I’m assuming that the dishes only started piling up when she decided to try and give the kids a subtle hint. Which they didn’t get.
Jesus. It’s not MOM’S job alone to take care of the house. Holy shit, no wonder kids today are such bastards, if people think this.
This sounds good and all, but I don’t buy it (about you obeying your parents only because you loved them). Ask a typical ten-year-old why they obey their parents’ instructions, and you’ll find that “I don’t wanna get in trouble” will be at the top of the list. I don’t think ten-year-old Bear_Nenno would have said anything much different than that. I loved my parents a bunch, but kids have to be taught how to respect authority. And parents are their children’s authority figures. Kids should be subordinate to adults. They are not equals. (And if doing the dishes is tauntamount to being treated like an animal, then I guess I’ve been abused my whole life. I started doing the dishes when I was–gasp!–seven-years-old! I did them not because I loved my parents. Not because doing them was fun. No, I did them because my parents made me. Oh. The. Horror.)
If I was a parent and I told Johnny and Suzy they need to take over dish duty, it would not be up for debate. If they told me, “I ain’t no slave. Your job is supposed to be taking care of me! You’re just too lazy!” then there’d have to be exorsizing of some demons in that house. As I said before, a child is in no position to dictate what a parent does.
Doing three little things–the dishes, laundry, and the trash–is not that freakin’ big a deal. I can tell these kids have been spoiled if they think these are serious chores. But I blame the parents for this.
If I had been the parents, I would have gone a less public but even more inconvienent route: locked the kids out of their bedrooms.
Even minimally competent authority figures don’t camp out the the driveway when their little troops are out of control. This is equivalent to factory managers refusing to come to work when their teams are not meeting quotas. The result will be the same and it tells you all you need to know about the root of the problem in the first place.
I agree. The mother’s a douche.
The only thing I’m taking issue with is that in some of your posts you seem to be equating doing a few simple chores (dishes, trash, laundry), with enslaving a child.
I agree.
Not at all. I’m not saying the kids should do them out of principle. If the mother decides not to ask the kids not to do them, then I have no problem with it. I’m just saying it’s not unreasonable that the kids should have some easy chores if the parents ask them to.
I don’t think the kids are lazy. The kids are kids. Kids generally don’t want to do their chores. It’s the parents’ responsibility to raise their children in such a way that the kids respect the parents where they do things that are asked of them. I am, in no way, placing any of the blame on the kids here.
I don’t think the parents are lazy, either - just really stupid, bad parents.
I thought you said a stay at home mom had no job at all…? Or is it “non-traditional” job?
Anyways, on to the heart of the matter.
And the amazing thing is, neither do you, Bear_Nenno!
Agreed. Very tiresome. Primarily because you have been spewing bullshit, hatefully, almost nonstop. **Nightime ** pointed out that the article contains little information, which is true. The myriad of assumptions you have made and used as a basis to scream and rant and rave about are assumptions.
Bear, you keep shrieking about mothers who use their children as houseslaves, when nothing of the sort was mentioned in the OP article. The fact that you maintain that you’ve been one of the most rational posters in this thread makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Bear_nenno: Your virtiol, anger, and illogical ranting in this thread makes my head hurt. Apparently you confuse chores with slavery for kids. Wow, you really make an excellent debater!
I just wonder if bear nenno and his supporters have been able to find women agreeable to their terms when it comes to running a household and division of labor?
The parents camping out in the yard are being ridiculous. Period. They should be sent back inside to formulate some ground rules and let the kids know what they are. The kids should have all privileges revoked until they feel so inclined to follow the rules.
I think every member of the household should pick up after themselves if they make a mess, dirty a dish, etc. From the time they were little my children knew what was expected of them and they did it without fighting or quarreling about it. They always helped with dishes, laundry and housecleaning and to be honest working with my kids around the house was some of the happiest times of my life.
I have a question, and this is as good a place to ask it as any.
I’ve heard many SAHMs say that their days are extremely full - just as full if not more than a full-time worker. And I believe them.
But there are families out there who both work full-time and manage to get everything done as well. Where does this disparity in the amount of housework arise?
Well, I’m not a Stay-At-Home anything, and I don’t have kids, but I do work full time and guess what I get to do when I am not working? All the housework type things. Clean, cook, dishes, laundry, lawn mowing, snow shoveling, pay the bills, etc. So, if all that can still get done in addition to being out of the house due to work anywhere from 9 to 15 hours a day, why is it unreasonable to think that a Stay-At-Home Parent can’t do the same housework, especially considering that they don’t spend half the hours in the day outside their house at a job?
Where? Because I never did. At 16, as soon as I could drive myself to said job, I got a job. I would get home from school at 3:30, eat and change clothes and be out the door by 4:00 so that I could be at work at 4:30, get home around 10:00 and then do homework before going to sleep so that I could get up again at 6:00 to go to school. I typically worked 3 or 4 nights a week and often on Saturday and Sunday. I never got any kind of ‘school credit’ for having a job, though.
The question then is ‘full of what’? You’re right. If it so completely fills a SAHM’s day to do the same kinds of things that a person who works full time has to do in the evenings or on weekends, such that the SAHM is dropping into bed exhausted at midnight, why does it seem to take them so much longer than it ever took my mom (who worked full time and didn’t dole out long lists of chores) or me (who has to take care of ‘breadwinner’ and ‘housekeeper’)?
You know, doob, I’m getting pretty sick of the “slave” comments. The only time I said anything about children being slaves, it was in direct response to Athena saying that a SAHM is not supposed to work like a slave.
I did not start this whole “slave” crap. Yet, everyone wants to keep mentioning it like it’s something I either believe or am defending. Let’s knock it off already.
I’ve made it clear that there is nothing wrong with kids doing some chores.
I’ve also made it clear that all the damn housework and house cleaning should not be the children’s responsibility.
You know, at least I pay attention to who actually says what, and why. I don’t just jump on the bandwagon at the end of a debate and start adding nonsense.
I keep shrieking about this? Wow, really? Are you sure? Nothing of the sort was mentioned in the OP, or even in this thread until Athena says that a mother who has to do all the housework is like a slave.
I tell her one time that a child is not a slave either. And then you and all your fucking SAHM Defense Corps repeatedly try to bash that claim.
And monstro, your assumptions are totally wrong.
“Not getting into trouble” was not my major motivation for doing what’s right. Making my parents happy and proud was. When a child only want to “not get caught” they will be sneaky and they will lie. Anything to “stay out of trouble”. I’ve never lied to my parents. The thought has never crossed my mind. If I did something wrong, I admitted to it and I apologized. And I actually felt bad about it.
Not because I got in trouble, but because it upset my mother.
Also, I disagree with this notion of “I am your father. I am authority, so you will obey me”. I understand that many people take that approach with their kids. But I’ll never understand it. Kids should be raised with love. If they love their parents, they will obey automatically out of honor and respect.
One obeys authority because they have to.
One should obey their parents because the want to.
Teenagers have this natural desire to rebel against authority. If parents are also authority figures, then it’s no wonder so many teenagers don’t get along with their parents. They will sneak about and lie to their parents. Because they will treat the parents like any other authority figure. Damn the Man and all that.
I had no trouble growing up respecting authority. I also never fought or lied to my parents. But they were not “authority figures” Authority figures are people like cops, teachers, principals, coaches, etc. These are people you obey because of their “authority”. With these people “not getting caught/ not getting in trouble” is a factor in the relationship.
With my parents, it was totally different. I did all I could to make them happy. Because it was clear to me that they did everything they could to keep me happy. Authority figures don’t care about such things.
Kids should not be made to comply out of fear. That’s how one trains a dog. It’s not wonder that kids turn out the way they do, and why parents and teenagers don’t get along, and why people grow up hating their parents. What a suck-ass way to live. To despise the people you live with.
I dunno, maybe this was just some One of a Kind magical relationship I have with my parents. But I just don’t understand the approach that other people take.
Don’t be sexist, Mermaid. I am fully capable of doing my own housework. If I marry a women who doesn’t feel she should do all the dishes, laundry and house cleaning, that’s fine with me. I’ll do any and all of it if she won’t. But if she really didn’t want to do anything, I doubt I would want someone that lazy.
But the point is, I am not looking for a women to do all my house work and cleaning. That’s not even up there on a list of “needs” for me.
But my children will not be responsible for my dishes or laundry. They wont be required to do that stuff. Not because it’s such hard work. But because it’s such a simple task, I can do it myself.
yosemite, just to clear things up a little. RE: Cleaning what’s Spilled.
Growing up, if we spilled something, we cleaned it. I say “we” because everything was always a team effort. If my brother and I were home alone and he spilled Kool-Aid, I didn’t laugh at him and watch him try to clean it all up. I helped him clean it. We did it together.
Now (and this is why I made my original statement), if my mother happened to be home when the Kool-Aid was spilled, she would clean it.
This isn’t because we were lazy kids or something. It’s because that’s just how she was. We would grab napkins or whatever to go clean it, and mom was always “No, I got it.”
“Are you sure mom, I got napkins”
“Yes, just go, I’ll get it. It’s fine”
“Sorry I spilled my drink, mom”
“It’s ok, Angel. It’ll come out.”
Damn… now I’m all nastolgic.
If my mom got sick or something, all the chores around the house still got done. We all chipped in and did the cooking, the laundry, the dishes, etc. Well… dad did the cooking. Well… ok. He picked up KFC or something. But we did all the other stuff. We did it without being ASKED to do it. We did it because it was the right thing to do. Because it made us feel good to be able to help out. It wasn’t demanded of us. We just did it.
Likewise, it was never demanded of my mother to do all those chores. She did it because she wanted to. Because she, too, liked the way it made her feel. To be taking care of her kids, and to be needed.
When the yard needed mowing, when weeds needed picking, when the dog poop needed to be policed in the backyard… We would be asked to do these things. And we would do them. These were chores.
So I guess I’m just biased. But when I see dishes piled up in a person’s house, I consider the parents lazy. Not the children. When there are trash bags piled up in the kitchen, I consider the parents lazy, not the children.
And when I read about a SAHM - a mother who is HOME ALL DAY - complaining that her kids are not washing the dishes and doing the laundry, all I see is a lazy fucking human being. Period.
I’m sorry that so many SAHMs here are taking offense to this. But when your kids are in middle school and high school, your SAHM duties or raising your kids are over. You are no longer staying at home to take care of an infant. So then, what exactly are you doing at home all day?
Well, if it is not the laundry and the dishes and the house cleaning, then what the fuck is it? You’re a lazy son of a bitch if you’re home all day long and you wait for your kids to get home so the dishes can be washed.
When a SAHM is caring for a toddler or new born, then their days are pleanty busy and stressful. The families with two full-time working parents compensate for this with Day Care and/or Babysitters. So it’s actually like having a third parent in the equation.
But once the kids are of school age and the mother continues to stay at home all day. I don’t see how she’s staying as busy as a full-time working mom who also manages to shuttle her kids around and partake in after-school activities and still clean and cook.
And when a SAHM has no kids to take care of during the day, and no dishes to wash, and no laundry to do, and no trash to deal with. There is no way in hell she is staying as busy as a full-time worker. She’s just being plain lazy.
**
catsix** brought up a great point. I have never, ever heard of such a policy either. Where did this come from?
First, I think we can all take it as a given that the entire family in question is more fucked than a call girl during Convention Week.
Second: Bear_Nenno, it sounds as though your mom was a lot like one of my friend’s mom. If you even went for a paper towel she’d shoo you away. The thing is, women like that are few and far-between. Also, now people my age (34) have kids in their teens. I can’t imagine any girl from my high school graduating class being that kind of person. I’m sure some of them ARE…but not very many, I’d wager. I think that you’re coming from a point of view which is really unusual to most of the people responding in here. So yeah…I think you do have unrealistic expectations. I think that doesn’t reflect poorly on society; I think it reflects beautifully on your mother. 
But…
Third: …being a SAHM can’t be like a regular 9-5 job. You’re never off of work. You never go on lunch break. You never get weekends or vacations or holidays. You don’t get sick leave. You don’t get medical benefits…unless your spouse can afford them. You don’t get social security credit. It’s a harder job than you might think. Plenty of women have tried it (men, too, actually) and gone back to working that 9-5 grrrrind because it was easier than being a SAHM.
Fourth: When I was 12, it was just my dad and me. I was responsible for the laundry, the dishes, the kitchen, the trash, the vacuuming, and cleaning the bathrooms. And I had to keep my room clean and if my grades fell below a B I was grounded. Plus, I was in band and choir and all of the rehearsals that entails. Plus he’d occasionally go on business trips for as long as a week and leave me by myself. The thing is, I know that’s unusual, and that putting all of that shit on a kid is completely unreasonable. That having been said…
It’s my ten-year-old’s chore to take out the trash every night. While he acts as though he’s reenacting the Labors of Hercules, I’m pretty sure that five minutes every night isn’t crushing his social life, self-esteem, or childhood. With five people all living in this house, three of whom still haven’t learned to pick up after themselves with any regularity…because the other two aren’t the best at it either… it really is too much for one person to do without going a little bit nuts. In the Fifties, an awful lot of those happy housewives were on Miltown or Valium.
Beats me, but my high school had it.
As much as I disliked Bear Nenno’s earlier tone, I can say from experience he is right on about having an infant or toddler. There are plenty of times I wish I could leave every morning, do an office job, have a lunch break, go to the bathroom by myself, and then come home. Yesterday by bedtime I was about ready to strangle my kid, and that was after a day *with * my husband around!
Never mind things like playing, education, and discipline, the basic chores of dressing, feeding, and cleaning them take up a large chunk of your day.
FWIW, today I woke up when Chloe called me, took care of her dirty diaper, dressed her, fed her breakfast, got myself ready, and went to the gym. I was lucky enough to get a shower there, and squeeze in grocery shopping and replacement-toilet-part shopping before Chloe needed a nap. During her nap I made lunch and then cleaned her bathroom. When she woke up, I chased her around trying to wrest the replacement toilet part from her grip, and we played for a while. Then I fed her dinner. Somewhere in there I threw in a load of laundry. I gave her a bath and put her to bed. Now I’m having a snack before making dinner, putting the laundry in the dryer and running a load of dirty diapers. Then I have to fold grownup laundry.
If she were in daycare, I wouldn’t be doing all the caretaking chores and playing during the day, plus the house would be neater, since she is a tornado of destruction.
I admit, I do wonder about women who don’t work, but have nannies and housekeepers. It would be nice for about a week, then I would be bored out of my mind!
Having grown up in a family where both parents worked full time from my infancy on, I think I’m qualified to answer this.
Things simply aren’t as neat and orderly at my parent’s house as they were in other places. When my sister was a very young child, we even had a once-every-two-weeks maid come, simply because my mom could not handle a full-time job, a primary school child, and a 1-3 year old who, because of various and sundry medical issues, did not sleep through the night until age four. Once my sister slept through the night, though, it ended.
When we got older, we were required to perform certain chores. We’d help out with shoveling the snow/raking leaves/mowing the lawn. We’d do some of the vacuuming and dusting, too, and helped cook/wash the dishes after dinner. Still, the house was never immaculate, though it certainly wasn’t filthy by any means.
A lot of the difference between a SAHM and my mom’s workload was use as transportation. I did not get picked up from school. My mom did not drive me to and from practices, and wasn’t very involved in activities that I did. Not a bad thing, not a good thing; it was just part of life for me.
Additionally, I think that SAHMs are required to more daily errands than a working mom. When both parents are working, either one is equally able to complete a list of activities like:
Going to the bank and cashing a check.
Dropping off dry cleaning.
Going grocery shopping.
Shopping for Christmas presents (for a seasonal touch).
Taking care of paperwork.
Calling around for prices on things like carpet, appliances, etc.
And basically dealing with daily bullshit. When only one parent is working, much–if not all–of this falls to the parent who isn’t working, simply because most of these places are only open 9-5, or are substantially less crowded during these hours. This stuff has to be done, and it’s often the parent who’s staying home who does it.
…anyway. Kids who do chores at home know how to do most–if not all–basic chores when they’re off on their own. That is also a factor in why people make children do chores. Yes, Bear_Nenno, playing and doing kid-things are important. But I went to college with people who, as children, didn’t have to do a goddamned thing at home, and it showed. People didn’t know how to do laundry, for instance, or dishes, or simply didn’t pick up after themselves.
And men–I hate to generalize here, but it’s just my experience–men who grew up without any chores are a BITCH to deal with when you’re married to them. It doesn’t occur to them that, hey, their wife isn’t their mother, and they’re expected to pull their own weight. Teaching them this gets really old, really fast. It’s not an easy lesson. I find that I am more likely to do the chores that I did during childhood out of habit, while those that I didn’t regularly have to do–such as cleaning the litterbox, or doing laundry–are much harder for me to do, simply because I have to THINK in order to remember that they need to be done.
I don’t think kids should be used as slave labor, but they need to learn how to do these things on their own before going out on their own, otherwise it’s never really going to be ingrained.
COMPLETELY agreed with Bear_Nenno. It is laziness in the highest when parents give their children bigger workloads in the home than they have - ESPECIALLY when the parents are able-bodied and available. “Rest from work” my ass - like school can’t be just as taxing? :rolleyes:
Here’s what I do, as a sort-of SAHM.
I’m not quite a SAHM, but people assume I am because I work such early hours.
I sleep until 9:30 or 10:00, which sounds really nice, until you realize that I’ve been UP since about 3:30 until after 7:00. I get the littles dressed, run to town to fetch todd33rpm, run home and make a quick lunch. Then I deliver TBone to kindergarten, go home and do household stuff. Loads and loads of laundry. Dishes. Cleaning. Vacuuming. Grocery shopping. Kitty litter. Bathrooms. I have a list that looks much like this every day.
Then around 4:00 I go into town again to fetch my 14 year old. Come home and do more housestuff. Cleaning. Fixing dinner. More dishes. More laundry. Help with homework. Baths for the littlepoets. Care for the animals. Bedtime routines.
I don’t knock myself out, and I don’t usually work to exhaustion, but I COULD, and still have work left to do.
I seriously, truly, do NOT know how anyone works a full-time position and still manages to take care of a household and children. I’ve tried it, and I sucked at it. I just don’t have whatever it takes, unless it takes just running yourself absolutely ragged. Since I refuse to do that to myself, I guess I’ll just keep with my half-time, weird-hours work.
And fwiw, my kids have minor chores. It takes 5 minutes to take out the trash and feed and water the animals. It is not gonna kill anyone to do it. If I have my hands full making dinner, someone else can damn well get up off the couch during a commercial and do those things.
My kids have gone through times when they had to do a LOT of work due to some serious problems in our lives. Now they can be off the hook a bit, so I don’t require so much from them.
But seriously–the thought of ANY of my kids just flat-out refusing to do something? No WAY. These parents need a serious clue.
Hama’s right, though…the work never goes away, and it never ends. There is never, NEVER a day that I don’t go to bed with a long To-Do list of household stuff the next day, seven days a week, every single day of the year. And my day never, ever ends at 5:00 or some convenient time when I can just plop down, pop open a beer, and put my feet up.
All of what I just said. Except it was really me, bodypoet.
(I can NOT get used to logging myself back in!)
Being that I have absolutely no one else to do these things for me, how is it that I manage to fit them into a day and I’m still not 'busy until I drop into bed at midnight* as a SAHM with a teenage kid is?
Funny how lawn mowing, car oil changing, leaf raking, fence painting, gutter cleaning, trash taking out, toilet repairing, disposal unclogging, furniture moving and other chores that commonly get slated to the men don’t get counted in ‘pulling their own weight.’ My mom’s one of the first to bitch that my dad doesn’t do anything around the house. Apparently unless it’s dusting, dish washing, laundry, or vacuuming, it’s not housework. I’d love to see her cry when the grass is 10 feet high and the engine on her car siezes up because he wanted her to pull her own weight.