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."

good post mrsruffallo

I love watching the children develop. It's one of the nicest parts of my last 23 years, walks in the woods, etc but I couldn't just do that and many working parents do that and work.

On what do the idle rich do -well whatever their sex they do what they've always done - either lots of worthy causes, running their estates, lives or lotus eating doing nothing or drugs of course and seeking the next thrill. Not too different from those on the dole really. If you don't have a job or are retired you can make the morning trip to visit the newsagent a huge task.

Anyway it's clear some men and women are happy to stay home and others prefer to work. It's just differences between individuals although I suspect some of us on either side find it hard to understand the other lot. My sister had a social event recently. She said most of those who came were the ones who didn't work and that they were just plain dull and she had nothing in common with them, their lives were too different from hers, their concerns so kind of petty, washing powder Stepford wives type things, a narrow world like that of a confined woman in Saudi. Obviously they aren't all like that and nor is everyone who works interesting but perhaps it's just lives then take a different turn and what is important to one person is not to another. But why is it that stay at home mothers I know hardly ever have a view on political issues or foreign policy or anything of any interest - is it because the stupid ones become housewives or do they kind of withdraw into a domestic world such that their only interest or concerns are hearth and home.

Dunno. I'm the only person I know in rl, apart from the window-cleaner, who has a view on politics or foreign policy - most of my freinds WOTH & moan about work all the time!

The window cleaner & I have put the world to rights on many occasions. He is so well-informed. Shame he looks like a bulldog.

Xenia - I think you only meet a certain sort of SAHM because most of the SAHMs I know have strong, well-informed and analytical views on lots of subjects. To be fair, my SAHM friends are all very well travelled (have lived, not just holidayed, in several countries) and have PhDs and MBAs and professional qualifications - and also have the time to think about things in a way that some working women (totally understandably) just don't. Jobs can be mind-numbingly narrowing too. Ten days ago I was at a party where I got stuck with a woman who has a new fairly high-up job at a big French clothing brand. Everyone laughs behind her back because wherever she works she cannot do anything but drone on about how everyone should buy her product. She was dressed in it head to foot (and my God did she not do that clothing brand justice ). Previously she worked at P&G - and told everyone to buy her toothpaste or washing powder or whatever category she was on at the time. Dull, dull, dull...

Anna, hear hear! I haven't got fancy quals but I worked fulltime until I was 34, when I had my dtws. I had done a lot of travelling/reading/thinking & worked with some v. intresting people prior to being a SAHM. Also my own mum had v. interesting life & views, so it all comes down to what we're like as people, not SAHM = dull & boring with no views and WOHM = dynamic & thrusting. A dull person is a dull person, 'job' or not.

Sorry must dash now, got cushions to plump

Oh completely agree, the world is full of dull people with narrow lives and views and work has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Work is just one way of filling your day - and it has the huge advantage of paying - and the huge disadvantage of being extremely time-consuming.

I work with male engineers and scientist (degree and PhD). Monday morning chatter usually consist of footballl or what was on the TV. Dull, dull, dull.

I work part-time as a research scientist because it provides me with self-fulfillment but it pales into insignificance compared to the time I spend with my 3yo DTS.

Last Friday we were collecting the leaves in the garden and we had a blissful time in the cold and mud. We then went inside and had a picnic in the living room. They devoured their cheese sandwiches and fruit salad with gusto and because they had been so good, I gave them each a chocolate lollipop. Hearing their squeals of delight was the icing on the cake.

To some that may be boring but to me, I would not change it for anything.

I wouldn't take advice from Ruby Wax, still less Graham Norton!!!! Oh and Liam from Big Brother is now dispensing advice in some magazine, wtf does he know about anything. What qualifications do these "slebs" have to go dishing out advice?

The bit that speaks to me "is that I am secretly (well, not so secretly any more) jealous". Too right

Spokette - aaah!!

I read the Graham Norton/Ruby Wax columns. They have some sage advice, of the kind you might get from a mature & experienced friend (and some not so - eg Graham told a man whose gf is a crap cook and a vegetarian to dump her as no future in the relationship. If my bf had listened to such advice 15 years ago we would not now be happily married, with me a passable cook!)

They obviously have the advantage of researchers behind them, so do come up with some interesting recent research, but mainly their appeal is they both have some very funny observations, especially GN, whose two obsessions seem to be food and sex.

OrmIrian - and, if (some) women are [green] of other women who have comfortable lives and do not have to work outside the home, what do you think about the mothers in past generations who urged their daughters to study hard and get a good job so they wouldn't have to be dependent on their husbands/could get a job? Do you think they were right, or do you just think they thought the grass was greener?

I think they were absolutely right! Not all women get married, not all women get married to rich men (I'm a case in point). I would like the choice to be at home, my not being able to earn enough to justify my going out to work would leave us financially in the sh*t! Which isn't a choice at all.

And even if I didn't work whilst my DCs were small, I'd still want to once they were older.

It's all about choices, isn't it? We should all, in an ideal world, be able to get ourselves educated & choose when/if to have dch, and then how to look after them & whether or not to carry on working. The problem comes when those who want to be SAHM but can't, for any particlar reason, might feel a bit jealous of those who can.

FWIW I remember, BC, looking out of the window at work at women with buggies, and feeling that I despised them and their boring lives, filled only with gossip about TV & nappies. It was only when I fell pg that I realised I had been jealous of them!
(And before anyone gets offended, I had it wrong about them and their lives - most of them!)

this is because neither is real, both actually the same hairy arsed trucker, this is internet not RL mmj!

lol @ janitor.

She does have a point

Sorry but just have to lol at Anna888's post saying that SAHMs have time to think about world issues and other interesting stuff in a way that 'some working women (totally understandably) don't'!!!!! So, SAHMs have a monopoly on THINKING now do they! Oh come on , Anna, you can do better than that! I know you're desperate to convince us all that you and your SAHM friends have discovered the perfect life style, but really!!
I'm a WOHM, most of the other mothers I know work full or part time. We are all able to think, we all read the newspapers, watch the news, are interested in literature, the arts, travel....... Working in interesting careers and achieving economic well-being does not prevent us from being interesting people - in fact it probably adds another interesting dimension!

Hairy arsed trucker with a split personality? ??!

What about what the children want/need?

Especially tiny little ones?

Shouldn't this be the cornerstone of our social and economic system? To have stable, secure children perhaps leading to less crime, more productive workers supporting the elderly, fewer mental health problems etc later on. It's a bit like a big old oak tree needing healthy roots.

It's always seemed to me that when they are small, they need you and you need them. It's biology.

After that, it makes a lot of sense to go out to work but it needs government compulsion with regard to school hours and holidays.

Otherwise we will keep losing all these clever women to the 20 year "career break".

Are wraparound schools a step in the right direction?

Oh, Ruby Wax? That comedienne (I use the term loosely) who gets paid shed loads to conduct unfunny TV interviews with vacuous B-list celebrities? And it was in the Telegraph. Well, by God, it must be the gospel truth!

Touche, Xenia! Touche!

My favourite is Amanda's statement that her husband outearns her by 6 times, but 'Life is hard . . .'

Yeah, right, Mandy!

I think ruby's funny

But the ponit is, Rosetip, that tiny children thrive with loving nannies and two parents around on some evenings, and the weekends and holidays and saying small children in some sense suffer because their parents leave them to work is wrong in my view. So putting children first can often involve mothers and fathers working and children don't suffer.
Obviously if the mother at home is cross all day or watches TV and ignores then or the childcare isn't adequate that's another matter.

inthegutter is right that in many ways many working parents have more to say and more interesting lives and time to think - commuting time to sit and think usually gives you more time than being home with 3 under 5s never mind chatting to colleagues and no it's not all about football and soaps. It is that entre in the wider world and coming up against all kinds of different people with different views which I just don't think most parents at home get.

Yes, Anna and I might be in a different world from others because she lives with a rich man and I earn a lot of money but that gives us choices and is a point for all our children on here - if you pick X life / career (or even impoverished man if your children could bear to live off male earnings) you won't have those choices and skiing holidays and ability even to stay home and not work although you still might want to make that choice but be careful because when you're 40 and harrassed and working because you don't l like it or having to be nice to your meal ticket you might regret it.

No, surely the point is SOME 'children thrive'....etc blah blah'. You can't make generalisations like ALL children whose mothers work are happier/parents are happier and all children who have SAHMs are damaged as their mums are bored! That may be true for you Xenia, but it can't be true for everyone in the world! Please try to accept that just because that's the way you run your life doesn't mean you can continually tell people who are different that they are in some way wrong or worthless.