If that isn’t a stay-at-home mom’s job, what is?
I feel you, man. I live by myself as well and I am no neat freak by any stretch of the imagination, but even I feel end up doing some light cleaning every day and heavy duty cleaning once a week, and it’s just me and my cat in my teeny apartment. I can’t imagine how much time someone would spend cleaning if they had a family and a decent sized house.
When I was growing up, I did all the cleaning and I went to school and worked two after school jobs. My mother worked hard, but I’ll be the first to admit that my stepfather was a lazy fuck and got off on having me do all the work around the house. The man couldn’t stand me and made it very well known. I did the dishes every night and cooked a few nights a week (when I wasn’t at work), did everyone’s laundry, took out the trash, cleaned the bathroom, kitchen, living room. I’m not kidding when I said I did every damn thing.
I realize my situation wasn’t like most people’s, though. I still turned out okay. Resented my parents like hell when I lived at home but we get along famously now. Funny thing too. I went to my parent’s house to visit a couple weeks ago and the place was an absolute sty. I haven’t lived at home in 8 years but I guess I never really noticed how filthy that place is. Looks like my doing all the housework when I lived at home was more detrimental to them than to me. My apartment looks great most of the time. 
I still believe children should have chores though and see absolutely nothing wrong with kids helping out around the house. I also think Bear_Nenno’s posts in this thread are waaaaay over the top. What my parents did wasn’t right but parent’s that don’t let their kids lift a damn finger aren’t right either. There’s a middle ground, you know. There has to be.
:rolleyes:
You think that laundry, trash and dishes are all that a stay at home mom ever does, and if she (horrors) expects her kids to do that, then she’s got nothing left do do? That’s really funny.
I’ll ask you what Bear_Nenno hasn’t answered yet: If a 12-year-old (or 17-year-old) spills Pepsi on the floor, should they wait for mom to wipe it up, because that’s her job? How far does this go, anyway?
Another question: What do these kids do during summer vacation? They may have summer school or some other activity part of the time, but for the most part, they have plenty of free time. Are they off the hook then too? Just goof off, and let mom do all the work?
To keep the house relatively clean and to take care of her kids. It’s NOT to be the kids’ fucking slave!
Dammit, it’s not going to fucking warp your fragile little kid psyche if you have to dry a fucking dish or push a vaccum cleaner around every once in a while! Heaven forbid!
I’m ashamed to say that the BBC has picked up the article. Its essentially the same as the original article posted, the main changes come at the end with a small bit of info/speculation/ect regarding the kids. Regarding Ben
I was rather tickled by the whole extremely inconvenient bit. The daughter however
In my humble opinion, chores are good for kids and won’t kill them, but we really don’t have enough information (as was stated earlier) to determine how much the kids were expected to do and what all the mom was doing.
Having been a SAHM and having worked outside (90% of the time) I have only this to say;
“I wish upon you OH BEAR NEENO that someday you can be a SAHM with children just like you.” You are so clueless you couldn’t find a clue with a map.
Also, I pity your poor working mom and your lazy ass self.
Good Lord - how do you manage that?!? I bow down before you!
It’s all I can do to keep the condo I share with my husband in order. Unfortunately, he was literally raised in a household with servants and never had to do a day of cleaning or cooking in his life until he moved to the U.S. Which doesn’t mean he’s lazy and refuses to clean, but it does mean he still doesn’t really have a grasp of how much effort and time goes into doing it. I’m kind of glad that my mom made me clean so much when I was younger - at least one of us knows when it’s time to start scrubbing. That way can tell him so he’ll help!
Right. And the mom in this article obviously wasn’t keeping the house “relatively” clean, was she? And if she’s moving out of the house to avoid doing housework, then she’s not really taking care of her kids, is she? So, you could pretty much say that she’s not doing her job.
Thus, it IS her job to “wipe and clean up after” 12-17 year olds kids, to a substantial degree. Note that this doesn’t exclude having them contributing some to the housework.
Please point out a single person in this thread who is explicitly or implicitly stating that having children occaisonally do chores is wrong.
You won’t be able to. In fact, people have explicitly stated the opposite! For you to pretend that people are arguing so is quite disgusting–you’re misrepresenting the truth in order to make your opponents seem irrational and yourself seem righteous, which is a pretty low tactic.
It’s the whole family’s house. They all live in it. They all funk it up. They should all do their part to keep it clean.
I was raised in a household where honoring (respecting) my parents was considered my primary responsibility. This meant doing my chores and doing them well and without back-talk. I never felt deprived of “kid” time while doing the dishes, vacuuming the stairs, and dusting the furniture. Chores taught me how to respect authority and take pride in my work. And you know what? They also helped my poor, hard-working parents. Heaven forbid children do something to make their parents’ lives easier!
Being a child does not mean your shit don’t stink and that everyone must do everything for you.
My mother worked full-time, so I don’t know what a stay-at-home mom’s job is. But if a working dad’s job ends at 5:00, why can’t a SAHM’s? And if parents believe in the value of chores for their children, why does it matter that one of the parents is SAH? The children aren’t the parents’ bosses. The children shouldn’t dictate what their mother does, not any more than I can dictate what my boss does.
A 17-year-old is a young adult living in a house rent-free with all the food they want. They shouldn’t have to be told to do shit.
Actually, no, that’s not what I think. I think she should do the vast majority of the household chores, and leave a few for her children to help with. If her children don’t do their chores, she shouldn’t respond by not doing her own. There are better ways to deal with such a situation.
You know what else is funny? Putting words in the mouth of someone you’re having a conversation with in order to make it appear that he’s taking an outrageous position, then pretending that’s what he actually as you self-righteously argue against a position that you yourself concocted.
Or maybe “funny” isn’t the right word?
How do we know that? How do we know anything about how she was keeping the house before she moved out? It sounds like she was doing it all, and she was sick of it.
This is funny. She “strikes,” to make a point, and you say she’s not doing her job? That’s sort of the whole damned point of a strike, isn’t it?
And do you think those kids are going to be traumatised because for once they’ll have to do some housework? Hell, when I was a kid my parents took off for several days to Yosemite, leaving my sisters (the oldest who was 16 or 17) to take care of the house by themselves. (I was younger and I don’t remember it well—I was farmed out to the neighbors, and the neighbors looked in on my sisters.) And you know what? My sisters took care of the house, and managed to survive! Amazing! And my parents were 300 miles away, not in the front yard.
What would you have suggested that my parents do when they wanted to take a trip like that? Not go? Not go because—oh my gosh—they needed to stay home to clean up after my sisters and me? You know, do their job as parents?
So then you agree that that’s what a SAHM’s job is?
I certainly don’t disagree with the rest. Children should help out with chores. But if a mom is claiming to be a mom for a living, then I’d expect that she’d be doing the majority of the household work.
Having a word for something (e.g., quitting your job to make a point) doesn’t make it right.
And a mom who leaves the dishes, laundry and trash to her kids IS still doing the majority of the work in the house.
What is it that you believe she is doing exactly? At what point would assigning chores to her kids to “lighten her load” pass over the threshold of being just a lazy fuck that wants her kids to take care of everything for her.
My recently deceased grandmother, God burn burn her soul, pulled this shit on my mother when she was growing up. Laundry, dishes, cleaning you name it. My grandmother wasn’t still doing most of the work. She was doing nothing except getting drunk all day. I know of several other cases like taht.
Some parents will absolutely do this without caring for the kid’s welfare or dividing up things so that each person has a fair share. They just want to get out of the work themselves.
And yes, I have been a stay at home father for the past year. Its not that difficult to take care of one house in an 8 hour day. A good maid can do several houses in that time.
The fact that she and her husband had the bright idea of moving out of their own house to somehow teach their kids a lesson proves that their parenting skills wouldn’t meet the standards of a crack whore’s kids.
When the kids are doing a hell of a lot more than laundry (presumably their own), taking turns doing dishes, and taking turns doing trash.
The fact that some parents go way too far does not mean that all parent do this when they have the audacity to expect their kids to do chores. Unless you are accusing the parents of those here who admit they did a similar load of chores of being “lazy”?
Keep your pity to yourself. In fact, wod it up tightly and shove it up your ass!
Nobody’s answered you because it’s a dumb ass questions. Of course the kid should clean it up. That’s not fucking housework. I would expect a child to pick up after himself–as I’ve said countless times already. I would expect him to also not leave trash around the house, and not leave dirty plates or dirty clothes laying around the house.
I specifically made these statements before. How on Earth can you go from these statements to asking if a child should wait around for his mother to cleaned spilled Pepsi???
I know how! Because you’re creating fictitious positions for other people just so you can argue with them. You’re being completely irrational.
Also, the very first line in the article states how trash, laundry and dishes WOULD PILE UP. Is this not enough proof for you people that this mother was not keeping the place “basically clean”. And she was not doing her part as a mother. And certainly not as a SAHM!!
I am so sick of people with disgusting messy houses with a kitchen FULL of dirty dishes, only to listen to the mother talk about how the place is a mess because the damn kids are so lazy.
What the fuck ever. And oh, I don’t see how I’m getting an ass whoopin in this thread. I’ve been one of the more rational posters in this thread, and certainly haven’t deranged a person point of view so that I could get more pissed and explain how hard it is to be a SAHM. Oh the poor SAHMs. Won’t someone think of them!
And growing up… monstro, I loved my mother unconditionaly. “Respecting” her was not a fucking responsibility. It wasn’t a job to “respect” or “obey” my parents. I did what they asked because I loved them and didn’t want to dissappoint them. People seem to want to raise their children the way they would a fucking animal or subordinate.
When a parent gets to the point where they are telling the child “You need to do what I say. I’m your father and you live under my roof, so you will do as I say”, they have seriously fucked up somewhere down the line. There has been some kind of serious bond/communication lapse. I would never have needed to be told some shit like that. I listened to my parents because of a mutual love and respect.
PictsiePat. the next time I’m in the fucking woods leading a patrol in the rain at 4am going off no sleep for 2 days, I will think about you. I will wonder how cozy you are sitting on your ass somewhere. I’ll wonder how you’re doing in your little cubicle or stupid sofa or what the fuck ever. Then I’ll think about your comment on me being lazy, and I’ll laugh as I conclude you’ve never done anything that even comes fucking close to this.
So be careful who the fuck you call lazy. I’ve done more, most days by sun-up, then you’ve fucking done all week. And this is all without the benefit of being forced into housework while growing up.
Maybe when a child grows up with a parent bitching at him to do chores, he sees the hypocrisy and grows accustomed to adults being lazy asses. So he grows up to be lazy.
Me? I grew up watching my parents bust their ass. This taught me how hard a person should work. And I knew that when I grew up, I would be just as hard a worker and just as good a parent as them.
I wasn’t so sure, after you wrote this statement:
Bolding mine. That’s why I asked.
I took that to mean that the mom was “waiting the kids out.” Hoping they’d do what she asked them to do. What’s the point of asking a kid to do something if you just do it yourself after a while? This is not a new technique, you know. Just wait 'em out, see how long it takes them to get sick of the mess and actually do something. My mom pulled that trick on us too sometimes. Did that mean that she wasn’t doing her job? No, I meant she was trying to get us to finally do what was a reasonable expectation.
This is funny.
Yes, you’re getting an ass whoopin. Yes, you sound deranged. Ranting and raving, the whole nine yards.