Would you leave a £250,000pa job to be a SAHM?

[misosoup]

Ok, I've changed my name for this, not quite sure why....

I really enjoy my job and it is pretty well paid but since I returned to work after having DD2 I have been thinking a lot about this.

I can afford not to work, dh's income is nothing like mine but still above average although it will clearly be a huge drop in our standard of living.

And I miss the kids do much during the day... I spend 2 hours per day with them plus weekends. There is no way I can cut my hours any more and part-time is out of the question.

But I have worked so hard to get here, against all odds. I don't want to throw it all away.

Rhubarb, you are still ' there ' for your son, and by the sounds of things you and he have a very strong attachment, and you always will be 'there' for him.He will settle,I'm sure of that,just keep supporting him/empathizing with his feelings,eg;' yes i know it's hard to be apart from mummy,i miss you loads too but we both have to go to nursery/work...how about on the way home we...( insert nice treat here...play in park/pick up DVd whatever ).Maybe he needs a 'bit' of you to carry/snuggle during nursery day, like a scarf/glove...something nice and cuddly,( like you in fact! )...my son now 4 still carries a v.worn old leather bookmark of mine in his blazer pocket,he says it smells of me and makes hi feel happy...no arguing with that ! Above all be a compassionate observr of your situation,treat yourself kindly and be assured it will get better.You certainly seem to have a lot going for you.

Could he get a bus drivers license? Or what about train drivers?

They are covered by unions and so tend to be better paid with better working conditions because the unions are quick to act if they are not!

train driver

bus driver

Thanks Soapy! He has looked into applying for a bus drivers permit but you have to pay for it and take lessons and stuff, the hours he's working he hasn't got time. If he was unemployed he'd get it paid for!

Mozhe, thanks for your kind words. I know he is being well looked after and maybe it won't affect him? All I know is that it is affecting him now, in the present, and that worries me. Plus I miss him, really really miss him even though he's a little pain in the arse! Every morning he asks me if nursery is closed, if he can stay with me, and when I leave he looks at me so sad, still staring through the window as I leave. When I pick him up he is crying and smiling at the same time!

That has to break even the hardened of hearts!

Rhubarb - I sympathise with your situation. I'm sure things will get better. DS will settle in and another 6 months, he'll be eligible for nursery vouchers and of the age that most non-working parents gladly send their little ones off to a nursery.

I'm sure your job prospects are improvable too. Fundraising has many avenues and some of them better paid than where you are currently. Will you have the chance to take some professional qualifications? Like you say, the hours would be fantastic if both your children were school age.

I hope I don't sound patronising here. Just trying to be optimistic for you. I have been at home for 2 years and now I know I'd find it very hard to put DD2 into a nursery and go back to work if I felt like that had been pushed upon me rather than my choice to go back to work. I quite happily handed DD1 over to a nursery at age 6 months but for some reason it seems harder when they have been used to being at home with you for longer.

Thanks! I shall bow out now as too much of my personal information is being bandied about. CAT me with job ideas for dh though!

your paying taxes becuase if you didn't you would be in prison

and may i remind you your your taxes are not a personal bank account - which you can dip into]

in fact a large proportion of todays taxes are going to pensioners who are claiming benefits - most of them are living longer draining the NHS or resources and taking from a system that proportionally their taxes did not cover.

so stop with the "i pay my taxes i can take out of the system"

and the
i pay my taxes for you to sit on your arse shit

becuase you dont despite what the sun and tory mail tell you everyday you taxes pay for much more than single mothers.

ashouldnt somone somewhere be asking two fundemental questions

if life on benefits is so good - you do it

and

why are people on long term benefits? where is the education, hope, ambition, pride?

i too take issue with the degredation of the family being with working mothers.

i have worked ( and studied) and claimed benefits ( to top up poor income) until around 2000

i did all because i wanted better for my children. i have a wonderful family.

somone somewhere has to decide what the argument is becuase on the one hand the degredation of society is down to parents having to work - latch key kids etc.

on the other its becuase lazy fuckers dont work at all.

in fact your royally screwed no matter what you do.

Rhubarb,he won't be ' affected ' I'm sure of that....he sounds like a very emotionally literate little boy ! In other words he knows whats what,thats good in lots of ways....he is probably much more resiliant than you think, also good ! You need to hang on to all those positives, and maybe join some sort of group,( Working Parents alliance ?), to get face to face support....You are doing a good job, hang in there...Welcome to sniff me out on mn whenever you need to talk ?

The best bit of the thread is the views that it pays to work. That didn't used to be the case so Blair has achieved something and helped women's rights and position in society too. Great.

Cumbria - wonderful area. Not that well known for high paying jobs, sadly. What about bits of self employed work? I suppose where I live tehre is a permanent shortage of all kinds of workers, gardeners, personal trainers (easy job - put cards through rich fat women's doors with your picture on - you have to look good and then force her out running every day), baby sitters, tutors. But if you're in an area where people just don't have spare monn ey to pay for anything it's much harder to set up those kinds of self employed businesses and extra income sources. Tends to be the gorgeous places too like Cumbria, Scottish Highlands, Devon/Cornwall. I will avoid the Tebbitt on your bike suggestion.

Xenia and my nan - both love tony blair. sums it up completely

my nan voted tory all her life.

IMO Xenia posts a lot of v,sensible stuff on mn...so give over custardo

are you suggesting tony blair isn't sensible

or my nan?

Well, mozhe, you and Xenia might as well stick together. There are only two of you, after all.

hugs in advance xenia!!!

Blair got in because he stole the Conservatives' policies. All very amusing. Pity we're not still paying back the national debt however.

Construction workers in Cumbria - at least presumably they don't have Polish competition like the construction workers in the SE do, who do indeed as she posted take on work without employment legislation being respected, heard about it on Radio 4, they pick them up each day, taken on for that day in that place, not members of unions etc etc

Dry stone walling? Trouble is farming and farming areas - just about the worst areas to be in if you need a bit more money. Probably not much call for expensive tutoring, gardening work, personal trainers, children's party entertainers, the kinds of jobs in richer areas which are not that hard to set yourself up to do.

thats new labour

love a good tory me

On a festive theme how about Christmas card designer? I was reading a mag in a waiting room (last years Marie-clare or similar) and one said she earned 60 k /year. Not bad if you can draw.

OMG mozhe I'm so glad my mum wasn't you.

She stayed at home to look after me and my three siblings and still managed to teach me all about important things like women's rights, and despite your theory (that by leaving your under 5's while you work is the only way to teach them social responsibilty) she taught me all about mothers working and 'taking a vital role in society by being economically active as it is so important to your son daughter' and I'm all up for being a 'vital role model especially to your daughter and all other girls too'

But she also taught me that she loved me enough to put me first . She worked as soon as we were all at school and has continued to work ever since. her flexibilty for work increased as we all became less dependent.

I have so much respect for her for putting the kids before her career which she did -for the short-term. In those really early years children are so dependent and need time with their parents to feel valued by them.

I don't know your circumstances mozhe but It I think it should be made easier for women like you to stay at home and look after their FIVE babies without the fear that you will not be teaching them all of those things -

maybe a start would be for our society recognise the need for mothers to nurture their young and also recognising that women who have careers need to take longer than 6 months to do this.

Of course I respect that you have a choice, but mozhe I am astonished by your reason for leaving your 5 young children for 12 hours each day.

Children under five and the words "social responsibility" should be mutually exclusive, unless we're talking about sharing toys.
We may as well send the little things out working so !
R

This has been a very interesting debate, and I'm glad I have read it and considered the points that different people have made.

It has helped many of us clarify our own reasons for doing what we do, even though we are very different in our conclusions.

I respect the choice of any of you, working, SAHM, benefits, nanny, nursery, working tax credit, whatever. All of these choices sound very well thought through to me, given the circumstances that we are all in.

Let's at least do each other the favour of a bit of mutual respect of our choices. You just can't judge someone else for their choices.

Just adding my support for what Custy has said. Regarding the family, in the 80's working mothers were criticised for a latch-key kid generation, but now the government more or less forces mothers into work.

I do believe that the family and family life is disintigrating as more and more mothers are forced into jobs to cover horrendous mortgages and stupidly high costs of living.

There is a difference here of those mothers who want to work, to raise their standards of living and for their own personal self-worth, and those who feel forced into working just to make ends meet.

Neither SAHMs nor working mums should have to justify their choices - but then no mum should feel that her choices have been taken away from her.

That's my final say on this!

How can you have 2 unplanned babies? one mistake I accept - we've all had a scare. But after getitng pregnant by mistake once how can you not ensure that it doens't happen again in this day and age with the pill/condoms et al?

thats drifting pretty far from the topic however!

inclined to sing off but wanted to round up my own loose threads.

I don't think women automatically should stay at home wiht their kids
I think that we should all take more responsibility for our reproductive urges and have the children we can afford
I think that if you can work you should, and if you CHOOSE not to because of a desire to be at home with kids or any other reasons you accept that your choice carries a possible financial burden.
I think that we worry far too much about the effect of wokring parents. It may be worth reflecting that both parents use to work even in the 'good old days' Dad may have been out on the farm but mum might well have been spinning/weaving/wetnursing for extra cash.
The fact that as a person you prefer work that isn't related to spening 24/7 with children doens't make you a bad person.
The welfare state is extremly fucked, whilst as a libertarian I believe in a minimal level of state intervention the romantic in me hates the thought of anyone suffering so supports some level of state help for those who are in crises.

and last but not least this is an incredibly middleclass discussion I worked on council estates for 10 years and most women up there wouldn't believe we get so het up about this. They figure that there are far worse things in life than your 2 yr old spending 5 or 6 hours a day in a registered nursery. (like druggies on your street, lack of jobs, no money for rent etc)

anon - thats far too sensible.

was discussing this with my dh last night and he practically shouted " i dont know why you even engage with these people!"

"it's kinda the point of a discussion forum" says i

Everyone else has put in their tuppence, so I might as well. Pretty shocked by the degree of contempt for SAHM from some who work and also for working mums by SAHMs. In my experience everyone thinks really carefully about this choice and doesn't think "oh, who cares about the kids I'll go back to my me me me life" or "who cares about paying my way in life, I want to be with my kids". Working mothers feel guilty about the kids and SAHMs about not "contributing" financially (although let's face it, all working mums know the cost of the jobs SAHMs do when we have to pay someone else to do them). Interesting thread, though.

In answer to the original question, surely this all proves that it isn't about the amount of money? I know £250K is a lot, much more than I get (although I'm not going to play the "I'm poorer than you" card because (a) there isn't that much in it and (b) that isn't the point), but if, as miso says, she can live comfortably on what dh earns, then the issue is if she wants to work or not, and would be the same if she earned a lot less - I'm not saying money doesn't matter (only really rich people say that), but that it is something more basic than that. If she stays, it ought to be because, as various people have argued, she might not be as happy at home as she thinks she might.

My advice, for what it's worth, is stick it out for a while and see how it goes. If it doesn't seem right, then do give it up, having researched returning to this or similar markets (there is always something else you can do in the same field) when the kids are a bit older, in case that is what you want to do.

The answer is obvious. Stop educating girls after secondary school - just teach cooking & sewing. Then we can make the men learn more and support us all whilst we stay at home

That has cheered me up as I am expecting a girl, so only have to save for DS uni fees