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

There are no hard and fast rules I think it is what works for you your family and your circumstances. I was a stay at home mum for a number of years and wouldn't have changed that for anything but my circumstances changed and I had to go back to work to help support the family. As a family my husband and I worked as team to keep the ship afloat and still do share the chores - (I work he is retired). I was fortunate to have my children young so by the time I got to my 40s was able to pick up a career then - it suited me and I don't feel at all diminished or unfulfilled by the route I took.

I played bridge when I was at medical school, I think we all did. Haven't had time since.
Oh those were the days, smoking , drinking,playing bridge. Whenever did we have time to study or go to lectures?
Now look at us all. Sober respectable citizens who sit there, tut tutting about the youth of today!
THEY would never dream of putting a ford Anglia on the roof of the Queen Elizabeth hospital.or painting the statue of Joseph chamberlain pink!

To quote a song of my youth
Those were the days my friend.

This debate will never end. In the early 60s I chaired a sixth form debate (yes - I was president of the school debating society), the title of which was: "A Woman's Place Is In the Home". Things got incredibly heated but I think the "woman's place ..." argument lost by a whisker.

Many of us were idealists then, but that's because the majority of our mothers stayed at home to nurture us and only worked if the wolf was at the proverbial door. We wanted more.

My own mother took in lodgers (we had a seven bedroom house) and foreign students and taught English to mature foreign students (much to my father's indignation!) and this supported her middle class lifestyle which included a loyal and diligent cleaner, regular bridge, cocktail parties, sorties to London etc. etc.

I have worked and studied throughout my adult life and fitted in children and grandchildren as well. But DH and I have always had cleaners, we spend a lot of time in London and, I hardly dare mention it, I have recently taken up bridge!

So it's horses for courses ...

It was a good compromise, especially as I was then chasing my ex-OH's career around the country. But if I'd had a full-time teaching job I'd have had a much better pension. He's living the life of Riley (who?) abroad with the second missus.

Working part-time kept the wolf from the door and seemed a reasonable compromise!

Blimey Annobel that needs an ology too!

At any rate, she would appear to have been sneering at other people's life choices. One wonders why she felt the need.

mamie, agreed about your comments re CB's speech. For an intelligent woman, she can be a bit thick sometimes, or maybe was just trying too hard to be a clever clogs

kitty - that was a full-time job! Having two was bad enough when I lived in a village with a very sparse bus service and had three part-time jobs into the bargain.

I think the main thing to come out of this discussion is that women should make the choices that suit them and their families AND that other women, and society, should support and value them in those choices!

Please may I have a logistics ology? My eldest child was 16 when the youngest was born and played cricket, football and ran cross-country for the school. He was also in the debating team. Next one down, aged 14, played hockey, football and cricket. Next one down (aged 13) did ballet and played the guitar. Next one down was aged 6 and had singing after school. It wears me out thinking about it!

No, no prizes for juggling, but we were of necessity very, very organised; maybe that was hard on the children sometimes, but it is a pretty useful life skill and they didn't struggle with managing to look after themselves at university as some of their friends did. They also remember the fun things we did together, Alison.
I would also just say that CB was talking about a very small group of people the "yummy-mummies" who are not very significant to the rest of us, though they may be to some of the audience at the lunch where she made the speech. I have met a few whom I believe could be said to belong to the category, observed them (and listened in because I am dead nosey) and my impression that the group she is talking about do not, on the whole, devote themselves to childcare and the home. They have nannies and cleaners so that they can shop and go to the gym. Husbands appear to be something in the City and the wives are busy spending the bonuses. I suspect it was a very minor part of the speech and maybe a bit ill-advised knowing how the press would react and the feelings it would stir up.

That's what I was thinking ej. Barristers are well paid (quite rightly, one hopes). People on lower incomes have less choice in everything they do. And not everyone can have a well-paid job.

mamie, I think you qualify for the parentology juggling award , as do many others on her, I'm sure, including me, even though I did choose to be a do it yourself parent for some of the time.

Not sure the Blair family were ever so short of cash they could not afford child care mamie!

I think it is undermining for all women if we start trying to rate one choice as preferable to another. What we should be shouting for is to give women that choice through job opportunity / good childcare at an accessible cost etc!

I think it is also worth pointing out that not every one who works and brings up a family has paid help in the home. My children went to nursery before they went to school, we shared the chores and we both worked full time. We also between us did cooking, shopping, cleaning, sewing, veg growing and all the other logistical things that needed doing. Our parents lived hundreds of miles away, although they did come and give me moral support when OH was working abroad a lot. Our children are well-adjusted, hard-working adults bringing up families of their own and don't seem to have suffered in any way; our daughter and daughter-in-law both have careers and our grandchildren seem fine. Not knocking anyone else's choices, just saying it can be done.
I also can't imagine that CB had masses of paid helpers when she was starting out as a barrister; she had a successful career before he started as a politician.

Agreed, alison

Another thought just occurred to me: I think I probably saved myself a good deal of angst by being a DIY mum – just thinking of all those threads where mums are tearing their hair out about child-care and the difficulties of getting it done how they want it done when you hand over to someone else who may have different ideas.

For me, that lack of angst was worth a lot of money. It 'paid for' the shortage of disposable income – cancelled that out, if you like.

But the main thing is, everyone's different. What bothers me won't bother everyone else and vice-versa. Wouldn't like to go back to the time when women were barred from jobs they were perfectly capable of doing. But I think we should not be negative about other people's life choices. So I agree with jacey's final comment in the original post.

At the risk of creating a storm I wonder what my GC and those of other working parents will be glad of when they are adults. My 3 DS remember all the things we did together and not what we bought them. According to DS2 the sun always shone on our caravan holidays in Cornwall. DS3 remembers going to lots of NT properties and it being fun. DS1 has such happy memories of just walking with his Grandad. They all remember picnics, walks, home made cake, French cricket......................... Would we have had time to do all these things if I had gone to work?

My GS gets taken out when Daddy is home but they never seem to do anything on the day Mum does.

Glammanan we don't have an emoticon for an 'ology' so I'm afraid you will have to settle for but I think we 'Logistics Experts' all deserve an 'ology'!

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!

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 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!

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

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.

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.

DAHLIA WHY NOT 111111111111111111

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