I’ve seen many posts in a variety of places where people - invariably gays and women, never (that I’ve spotted) heterosexual men - have disparaged (to a greater or lesser degree, and often only by inference) being a full-time mother. Why? What is wrong with being a full-time mother? It may not be for you (and I have friends who are working mothers), but surely that doesn’t mean it isn’t for someone else? I’d suggest that it’s great now that women have the choice, but that choice is perfectly valid and deserves respect, not sneers and derision.
I’m not going to name names or cite threads from the SDMB or elsewhere because I believe it would be counter-productive.
The whole “dissing working moms” thing is mostly (not entirely) a female on female scenario (hetero and gay female) and I don’t recall ever seeing a gay man dissing working moms here or elsewhere, so your lumping of the working mom dissers as “gay” is a bit inaccurate.
Beyond this if you aren’t really going to provide a single cite for your assertion that this dissing is widespread on the SDMB (it’s not IMO BTW) then you are going to have difficultly having your claim taken seriously.
It does happen but I don’t think it’s an epidemic and quite frankly in real world terms from waht I have observed IRL the biggest dissers of stay at home moms are other jealous or defensive working moms and ironically the non-working mother in laws of said moms, not gay women.
Astro It’s full-time AKA stay-at-home mothers, not ‘working’ mothers. I know you meant that, so this is just for clarification.
I’m not going to provide cites from here - I’ve stated why and I maintain that position - and I’ll ask you to note both that I’ve said that I’ve seen it elsewhere (than the SDMB) too and that I never said it was widespread here. I know this puts me in a difficult position, but it’s preferable to being in the flame-fest that would result if I named names.
Well, someone’s gonna come in any minute and blame it all on feminists, so I’ll anticipate that by saying that claiming “modern people look down on full-time mothers” is overgeneralizing.
I don’t know, I’m a man and I envy the position a full-time mom has. If I ever had kids I would just love being able to spend all that time with them. MHO.
I quite agree, erislover. That said, being a full-time mother is hard work: you’ve got to keep the children engaged (as opposed to entertained) and out of danger and keep the house in order - let’s face it, many cannot afford domestic help. On the plus side, there’s the increased individual attention and more controlled socialising.
Astro, I agree that it’s not an epidemic. It does, however, seem to recur.
I’m a heterosexual man, and have a divided opinion on this subject.
On the one hand, I have sympathy for the feminist project, and feel that an unintentional consequence of full-time mothers in general is that it may strengthen the prejudice that working women are not fully reliable because they all, or a large portion of them, will leave the work-force to become full-time mothers. It may also strengthen the stereotype that women are ‘meant’ to be mothers. Both of these prejudices/stereotypes I find wrong.
On the other hand, being a man who is not adverse to eventually having kids, I have been exposed to the general stereotype just like everyone else. Hence when I think about a happy family I am prone to picture a wife who is a full-time mother, and not a family in which I will have to take my 50%-load of parenthood. Note: I’m not happy that I think this way and would hope that I would act differently if I would find myself in a parental situation. That I harbour such stereotypical thoughts I find in some way worrying.
While I’m not against any particular full-time mother I meet, I do find it a bad thing in general if society pushes mothers into the role of full-time moms and pushes fathers into the role of full-time providers. The acts of individuals unfortunately do affect general beliefs in society. I guess thougts such as these may lead to some of the more hostile reactions you may encounter. And I cannot exclude a certain envy as well (as erislover said).
qts, I hear you, I think this phenomenon is a lot more common then people care to admit. As the the husband of a stay at home mom who works in a largely female environment, I feel as though I am constantly “apologizing” for my wife when cow-orkers ask me what she does. No, I don’t “force” her to stay at home with our baby and slave over the coal burning stove while she scrubs my laundry over the washboard with whale oil soap. We graduated at roughly the same time last year into a slow economy, she got pregnant, I got lucky and got a job with bennies that cover all three of us, she did’nt find anything. We don’t have the luxury of snotty college idealism or time to worry about “how the modern women ought to behave.” Things just kind of worked out this way. She is breastfeeding, which is very demanding and makes it very difficult to be a nine to fiver and “gasp” sometimes after I get home I have to fix dinner and do the housework because the baby has been fussy all day and she can’t get away. But i would’nt trade it for the world. Wow, that felt kinda cathartic, almost pittish. I think many people who spout the drivel you mention in your OP, live in an alternate(fully paid and childless) reality. Just my $0.02.
Ben
I think some of it may be regarding the large portion of time that the stay-at-home mother lacks adult mental stimulation, conversations, that sort of thing.
Sometimes that can just be pretty hard to understand.
Tusculan, could it not be that the stereotypes could actually be turned to good if handled properly? Specifically, instead of employers taking the attitude of, “She’s going to leave to have kids so why bother promoting her?”, should they not take the attitude, “Let’s make the best use of her while we are lucky enough to have her”? After all, changing jobs every few years is pretty common these days, so what’s the difference between a woman working for three years then moving to another company and a womon who works for three years then goes off to have a child?
I do agree that society should respect the decision of women (who, after all, make up 50% of our society) to work or be a mother or both.
I wish the OP would provide specifics, or at least cite an op/ed piece that expresses anti-mom bias. We need something. Not everyone–including myself–has been exposed to these feelings so I don’t if the OP is exaggerating or not.
I will say what raises my ire when it comes to some stay-at-home mothers. There’s a segment of them that bear their jobs like they’re carrying a cross. They don’t get any respect, they feel. Their jobs are thankless and never-ending. They want people to recognize that they have jobs too…caring for their families. They want people to recognize they have the most important job in the world–being their children’s mother. And it’s so hard, they want us all to know.
I guess I just don’t think it’s the hardest job in the world. And if it IS the hardest job in the world, then people like my mother–who worked AND mothered at the same time, deserve extra props.
I understand that there are people who wrongly and ignorantly think stay-at-home mothers just lay about the house, eating bon bons in front of “All My Children”. But the self-righteousness is a two-way street. Mothering at home is a very important job, one that deserves heaps of respect, but no one should feel like being their “child’s mom” is an occupation requiring staying home. No one–the working mother* or the stay-at-home mother–should be placed on a pedastal.
*I do realize that stay-at-home mothers work too. But it is just too awkward to write “working mothers who work at home”.
I guess companies don’t want to devote resources to an employee who could leave at any time - and maybe never come back 100%. Also, there’s the issue of maternity leave - don’t companies have to pay for that in some way? They might prefer not to get into a situation where they have to, if they can avoid it. Not that any of those attitudes are OK, I’m just explaining why perhaps you don’t see a better attitude.
Well, being houswives and mothers is what women did before feminism and they didn’t have much choice about it. Now, feminism should be about giving women choices but if you fight the fight to provide women with more choices you might feel slighted by those women who still want to do what they were doing before.
I suppose 50 years ago many women were forced by convention to be housewives when they would have rather done something else (although many women still managed to do it anyway). But today the situation has been somewhat reversed and I know a number of women who bought the whole feminist notion of going out and fighting in the corporate world and when they hit their late 30s it suddenly hits them hard the realization that they really wanted to be mothers more than corporate bullshitters Their choice was also narrowed down by societal pressure because they grew up in a generation where if you said when you were young that your aim was to be a mother and wife people would laugh at you in your face.
I rarely see men criticising stay at home moms. Mostly it is other women and I think they are traying to reassure themselves that they did the right thing by working full time.
I’m a SAHM… I quit a crappy part time job to say home with my daughter. When I say crappy … I brought home about $100/week.
My boss, the owner, could not understand why I would give up my job to stay home. I tried to explain nicely that I was supposed to be infertile and figured if I was given such an amazing gift then I didn’t want to ship her off to daycare if I could help it. My husband and I both felt that one of us being home with the munchkin would be a good thing. Besides I couldn’t pay daycare out of my salary. She told me to just bring the baby to work with me. Well that sounds nice except anyone with a baby knows that’s just not going to work out. I finally got her to understand I was serious about quitting she was shocked. To her I single handedly set the woman’s movement back 50 years.
Unfortunately she was not the only person who expressed that opinion about me staying home. And all of the dissenting opinions came from other women.
I can not imagine how any parent must feel at the end of the day when they have to work outside the home. I know I’m exhausted and I have my telecommuting husband to help me during the day. When do ‘work outside the home’ parents schedule doctor appointments and go to the bank or post office or grocery store?
But staying home is hard in different ways than going to work is hard. I don’t get sanctioned coffee breaks and lunch hours but I also don’t have to commute anywhere and have the kids out of the house at a specific time. There are many tasks I can’t leave in my in-box until tomorrow but there is no time clock for me to deal with. Having the child home all day means they trash your house all day though and not the sitter’s. I often pick up the same mess many times a day. You have to make them and you three meals. You have to keep them from killing themselves (which is a full time job in and of itself with any toddler)
I also don’t understand why the two groups of moms can’t just say ‘I’m doing what’s best for me and my kids but YMMV.’ Our days are different but not necessarily better/worse depending in your particular side of the fence.
You know, it’s not a one-sided issue. There’s plenty of disparagement directed toward those mom’s who don’t SAH, too. And I suspect that the amounts are about equal, and often in self-defense ( on both sides).
Me too. I sometimes wonder if these “mommy wars” aren’t partially due to both sides thinking the other looks down on them, and getting defensive. Moms can’t really win; either we’re downtrodden, oppressed SAHMs obsessed with our children and losing all our mental acuity from the drudgery of eternal housework, or we’re selfish workaholics who only want another BMW and don’t care about our poor oppressed babies, who are cared for by utter strangers and who are going to grow up to be criminals (as opposed to the SAHMs kids, who will be timid, mother-dependent 'fraidy-cats with no gumption).
As a SAHM, I wonder how two-income families do it. When does grocery shopping get done, and when do you relax?
I feel lucky that I can stay home if I want to (that I have that choice), and that I live in a city where that’s still considered a normal and worthwhile thing to do. It means I have plenty of support and rarely meet up with someone who wants to know how I can stand it. I don’t see how housework is demeaning (and is it somehow redeemed if you’re a maid and are paid for it?)–it would have to get done whether I worked or not–and yes, mr. genie does his share.
Well, that might be true for some of us, as much as we enjoy our children (what about the poor day-care workers? Aren’t they losing their minds, or is it just the moms?). It turns out, though, that there are other people raising children, and we get together sometimes. We get out and go someplace, talk, and generally have a pleasant time (inbetween telling the kids to stop pushing and apologize to each other :p). I have quite a bit more social life than my working husband does, though he does have more face-time with coworkers. I also have some time for my own interests; I get to read a lot, exercise, and sew a lot of quilts, among other things. All in all, life as a SAHM is pretty great, I think. Our life is calm and manageable, which I don’t think it would be if I worked full time–and my paycheck wouldn’t even cover day care, I bet–I’m a librarian.
Feminist stay-at-home mother here and I’ve not noticed a huge trend towards bashing us here. Maybe I just don’t notice it because it’s so irrelevant to me or my experience. I’m at home because I need to be at home at this stage of my kids’s lives. When things change, I’ll be back in the workforce. I tend to see other people’s choices in the same light. You do what works for you and your family.
I certainly think working as a single person without kids is easier than full time at home with kids. Done both and I know what was easier for me.
I have never noticed any contempt from gay people on this board towards SAHP ever. I do think cites would help here although maybe that would be safer in the Pit.
I think doreen and genie make valid points. I also know I am not careful with my words sometimes, and my own respect for women who stay home with their kids doesn’t come across.
Maybe when I say “I’d go crazy!” (IRT staying home with my son when he was a toddler) sounds to some moms as if I meant SAHMs have to be dimwits with no need for real stimulation to stay sane. I don’t think that at all. I think it takes a certain amount of creativity and patience that I lack. I don’t always explain that carefully.
Similarly, I know some SAHMs aren’t careful with their words, either.
I can think of a recent incident (not the first time on these boards) where someone said they couldn’t imagine a “stranger” taking care of their children. Well, I understand what they mean, but this gets my hackles up somewhat because it implies that working parents just drop their poor kids off with any ol’ schlub that will take them. Au contraire; the parents I know have made careful choices.
I am sure there is plenty of legitimate degradation of both types of moms on this board now and then. But I can recall arguments on my parenting lists that flared up over perceived slights that simply didn’t exist and never happened.
qts, i agree that it is not necessary that companies think it is a bad thing that part of the female workforce takes leave for a couple of years for taking care of the kids. Unfortunately at present the thought that they are therefore less worthwhile for the company seems to be prevalent, even though it is not often said out loud.
I’m also with what others doreen, genie, have said about working moms: I’ve heard mum/co-workers complaining that stay-at-home-moms accused them of being bad mothers.
In the end I agree that hostilities are really uncalled for on both sides. If anything is bad here, I’d say it is that women get criticized for whatever choice they make, while men in general are left alone (except if a man wants to be a stay-at-home-dad).