# Staying at home **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 24, 2013, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553 "2013-04-24T01:26:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2013, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/61 "2013-04-26T00:47:35Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > And let’s talk about nutrition. I winder how much of the obesity epidemic in the US today comes from eating packaged foods for dinner because there is no time to really cook. I know that when my wife is away I don’t eat dinner until 8 pm since I refuse to go the packaged food route for myself. Thanks to her being at home and then working at home we always had real dinners. This saves money, but the nutrition is more important. ☹ now that makes me feel guilty about the baked beans, chicken nuggets, and mandarin oranges we had for dinner. I suck ---
**Author:** ![DaisyOlive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DaisyOlive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaisyOlive)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2013, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/62 "2013-04-26T00:49:49Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > ☹ now that makes me feel guilty about the baked beans, chicken nuggets, and mandarin oranges we had for dinner. I suck Two out of three isn’t bad. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2013, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/63 "2013-04-26T00:51:07Z")
it was all canned or frozen it is an improvement over the cereal or pbj sammies we usually have during the week. I only cook from scratch on the weekends. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2013, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/64 "2013-04-26T00:56:38Z")
My kids are 13 and 14 and I’ve been a working Mom since maternity leave. And I’m going to start staying at home for a few years. At 13 and 14 they can get into more trouble and need more consistency than they could at nine and ten. At nine and ten they were latchkey kids. ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/65 "2013-04-26T00:58:59Z")
Yeah, I am one of the ones who chose 17, even though I was babysitting OTHER people’s kids \ from aged 10 on. But I am differentiating between ‘NEEDING’ an adult around and it being just ‘a good idea’. This is just personal experience, and I hated it growing up, but my folks knew where each of us 4 kid were and what they were doing ALL. THE. TIME.\* It was extremely difficult to get into trouble, and holy crap did we try. I see my sister’s kids, basically parentless since age 14, and it’s a miracle they aren’t all in jail. Sure, nobody’s ‘needed’ an adult around in terms of physical safety…but that is hardly the end of parenting. I vouschafe that the teen years are when MORE vigilance,- even if quiet and circumspect- accessibility and guidelines are ‘needed’. \*except when they didn’t; but that’s another story or twelve, hehe. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2013, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/66 "2013-04-26T01:39:42Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > And let’s talk about nutrition. I winder how much of the obesity epidemic in the US today comes from eating packaged foods for dinner because there is no time to really cook. I know that when my wife is away I don’t eat dinner until 8 pm since I refuse to go the packaged food route for myself. Thanks to her being at home and then working at home we always had real dinners. This saves money, but the nutrition is more important. Meh. An extra income buys a lot of pre-cut veggies, healthy and quick-cooking (but pricey) meat cuts, and trips to “real food” fast food (Chipotle and the ilk) in the place of cheap McMeals. Eating healthy is a commitment, but I think money trumps time when it comes to enabling healthy eating. ---
**Author:** ![nashiitashii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7c8e57/32.png) [@nashiitashii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nashiitashii)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2013, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/67 "2013-04-26T01:46:43Z")
I’m answering based on “need” rather than “is a good idea”. I’m a little iffy on where the “is a good idea” line gets drawn, and I think that it varies heavily for each kid, but that somewhere in the teen years, it’s weird to have a SAHP. > [@FairyChatMom](#): > > But it seems to me if you can’t trust your kid alone for a few hours at 9 or 10 (obviously excluding special needs kids), maybe you need to work on teaching responsibility and independence. We started when ours was around 7 - we let her stay home while we took a walk around the block. It was only 30 minutes or so, but it was the first step. Agreed. I see a lot of kids and young adults who had stay at home parents who didn’t really foster a sense of independence or responsibility in them; it was frequently “well, mom takes care of it” or “I don’t have to do it because mom isn’t hovering over me to make sure I did”. Once they’re old enough that they don’t have to be constantly supervised, it’s really helpful for kids to have that time to make independent choices about what they’re going to get done, and to have consequences for if they choose to use that time unwisely. (One poster on here had mentioned in another thread about the itemized chore list that her mom left behind-- I think having stuff like that and expectations that children get it done within a certain time frame is really important.) I just don’t see enough kids who are independent and responsible and not trying to hang on to SAHP’s apron strings to really think that it’s a major benefit for the average kid. Sure, it’s great to have someone there and be secure all the time, but what does the child miss out on in their own personal development by not being given that independent time to figure stuff out on their own? This obviously doesn’t apply to kids with developmental delays, etc. and it varies from kid to kid, but I do feel like kids should have increasing levels of some independence after the age of 10. Not having a SAHP around all the time may be a part of that, and it certainly helped with my own development to have working parents. As a side note: for those families with stay-at-home moms, do your kids ever question your choice to stay at home, or why you don’t also have a career? I recently [read this op-ed piece](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/parentingcom/dear-daughter-heres-why-i_b_3069576.html) in The Huffington Post and it got me wondering about how American culture values or devalues working moms. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/68 "2013-04-27T04:35:42Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > And let’s talk about nutrition. I winder how much of the obesity epidemic in the US today comes from eating packaged foods for dinner because there is no time to really cook. I know that when my wife is away I don’t eat dinner until 8 pm since I refuse to go the packaged food route for myself. Thanks to her being at home and then working at home we always had real dinners. This saves money, but the nutrition is more important. Is there some reason why you can’t cook yourself? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/69 "2013-04-27T04:37:40Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > ☹ now that makes me feel guilty about the baked beans, chicken nuggets, and mandarin oranges we had for dinner. I suck I’m single, childless, and self-employed, and I sometimes eat like that (or worse!) :o Now, you don’t want to live entirely on a diet like that, but sometimes you just have to, or you want to. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/70 "2013-04-27T10:18:21Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Is there some reason why you can’t cook yourself? I think what he is saying is that when a person works until 5 or 6 and then goes home and cooks, they eat after 8:00, simply because cooking takes a while. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/71 "2013-04-27T11:09:08Z")
Age 9 seems to be, for a typical child, about when one can be home alone for hours at a time, and be taught to cook a simple meal for oneself, and how to handle things if certain emergencies occur. The ubiquity of cell phones these days helps with the latter issue. I’d say that kids at either extreme of the rural-urban spectrum develop skills like this as a matter of course, while with families in the middle – i.e., suburbia – parents need to make a more proactive effort to teach these skills. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/72 "2013-04-27T11:34:34Z")
Personally, I think the ideal is for the primary carer to work part time as soon as the kids don’t need someone there permanently- I don’t think it’s really that healthy for kids to grow up with the idea that ‘mothers don’t work’. Also, a bit of independence is a good thing- within limits of course, but expecting a kid that’s never been left alone to magically become sensible at age 18 rarely works well. I was left at home while my parents were at work from age 11ish, without causing any chaos worse than burning some weird cooking experiment, and I didn’t go as wild when I moved out for uni as some kids I knew who had never been left unsupervised for more than an hour or so. There was always the understanding that home alone privileges could be revoked if abused. I’ve met 18 year olds who can’t use a vacuum, can’t wash a dish properly, don’t have the faintest idea how to use a washing machine, and have never even tried to boil an egg themselves, because mummy always did it all, that just doesn’t seem healthy to me. ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/73 "2013-04-27T12:46:38Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > I’ve met 18 year olds who can’t use a vacuum, can’t wash a dish properly, don’t have the faintest idea how to use a washing machine, and have never even tried to boil an egg themselves, because mummy always did it all, that just doesn’t seem healthy to me. I’ve run across plenty of those (especially boys), too, but most of them didn’t have a SAHP. Most of their fathers were pretty iffy on those same skills, even though they generally didn’t have a SAHP either. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/74 "2013-04-27T15:34:26Z")
You’d be surprised how many women always complain about how men are all lazy good-for-nothings, and yet they raise their sons to be that way too. And it has nothing to do with culture or ethnicity, either. :smack: There are also plenty of women who reach early adulthood not knowing how to do simple household chores, either. ---
**Author:** ![Incubus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/75 "2013-04-27T19:03:15Z")
I think it depends on a lot of variables. My mom worked when I was a kid, and I was fortunate that she had a schedule that was in sync with my school schedule. So I didnt really suffer from her having to work. And in my wife’s family/culture, her mom always worked. Its really shaped her attitudes on stay at home moms. The problem we see with the concept of the sahm is risk. If the working parent can no longer work (or is otherwise out of the picture) could the sahm, having spent perhaps a decade without working or building career skills, get a job that could afford to maintain their standard of living? Doubtful. This concept of mommy wars (working moms vs sahms) is distinctively a cultural one. While many caucasians went along with the idea that the man works and the woman stays at home with the kids, many minorities could not afford the luxury. These cultures didnt have mommy wars because the idea of a mother justifying not working was laughable. Some people are claiming being a full-time mom gives them time to take care of everything, but they don’t realize there are families where both parents work 7 days/week and still have time for their kids and home. When my wife and I have kids, we plan on working a 10hr/4 day weekly schedule, and overlapping 1 or 2 days off. This way through most of the week one parent is around, our kids get to see both of us equally (vs always seeing mom/never seeing dad). My wife’s only tenure as a sahm will be the first 6 momths of our child’s life while she is off on maternity leave. ---
**Author:** ![Rhiannon8404](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhiannon8404/32/17929_2.png) [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/76 "2013-04-27T19:12:24Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > I’ve met 18 year olds who can’t use a vacuum, can’t wash a dish properly, don’t have the faintest idea how to use a washing machine, and have never even tried to boil an egg themselves, because mummy always did it all, that just doesn’t seem healthy to me. This has nothing to do with whether a parent stays at home or works. This has everything to do with whether the parents bother to teach their kids these skills. For many parents, it’s easier and quicker to just do the things, than it is to spend the time teaching their child to do them. My 14 yo son can do all these things and much more, because I take the time to show him. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/77 "2013-04-27T20:02:53Z")
A lot of this is going to vary by individual, as well. I know lots of people LOVE being at home, but I know that I suck at at it. I’m a generally ambitious, productive, on-the-ball person. But leave me at home for a day and you’ll find me in jammies, glued to the computer, blasting bad reality TV and making meals out of tortilla chips. While I’d like to say I’d magically reform if kids were involved, I honestly doubt throwing a toddler into the mix is going to make me any more enthusiastic about, skilled at, or fulfilled by doing housework or cooking. I really do need the forward momentum of a job to keep my energy directed, and I think my kids will be better off with a smaller amount of high-quality time with me rather than a larger amount of time where I’m unfocused and unhappy. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2013, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553/78 "2013-04-27T22:21:07Z")
> [@Rhiannon8404](#): > > This has nothing to do with whether a parent stays at home or works. This has everything to do with whether the parents bother to teach their kids these skills. For many parents, it’s easier and quicker to just do the things, than it is to spend the time teaching their child to do them. My 14 yo son can do all these things and much more, because I take the time to show him. It isn’t the teaching, its the nagging. They learn it pretty easy, but getting follow through can be tough. My son can and will vaccuum, do laundry, wash dishes, clean bathrooms - and does it without nagging - he’s pretty good at it. My daughter can do all those things, and is lousy at them all, and it requires constant nagging to get her to do them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/staying-at-home/656553.md?page=3)