Vihaga,
My aunt felt the same way you do–she had two kids and being a SAHM just drove her CRAZY. She is an aerospace engineer and was fortunate in that she was able to do part-time work while the kids were young.
Don’t cave to the pressure. Both of my parents worked full-time after I was born and it didn’t bother me a bit. And my mental development turned out fine–I’m now a physics professor.
After a lot of thought and discussion with my husband we’ve decided that it would be best for me to quit and find part time work after the baby is born. Even if I do decide that I need to go back to work full time a job with this kind of strict lateness and PTO policy is not someplace I can feasibly work with a young baby at home so in the end I won’t be keeping this job either way.
Bolding mine. It is never, ever that simple, and it pisses me off to know end when people make it sounds as though it is.
Yeah, it doesn’t sound like THIS job is a good one with kids without a battle - and that’s a battle that will take energy to fight that you probably want to put somewhere else at this point in time.
Our baby is not even born yet, so idealism is still ripe in our household. I didn’t mean to anger you, but perhaps you could shed some light on how things go awry after the baby is born.
It’s not that simple because the question can also be “do you value providing a college education, travel, and financial security for your child more than additional time with them?”
Or the question might be “Are you the most qualified caretaker for your child during the day given your own temperament and the other options available?”
Or the question might be “Does it best suit your child to be under the auspices of one caretaker, or do they do better in a more structured, more socially-rich environment?”
I am saying this as someone who has decided that a SAHP (my husband) is the best choice for our family. But I’d never think that means it’s the best choice for someone else, or that it’s evidence that they value their job more than they value their child, which is what you are implying.
Um I agree…especially about timing bathroom breaks? Is that even legal?
Yeah, they grow up so quickly. The monetary sacrifices you might have to make are worth it. And once the child gets to be school age, you can go back to work. Or, get a job where they don’t time your bathroom breaks. YEESH! I practically lived in the bathroom the last couple of months of each pregnancy, I can’t imagine being bitched out for peeing too much.
Manda JO has captured some of what pissed me off and I’ve bolded where she sums it up nicely. I do fully admit that this is a hot-button topic for me and one that I think results in just as many arguments (if not more) than breast vs. bottle.
The decision to work or not to work is very rarely a measure of how much you ***value ***time with your baby or child. Honestly, I read that and thought “Someone’s been reading Dr. Sears.” It sounds really sanctimonious. The decision to return to work or stay at home has so, so many more layers and nuances to it, as Manda JO aptly conveyed. It’s not a simple math equation: baby > work or work > baby. If it were, few people would work.
No, I do not value the marginal value of the time with my child more than my current job.
(Though in the Manda JO sense, where I value my sanity and financial security and my child’s right to have a sane mother and a non-SAHM role model and need for more social time than I alone can provide her more than I value the marginal value of that time. For at least a third of which, also, she’s napping.)
I am so glad I will never get that first year back (especially that first month), by the way. SOOOO glad.
This is really, really good advice.
I’ve mentioned this before but I’ve noticed that my peers and my siblings’ peers whose mothers didn’t work growing up have a fundamentally different worldview. They don’t appreciate what their mothers did “for them” and they don’t seem to think that women are men’s equals, plain and simple. I’m not justifying or defending their behavior but that’s what I see. I see my brothers very proud of our mom for working. I think they respect women more and consider them equals whereas their friends whose mothers don’t work don’t see it as such.
From what I’ve read of you pbbth, you wouldn’t enjoy being a stay at home parent. You’re very career driven, which is great. I’ve never seen or heard of a woman jump right back into her career after taking several years off. Frankly, seeing my mom semi-retire in her early 50’s (when I was 20 and the siblings 16 and 12) was just about perfect: we were teens and young adults and we WANTED to spend more time with her, cause she’s pretty awesome. Would we have traded it so she wiped our asses more? I don’t think so.
As a high school teacher, I haven’t seen this. I’ve seen kids that did or did not respect their mothers, but it’s always a lot more complicated than “worked outside the home” or “didn’t work outside the home”. I can think of one family over the last ten years where I really felt like that dynamic was in play. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but I think it’s unlikely, and can be prevented provided that both parents respect and value what the stay at home parent provides to the household.
Again, not my experience. I can think of several women in my own family who either took several years “off” or (more commonly) delaying starting their career until they were older who went on to have very successful careers. My own mom stayed home until the youngest (of the six of us!) was in grade school, and she’s retiring from an executive position in a large corporation making a very healthy salary.
This is another thing to consider with kids…
A lot of SAHMs think that they’ll stay home when the kids are little. But they are surprisingly needy at that 12 to 16 age. Its not difficult (but it IS expensive) to find quality daycare for a two year old. Its harder to find someone who will make sure your 13 year old gets on the bus, does his homework, gets picked up from practice - that person is almost always Mom or Dad. And its really hard to find someone who isn’t you who can help guide them through the minefield of high school/middle school (e.g. sex, drugs, alcohol, misbehaving). You may discover your kids need you MORE when they are tweens/teens than when they were young.
(Good kids are easy from 10ish to 16ish - no guarantee they’ll be “good” though. But if you are going to keep them busy with something other than TV/Video Games, you spend a lot of time in the car. You have time to read while they are at practice - which you never did when they were little and you were watching them all the time. But it isn’t like the time becomes all yours.)
Now, if you can afford to and want to stay home for more years, this is fine. But if you are worried about social security credits/your own 401k or just wanting to make sure an empty nest doesn’t hit you hard - you might find it worthwhile to work whenever it isn’t “too hard with kids.” That might be a little now and a little later.
I have considered that part of myself when making a decision about all of this and that is why I’m looking to go back to work part time so that I don’t feel like I’m not a functioning part of society. It is also important to have interactions with other adults so you don’t spend your whole day wanting to stab Dora the Explorer in the face. I also want my child to understand that in a family everybody has to work in some fashion to contribute to the household so that when she gets older she doesn’t fight the concept of getting a job and taking care of some of her own expenses the way a few of the kids in my high school did.
However, when I think back on my childhood with 2 working parents I honestly don’t remember a whole lot of my parents until about the time I started school. Most of my earliest memories are of grandparents, babysitters, and daycare centers, many of them bad. I remember the babysitter that taught me to tie my shoes and the babysitter that helped me write a letter to a clown that had a TV show I watched regularly, but I also remember the babysitter that napped for 6 hours a day and left me to do pretty much nothing and the daycare center where one of the employees would steal the snack my mom put in my bag for me and make me watch him eat it every day. Not everyone who cares for children is good at their job or even nice to the kids in their care and often kids are afraid to say anything or don’t understand that what is happening to them is wrong. I trust that my parents vetted each person or center where they left me while they were at work and I know that the places that were bad weren’t places that cared for me for too long but considering that they each worked 40 hours a week I’m sure they only had so much time they could take off work to spend at day care centers and such to see where they would be comfortable sending me every day. I don’t want that for my kid if I can help it, you know?
It seems like this is going to be a fine line to walk and no matter what decision I make I’m going to feel like the grass might have been greener on the other side. The whole decision making process gets a lot more difficult when it is someone else’s life you are potentially screwing up! 
Picked for brevity, and another one adding my voice to the “being a SAHM is something which should be done, if possible, only by those who want to be one.” Your job sounds as mother-friendly as the big bad wolf with a case of rabies, but whatever choice you end up taking remember: it doesn’t have to be for life. If you choose to stay at your job and things start going to Hell in a basket, jump off; if you choose to leave, that doesn’t mean you have to be a SAHM any longer than it makes sense FOR YOU and not for anybody else’s criteria to remain one.
My mother was a SAHM… of the never at home variety. She wasn’t happy about it and I ended up being as much of a mother to my brothers as she ever was.
By “not respect” I didn’t mean cruel or abusive to the parents or downright disrespectful. If you talked to the kid they generally had positive things to say. But they never formulated it as “My mother is an equal contributor” it was more like “Uh, my mom makes good sandwiches.” Or “My mom’s great but I don’t know what she does all day at home (this is when they were in middle school and high school and the mothers hadn’t gone back to work).” Or “My mom doesn’t work so she can bug me all day.” ETA: Even in my 20’s when presumably people “grew up”, I never saw them value their SAHmothers equally or even close to equally.
Well now I can say I have heard of women going back to work and being successful! :p. That’s pretty great, actually, to hear a success story. I can see delaying one’s career too. But many careers that wouldn’t be possible - as pbbth’s said, things are rapidly changing in her field and she’d be unlikely to be able to re-enter in a few years.
In a few cases it’s very possible if you keep up with some professional certifications - my cousin is a pharmacist and went back to work after 6 years off (I didn’t include her because she’s just starting out again so I don’t know if she’ll be “successful”). But pharmacists are hugely in demand; she was getting offers left and right to go back to work throughout her time off.
If I had to do it all over again I’d definitely choose the “be around more in tween/teen years”. Mom was there for all the sporting events, recitals, the whole kit 'n kaboodle when other (working) mothers were trying to prove themselves, trying to make that jump to senior librarian/full professor/upper level management/etc whereas mine was already there, been there done that, professionally very fulfilled.
Even if your kids are “good” - not tempted by drugs/alcohol/unprotected sex and have high grades - they still need a lot of reinforcement of it as well as being carted around to the things you can afford on a two income salary - private music lessons, sports instruction, after school clubs, summer camps, etc.
Pbbth … I am very curious to know: what kind of job are you working now? With the kinds of time restrictions you’re describing, I can only conceive of soul-crushing jobs with a lot of turnover. Can’t think of a time-centric job that people actually like and are willing to stay at for long periods of time.
Mrs. P and I went to our last childbirth class last night, it was a great class and we dealt with a lot of loose ends in terms of what outlying questions did we have. And work\stay at home was one of the biggest topics among all who were there. One of the moms is a surgeon, and she is planning on staying home for 6 months, then heading back to work, my wife is leaving her job and staying home indefinitely: which could mean 6 mos. or 6 years…we are going to play that one by ear and see what works best for all of us.
One woman who already has two tweens is having a “late-in-life” pregnancy [she’s 42] and the one thing that stuck in my mind last night from what she said is that the early years are great, but she felt like the school-age time for her two older kids (13 and 11), was the best by far. And that the one thing her children wanted most - which she felt she could not have planned for - was simply time with she and her husband.
Not knowing exactly what that means just yet I can assume that time is very important for older children to have with their parents. I don’t know all of this is so obscure right now for me, people say everything is going to change but what does that really mean? My sense is I am going to have to experience it for myself and just live it.
I’m a health insurance agent. I don’t do the sales end of things but more the research and maintenance portion of the job. It is actually a wonderful place with wonderful people and I’ve never thought of it as soul-crushing in any way. They also have almost no turnover…the newest person we have in the office has been here for 2 years and most of the people who work here have been here for 5 years or more. Like I said, the job is great and they are very supportive and spend a butt-ton of money to help their employees but the one thing they are sticklers for is time.
Partly this is worse for me in my department than for people in other departments because my supervisor is a stickler for lateness and time off just in general. In her life she is early everywhere and she hasn’t taken a sick day in 8 years of working in this company. Partly this is because a portion of my job involves being on the phone and since our office hours are 9-5 they want me here from 9-5, not 9:01-5:01. Partly this is because all of the companies we work with also have 9-5 hours so even if I wanted to work late or come in early my ability to access much of the information I need to do my job would be severely limited. It doesn’t make sense for the company to pay me to be here until 6 pm if from 5-6 I can’t check on coverage or anything for a member. For someone in our sales department who doesn’t need access to that information all of the time they can sleep in late tomorrow and then have a dinner meeting at 8 pm and not have any issues. I understand why they have the policy they have regarding the lateness and I even understand forcing you to take the PTO in half day increments as it forces you to determine if your emergency really is an emergency instead of just taking off for minor issues. Unfortunately this also means that with a baby I’m really not going to be able to meet their standards for lateness/PTO and I’m not going to be able to keep the job once the kid is born. I will miss the company terribly and once I get to the point where the kid is in school and we are better able to hold a regular schedule my resume will be sent back in to see if they are hiring, but it isn’t going to be a good fit for my needs here in a few months.
Is it possible to transfer to another place in the company where your boss wouldn’t be such a stickler or the work might be more adaptable for a “mommy schedule?” It might be worth talking to your boss/HR/or a supervisor in another department before you pack it in. Maybe moving off phone work and into analysis? Or off phone work and into claims review?
(I know, HR isn’t interested in YOU - they are interested in the company. But they are also interested in retention, so it might be worth a shot).
Sometimes. Tweens are strange. My son is very independent. He doesn’t NEED us except to nag him to read, and for someone to drag him to baseball (my husband coaches, so that one is easy). But when he does need his Mom and Dad, he needs them. He doesn’t really want to hang with us too often, but we’d better be there for him when he does. He has his own friends and self entertains. I wouldn’t want to NEVER be home for him, but there isn’t any reason to hover over the kid. Being a SAHM of that one would mean I’d get a lot of time to garden and cook and hang on the Dope.
My daughter is still clingy. She’s actually at sleep away camp this week…so not that clingy. But she needs more parent time. She wants us to talk to her about books and movies. She wants to share her day with us. She wants feedback from us on her accomplishments. (My son - none of this…). She also has her own friends and can self entertain, but hanging out with Mom or Dad is still way cool. I have to keep myself from hovering over her or she won’t gain independence. And she needs us more to enable her activities. Girl Scouts, gymnastics - even her friends tend to be a car trip away instead of the neighbor kids.
Both can be very aware of “Mom, don’t embarrass me.” If we go to a movie and they spot friends of theirs, the chances we meet them outside the theater instead of them sitting with us go way up. I make my son cuddle on the couch with me and watch TV when he is home alone, because I know touching him in public is just WRONG!