Wise Ruby Wax - working and stay at home parents

[Judy1234]

In today's Telegraph....

"Dear Ruby

I stopped working when I had my third child. It didn't make sense to continue with my job when I had a stressed-out husband requiring my support and children who needed me at home. It was an agonising decision, but my salary only just covered the cost of childcare.

And we didn't need the money - my husband earns six times more than I did. More importantly, I felt really guilty going off to the office every day and leaving my kids behind.

My problem is this: since I stopped working I feel like a non-person. Oddly, it's other women who give me this feeling. Women who have somehow managed to keep their careers afloat through babies, breastfeeding, nappy rash and all the mayhem of motherhood, treat me with barely disguised contempt. It's almost as if, by staying at home, I've lost the right to have an opinion, or say anything interesting. It's deeply upsetting.

Life is hard enough as it is, so why can't women be allies at least? Why can't we respect each other's choices? Amanda M, Edinburgh

Dear Amanda

I have heard that cry from some of my "non-person" friends when they decided to give it all up for breastfeeding duty. The reason I would also probably treat you with disdain if I met you is that I am secretly (well, not so secretly any more) jealous.

You are lucky enough to have a husband who makes six times the amount you made and that really irks me, as I'm sure it would other females.

But in your position, I would have worked anyway, as all my self-esteem is stored up in my job. I could never have applied the word "housewife" to myself. I'd rather have put a sabre through my head.

Although I admire your sacrifice to the little one, on the whole, I find women who don't work to be just a teensy bit boring with their obsession with schools and stools. Not all, just most.

Perhaps other working mothers are reminded how guilty they feel about abandoning the home. Perhaps we take it out on you. Enjoy your home life."

"All my self-esteem was stored up in my job". This simply wasn't the case for me. I had a good job but I resented how work impinged on my life and I hated being defined by what I did to earn money. Once I got pregnant I couldn't get out quick enough and left without so much as a backward glance .

Seems weird to have all her self esteem stored up in her job too, can't be very healthy to base all self confidence on one aspect of life.

A lot of people get self esteem from their work but usually from other things too. The Sunday Times article on people working in the city says of one person "I realised that what gave me my drive in life was the adrenaline at work, it was the stress and the social side, the long hours. I found family life dull and restrictive by comparison". My life would not be as full if it were just home and children. I can sympathise with these comments.

I knew someone who was interviewed by Ruby Wax for the post of nanny, about 15 years ago. She was offered the job but didn't take it as she could see that Ruby was never going to be there.

But to be able to give up your job and being at home means you then have to be dependant on someone else.
Personally, I couldn't bear to be a sahp and am lucky that dh is one instead.

Why does SAHM = housewife?
I stayed at home to look after the children.
Housework was shared evenings and weekends.

Yes I'm dependent on dh for certain things and he is dependent on me for certain things. I consider it an equal partnership.

I'm a WAHM so I'm confused about which side I should be on?
Can somebody tell me please?

PMSL - oh xenia, you really think that Ruby Wax is going to have anything constructive to say about this debate!!! She will only write to antagonise, surely you of all people must see that. The trouble is with the whole "non-person" thing of being a SAHM is other womens perceptions.

PMSL at wheresthehamster. I was at MIL yesterday and made a comment about my quite disgraceful house (no really its almost time to call in the clean brigade!). She sort of looked at DP as is to say is it really that messy, he said laughed. I just said, well my "job" is to look after DD and do DPs admin , not skivvy. If he wants a show house, best employ a cleaner, else live with the mess. He just doesnt notice it anymore tbh.

quickdraw - you are an uber woman, i bow at your multitasking feet

Glad to see I'm not the only one with a reasonable DP lem

why thankyou Lucyellen, I accept your praise graciously.
I'm just glad I never had to make the decision between the two.

I remember an interview several years ago, where Ruby Wax described taking her children shopping in a supermarket.

She said that after five minutes she was hiding under a vegetable display, and sobbing and screaming for the nanny to come and help her.

I think its a bit of a non-problem. I am assuming that six times more than the letter writer means a three figure salary. As much as the writer isn't particularly happy, she has a choice, and could, presumably, pay for high quality childcare if she did go back to work.

"Life is hard enough as it is". Maybe I am feeling a bit mean this evening, but based on the contents of the letter, my response would be not really.

That's another interesting point whether a housewife who just minds the children and doesn't do housework which is then shared when husband and wife are home is really doing her job particularly given how much easier housework is today than say 1930 when you didn't have a hoover etc. So do housewives big up the role by saying I never do the housework bit and leave it to share with my husband at weekends and my job is child care?

Depends on ages of children and number of children. I think most people can run a hoover around with young children underfoot, but other jobs can be a bit more challenging. I think you were allowed to send young children out all day to forage in the hedgerows in the 1930's...

In 1930 both my grandmothers had servants - my paternal grandmother had 15 of them (in India), including a nanny for each of her five children as they came along; and my maternal grandmother had a full-time live-in maid and a nursery nurse for her children.

They certainly didn't do any housework.

SAHM certainly doesn't need to = housewife and, of course, although this is not PC on MN, the level of activity of a SAHM is largely dependent on how much her partner earns. A SAHM with a very high earning partner and several children can be pretty busy, even with all domestic chores outsourced, running a home or two, organising schools, children's activities, holidays, managing family finances, travelling etc. Obviously the less money your partner earns, the "smaller" your joint life will be. That's just life.

I don't like Ruby Wax much, however.

The column written in the Daily Telegraph is alternated each week between Ruby Wax and Graham Norton, it actually is a superb agony aunt column, very much written tongue in cheek and takes the mickey out of the people who write in more often than not. Consequently I would take what either of the agony aunts say with a pinch of salt. Anyone who reads the column weekly will know what I mean

So Anna, somebody with a high earning partner has more to organise because they might have a second home and go on loads of holidays?

lol at 'bigging up' a job as SAHM
Does anyone remotely care what other people do with their day?
I don't feel I have to justify myself to anyone.

Lol at 'running a home or two', 'organising schools' and 'travelling' being examples of the hard-working SAHM. Dear dear, running that second home is just SOOOOOOO hard!

Ruby Wax is incredibly unfunny.
Christ knows why the Telegraph employ her and the similarly unamusing Graham Norton to dispense advice.

She tries soo hard to be wackybutglamorousidentikit Kathy Lette type.It was funny once. For about 2 months in 1987.

Mind you the column jostles for space with the staggeringly obvious crap written by the life coach guru Nina Grusfeld (or summat) who dispenses pearls of wisdom such as

Feeling lethargic? Take a walk and throw open the windows while you're out!

Feeling old and not with it? Get someone young to show you how to use an iPod!

Load of shite,the lot of it.

Yes, Anna is right. It's why my life is quite complex to organise even without a man to dole out cash to me. The life itself is a bit like running a small business at times, organising the trips and the schools etc I think... it would be an interesting discussion actually to compare (ignoring whether you work or not) whether if you have a higher income you have more of a life in the sense of more to run and organise than if you don't earn much and you're just organising the trip to the pub and the week camping every summer or whatever.

You know what Ruby Wax and Graham Norton replaced???
A brilliant column by Rose Prince called Savvy Shopper.
No idea why - they're rubbish and the letters surely must be made up - who'd ask those two for advice?

I remember that too Hamster.Sorely missed.

What interests me is that with more money,often there is more hassle and aggro. So yes, running a home and paid help and several cars and a second home is a f/t job.

You also have to outsource to other peopel which I think makes you vulnerable. You never know who is nosing in your underwear drawer,looking at your e mails, spitting in your casseroles and ignoring your kids.

Which is precisely why I prefer to do it ALL myself.