My daughter was in daycare or with her grandparents till she was 9. At that point, she was trustworthy enough to get herself to the bus in the morning and to come home and deal with her homework till I got home within an hour of her. It helped that the bus stopped about 4 houses down from us.
Back in the olden days, I was 11 or 12 and I babysat my 4 siblings - one not yet a toddler. Not on a daily basis, since my mom didn’t work outside the home, but if my folks went out in the evening for any reason, I’d be left in charge with the phone number of a neighbor just in case. I suppose that would be scandalous today, but it wasn’t that huge a deal for us. I made a little bit of pocket money and Mom and Dad got a break from 5 kids for a few hours.
From the time I was born, my mom never held an outside job. I must say, there was something comforting about knowing she was going to be home when we got there. I wish I’d had that option with my daughter, but like April, I was working and my husband was a full-time student for some years, and when he finally started working, my job was the one that had the better pay and bennies. At that point, our daughter was becoming more independent and my career was moving along. Had we had more kids, who knows??
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.
Like manda jo and the others said, it really depends on the individual family. Also, you don’t know how long she’s been trying to get back to paid work - it could be years.
There was nothing cooler than having the house to myself when I got home from school. From the age of 10 onward I was on my own in the afternoon until my parents got home from work. Usually one of my buddies would come over. By the time I was about 14 we would always smoke a bowl and then dive into the chips. Sometimes we would head over to Bill’s house but he was always drunk on his ass by then so we would move on. Julie started hanging out for the weed, she was such a slut - everybody got a piece of her! There was this one time we went over to Rick’s house, he was crazy, he showed us his dad’s gun and we went out back shooting cans - later we heard he shot his brother accidentally so we didn’t hang out there anymore. Once we went over to Nick’s house - he was babysitting some little neighbor kids - he told us he liked to screw the little girls - we thought he was just bullshitting us - but then he asked the little girl if she liked it when he screwed her and she said she did - man, we were not into that scene so we left.
To be fair, kids who are going to smoke weed, drink, fuck little girls, etc… are going to do so whether or not there is a parent around. There is this whole world, called “outside,” where you can do all kinds of things if you are inclined.
There are a lot of evils in this world. And if your kid is fucking little girls, or shooting his brother, you screwed up your role in parenting to the point that it is highly unlikely that being around when your kid got home from school would have made a damn bit of difference.
Debatable - the principle is that having a consistent parent around from the beginning and throughout lessens the likelihood that the child will stray at all, or even be interested in straying.
I was raised with a SAHP who was very involved in my life and I still managed to smoke week, get drunk, shoplift and have sex as a confused, angsty teen. I was grounded and lectured all the time - if there is a will, there is a way.
I would like to see* both parents* actively involved in their kids life and better workplace accommodations that allow people to achieve more work-life balance. Having one parent work (either two jobs or just work long hours at one job) while the other parent does all the housework and child-rearing is not automatically the best thing at all. I think both parents should be involved with child-rearing and household labor (whether they stay home or work) so kids can forge bonds with both parents and healthy life-balance behaviors are modeled for their kids.
My mom was a devoted SAHP while my dad worked and was away a lot on business overseas. While I feel very fortunate to have been raised in a stable emotional and financial environment and very much appreciated having the resources to go college and travel on the parental dole, I would have liked to have had more of relationship with my dad growing up. I didn’t really get to know my dad, as person, until he retired five years ago.
Lastly, I worry about the economic security of the SAHP if things go south in the relationship, or heaven forbid, something happens to the primary earner. There is an opportunity cost to staying at home that can’t always be made up by alimony and child support - e.g. loss of professional development. If someone is considering staying at home I would strongly advise them to acquire a degree or skill of economic value before dropping out of the work force.
My mom was stay at home the whole time we were growing up. Yeah, 13 is old enough to be home alone, but it’s not as if we couldn’t have gotten into plenty of trouble anyway, even MORE trouble than we would have thought about at, say, age 8. And it’s not as if the household would have run itself if she had worked. Even with all 4 of us doing chores and cooking and helping in general <not for an allowance, either> there was still a ton of stuff that needed doing every day that would not have been done without my mom home. I’m glad she was.
So sez Tamerlane, lazy-ass latchkey kid from age ~7 or 8 or so :D. Also I solved any parental dilemmas about organized after-school activities by just not doing any ;), at least until well into High School when I needed no outside transportation. Me and my friends would just wander around aimlessly, doing stuff like finding old vinyl records in the back of dumpsters and seeing how well we could get them to shatter throwing them in the middle of the street or trying to see if we could roll an orange all the way across four lanes of traffic. Harmless fun, I tell ya!
I wouldn’t negatively judge a job candidate for staying at home so long without knowing the whole story. For all you know, she had 4 or 5 kids in a row, or a special needs child.
On a personal level, I get a little judgey when a woman calls herself a SAHM after all her kids are of school age (5-6+). She could at least work part-time, if she wanted to. And once the kids are 12+, mom has no good reason to keep avoiding the workplace. If she doesn’t have to work because her husband makes enough to support the whole family, I guess that’s fine for them. But she should still be volunteering, or working for the kids’ college funds, or something. I think that teenaged kids get a lot of benefit from spending time *away *from mom after school.
Anyway, I wouldn’t have jack shit in common with a woman like this, so it doesn’t really matter what I think of them. I would never say something like this to their face, I just avoid them. But yeah, I think it’s lazy.
I think that’s my viewpoint. If you’re ten and over, you don’t really need someone with you for 3 hours or fewer. It just sort of annoys me when a parent says “My child needs me” or “I have to be there by such and such a time” when a child is ten and over. It’s not really a need. You want to be there. Which I don’t care about. If you can afford it fine, but it seems weird to say a child needs if you if they don’t. I think sometimes when sahp deal with others they use their children as an excuse. Like I said before they claim they have to be home by a certain time when the child can take the school bus or let themselves in. I guess my point sort of is don’t think you’re pulling a fast one on people by getting out of things by being a sahp if it’s just you not wanting to do them.
Has this happened to you? You’ve asked someone to help you and they pretended they couldn’t because of their kids? What kind of things do you think these SAHPs are trying to get out of by picking up their kids from school? I think this is a really weird thing for someone to assert.
Yes, it has happened to me in social situations. Let’s say I’m with a group of friends and we’re all doing something that sahp does want to do, they don’t care if they’re late picking up their children. If it’s something the sahp doesn’t want to do, they all of a sudden have to pick up their children at 3:30 or whatever. It’s all just variants of the same thing. Like once did something they liked and they said their children could microwave dinner or want for working spouse. When it was something they didn’t like, they claimed they HAD to cook for their children. :dubious: I wanted to confront this person, but they everyone acted like I would be the bad person because “she has to think of her kids”. :mad:
People use all sorts of excuses to get out of doing stuff they don’t want to do. Getting home to the kids is indeed a convenient one, but parents are not unique in excuse-making.
It’s also possible that the child knew that nobody would be at home when they said the child could nuke something or wait for Daddy, and when they said they needed to leave early, they hadn’t said anything and didn’t want a panic-stricken youngster, especially if they don’t have a cell phone.
Don’t insult others in this forum again. Take it to the Pit.
Thanks, but if you feel a rule is being broken report the post, please…this could be seen as a mild form of Jr Modding, which is also frowned upon here.
And it’s not as if the household would have run itself if she had worked. Even with all 4 of us doing chores and cooking and helping in general <not for an allowance, either> there was still a ton of stuff that needed doing every day that would not have been done without my mom home. I’m glad she was.
