Can we talk about Stay at Home Mums

I agree eazybee. Not to mention, if the unthinkable happens (divorce or death), they are in a VERY bad position to reenter the work force. Most short sighted.

I should have returned to work but was still feeding my son and didn’t want him in a nursery. I returned to work partime briefly then had my daughter started divorce proceeding not long after.

Went to college then university with the intention of (after graduating) getting a good paying job. I got remarried and ended up running a business with my husband partime.

Women fought long and hard to get the right to an equal education, equal job opportunities and equal pay. it grieves me when I hear of intelligent, well-qualified women making no use of their education and training., after their children are independent.

I have 5 children also. I had a total of 10 years at home with them. The youngest was 1 when I started work again, but only on a relief basis. Then 9 months later a 20 hour maternity contract became available. I went in to secure that permanently. My marriage fell apart and by the time the youngest was 4 years, I started my social work training. There then followed many years of anxiety trying to juggle work and childcare as a lone adult household.

I don’t think it’s really fair to imply that just because someone doesn’t pay tax, they don’t contribute to society.

I don't think that. There are many ways to contribute, but people saying that they 'chose' to SAH and then go on to make sanctimonious comments about there being 'no point in having children' unless you are at home when they are at school rarely consider the whole picture.

It is true that far more parents would have to work if the one not at home had to pay the tax and NI of the SAH one. It is also true that those who can't afford to SAH will still have to pay in, which subsidises the SAH parents who come out with nonsense like comparing having children to driving a car.

Working parents bring their children up too. Most children of working parents are in some sort of care (after school club, a nanny or childminder) for an hour or two after school at most, so it is not remotely fair to suggest that their parents don't bring them up.

I have no issue whatsoever with people doing what's right for them. What I do have an issue with is people who make unkind comments about others without thinking about what props up the 'choices' they have made.

Same here, I stayed at home too. Loved it very much, would never have considered working unless there was no other option. What’s the point in having children, then leaving them for someone else to bring up? You wouldn’t buy a car and let someone else drive it! Best years of my life.

I stayed at home. Four children...five years between oldest and youngest. I trained as a nurse, did some agency. Worked in occupational health for a while, until my first was born in 1985. Never done paid work since. I was so lucky we didn’t need me to work, but never would have chosen to. Unless you fall upon hard times after your children are born, there is no reason to. My children all went to playgroups and nurseries from 3 years old, starting with one morning, and working up to before school, but that was for them not me, I really missed them. Have never understood people working if they don’t need to...but each to their own I suppose.

If people didn't subsidise them, who would pay the NI and tax contributions to cover for those who 'choose' not to work
I agree with the rest of your post DD, but I had a shortfall in NI contributions partly because of my years as a SAHM and partly because of living abroad for 11 years (the two periods overlapped by several years)
I had to pay quite a lot of money to make up the shortfall to get anything approaching the full state pension.
As for taxation, well quite a lot of people who work part-time don’t pay tax because they don’t reach the tax threshold.
I don’t think it’s really fair to imply that just because someone doesn’t pay tax, they don’t contribute to society.

kittylester As a SAHM, I didn't 'deal' with my children's problems but i was around if necessary just as we were when they went to university and had a problem.
I know we all to a certain extent help out in our children's lives when they need us but when do you stop being the automatic standby? I would have thought part of a parent's responsibility was to send their children out into the worlld ready to stand on their own two feet. I know we protect children much more today, but my mother was working when she was 14 and I left home at 18. I wanted my children to be independent and to deal with their own problems. I was a last resource only to be called in emergencies.

I stayed at home full time with my children, born 1974 and 1976. DH said, “No point in having children if someone else brings them up”. He worked long hours, they were mainly my responsibility, but that was how it was then, and I didn’t expect to work.

I went back part time to bank work when youngest started school, was able to take them to school myself, they went home with my sister after school, but I was able to collect them soon after.

DH or I tried to have school holidays off, but my mum helped out if needed, or if they were poorly.

I was very lucky to be able to do it like this, and as they grew older, I took on more hours at work until I did full time again.

Isn't it better for them to realise that sometimes they have to learn to cope, before they leave home?
I agree Trisher. I’ve sometimes felt guilty that there were times during my children’s teenage years when I was pre-occupied with work and wondered if it was a good thing or not, that they had to be self-reliant.

I did have a rule at work that phone calls at work from the children always had to be put through to me, no matter what I was doing.
The counter-balance was that they knew they must only call in a real emergency.

Except for the day DD2 called and asked me to come home as soon as possible to curl her hair prior to the school leavers’ Ball

Iam64

Posters who say they didn’t have children to let someone else bring them up, do all of us a disservice.
As well as respecting the choices we all make, it’s important to remember that not all choices are made without so many factors coming into play.

Absolutely.

I realise that this won't be popular, but my view is that people say that it is 'a choice' whether or not to work, but IMO, apart from the wealthy, it is only a choice because some people can't afford to make that choice.

If people didn't subsidise them, who would pay the NI and tax contributions to cover for those who 'choose' not to work? Who would fund the schools, the hospitals, the roads, the pensions etc that still benefit those who don't pay in? Before anyone says that their husband has paid, husbands of non-working wives don't pay twice as much tax and NI than those with wives who work, and that would be the only way that the 'choice' would approach a level playing field.

I know that in the 50s and 60s there was far less of a choice for women who wanted to work, so I am not talking about that, but about comments about SAH parents 'wanting the best' for children, as though working parents don't. In any case, the children of SAH parents don't always have a happier childhood. My own mother stayed at home with us, but she was frustrated with that situation and wished she had a career. She may not have been able to earn enough to make much of a financial difference when we were small, as women were paid so much less than men back then, but staying at home for so long kept her in that position even when we had grown up and left home. She felt that she never reached her potential, and I'm pretty sure that I would have had a happier childhood with a mother who was less resentful than she was.

When I had my own children, my husband and I shared childcare, which meant sacrifices for both of our careers, but it meant that we both felt that the partnership was equal, and our children were not brought up with traditional gender-based expectations. Mr Dog was one of the few fathers at toddler groups and the like, but we wouldn't have done it differently, and it would be a lot easier for a couple to share parenting nowadays, as this pattern is much more common.

Everyone does what suits them, and what fits the circumstances of the day, but I do object to sanctimonious comments that suggest that SAH parents are making financial sacrifices because they care more for their children. Financial sacrifices are also being made by those who are subsidising them through offtakes, and working parents also care about their children.

trisher

I suppose I was a SAHM when my 3 were little, did some childminding and school pick ups, then back to supply teaching and a mix of the two when I got divorced. Back to full time teaching as they got older. I do wonder if you are around to deal with all your teenager's problems what happens when they leave for university? Isn't it better for them to realise that sometimes they have to learn to cope, before they leave home?

As a SAHM, I didn't 'deal' with my children's problems but i was around if necessary just as we were when they went to university and had a problem.

I lived hundreds of miles from any family and my husband was away a lot on business,it would have been nearly impossible for me to work.
I loved being at home,I was on lots of committee’s ,became a school governor and did a lot of volunteering in the children’s schools.
When our youngest was 5 I returned to work.
I was lucky to be able to have that time although the money would have been nice!

Some women want to be sahm. Some women can't afford to do that, I perceive that is more the case now. Some women want to go to work they feel they are a better mother when working. I wanted to be a sahm after I'd had a long stretch at work. I feel fortunate I had that choice. Sometimes being a sahm was wonderful, other times it was awful. Equally sometimes I loved being at work other times I didn't. Nothing is perfect, we are as individual as our choices. My mother was a sahm when we were young then she went part time, working as a school secretary at a prep school just up the road, so she could work around our school life. When I was halfway through junior school she went back to work full time for a large insurance company. Our family finances improved immeasurably. We were latch key kids, but that was the time of non helicopter parenting so everyone just got on with it. I think my mother preferred going to work rather than staying at home. My father sat on his arse when he got home from work and let her do all the domestic chores. I thought "this is great I'm never putting up with this crap! when I'm coupled up" luckily husbands (only 2) did pull their weight on the domestic front. When I went to my snooty convent senior school, the nuns treated girls who had working mums as persona non gratis but what they knew about life could be written on the back of a postage stamp

I had the best of both worlds in a way. I had my DD in 1977, leaving work when I was 7 months pregnant. When she was 5 months old the company got in touch to ask if I would to work from home coding forms for computer input. I had to go into the office once a week ( and I took my daughter with me) for about an hour to exchange one weeks work for another. I was set so many forms an hour to complete, but because I had been doing it for so long I could complete them in half the time! So when she had a nap or went to bed I worked. It meant I earned full time money for part time work!
This continued until she was 5 when the company change to direct input. Then I started doing "buy at home parties" such as tupperware, books and even Ann Summers!
I didn't go back to work full time until she was 11.

Posters who say they didn’t have children to let someone else bring them up, do all of us a disservice.
As well as respecting the choices we all make, it’s important to remember that not all choices are made without so many factors coming into play.

I suppose I was a SAHM when my 3 were little, did some childminding and school pick ups, then back to supply teaching and a mix of the two when I got divorced. Back to full time teaching as they got older. I do wonder if you are around to deal with all your teenager's problems what happens when they leave for university? Isn't it better for them to realise that sometimes they have to learn to cope, before they leave home?

I was a stay at home mum until my youngest went to school. I had worked for over 14 years by the time I had my first and worked up until 7th month of pregnancy. I went back to work part time for my husband's business once my younger child went into the infants. I worked mornings, drove to the office after I'd dropped the children off, worked till 1 pm, still managed to fit in ironing, shopping and cooking. Clearly Wonder Woman School holidays I worked from home, but not so much so as to interfere with activities, I think my husband got a temp in during those times, it's a bit of haze now. Somehow it didn't seem that onerous, I always sat down and watched Neighbours and a Scottish series called Take The High Road, that was my switching off and winding down time before I picked the children up from school. I think there's a bit of a stigma in being a SAHM these days, there wasn't then.

I live near infant and junior school and it's very apparent there is far more after school care now than there was when my children were young. Before Covid parents were picking up their children way beyond 3.30, lots of activity up until 6 pm. outside schools these days.

Same here kittylester, i started doing part time work and voluntered classroom assistant.
So was with the boys during the school holidays.
Win win all around.

So agree Franbern,my experience the same.?

I find it very interesting how many people who say they were SAHM's actually went back to work once the children were either firmly established in primary school, or when they went on to secondary education.

When my were very young, I met a lady who had two pre-schoolers and two in the mid - late teens. Her older ones were doing brilliantly and I asked what she recommended and was surprised with her reply.

'Anyone who cares' she told me ' can look after a baby and even a toddler parents, g.parents, professionals in nursery,etc. Unlikely to have any sort of bad impact on baby. However, it is when they become teenagers that it is important to have a parent at home, able to give them time, whenever they are appear to want it. No use, when your teenager comes to say they want to talk about something to say 'Ok, in a moment, when I have peeled the potatoes, done the washing, answered this work call' -that is slamming the door in their face. So,' she concluded', 'work if you wish to and must during their earlier chidlhood, but try to be there at home during those early teenage years'.

Stayed with me what she said, and I was there for all of mine until they left home for Uni -and must say, that there was a lot in it - the very sudden demands on my time as teenagers did need to be met immediately.

Life was difficult in our home during most of their teenage years, my marriage was breaking apart, hubbie was so very bitter about his illness and taking it out on all of use. Money non-existent. But, I am glad I managed to stay around for them - did odd jobs, ironing, free paper deliveries, etc. etc. but always there when they were not at school. They have all turned out so very well.

I was a SAHM until my youngest was about 10 years old. Choices were limited as I had no family around to help out with emergency childcare but I don’t regret my decision not to go out to work at that time. I looked after my neighbour’s children after school but in the holidays their aunts and grandparents took over.

Our primary school PTA was very active with fundraising but we also spent time volunteering in the school with things like setting up the library.

There were times when I was bored but when I see how stressed my DD and others of her generation can get trying to keep all the plates spinning I know I wouldn’t have wanted that.

I’m another who wasn’t at all sure about nurseries until my first GC started, I was soon converted though, they do such valuable work.

We could have had much more materially if I’d had a paid job throughout those years but we made the decisions we believed were the best for our family and that’s all any of us can do.

We all have to do what is best for us and our families don’t we?
Some women do miss the stimulation of being at work and I can understand that, even though I always wanted to be at home with mine, even when there were times when I would happily have had them over to anyone!

Grandma70s

Those of you who stayed at home until the children started school - who met them from school? Who looked after them after school, and in the holidays?

I did my share of twighlight shifts at supermarket when I had 2 small children. Needed the money.
Picked up my career when youngest started school. Mad scramble between grandparents, childminders and holiday clubs after that.
Awful and constantly guilty.