This was more or less how I was raised, I thought it was pretty standard.
I just wanted to weigh in for just a moment to address the assumption that a “working mom” gets her cup of coffee at her desk alone, or never has tugs on her shirt throughout the day, or never has to be followed to the bathroom…or any number of luxeries that are assumed by others.
I am a working mom. I never get a moment alone because I don’t have an office in a glass and steel tower. I greet the beginning of each workday with twenty-one 6 year olds, and I am mom to them all day. Yes they tug on my shirt, yes they’ll follow me to the bathroom and stand outside the door until I come out, and I don’t even get silence on my commute to and from work because my child attends school where I teach.
I would like to respectfully remind all those claiming the bliss and silence and relaxation of the workday that some of us working moms are teachers, daycare givers, nurses, paramedics, firefighters, etc. We don’t all have our feet propped up on our desk while we surf the 'net and drink coffee.
So working moms can’t very successfully parent without a father around?
Dayum, y’all, aren’t you forgetting that we single moms work, parent, run the household including lawnwork and car care and sometimes even find time to tackle the horrors of dating? 
I don’t believe it is. Your experience may be different, but for most families the decision to lose a paycheck is HUGE and it comes with a fair amount of belt tightening. Food may be convenient, healthful, or cheap, but it’s rarely all three so families often find themselves choosing between pricey, nutritious and quick or inexpensive but time consuming. The parents on my radar (granted, I’m not surrounded by million dollar homes…is that the norm these days?) more often than not will choose the cheaper option.
Now this is how these threads turn ugly.
Please don’t turn a rational discussion into something it isn’t by taking my comments personally. I never suggested that working parents don’t do these things. My post was a direct response to numerous posters stating that working parents do just as much as care giving parents 'cept more because they’ve got to come home after work and do everything that the sahm mother took the entire day to do. Since the OP (sorry to keep bringing it up) asked why sahm aren’t held in such high esteem, I think it bears emphasis. One way sahp are looked down upon is by hearing that the work they do all day could be done by someone else in a couple of hours. Now. I’m not sure why people think this — that’s the real answer to the OP, isn’t it — I just know they do. I think it’s appropriate to point out that working parents don’t necessarily do the same things that a sahp does. As you and others have stated, they simply can’t. Homes may stay clean. Nutritious, hot meals may be served, and yard work may be done, but as some have posted here, these jobs are outsourced as in:
and pensandfeather’s response:
Granted, you’ve hired a part time laborer to do what some claim to be a full time (120 hours a week :dubious: ) job. But before we ask a sahm what she does all day, consider the myriad part time jobs the average two income family outsources but which the sahp does because it’s part of the deal.
There are exceptions, of course. I will use one to emphasize my point. I know a woman who, like me, left a professional career to raise her children at home. While both she and her husband were working, they had short list
grocery delivery,
wine delivery,
laundry pick-up/drop-off,
ate out 3 nights a week,
cleaning lady 10 hours a week,
professional lawn maintenance,
and a guy with a plow who shows up whenever it snows.
Like us, they lived on one income for years prior to starting a family, so they were financially prepared for the big switch. When it came, guess how many of the above services they retained? All of them. That’s right. All of them. This couple agreed that a sahp stayed home to take care of the children not to be a housekeeper, laundress, or day laborer. They consider child care giving to be a full time job, and they’re not alone in this belief. Plenty of people pay someone a (nearly) living wage to care for their children. In fact, I was one of them, since I used to be the stranger standing in front of the chalkboard.
So why does this full time job suddenly become just another part time diversion whenever we have this discussion? I think the answer to the OP is essentially that child care is only considered a full time job when money changes hands in the bargain.
I haven’t seen anyone say that. What I have seen is numerous posts saying that the only way being a SAHM involves working 120 hours a week is if every waking hour is counted as a working hour, that working parents do just as much caregiving and being on call in those extra 80 hours as SAHM’s do in those extra 80 hours, and that while there will be some extra housework involved with children home all day, it’s not going to be more than forty hours of extra work .
It doesn’t become a part-time job just because money doesn’t change hands. But neither does it suddenly become a 120 hour a week job - unless employed parents are also working 120 hours a week.
Farmwoman, I’m not trying to turn this ugly…but one of the things that bothers me in this debate is the “you don’t understand” as in “you wouldn’t believe how much time it takes to take toddlers shopping.” Its simply patronizing to believe a working mom doesn’t understand how much time it takes to get a two year old into a snowsuit and out the door - she does it every winter morning with a time limit while saying to her kids “hurry up dears, mommy is going to be late for work.” You make it sound like us working parents have full time nannies. Most of us don’t.
No one is saying SAHMs don’t work their butts off. I think its a really challenging job and admire the hell out of anyone who does it. Even my well off neighbors who still have cleaning help. (Half a million dollar houses, the million dollar ones are up the street. Median house prices in the Twin Cities are I think around $220,000 now). Being at home all day with little kids is exhausting. And ALL parents make financial sacrifices for their kids - I’d really like the $1500 a month I spend in daycare. Its just that both the amount of work and depth of cuts are going to be highly variable depending. One kid who plays quietly and contentedly, takes two or three hour daily naps is simply less work than triplets who pull out every toy in the toybox as faster than you can pick them up and don’t nap or at least don’t nap on the same schedule. Cuts are going to be a lot deeper if the SAHP made a good living as a professional, and the working parent maintains a lower paying job, than if the SAHP didn’t have a high paying job and the working parent makes six figures. A lot of families come out ahead finacially when one parent stays home - (not all incomes support $1500 a month in child care!).
I agree with everything you say about the 120 hours a week (note my dubious smiley above). What I don’t agree with is your statement quoted here. Of course, YMMV but my hearthkeeping and childcare and all the organization and detail it that comes with it does, indeed, add up to over 40 extra hours per week. It’s difficult for me to separate child care from housekeeping. When I’m using an old toothbrush to clean oatmeal and banana out of the heat register for the 4th time this week…am I providing childcare or just regular housekeeping? I’m convinced that I wouldn’t be doing this so often if I went into a classroom everyday. I’m pretty sure I would be paying someone else to do this, or some similar task in some other home or building.
dangerosa I know you don’t want ugliness:) and I see where you’re coming from. I’m not at all interested in joining a ‘who’s the better mother’ type debate, but I am very interested in the topic brought up by the OP. I don’t see this discussion to be about working parents at all, but rather an attempt to find out why the work done by sahp isn’t given the same respect as that of people in the work force. All the “it’s the toughest job in the world” statements, no matter how heartfelt and sincere, don’t erase the single “but I do everything you do in just a few hours after slaving all day at the office”.
It’s all a question of priorities. We had, in addition to my parents, a live-in housekeeper from the time I was born, until I was 10 or so. It was more important to my mother that she spend time with me and (later) my brother than it was spending that same time cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, etc. My cousin, who left a lucrative career as a therapist, feels the same way. She’s got a lawn service and a full-time housekeeper. She, like my mother, wants to spend as much time with her kids as she can. She doesn’t want to delegate her kids’ care; she’d rather delegate housework.
What I’ve noticed is that you’re laboring under the assumption that the whole thing is a package deal. Cleaning, laundry, cooking, child-care, and other activities are lumped into this big label called “SAHP”. They’re not. If your acquaintance thinks it’s worth it to have all of those extra services without hurting her family, then more power to her. Whipping out the checkbook is a lot easier than juggling all the things a SAHP is expected to do. And I’m sure her kids appreciate having more of their mother.
Robin
Thinking about the fascinating replies to my query gave me another answer to the OP. And a need to amend my previous statement.
When I said I wouldn’t accomplish as much professionally b/c I’m now busy raising children instead, it implied that I cared. In fact I don’t. Giving up working wasn’t a big sacrifice for me - I wasn’t “rat race” ambitious before and I’m not now. Plenty of people who look down on SAHMs would’ve scorned me as an employee, too, because I have a fairly high IQ and “should” have been a “success”, but I wasn’t. Not at any job, nor as an artist (although I do miss painting fiercely).
And I’m not going to be all Martha Stewart as a SAHM. That’s another version of the rat race & it’s not important to me either. The pressure to be WunderMom, enriching every moment of my munchkins’ lives, is more tempting but I’m doing my best to deflect that game as well.
It could be that some of the disdain for SAHMs is a response to our withdrawal from the great American competition - not only b/c we’re not making wages ourselves (as others have already noted), but because by eschewing the sport we’re diminishing its value. I’d much rather watch clouds with my kids than put on the old pantyhose.
That’s not to diminish any of the joy my fellow Dopers feel from their work, or the difficulties of raising a child in addition to holding down a job. I think that full-time working moms do have it worse than SAHMs, but that being a SAHM is a bigger sacrifice of ego. And that the first year is sheer hell for SAHMs. And most SAHMs work at something once the kids get older.
It’s also true, if you don’t have a choice you bust ass doing whatever you have to. If there’s any group I believe in it’s Moms - every one of us would leap into a burning building to save our children. Should my life take a different turn I’ll be right there alongside you in some workplace somewhere, doing my best and loving my children just as I do now.
I also liked the points about working moms teaching their kids to be self-sufficient. That’s really smart, and it’s something SAHMs need to do for their kids’ own good.
I didn’t mean to say that single moms can’t raise families and do it well, but it’s definitely harder than if that mother has a good husband (or comparable person) alongside her. And extended family, like aunts and uncles, grandparents, and older cousins, also classify as “help”.
Farmwoman, it can’t add up to more than 40, (or 45 or 50 with commute time and a more than full time job) because that is the difference in time. You may get more “value” out of those 40 or 50 hours and pack more into them than an employed parent, and do more hard labor (but that’s getting into the whole “who works harder thing” and we don’t want to go there - I bet you work harder than I do, but I’ve got it easy with relatively a lot of money and a little bit older kids), but you can’t possibly work more hours than that, because that is the difference in the amount of time you spend with your primary job as “parent and house manager” and a working parent spends primarily as “parent and house manager.” You seem to be saying that days are longer than 24 hours when you are a SAHP. (And I’m sure there are days that seem longer than 24 hours, and days you wish were longer than 24 hours, but to the best of my knowledge, the Earth continues to spin at the same rate…).
I’ll answer the original question…
I think that American culture very much values self sufficiency. We don’t like supporting “welfare mothers” (and I’m a liberal who thinks welfare isn’t always a bad thing - I’m talking about our culture). By definition, to make being a SAHP work, you need someone else providing the income to support the primary parent. A SAHP is not self sufficient, they are dependant on the working parent (or other source of income) for even their most basic needs. Now, of course, this is between the SAHP and their spouse, and really not any of society’s business…if your spouse values having you at home and is willing to make any necessary financial sacrifices to get there, more power to you. But, hey, society makes a lot of judgements about things that shouldn’t be any of their business.
Society sees a few huge generalizations about SAHP that they judge. One is women who’s only career goal is to be a SAHP. Unless you are going to have a dozen children and then help with your grandchildren, spending your time as a SAHP isn’t seen as an effective use of resources long term. You work your back end off when your kids are little, but how much parenting does someone do when their kids are in their 20s. There is also the belief that people who want nothing but SAHP as their career goal have poor backup plans if something happens. If a spouse dies or leaves and deadbeats on child support, society will be “on the hook” for the choices made.
Another is that a lot of time the deal made is “I’ll be a SAHP while the kids are little” and that deal is broken. Two of my male coworkers are in this state with their spouses, and I’m doubting either marriage will survive five years (one is a sham now only together for the kids). While both have other problems, a big problem in both cases is that the working spouse isn’t supportive of the decision the SAHP made to continue to SAH once the kids reached schoolage. I’ll admit, I have nothing but contempt for either of those women - who value being a SAHP (or more correctly, not having to hold a job with the “but I have carpool duties every Wednesday!” as the excuse) over the health of their marriage. Granted, I only get their husband’s side of the story, but it ain’t pretty.
Actually there’s one question I have about that.
On “Baby Boards” elsewhere on the Internet, you read a lot from working moms who are moving heaven and earth to keep their babies on a schedule. It gives me the impression that a working mother has to use extreme tactics (CIO, etc.) to train her baby to sleep through the night b/c it’s the only way she can function at work the next day. They don’t sound like 24-hr moms, at least not if they can help it.
OTOH, I’ve worked with plenty of moms who would mention in the morning they’d been up 'til all hours with a sick child. I never could figure out how they were able to do that. They’re a lot tougher than me.
I look down on stay-at-home-moms because I’m 6’1" and they’re all so short.
Whether the child is sleeping through the night or not, we’re still 24 hr moms. A parent is a parent 24/7 no matter where the child is or what they’re doing. You still have to respond in times of need. WOHM just happen to have someone to respond to the smaller needs during working hours. I’d submit that it is a small number of WOHM who use “extreme tactics” to get the baby on a schedule that works for their family.
We do it the same way SAHM moms do - we get up and tend to the child then do what needs to be done the next day. Other responsibilities don’t disappear just because you didn’t sleep the night before.
Perhaps I’m overly-sensitive but the comments I’ve read from you, fessie, in this thread seem pretty judgmental against WOHM. I hope this isn’t the case.
I’m surprised you would say that, mornea; I thought my remarks were respectful and well received.
My only experience as a Mom is with infants. I do think it’s better for them to have a full-time parent, and that usually Mom is more likely to have the temperament (and the mammary glands) for the job.
The whole point of this thread was to defend SAHMs. I rather thought we were the ones being put on the spot.
Just for the record, though, in my (admittedly very limited) experience SAHMs are no more supportive of each other than they are of WOHMs. I connected with a bunch of them online and when we met for lunch, I was surprised at how unfriendly they were. There was no chemistry at all. One of them had a son about a year older than mine, and when I made some innocuous pleasantries about looking forward to when my kids were his age, she replied “Oh, you can’t compare your children to mine. He’s already speaking, my pediatrician is amazed.” Perhaps I’m just as bitchy as her w/out realizing it - there was an article in a parenting magazine about the great Mommy olympics & how we undermine each other b/c we’re so insecure. That’s not my intention, but perhaps I’m guilty anyway.
My son’s whining so I have to stop, but I do believe you can’t make everything in the world your #1 priority, you can’t “have it all”, and we shouldn’t be expected to try! Cut us some slack! Being a really good mom ought to be enough.
Also, re: my remark about the sick kid - following a sleepless night I can usually catch a nap when mine go down, that was my point. Going to work would be really difficult, if not impossible.
Hi, guys. I’m sorry I abandoned the thread for a while. Strangely enough, a friend of mine had her baby Saturday morning. She went into labor Friday around 3:45 p.m. and I spent the afternoon in the hospital, then my dad arrived in town for his visit and stayed until Sunday. After my husband and I visited my friend, I went to bed and didn’t get up until this morning.
Anyway, In regards to the 120 hours per week figure, I’m willing to concede that that may be overstated. However, I did read it in an article somewhere and a friend sent me a copy of the study to back it up because I said the same thing: “Wow, I know working moms work hard, but can they really work that hard?” Anyway, I guess making that comment without the actual study in my hand is as good as the study not existing in the first place. So please ignore that comment.
The whole point of my OP was not a slam on working moms. I have no idea how working moms do it - go out, work (often far more than 40 hours a week), then switch gears and come back and have to keep up with a child. It was mostly started by a couple of comments I heard this week. For example, “Oh, I called my sister to do X - after all, she’s only a stay at home mom. She probably has loads of time on her hands.” I heard that while I was in the grocery store from the woman ahead of me. Then there was the guy at the gas station saying, “Yeah, my wife’s just a stay-at-home-mom. I wish she’d at least work while she was at home, like you do.” This from the attendant when we got into a conversation and he asked what I do (I’m a writer who works from home).
Anyway, at least where I live I tend to see that “just a stay-at-home-mom” attitude from women even more than men. It’s almost as if SAHMs are somehow subverting feminism by making the choice they have, or like they lack some sort of ambition that can only be demonstrated in the workplace.
And I’m not sure where being a stay-at-home-mom becomes housekeeping versus caring for children, either. I mean, if you’re cleaning vomit out of your clothing and the couch for what seems like the gazillionth time because your baby just managed to spit up all the way down your back, is it a cleaning service you’re providing, or because it’s baby-related, is it childcare because you also have to change the kid and clean him/her up, then clean yourself up and throw in another load of laundry because the kid just barfed everywhere?
fessie, I missed that question in your previous post, which did seem to be a little judgemental…
I never scheduled my kids. They napped at daycare, didn’t nap at home. Neither of them slept dependably through the night until they were toddlers. You get used to functioning on limited and interrupted sleep, but a helpful spouse does limit it (your turn tonight).
By definition, they were more scheduled than if one of us had stayed home. We have to get them out the door each day by 8:00 am to be at work. Until they were “pre-K”, they had a regular naptime at daycare (although the baby room - until 15 or 16 months - is unscheduled at daycare - lunch is relatively scheduled when you get old enough for table food), as well as regularly scheduled activities at daycare (they always eat lunch at the same time, they go outside twice a day, weather permitting, at approximately the same time). We are more “free for all” parents (hey, have the kids eaten lunch yet?) on the weekends. Like parenting, there is huge variation in daycare…one of my girlfriends has her youngest in a liberal co-op - lots of single sling wearing hippie parents, no meat at the daycare, lots of people trying to make attachment parenting work when they need to hold a job. I’d guess they are less scheduled than my kids.
And “usually” mom may have the temperment. In my experience, choosing childcare as a profession self selects for people who really enjoy small kids (I don’t). And you don’t have any need for those mammary glands if your kid is adopted. Pumping works, too.
overlyverbose,
Is it possible that some of the comments you overheard are different in context? I mean, someone who is “only” a SAHM of one junior high school age kid might have a lot more time on their hands than someone who is the SAHM of four kids under six. Although I don’t think most people realize how much work children are while they are little (and I’m probably underestimating the amount of time and energy you can spend on one twelve year old girl).
And you, who does a paying job from inside the house, that’s one I’ve never be able to do. All the demands of a house and young kids AND finding time to write (and writing takes uninterrupted time for most people). One of my girlfriends husband’s is a writer who stayed home while the kids were little. He didn’t get a lot of writing done.