Sure fessie, but while they’re napping you aren’t on Red Alert counting their breaths right? Instead, you’ll do something else and wait until they awake/cry so you know they need you. That’s all I’m trying to get at, no disparagement intended at all.
I work out of home out of necessity, but to be honest I don’t think I’d be a very good SAHM even if I was in the situation where it was possible. I’m not disciplined enough. But now after reading dangermom’s post about actually having a little time to pursue hobbies/better herself, I can add another reason why people give SAHMs attitude. They’re jealous. At least I am now.
A perfect example of "grass is always greener"ism in action, it seems.
Young children are way more time consuming and the toddler years are like night of the living dead for most parents regardless of if they get a paycheck or not. You don’t leave your kids alone for five minutes - you are either with them or someone else is (Dad, Grandma, a paid professional). You do have them follow you into the bathroom with you, which you are happy about because otherwise they’d find a Sharpie marker to draw on the walls with. And multiple young children multiply the work. (Add pets and stir for complete chaos). Being a working parents can give you are break for the endless calls for juice and diaper changing - that’s very true (and not a small part of why I’ve never chosen to stay at home, it was always a relief to pee without someone watching eight hours a day). But kids do grow up, and most people don’t have a house full of kids in diapers for years (some people do - big families are less common, but not unknown - however in most big families I’ve seen operate, older kids take a lot of the responsibility). Eventually kids potty train, are able to get their own juice, can be unattended for half an hour at a time (unless you hear a big crash or a scream) and you can take up gardening or quilting or read a whole book again. Unless you homeschool, eventually they go to school (SAHMs who homeschool have, of course, and even bigger job - endless amazement for people who have kids in diapers while they competently homeschool older children - I don’t think they should even be called SAHMs anymore, there has to be a seperate category). They have playdates and overnights where you don’t see them for 24 hours (hey, let’s paint and have loud sex!). Even later they become self sufficient adults and leave home (at least, you hope your 37 year old son doesn’t live in your basement and attend Star Trek conventions). Its hard to compare a SAHP with one school attending seven year old with a SAHP with three under three in diapers. (Mine are 13 months apart - those years are a vague blur).
But back to the lack of respect. As Farmwoman has pointed out, the job is part childcare and part housekeeping. If childcare is a disrespected position in society, people who clean for a living are one step up the respect ladder from single celled organisms. The “mom” part in Stay at Home Mom gets a lot more respect than the “home” part. Of the “visable” parts of being a SAHM, only the cooking has a nominally respected “paying” counterpart - and then only really in the elite chef roles (no one admires a Burger King grill operator).
How can an opinion be factually correct? Here’s my recap. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Posters x,y, and z post the opinion that sahps do only slightly more around the home than their working counterparts but that they have all day to do it.
We spend a page and a half establishing that this is not the case.
You drop in to say posters xyz are correct and to suggest that being on call is the same as providing primary child care.
I point to you as an illustration of the respect problem sahps face.
This thread is made up entirely of opinions, and I’m sure that’s why it hasn’t been moved to GD. There isn’t a fact anywhere in this thread…just a whole bunch of opinions.
FTR I’m of the opinion that working parents have it much tougher than sahps and I’ve worked hard to ensure that I have a choice in the matter. Obviously I made the choice I think is better for our family. Other families will naturally come to other conclusions and make their decisions accordingly. But that’s not what this discussion is about and I’m much less interested in the actual choices parents make than I am in the level of respect given to parents who choose full time child care instead of paid work.
question and no one need answer this publicly, just honestly consider your reaction:
You encounter two equally messy homes, one inhabited by a sahm and the other by a working mother. What are your impressions of each of these women? Does one get the roll-eyes smiley while the other gets a supportive hug? How about their husbands?
Dangerosa you talk about it being hard to compare a SAHP with one situation to another with a different situation, but I ask, why are we making that comparison? People who work fulltime and earn enough to support themselves are generally afforded a modicum of respect regardless as to how hard they actually work and to some extent how much they make. We could do that with SAHP, according them with a modicum of respect as long as they actually raise their children, but we often don’t. Why?
Well, again, it depends on the women. I know a woman with four kids and a husband, and her house looks like a cyclone hit it. All the time. Laundry is always in a pile on the couch ready to be folded. Dishes are always in the sink. Toys are always strewn about.
But I’ll tell you…she’s a great mother. Her children are bright, happy, polite, and loved. How do you complain about something like that?
Actually, feminists in general, both men and women, support the right of either parent to stay home. Look at the wording of the resolution again:
Although this plank was part of a women’s conference, the wording is not gender specific.
With that said, certainly not all women are feminists and not all feminists are women. And each feminist woman is different. The ones that I have known are very supportive of choices.
I offer a little experiment of my own. Each time that you hear SAHMs, in particular, degraded, ask yourself what you know for certain about the person making the statement – gender, political background, parental status, employment position, and so forth, to see if you can find any patterns.
I have found generally that it is almost always someone else who claims that SAHMs are being put down by a third party. I just don’t hear anyone actually putting them down. Everyone claims respect. Yet, Dangerosa has made some excellent points about how our society may be showing a kind of contempt for children and their caregivers.
Sometimes a messy home is the sign of having the right priorities, but I try not to be too quick to judge someone who is orderly.
To be fair, we’ve hit on the relative labor involved in being a vet tech, nurse or teacher compared to being an office worker, and alluded to the relative respect given different paid positions as well.
But what I was trying to get at is Farmwoman sounds like she has a challenging SAHM life - not having much time for herself, always scrambling. dangermom comes on and posts about how she finds time to read in two languages and quilt. Fessie is at that “I am completely overwhelmed with two children and a fairly new mom” state. You can’t judge the amount of labor in the job merely by the title. There are more variables than number and ages of kids - but those are two big ones.
I reject that we should be talking about the amount of labor. “Her children are bright, happy, polite, and loved.” That to me matters more than how much labor someone does, or how much they get paid.
Oh, I didn’t mean to give that impression. My life is only as challenging as I choose to make it. I guess that can be said of most people who have even the most basic choices in life.
Like dangermom I enjoy the self-scheduling aspect of sahping, and I tend to frame my goals weekly rather than daily, so I don’t stress if certain things don’t get done before I go to bed. I get to listen to listen to good music all day, and so do my children. I manage a small spinner’s flock, dabble in spinning and fiber arts, and have started a natural spa business as a way to make the farm self-sufficient, but these are really just hobbies…hobbies which pay for themselves and bring in enough money to qualify our place as a working farm. I find our lives are more intensely connected to the rise and fall of the seasons than would be possible if I didn’t do this work, so naturally, there are times when I’m far busier than others. We just finished lambing, so I’m getting more sleep and spend less time in the barn than I did during the month of February, but by May the retail end of the business will pick up and I’ll be busy again. My nearly 5 year-old does school at the table with me each morning and we intend to continue this until it no longer works for us. But any or all of these ‘extras’ could be dropped if I found myself not enjoying the life anymore.
Our situation is unique in that my husband’s job is based 200 miles away in NYC. He works out of an office in our home, but often has to travel to the physical work space and sometimes stays for a few days, often in emergency situations (he is CIO of a group of 8 hospitals…can’t wait til Monday morning to get the system back up) Like a military spouse, I can’t rely on my husband to pick up a sick kid from day care, and our (well-discussed) agreement regarding duties and responsibilities of the sahp included him being unencumbered to train and remain competitive in a field which aggressively favors youth. So our family closely resembles the pre-war model family where mother is responsible for all things at home while father brings home the bacon. The only difference (and it’s a biggy) is that this was our choice and not a societal dictate.
I’m busy and happy and so is my family. I don’t feel the isolation or boredom described by some sahps. I find time to read, and though it’s rarely for pleasure anymore I still find it pleasureable. So why do I feel the need to explain myself when people ask when I’m going to go back to ‘work’? Or why my husband can’t ‘watch’ the kids? Or why I bothered to get all those teaching degrees if I wasn’t going to use them? It’s as if my worth as child care provider and teacher(all child care providers are teachers after all) is only valid if I’m getting paid.
Sorry to go off-topic, but I think I’ve given people the wrong impression of my life and thought I ought to correct it.
I agree - regardless of if someone gets paid for some of their time inside or outside the home. But the question is “why are SAHMs looked down upon.” One of the reasons is the perception that unless your kids are in diapers, its a couch and bon-bons job - which it generally isn’t, but once your kids get past the completely dependant age - your time does free up for you to spend - you choose how to spend it…volunteering, being the main carpool mom, quilting, gardening, keeping the cleanest house in the neighborhood, or keeping abreast of Jerry Springer. (Personally, I play City of Heroes and go to school half time).
Actually, people do question men who clearly don’t want to spend time with their families, except maybe when it’s useful for them.
I know of a family where the dad got involved with pretty much every civic organization he could sign up for, just so he wouldn’t have to deal with, like, the not-fun parts of parenting, and he didn’t expect the wake-up call to be his teenage daughter telling him that he would be facing sexual abuse charges if he didn’t start spending more time at home. :eek: If he didn’t want to be at home, she’d fix things so he COULDN’T be there, KWIM? The saddest thing about it was that there were people who said that while there is no such thing as justified false sexual abuse charges, there are situations where they are almost understandable, and this was one of them.
My experience with men like this is that I reply, “And I suppose you want everyone to feel sorry for you because you have to pay child support.”
I used to work with a man who, while his wife was pregnant, was always talking about how he wasn’t going to have to change anything about his life, because he had a wife to do it all. :smack: These were not stupid people, either; both were highly educated and in their 30s! I was not the only person who said that this marriage probably wouldn’t last a year if he really was going to keep partying all the time, etc. and use his wife as a 24-hour live-in babysitter. I left that job when the baby was 8 months old, and he did seem to be marginally interested in her but always referred to her as “it”. :rolleyes:
I can’t get over the women who knew their husbands were this way before they had the kids, and had them anyway and still wondered why they didn’t step up to the plate.
Bwhaaa. My kid who was still in daycare when this thread happened is now in 9th grade, and I’m a SAHM who homeschools him (he went deep into middle school larval stage and needs some extra guidance). And everything I thought then is still true from this end. This job is as hard - just very different.
I want to be a stay at home mom. I have to work right now because of finances, but as soon as we’re able to have me stay home I’m going to do that for a while. But knowing me I will probably want to get back to work after I’ve done the stay at home mom thing for a little bit. I have twin 5 year olds and a 3 month old right now, and honestly I don’t enjoy spending all day with them and trying to figure out something to do with them to constantly keep them entertained & happy. You can only do so much in a day to keep your kids entertaining and out of trouble. I’m glad they to go to kindergarten right now during the day, and the baby is in daycare. Definitely can see myself staying home all day with the baby, but with the twins, not so much! Most of the day would be spent having to ieep telling them to clean up after themselves, to stop hitting each other, and stop yelling at each other, etcetera…
Ok, so I wrote this 8½ yrs ago, when my son was in first grade and I was just about to pull him from school and home school him. I did for 2 years then he went back to public school and now he’s a sophomore.
The funny thing is, I said I never had to defend my decision to be a SAHM, and I didn’t back then. BUT…now that he’s a teenager, people ask me why I haven’t gone back to work. It started right around the time he hit middle school. As if middle and high school kids don’t benefit from having a parent at home when they get home from school. In our case, I drive him because he goes to an excellent charter school that has no bus service to our neighborhood. We have some of our best conversations during the drive to and from school.
The criticizers do seem somewhat placated when I tell them that I do volunteer work at our local animal shelter.
