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."

I am pretty sure that more money and more children = more activity outside the home that needs organising.
Is this rocket science? PMSL

Well Xenia,I find the idea of having more income equating to 'more of a life in the sense of more to run' pretty bizarre! You could argue that the opposite is true - that when you are working to a tight budget, you have to be far more thorough in your research for holidays/trips/meal planning etc. Whereas if money isn't a problem, you can book or buy without having to look so carefully.
But anyway, I have to say that Anna's posts always make me smile - she's always so determined to tell us about her blissful life where she can afford to offload the domestic chores and spend time travelling etc - I think we've got the message lol

I'm quite fond of Anna actually - she is essentially harmless

www.aldi-stores.co.uk/uk/html/product_range/2744_4273.htm

Might be of interest to people with small lives.

Just got lost in an eighties reverie there for a moment

Yes, you could argue that if you have to walk for an hour to the supermarket with cheapest bread that's going to take more time than booking the ski chalet. I suppose anyone with more than one home probably has more to organise than someone who doesn't and presumably I with 5 children have more to do than someone with an only child. But then you outsource more (and yes I live on a daily basis with people who work here for me knowing lots presumably about me, what's in my bed side table, where my knickers were left etc). You have to balance that against do you want to spend 3 hours a day cleaning and doing the washing which for me is no.

And a lot of full time working mothers and fathers with these kinds of lives do the family organisation too. The housewives and husbands who use to have good jobs and gave it up to be at home have to invent a job which isn't there so they make out there is a lot of organisation to be done which the rest of us manage with just as much competence in our spare time. Parkinson's law -work expands to fill the time available. I'm relying on that one when I'm 80 and bored with nothing to do - that the trip to the library can fill up half the day etc.

Xenia, if people at home are inventing jobs that aren't there, what exactly is it that you are "outsourcing", as opposed to competently managing yourself in your spare time ?

God fancy having all your self esteem from your job.

Tragic if you're made redundant then.

Saddoes

Most of us get a lot of our sense of self worth from our work as well as our relationships with our families, surely? I am sure I do and most nurse, doctors or whatever do as well. It's just part of life.

On the inventing jobs I meant people who say they are running a series of homes with staff who say that's a job - the kind of power trophy wife thing. I am just saying plenty of men and women who work full time and also run that kind of a lifestyle manage to do the running of it in their spare time rather than pretending it's a real job. I would never say that cleaning was invented though and I'm certainly delighted to outsource that.

Maybewegetourselfworthfromhavingfunbeinginlovefeelinggoodbeingtruetourselvesworkingornotisaboringand dulldiscussion

Xenia - try running multiple homes before you judge.

This time last year my sister was living in Spain, where her husband's office was but where he rarely was, bringing up three children in three languages, one of whom was not yet at school. She was renovating a quite substantial ruin in deepest rural France, organising moving her whole family permanently to Amsterdam and overseeing works on her London home.

She was flat out for many months.

Oh - and she didn't/doesn't have "staff" apart from a cleaner/ironer once a week . "Staff" can't do that kind of work.

Xenia - definitely agree that a sense of self worth should come from a range of areas - family/friends/work in order to have a balanced life. LittleBella - it would indeed be a fairly sad person who relies on their work to give them their entire sense of self worth. But equally, mothers who live their lives through their children's achievements and have no life of their own are equally sad. Surely the whole point is that people need an equilibrium?

in thegutter exactly, on the equilibrium front. If I didn't work I'd go crazy as I'd have too much mindless housework and not enough mental stimulation.

Would rather get the mental stimulation thru work, and use the money to 'outsource' the borrrrring housework.

What do rich SAHM do ? if you outsource the boring stuff..there's only tennis and shopping!!!

If you are at all interested in child devolopement it is fascinating to see your children change and devolop a little more everyday.
When you work hard to stimulate and educate them you do feel a sense of achievement when they understand more and more.
When you have long rambling beautiful countryside walks with no schedule to worry about then you feel a a genuine sense of exhileration and that is the joy of spending their pre school years together.
Being a SAHM doesn't mean housework and boredom. Lack of imagination does.

I like ruby wax.

I think Xenia is Ruby Wax

Both are entirely humourless 'tis true.

You're dead right Mrsruffallo.

Both are entirely humourless 'tis true.

You're dead right Mrsruffallo.

Three cheers for Mrsruffallo. Life gets boring at work too, as well as for SAHMs. I'm at home now and I rarely get bored. In bleak times I just stick my head in a book & escape.

There is one thing - as a SAHM I always feel that I'm 'on duty'. When I was working full time, I had definate 'off-duty' time, and the chores somehow got done between the two of us. Example - Mum gave me her piano, but I can't have lessons because it would be me-time off duty and somehow I can't justify that. Do I make sense?? When the dch were small I did quite a bit of arty-farty stuff - now, never. I can't take time off to do painting, got a dog to walk/dinner to organise/washing to sort - agree with Xenia about 'inventing' to fill the time.