Were you a full-time SAHM? ...or SAHD?

Watched TV programme last night about the 1950s kitchens revolution.. all that physical work that was required to keep the house and its occupants in clean clothes, hygienic conditions and fed! Must have been tremendously hard work to work outside the home and do all that! Plenty of women will have and still do that!

I think it is a shame that some women feel they need to keep up their career in case the marriage fails. It never occured to me 44 years ago but I think it would now.

We had a joint bank account from the beginning and I never felt 'kept' because we each had our own role within the family so earning was only one part of that. In latter years when DH was working and paying 40% tax, he transferred all our savings to my name and I still have most of them even though since retirement we both pay 20%. Our sons are still on our credit cards and bank account since the days when they were students and needed access to our cash. We run our family on trust and it seems to work for us.

I really wonder how many yummy mummies(as defined by CB, marrying a rich husband so they don't have to go out to work themselves) there really are - I don't know any!
Her claim that she carried on with her career in order to make her children self-sufficient shouldn't fool any of us.
At various times since my children were born, I have worked full-time, part-time, and been a full-time mum for 8 years.
All of it was hard - and we make sacrifices whichever path we choose, once we become wives and mothers, because that's what human relationships are about.

I do wish Cherie Blair would keep her mouth shut , is any one really interested in what she says ? still as someone earlier remarked it gets her in the news and adds a bit more to the bank balance . ho hum

Cherie didn't do a very good job of making her kids self-sufficient. They all live in £1 million + properties in London thanks to her.

You can't go out to work if you have small children, without some help in looking after them. I'm sure Cherie Blair had lots of paid help, and how many of us can afford this? I sometimes wonder what planet she is on. She may be a clever career woman, but the practicalities of life seem to escape her. Couples must do what suits their income and circumstances and don't need any lessons from her. Incidentally, I thought she was a Catholic, so how come she admits to forgetting her contraceptives? We really don't want to know all this.

Whenever I filled in a job application form I always included my years as a SAHM in the columns about my career. I did not see it as "time out" from something more important, but as an integral part of my career - I would always indicate what I had learned from it and the transferable skills that flowed from it.

The concept of a "career woman" having to define that career as anything that happens out of the home is illogical to me.

mishap how true the value's of being at home bring to a job application,mine would list the following: keeping up to date accounts,head chef,launderess.seamstress,electrician,mechanic,gardener,taxi-driver,teacher,nurse and countless other trades too numerous to mention,I would have liked to see Cherie Blair cope with childcare and her career if she was without nannies and home help.

I was a full-time mum, and would not have had it any other way. As far as I am concerned, raising my children has been the single most important 'career' of my life.
I have also worked in a wide variety of jobs, including being a civil servant, a teacher and a small business owner.
I have never seen my many years of full-time motherhood as any barrier to getting out there and taking on a new direction in the workplace later in life.
My 3 daughters value the years when they were my sole focus, and also respect how I resumed my education when they were older, and how I have reinvented myself work-wise when circumstances have forced change upon me. I would say I am an extremely resourceful person, and far from diminishing me, motherhood gave me many additional life-skills that I have since put to good use.
I have also known plenty of women who returned to work when they had small children and would have been very unhappy to stay at home for years on end. An unhappy mother is no good to any child! One neighbour of mine - a primary school teacher - could not wait to return to the classroom. She was forever saying that a class of 30 6 years olds were far easier to cope with than a toddler and a baby! She was visibly more relaxed and definitely happier once she went back to work.
No one has the right to judge any one else's choices or decisions. What we need is respect for each other, whatever our choices, but also society's recognition that choosing to be a full-time parent is a valid and valuable career choice. (For those who want to do it).
My heart goes out to those mothers who would love to stay at home with their children but have to return to work out of financial necessity. I am grateful that I was not in that position, but it does seem that many young women today are not so fortunate.

And I also think it teaches you lots of skills that are useful in the workplace: patience, negotiating skills, the ability to put yourself in another's shoes, organisational skills etc - all of which are transferable. And SAHMs often get involved in setting up toddler groups etc, and learn money management, grant applications, legal issues etc.

It is quite easy to talk up the things that you learn from being a parent and persuade employers that these things are valuable. I never hesitated to include them in interview situations. At one interview (for a post to run a youth arts project) I was asked how I would deal with difficult teenagers. I related it to my work as a mother and said that many people had asked me how I coped with having 3 teenage girls in the house, but that I had seen it as a joy watching their developing personalities - I said that it was all a matter of attitude - I got the job!

Employers should never downplay the value of the work of a parent and we should not let them!

Glam don't forget logistics, that was a big part for me with a 15 year old needing to be collected while the 4 year old needed to be in bed et., etc...................

I totally agree with NONU.

I could not care one hoot CB thinks.

Is there a book coming out!.

POGS we will have to wait and see , if a book does come out I can assure you I will NOT be buying it but guess others will . Why in this day and age dco wives of P.M. etc think we give a tinkers toss what they think , but I suppose with the advent of "OK and Hello" every one has to have their 15 mins of fame

As far as I am concerned Cherie Blair is that interesting combination of a brilliant brain and cheap genes.

gosh will I be sued but basically she is white trailer tra osh

Having read through this thread quickly (so may well have missed it) I can't understand why no-one has pointed out that being a SAHM is also work (very hard work!). I used to become incandescent when I had 3 small children, DH working an average 80 hours a week as a GP and people said that I wasn't working !! Why do we have this argument anyway? Can't we, as sensible adults, realise that different people make different choices, and that what works for one family may not work for another? In my mother's day (50s), women gave up going out to work when they got married, in mine (70s) they usually stopped when they had children, and in my daughters' (00s) it is normal to go back out to work while the children are little. Having said that, DD1 was made redundant and stayed at home before the children went to school, DD2 works from home and DDIL has stayed at home since the children were born. All with the support of their spouses and parents/parents in law.

There are enough pressures on women even in these days of almost-equality without our falling out among ourselves about each others' choices!

I haven't read the article, but I do feel Cherie Blair has done very well for herself. Sure, she may have benefitted form her connection with the ex-P.M., but she became a Q.C. on her own merit - or am I being naive? I agree with NanaAnna: we shouldn't condemn anyone for their life choices (as long as no-one suffers as a result). Back in the 60's my husband was out of work and we were living in a bedsit with a 1 year old daughter. I had no choice but to return to work full-time myself or we would still be living there, but I was lucky enough to find a really lovely childminder with a little girl of her own, who gave my daughter every care when I was at work. I have always worked part-time in teaching or secretarial work, 21 years full-time before retiring last year. My own daughter told me she admired me so much for going to work, and she has been able to follow her career and raise two very happy daughters herself. Whatever our choices, it is our personal business - please don't let us bitch on about other women!

AlisonMa trust me to forget that one does that mean I have an ology in logistic's I feel we all deserve one !!!

DAHLIA WHY NOT 111111111111111111

Er.......I have read all the posts again and I can't find any that are bitchy about other women's choices - just people recounting their own stories.

Would just point out again that it wasn't an article it was a couple of sentences in a speech she had been invited to make to a particular audience. I find all this nastiness about CB quite upsetting, actually. People may not agree with things she has said and done, but she has made a very successful career of her own, she has been constantly misreported and vilified in the press and I think she deserves a bit more respect.

'White trailer trash'? How did that horrible example of American snobbery get into English usage?

I agree with all those who point out that it is not only the people who work for money who, um, work. I see parents as a team. It's up to them to decide (if they have a choice) who does which work of the paid and unpaid varieties that need doing, or whether they both get paid work and use some of their pay to pay someone else to do the home work.

I chose to be a SAHM while my kids were young quite simply because I wanted to be the one who brought them up and not hand that work over to someone else. It is work I enjoyed and which I found very rewarding in spite of its not being rewarding financially. We did without all but basics - didn't have a car till I went back to paid work, for instance.

Attitudes will not change until valuable but unpaid work done at home for the family is, well, valued as being "worth" just as much as paid work. To start with, people should stop asking "do you work?" If you have kids, of course you bloody work!

PS the question of employing unpaid childminders (grandparents) while both parents 'went out to' work never arose because there weren't any handy grandparents around.

I suspect that there will be more grandparents around who have retired, and are therefore available for child-minding, as the age at which women have children continues to rise. I was a grandmother at 42, still in the thick of working myself, so I was never asked to childmind - thank goodness! The same held true for my daughter, who was also a grandmother at 42. Now she is 'retired' she lives 12,000 miles from her gc much to her DIL's annoyance!