Mothers at home matter

I agree, Luckygirl, house prices are ridiculous these days, not like when we started out, although then the interest rates were 16/18% if I remember rightly.

Staying at home was a career choice for me. We were always short of money but managed somehow. I did go back to working outside the home when the youngest was a teenager.

I am not at all suggesting that the children of working mothers are not bringing up their children well - assuming of course they are able to find/afford the quality of child care that they want for their children.

It just all looks a bit cock-eyed at the moment. There is financial support for child care for working mothers, who still often finish up earning almost nothing by the time all the expenses associated with working are taken into account. I also appreciate that by doing so they are contributing to the economy. But their lives are frantic, meeting themselves coming back; and there can be no doubt that for some this is to the detriment of their parenting - they are tired and overworked trying to keep so many plates spinning. It is far from an ideal situation, but many keep going with it as they are frightened that if they duck out for a while they will lose their place on the career ladder.

I watch my DDs struggling with exactly this dilemma. One has solved it by her OH being the one who only works part-time while she provides most of the income to the household. Another works from home, with all the problems that causes of having one's attention split between work and school runs and child care. The other works for her sister and they have a gang of both lots of children rampaging about while they are trying to work - not easy.

It was always going to be a dilemma that most impacts on women. We all want to do the best for our children and that is very hard to do, especially where couples have high mortgages to pay that are based on more than one income.

Luckygirl3

*The logic is that the economy needs workers (more so since Brexit) so that it can grow.*

Is our sole role in life to make the economy grow? A worthwhile job is a worthwhile job whether it be paid or unpaid, as in raising children.

Raising children should be valued, whether the person doing it is a nursery worker/child minder or a parent.

I just knew someone was going to come back with that, which is why I pointed out for avoidance of doubt that I was talking about financial contributions because you asked about financial reward. It is interesting that you ignore the rest of my post about the lack of logic in your claim that SAHPs should get paid money on top of all the other tax breaks and so on from which they benefit already.

The contributions to society in the form of raising happy and well-balanced children are made equally by working and SAHPs. Working parents still nurture and bring up their children. Having a trusted minder look after them for an hour or two after school is not abdicating that responsibility.

Were your children with you every minute of every day? Were they not allowed to play with friends after school, or go to clubs, or follow interests of their own? Or doing homework in their rooms when the 'farmed out' ones were doing it in an after-school clubs with access to a library and qualified staff? Or just sitting in their rooms being unsociable, like pretty much every 10-15 year old I've ever known? When you take that sort of thing into account, working parents often have as much time with their children as SAH ones.

Of course all childcare should be valued. Nobody is saying that it isn't. Why should it just be those who stay at home get more financial reward, though? What about those who look after their children and do the housework and do all the other things connected with parenthood, but also work?

The logic is that the economy needs workers (more so since Brexit) so that it can grow.

Is our sole role in life to make the economy grow? A worthwhile job is a worthwhile job whether it be paid or unpaid, as in raising children.

Raising children should be valued, whether the person doing it is a nursery worker/child minder or a parent.

I didn’t like the idea of childcare for young children ( there wasn’t much around then, anyway)so I stayed home until mine went to school and then worked part time until they were around high school age when I went full time. It was very difficult and in the end I dropped a day a week and it was so much easier and I was more relaxed. Sometimes I worked weekends and nights and my husband was the caregiver then. I enjoyed meeting other adults and the to and fro of working life, I must admit. We were so lucky,looking back, because mortgages were affordable and we paid ours off by the time the children were mid- late teens. The huge mortgages that the young ones have to pay off now are dreadful, they have no choice but to both work.Life gets worse and harder as the years go by.

biglouis, thanks for telling your experience. It broadens the discussion to be reminded that in many families across the classes, having mothers / wives was seen to reflect badly on the fathers ability to provide for his family. It also gave men control over their families.
Both my grandmothers worked in the mills, alongside other married women/mothers. My paternal grandfather shared the cooking and cleaning with grannie. His own father had been a poor father and husband, something grandpa and his brothers didn’t repeat.

I dislike the polarised views so often expressed in these discussions. I’m with Doodledog in believing we need a calm research based review of the costs and benefits of work and child care. My social work team would have been devastated and less effective if the women hadn’t returned after mat leave.

Lollipop1

I brought up my own children, the extra money had I worked would have been very handy but had I not been able to stay at home, I would never have brought children into the world.

And what if you had had your children and then found yourself in circumstances where you needed to go to work?

Lollipop Your post just shows how ignorant you are of the world of work and most working mothers.

When I was a kid in the 1950s my father would not "allow" my mother to work because he felt it reflected badly on his identity as a "bread winner". This was a common orientation among men of his class. When I was 14 he very reluctantly "allowed" her to get a part time job in Vernon's Pools. As soon as I hit 16 the pressure was on me to get a job and pay for my "keep" and my mother stopped work immediately. To them I was simply a teenage cash machine. I was not allowed to stay on and do my A levels. Nor did my parents support my desire to progress in my chosen career.

With help from my boss I found a part time course to help me qualify. It took longer and caused me financial hardship because I still had to contribute to the family pot. I would not have been able to do it except for financial help from my grandmother and another relative.

I never forgot that and always held it against my parents.

When I was 22 I had just qualified in my profession and been promoted. It was a day I had longed for because it gave me complete financial freedom from my parents. My younger sister had recently given birth to an unplanned child and she had to give up work.

My mother told me that because of the "extra expense" of the baby I was expected to contribute more money from the next month. Great! So I was supposed to keep my sisters unplanned child. I will always remember the look on her face when I told her that I would be moving into my own flat in a weeks time.

I reminded her that she would have "one less mouth to feed" after my departure.

"How are we going to manage without your money?"

"Well one of you is going to have to go back to work and the other one look after the baby"

Lollipop1
I brought up my own children, the extra money had I worked would have been very handy but had I not been able to stay at home, I would never have brought children into the world.
How lovely for you to have had sufficient to live on to make that choice.
It implies though, that poor people who need to go to work shouldn’t have children-which isn’t very kind.

It is a matter of choice, but both choices need to be supported. At the moment help is available to buy child care, but no help is available to offset loss of earnings/pension rights. That does not make logical sense.
It makes perfect logical sense. The logic is that the economy needs workers (more so since Brexit) so that it can grow. Non-working parents cost the state money in lost taxes and because they get free NI contributions for years, meaning that they then get pensions to which they have not contributed. They also use the NHS, Education, libraries, roads and all the other things to which they are making no financial contribution.

Working parents on low wages do contribute to all of that, as well as producing or providing services to all of society (in their line of work), rather than just their own families. If they are unable to afford childcare, many would not be able to do so.

We have a serious shortage of carers and hospitality workers, and numerous other roles are difficult to fill. Which makes more logical sense - paying people to stay at home or helping those who want to work by contributing to childcare costs that allow them to do so?

I can't see any logic in paying people for loss of earnings and giving them pension contributions that they haven't earned. It would be far more logical for workers on middle to low salaries to throw in the towel and stay at home if that happened.

None of the above applies to people caring for sick or disabled people of any age, and I am talking about financial contributions to society, as the suggestion was that non-working parents should be given financial incentives to stay at home.

Lollipop1

I brought up my own children, the extra money had I worked would have been very handy but had I not been able to stay at home, I would never have brought children into the world.

Good for you ?

Even non-working mothers in the old days sometimes “farmed out” their children. Apparently I was sent to some kind of “baby farm” when I was about a year old so my parents could go on holidays. My mother told me she heard afterwards that the establishment used to drug the children to keep them quiet!

Re farming out at school; same things apply. If you can afford to keep them at home and are able to teach them yourself, no need to send them to school, just be a SAHT.
Only thing that’s not the same is that schooling at home or at school isn’t the same as child care.

Glorianny

I've never understood why child care before 5 is "farming out" children, but after their 4th birthday sending a child to school is OK. Isn't that "farming out" as well?

Good point.

Baggs

Esspee

I was a full time mum because I didn’t bring children into the world to farm them out to others to mould their personalities.

Had it been a financial imperative that I worked I would not have had children.

I felt the same, espee, about wanting to bring up my children myself if only because I and their father were the ones who cared the most about what they were taught, especially in their early years.

Re your second point though, bringing up one's own kids is work and that's what people have been ignoring for too long just because it is technically unpaid.

It is certainly work, but for those who can, or are willing to make do with less, there is no better reward than to be with your own young children.

I've never understood why child care before 5 is "farming out" children, but after their 4th birthday sending a child to school is OK. Isn't that "farming out" as well?

Callistemon21

I'll leave you to it.

It always ends up with self-righteous mothers who went back to work when baby was a month old disparaging SAHMs as lazy.

The self-righteousness is coming from those who say they wouldn't have had children if they didn't have a man to support them, and those who say that working parents are farming out their children to others. That is not only smug and hurtful but wrong, and when it comes from people who are boasting about not having contributed towards the things that others have paid for, it sticks in the throat, quite frankly.

Stropping off when someone fights back after pages of being told such errant nonsense add to the sense that there is a lot of justification going on.

FWIW, and not that it matters, I worked PT after maternity leave so when they were about 9 months old, and my husband shared care with his parents, depending on his hours. Like most children of SAHPs they were with me, their father or their grandparents all day. When the younger child was a year off starting school, I went to FT. My husband looked after them for that year, after which I and others set up a before and after school club (as volunteers) which was on the school premises with their friends, and staffed by qualified childcare professionals. Mine went when neither my husband or I were able to collect them direct from school - the hours varied from 0 to maybe 8 hours a week at most.

I don't know why I am justifying myself really. My point would stand whether I'd worked 100 hours a week or not at all - the choice to stay at home is paid for by those who work, yet it is the SAHPs who make the hurtful and unnecessary comments such as 'farming out' children.

Callistemon21

^Some of the comments on this thread have been disgraceful^

As you quoted Luckygirl and me, I assume you mean our posts are disgraceful Doodledog.

I refute that rude suggestion.

No, I wasn't saying anything of the kind. In fact I specifically said that you didn't say that working meant not bringing up your children. See the bit in brackets at the beginning of the post. I was referring to the posters who claim that going to work means that your children are farmed out to others.

Oh, and far from being in at 6.00 every night, my husband worked shifts. Wrong assumption there. And I am not saying that SAHPs are sitting on their backsides. I was refuting the notion that only they spend time volunteering. Working parents do too. As someone (Iam?) said upthread, we do/did all the things SAHPs do/did, but backwards wearing heels.

Albertina
* A solid loving home-centered upbringing is the best way to raise confident, happy children.*
I’m sure that’s true, and can happen whether you’re working or a SAHP.
As a working primary teacher, for KS1 children, the one of the most important things for giving them confidence is the security of knowing what happens after school; knowing who’s picking them up or if it’s after-school club or childminder.

Norah

Fleurpepper

None of us did.

However, how long do you think a mum should remain sahm? Until the youngest goes to primary school, until youngest goes to secondary school, until youngest is 16, until youngest is 18, until youngest is 21, until youngest is ...?

As long as SAH parent and partner agree is necessary.

Why would timing matter to anyone apart from the parents?

Just interested, quite simply.

I brought up my own children, the extra money had I worked would have been very handy but had I not been able to stay at home, I would never have brought children into the world.

As a retired Primary school teacher I can tell you that I believe in Mothers being at home with their children for as long as it practicably possible. A solid loving home-centered upbringing is the best way to raise confident, happy children.
In my own case my husband walked out and left me with two children under two years of age and I struggled on with benefits until my younger daughter was five. Then I went back to work, but as my parents were dead and there was no family support nearer than 400 miles, I struggled with no car and the cost of child care.
It wasn't a good decision to return to work. I ended up dropping off the two children at the childminder very early in the mornings and not being able to collect them till early evening. A long day for tots.

Fleurpepper

None of us did.

However, how long do you think a mum should remain sahm? Until the youngest goes to primary school, until youngest goes to secondary school, until youngest is 16, until youngest is 18, until youngest is 21, until youngest is ...?

As long as SAH parent and partner agree is necessary.

Why would timing matter to anyone apart from the parents?