Working mothers vs SAHM mothers: the ancient battleground

Let us not make any bones about this: between working mothers and sahm mothers, there is WAR. Working mothers think SAHMs are doe-eyed sappy milk-cows, letting their brains rot as victims of both their biology and the patriarchy. SAHMs think that working mothers are tin-hearted capitalist drones raising kids 98% mental without considerable parental input - and then, if the subject of "really good childminders" comes up, mention that experiment about the orphaned baby monkey hugging the wire mummy monkey, by way of a knock-out blow. The tension arises because, deep down, we all believe that there is a way to raise children that will, one day, be imperically proven to be the best way, and we're all hoping to God it's the way we've chosen to raise ours.
A report in today's Times - will make us all feel tense again, one way or another. Apparently, working mothers are happier than stay at home mothers. "Women with children are significantly happier if they have a job," the report's authors, Alison Booth and Jan Van Ours, concluded.
What vexes me is that having a career and the hands-on raising of children continue to be seen as mutually exclusive concerns. You have to chose one or the other, and that's that. Instead of "working mothers" and "SAHMs", aren't we all working mothers who would like to work a little bit less, and SAHM mother who would like to work a little bit more?

Comments

[GypsyGurk]

Oh dear...well..at the risk of "sitting on the fence" I have to say I have friends in both camps...and also nemisi in both camps ;)
Single mum out to work =good
married mum out to work to pay essential bills =good
mum out to work so she can "get away from the children"= er...bad
mum out to work because she hammers the credit card and has a huge morgage on a 4 bed house she didn't really need= insane.

I stay at home, my own education ( Newmarket racing school :P) hardly gave me the option of working from home or taking school holidays off.

There is a balance..there is always a way to balance..but how insulting to be told *true story* by a WM that she was going back to work and wan't it NICE that I could take the lazy option.

Erm ..no...I take the option of not going on holiday every year, let alone 2 or 3 times, I took the option of curbing my spending and growing vegetables, I took the option of being avaliable for my kids when they needed me..

There are some fantastic childcare options, butthere are also some dire ones.
The nursery local to us is staffed by bored looking school leavers on minimum wage.

How can the militant WM think that its ok to hand their child over to a slightly older child and PAY them to take care of him/her and yet dismiss the SAHM as lazy and unimaginative.

Early long term nursery teaches children to read and write quicker, it also teaches them that they have to be hard and sneaky to survive.

*ducks in anticipation of angry shouting*

[jac]

ps equally ludicrous is the bonkers idea that being emotionally attached to your parents mean you cling to their apron strings! For heavens sakes, how do people think the human race survived before the introduction of nurseries?
My mother was a stay at home mother, on a tiny income from my father and I travelled and worked round the world when I was 20.

[jac]

It's funny how women on benefits are derided. They are not seen as doing anything even though every mother knows that looking after children is the hardest job you can do. Why? Because it involves emotional selfnesses and profound responsibility at a much greater level than your performance targets for whichever company you work for. And these demands are why, increasingly, more and more men and women are walking away from the job of looking after their children. Because they can't take it. And yet, noone has to have children - so why in a modern society do people persist if they don't want the challenge of proper involved parenting - it's really only a few years out of a life?

Perhaps it's because of a frankly very outdated view that looking after children doesn't exercise your brain. It's such an incredibly sexist and idiotic view I can hardly believe intelligent women express it. A job is what you make of it. So too is caring for children - after all your children are tomorrow's adults and if they are emotionally neglected and unhappy, the problems are passed onto the next generation. This is why humanity - in my view - struggles so profoundly to behave in a civilised way. How many dictators have been emotionally damaged children?

On another blog here I battled with outraged women who were quick to say how fantastic professional childcarers were - and how deserving of more pay. But slated women who lived on benefits so they could look after their OWN children. Contradiction?

If women who are hard up end up taking benefits to look after their children, better I say, than making those children's lives any harder by insisting that their mothers work. Better still if we keep funding initiatives to help those people live fulfilling lives. Playschemes, education, resources to assist people who have low expectations and limited abilities to improve their lives and those of their offspring. We should set up parenting centres in deprived areas to offer easily-accessed advice and help on bringing up children - much better than encouraging people to shunt the problem - ie the child - into a nursery to be looked after by strangers.

Meanwhile, while harping on about benefit-scrounging, mothers who work demand all sorts of income supplements to shore up their two-income lifestyles. I am always hearing well-off women complaining that they don't get enough contributions towards nursery/chilcare etc etc even when plenty of money is put into this area. These are women I have met with substantial properties, two cars in the garage and lifestyles that include expensive holidays, so why do they need more from the taxpayer's purse? It's total hypocrisy.

I work part-time and my partner does too. We are not especially well-off but then I don't think I NEED to live in a three-bedroom house, nor do my children NEED endless holidays. I had children to look after them and I don't apply for jobs I don't intend to do to the best of my ability and with total commitmment. I just wonder why I and people like me, who don't need it, get child allowance (or whatever it's called nowadays) when frankly there are other people who need it far more so they can be good parents to their children.

[J]

KittyM. I would agree with you up to a point.

There is nothing to criticise in a family who pays its way as a whole, deciding that one of them should stay home with the kids. Or indeed, for ever, if they can afford it. A private family decision, I would say, and socliety needs volunteers and neighbours.

I also have respect for parents who need benefits for hard times, such as single parents with no other options for now.

What I dislike is the attitude that nobody needs to work these days. Take benefits when you need them but accept that you have a moral duty to repay society when you can.

[KittyM]

Can I just point out that actual working class couples don't thave the luxury of debating whether or not to go to work or stay at home to look after their children! If you are wealthy enough you can have a choice and if you are lazy, have no commitment to the rest of society and no moral compass at all, the benefits system encourages you to leech off others and contribute nothing to society. It seems to me that actual working class people (who work in average jobs and aren't very well paid but also who arent on minimum wage) are the only ones with no choice.

[J]

L Bentham, do you not believe then in any decent work?

Are the female doctors who helped you through your pregnancies also victims of this consipacy? how about your kids' teachers? if your house catches fire, are the firefighters capitalist drones? Do you want your own kids to have no vocation to do anything?

"Because the government would be embarrassed by starving people in its own borders and the potential for revolution it pays a "Danegeld" to the working/underclass to pacify them.
I'm just taking advantage of a situation that exists, its not of my making."

That money is intended for the truly vulnerable such as disabled or ill people. Of course we dont tolerate starvation in this country, but that does not mean that nobody should bother to work. By all means be a FTM, so was I when they needed me. But when they grow up, contribute a bit.

Will you still not earn once they are adults? Or will you do your share to a fair society?

[Jane]

"Babies are far nicer."

But not, of course, the babies who are raised by the 'feckless poor' who simply reproduce themselves every fifteen years and raise the next generation of guests of her Majesty, ASBO recipients, school hooligans, and parasites on the earnings of tax payers.

Pious-sounding anti-materialism doesn't get children fed and housed. That's what working in the economy provides. Now, fine if you simply want to opt out of the rat race and earn a living in a low-stress, low-financial-reward way, but NO ONE ON THIS PLANET deserves a free ride off the work of others.

[Jenny]

I'm fed up with wealthy, spoiled shrews believing they have the right to tell other women what they should think and do. If a woman can afford to stay at home and raise their children, they should have the right to make that decision for themselves. Perhaps some of these zealots lack the full and happy life they pretend to, and because of that feel the need to try and stick their noses into the lives of others?

Children need their parent's love and care. They are a commitment, and no one should have a child if they aren't willing to put the time and effort in that it takes to raise them. Staying at home with them isn't wrong, nor does it rot ones mind. Nor do the children of stay at home mothers turn out less socialized. I'm fed up with these extremist stereotypes being flung out there to attack women who've made the choice to raise their own children.

[L. Bentham]

I'm not taking your or anyone else's money. The government takes it off you and spends it on worse things like atomic bombs and pointless wars. Babies are far nicer.

Because the government would be embarrassed by starving people in its own borders and the potential for revolution it pays a "Danegeld" to the working/underclass to pacify them.
I'm just taking advantage of a situation that exists, its not of my making. I'd be quite at home in a teepee living a more sustainable existence ( which is what we'll all have to do in the end anyway-if we're going to save the planet.)

I just can't think of a worse way to waste ones life or brain than by running yourself ragged, serving a corporate machine that doesn't really appreciate you. Or serving a system that is destroying the planet or a capitalist establishment that tore to tatters the social contract when it invited foreign coolies into its borders to replace the British working class because they were not good enough slaves.

[j]

Toddler tamer, I think that it comes directly from the type of holiday you arrange.

There is the low key holiday, where you all hang out together and mum and dad both get some down-time (which we all need) by the other taking over, or by the kids just mooching about. Works well by the sea, in a villa with friends, but essentially quite homely.

If you book a holiday which is heavy in adult activity then very often the kids need to do something else.

If we ask, why do people book such holidays, I think there is sometimes pressure on the mother to provide daddy with adult company- he is the one unwilling to slow down to toddler pace and just chill.

[j]

Melanie, not Bella but LBentham, otherwise my views on that post are below.

[Melanie]

I am shocked by Bella's comments. How dare she take our hard earned money to raise seven children without the slightest conscience of contributing back to society and earning a living. Such is her greed, what can she teach her children about the value of hard work, and all the opportunity and achievement in life it brings? Makes my blood boil!

[toddlertamer]

I've got a slightly different question to ask.
If you work and put your child in a nursery up to 4 days a week, is it OK to then go on a holiday where essentially your child is in a creche all week? ie skiing, or Mark Warner type affair with kids club. And I'm not referring to the McCanns here, it's just that lots of people I know seem to do this - their argument being that they need holiday time for 'themself' or to spend quality time with their partner sans kids. I'm all for people going out to work (and work part time myself), but to spend your holiday time without the kids as well seems a tad selfish...it's not a holiday for the kids at all, and it seems more than ever to negate the point of having the kids, and it seems sad as seeing your kids having fun on holiday is, in my opinion, one of the greatest things about parenthood.
What does everyone else think?

[j]

"The government wants everyone working otherwise they'd be thinking. If you are given free money what's the point in working anyhow."

I have much more chance of thinking at work to be honest, more time to do it and also more information coming into the brain.

I think FTM is an honourable and important use of someone's life, but I dislike the POV that says if I can get free money why bother working. There is no free money, it is somebody else's taxes. Which could have been spent on child poverty, disability or decent medical care (eg midwives).

[Bella]

Since there is no definitive evidence (and YES, I have spoken to psychologists about this issue) as to whether mothers staying at home or working is best for children, this "debate" is really just an opportunity for middle-class mothers to bleat on about how their way is the right way, ergo their children will be better than a mother who chooses a different path. I hope it makes them feel better. Isn't that the point of anecdotal drivel?
What is clear is that quality of childcare and parenting is important. A crap mother is not necessarily worse or better than a crap childminder. A child is not necessarily happier with the constant presence of a mother (or a father for that matter). It might be a beneficial thing for a child to know that he can be loved and cared for by lots of people, and not just mummy. A happy secure family unit (whatever shape that takes) with good role models and boundaries is a good thing.

Children are not the means by which we prove our self-worth. They are part of a family unit and what suits one family and is best for their children will not necessarily be what is best for another.

[L.Bentham]

I don't think anyone needs to work in this day and age. It just seems mad to me that a woman would put treadmill behaviour over her children. I regard my seven children as gods and treasure every prescious moment with them. They haven't hindered me camping or climbing Snowdon (I took them up there)Life is wonderful and one long holiday!
Remember "tomorrows' world" in the 70's; they said everything would be made by robots by now. The government wants everyone working otherwise they'd be thinking.
If you are given free money what's the point in working anyhow. You just don't need money that much. It doesn't earn you respect, you don't need it for your old age. It doesn't give you freedom and your family would prefer you to stay at home.

[Jane]

"Jane they werent really boyfriends, the men rented the girls by the day as part of an all-inclusive package. The girls were paid to pretend all day every day to find these guys compellingly attractive and then sleep with them as well. The men were, as the guy in charge explained, on the whole very overweight with unpleasant personal habits and poor hygiene- they came to venezuala from the US and the UK for a fortnights holiday."

This seems to tie in depressingly well both with the article about why men pay for commercial sex and the repellent Ted Saffron's assumption that women should spend their lives making themselves fanciable to him...

Personally, I blame these men's mothers! (Seriously, actually - I always feel one of my main parenting missions is to raise a son who will grow up to be a decent human being and a man any woman would be lucky to marry!!!)(mind you, I'll be filtering those lucky women VERY selectively!!!!!!)

[Jane]

!"holes everyone's got one and none is better than the others"

Nonsense! Mine's LOADS better than everyone else's!!!!!

:)

[Mike]

Just to throw in an Australian perspective, I'm one of 4 stay at home dads in my son's "Mother's Group" and that's not at all unusual here, and after all why should it be.

My wife loved being at home with our son, but said her brain had gone to mush and she has enjoyed returning to work much more than she imagined. When our son is a little older we both want to work part-time and have him in care a couple of days a week. I can dream.

A goverment funded study just published here shows that ...
children who attended more hours in childcare are more socially competent and had fewer behaviour problems. They also showed no evidence that longer hours in care were linked to poor outcomes for children.

But the article said this differed from results in the UK and US - so it's either a plus for Childcare standards in Oz or a minus for parenting skills !

The availability of childcare was a big talking point in the recent election and is a major factor in stopping parents getting back into the workforce. Frankly I'm of the opinion that if you want to work as a parent you should be able to and if you want to stay at home you should be able to - opinions are like a...holes everyone's got one and none is better than the others

[J]

Jane they werent really boyfriends, the men rented the girls by the day as part of an all-inclusive package. The girls were paid to pretend all day every day to find these guys compellingly attractive and then sleep with them as well. The men were, as the guy in charge explained, on the whole very overweight with unpleasant personal habits and poor hygiene- they came to venezuala from the US and the UK for a fortnights holiday.

[J]

actually I think the spam thing triggers if you try to post three times in a row.

[Lazy Mummy]

Um, here's another way to think about the WM vs SAHM thing...

Five of my close women friends here in the US are the primary breadwinner. Actually, in three cases, they are the sole breadwinner. They all have mid-senior or executive level positions and all but one work in software (the other's in biotech).

The fathers (not all couples are married) are definitely a bit more laid-back than many of the men I know, and in three cases, the fathers are less educated than the mothers (the mothers all have masters/professional degrees, and these three fathers are all college drop-outs). Perhaps some might describe the fathers as "beta" - and in terms of personality type, I think that's fair. They're not the Type A, go-getter, must be top-of-the-heap people and they're happy being SAHDs or working part-time.

Their children are all incredibly well-adjusted, which you'd expect from nice middle-class families with solid values, etcetcetc.

This suddenly struck me as interesting, as it seems to be the reverse of my parents' generation. But until now, it didn't strike me as odd, eccentric, out-of-place. It still doesn't, though it might to some people reading this post. I think that's because I've lived in the US for so long now. In Britain, it would be less acceptable.

So, Supermother's hopes/predictions about societal redressing of the male-female balance *are* starting to come true, albeit slowly, and not necessarily in Britain (yet).

[Lazy Mummy]

"This spamming thing is a pain - if they are going to insist on shorter posts, then please do the character count thingy that they do on the non-blog comments on this site. Otherwise we can't tell when we are hitting the stupid filter threshold."

Oh, is that what it is? I wondered why my post about Tad Safran never made it in...

[Jane]

"we must not forget what happens when women have no realistic option to leave an abusive relationship and earn their living. "

Yes, it's one of the shameful reasons why women stay with men who beat them up. By the way, surely the programme's title should have been 'my EX boyfriend the sxx tourist'....! Surely no woman would stay with a man like that?

(Anyone read the really depressing article here about the rise in prositution as it becomes 'socially acceptable' to pay for commercial sex?)

[Jane]

This spamming thing is a pain - if they are going to insist on shorter posts, then please do the character count thingy that they do on the non-blog comments on this site. Otherwise we can't tell when we are hitting the stupid filter threshold.