Quote:
Originally Posted by
amber3902
OP, I think part of the reason you're getting more flack now that your kids are older is because it seems the only reason a mother would stay home is to save money on child care. Once your kids are in school people don't see what other reason there would be for you to stay home.
There are so many modern day conveniences, dishwasher, microwave, washer and dryer, that the previous generation didn't have, that other than child care they don't see what takes up so much time every day that you can't do when you get home from work. Not trying to give you a hard time here, but really, I'm able to clean my whole house in a couple hours, and I do that once a week, and it takes me on average 30 minutes to cook dinner every night. Granted, I don't have to time to cook everything from scratch, and I don't can and freeze vegetables, but I think we still manage to eat pretty healthy.
Spending time with your kids of course is very important, but you can't spend any time with them if they're in school. And housework doesn't take all day, especially if the biggest mess makers are at school all day, so what's the point of being at home while your kids are in school? Again, not trying to attack SAHMs, just trying to help you see their perspective.
Gooseberry, maybe you'd like to start a thread in the working parent's forum to discuss how to handle housework/child rearing while working full time. I think I could offer a few tips I've picked up over the years.
@amber3902 reading this is very upsetting as a SAHP with my kids in full time school. I an spend time with them while they are in school. 4 days a week I go and spend 20 mins first thing reading with my child in her classroom and other children who's parents are unable to attend do to various other commitments. This would not be possible if I had to work. I am also able to volunteer to help out on field trips and in the classrooms, spending time watching my children grow in their learning environment. I could be at the school every day volunteering in some capacity watching them grow, learn and make friendships. I'm not however as I take care of almost everything house and life related. My husband works 12+ hour days. There is no time for him to pitch in and help. He can work 24+ straight days in a row sometimes. Other times he can be working away for weeks or months on end. I get to do everything a single parent would do, without being single. And I don't have the extra stress of having to make a living.
There are many days that I have lots of downtime. I too have Fibro and it often flares. I also have celiac and get migraines randomly. Working for me would be difficult with these conditions. Certainly not impossible and I have "worked" on and off in the past as well.
However there is almost no daycare where we are and it's mega expensive when you can find it and my children are not able to stay home by themselves yet. So working hours would have to be between 9-2/230. Which means my job choices are limited and if working 5 days a week it would only give me 25 hours tops. Which isn't worth going to work for once we factor in the increase of taxes (I already make some residual income from our income property and DH makes enough that my working *would* impact his taxes), extra clothes and extra food costs (not being able to cook from scratch all the time). Not to mention my health would suffer from all the added stress and extra hours of "stuff" we would have to add on to the end of our day. And we would lose out on our family "downtime".
As parents and a family we put a large focus on our children learning through play at home and through being with us. If after school was all about groceries, Dr's Appt's, errands and cleaning *our* needs would suffer.
As it is my youngest comes home from school exhausted every day and needs time to play and relax. My oldest has many different Dr's and specialists she needs to see. It's unlikely any job I could find from 9-2 would allow me to take the amount of time off I would need for Dr's Appt's alone. Never ins being able to go and help at school field trips.
Also every summer I would need to quit my job or spend it all on summer camps or daycares (again *if* I was able to find space). And personally I like the fact that we can choose to be lazy or explore or hop in the car and go on vacation whenever we want in the summer. I tn't have to worry about schedules and bookin time off or being allowed to have time off. If my husband comes with us then we only need to worry about scheduling vacation around one job.
ProD days I don't have to take time off or scramble for care. And my oldest gets sick every couple months for a few days at a time. She's been like that since she was a baby. And again I would have to take off more time. We don't have family here really (1 but they work full time) and I would never want to be asking my friends ALL of the time.
I can't work weekends and evenings (and wouldn't want to, we'd rather be together as a family) because my husbands schedule is so up in the air. He might be home, or not. He might think he's going to be home and then get called in.
Trust me I've looked at getting jobs, there's even a few I have been offered (wasn't looking but lots of work here) that sounded almost perfect. But trying to make the logistics work of *our* life and what does regularly occur (not the what if's) there is no point at all in me even trying to get a regular job outside the home.
If my husband and I were to spilt tomorrow I could have good job with a live able wage within two weeks and a short course. Or many other jobs, as I mentioned our job market is crazy here. And yes I'd then HAVE to make childcare work. But it would not be easy, and parts of our life would suffer.
So for the amount of downtime I have during the day (sometimes an hour or two, often much less) fitting in a job just to make extra money isn't worth it. Money isn't everything. The life we've built for ourselves is comfortable meets our NEEDS and not just our WANTS. For other's their mileage may vary.
OP, I live in a very "1950's" town when it comes to SAHP. While many moms want to work they are unable do to their husbands/SO's work schedules. Here SAHM's are a very large part of the community. And no one looks down on Working Parent's either
However I do get the "go back to work" attitude from some people. Mainly family back from where we grew up. However in that area it was *very hard* to stay home on one income. I did go back to work after a year with my first and our life suffered greatly. The best work/SAH balance I had was when DH was only working 8 hours a day and I was doing daycare 3 shortened days a week our of our basement suite in our old home. My house stayed clean because we weren't in it (daycare was in the suite), I could still help out at school sometimes, although I did miss some field trips
and I could get errands done on days off and I could schedule Dr's appointments on days off and the odd time during care (could either take the kids or take a day off). However I hate doing daycare in *my* house and since we moved to a place without a separate area I don't think it would work. Besides I'm loving this SAHM schedule I'm rocking now!
And again as a side reminder to everyone, this is the SAHP forum. Discussion about topics pertaining to and support for parents who choose this lifestyle is the goal of the board. SAHP should not feel the need to have to justify their choices or lifestyle in this forum. Debates and Questioning the differences between SAHP and Working Parents belong in Parenting.