The end of the stay-at-home mum

The whole stay-at-home mums vs working mums conflict will soon be a thing of the past, mainly because no one will be able to afford to stay home.

The number of women in Britain becoming full-time mothers has fallen 24 per cent from 2.7 million in 1993 to just 2.04 million in 2008. That figure is set to drop below the two million mark by 2010 according to the joint YouGov and uSwitch research.

The research indicates increasing childcare and living costs have created a vicious circle where parents cannot afford to remain at home but also struggle to pay fees for nurseries which can cost as much as £8,000 per child.

And because one-earner families are becoming rarer now that a litre of milk costs the same as liquid platinum, bigger families are a status symbol. Or as Sarah Vine put it, 4 is the new 3. Frank Furedi, author of Paranoid Parenting and a professor of sociology at University of Kent, described it thus: to justify staying at home, stay-at-home mums have more children, demonstrating that they are busy and putting effort into their child-focussed "career".

So is the working mums vs SAHM mums debate become obsolete since Caitlin wrote about it in December?  And more importantly, if there are no more SAHM mums, who's going to organise the bisquits for the summer party?

Comments

[Kieransmum]

Well, I hope so BoB! I remember us meeting my (former) university tutor and telling her we were getting married in the final year of our Ph.Ds. She narrowed her eyes, sighed and said "Please, please please don't share a computer."
She was right.

[Baggofbones]

KM - ooh, no. But you will probably be married for a very, very long time if you survived simultaneous PhDs!!

[Jane2]

I agree that working can facilitate a divorce. Someone I know was bullied by her husband into getting a full-time job and as soon as she did he announced he was leaving her for a pre-existing (unknown to her) lover, which he couldn't have aforded to do if she had no income.
I still think one should be prepared for anything, though.
Divorce gets very very mean, and I have seen lawyers fees mounting by £4,000 per week.

[Kieransmum]

Those all sound lovely things to do BoB and I'm quite jealous of the time with retired husband. My husband and I wrote our Ph.Ds in the same house...but that wasn't quite as relaxing...

[Gipsy]

Delilah - the example you site is exactly what I'm talking about. I don't know of anyone who has been thrown into financial hardship simply because they didn't want to chase their husbands or ex partners for money.

I do know people who have been thrown into financial hardship because they did precisely that - the husband or partner fought every step of the way and lawyers fees took up everything that they would have got from the sale of the house etc, so effectively they left the marriage with nothing. As for chasing maintenance - again that can be extremely difficult. All you need is a slimeball of an ex, and you've got years and years of pain for very little gain.

I've seen the other side of it too, where decent men have ended up supporting an ex and left with very little money for any future family. Of course there are those that fit in between and strike the right balance. But you never know what will happen in the lottery of life.

[Delilah]

Gipsy wrote: "I've now seen quite a number of friends thrown into absolute grinding financial situations, where they're working all the hours just to keep a roof over their heads, because the primary breadwinner has walked out or died."

Err .. that's what life insurance and divorce settlements are for.

The main earner's life insurance should cover not only the mortgage (the only one who really benefits from that is the bank) but the loss of income (or childcare) should either or both parents die. That cover is as basic as food or healthcare; but I'm always amazed how many mothers, even WMs, don't know whether they have it.

And the truth is that divorce law is as good or often better protection for a mother than a job (especially of the husband is a good earner) but enforcing it is seen as sooooo unladylike. I've seen more women throw their rights away than get screwed by the system - usually because they would rather face three jobs and a house full of lodgers than keep dealing with their ex. That lets the ex off rather lightly, frankly, and does nothing for the dignity of the ex-wife. Working can even facilitate divorce - consider a SAHM of my acquaintance who was bullied by her husband into starting a business with him; she reluctantly got granny to mind the kids, he left his job and they remortgaged the house. The business was a moderate success, but very hard work, and exactly a year later the husband left her and the business and moved in with a lover of three years' standing. All she got in alimony was her husband's share of the business! He'd engineered this quite cynically because he couldn't afford to leave her while he was employed and she was a SAHM, it would have cost him too much in almony against his salary. This way, it cost him nothing.

[Baggofbones]

"So sorry guys, but sometimes this FTM/SAHM fight can be very trying to those of us who would love it if that were our children's only problem."

J - you are absolutely right. Thank you for the reminder.

KM - yes, I have lots of plans for when the children aren't a full-time job. I shall play the piano more; I shall write fiction (can't do it at the moment as I'm too exhausted by the time they're in bed); I shall do more gardening than I can do at the moment; I shall get a dog (don't tell my husband); I shall re-learn Latin; I shall do more voluntary work; I shall try to tidy the house occasionally. I shall also enjoy spending day-time just with my husband (who, let's face it, isn't likely to be sharing my retirement with me, given the fact that he's 30 years older than me - so I need to enjoy his company now!) So I have no shortage of things to keep me occupied...

[Gipsy]

oops sorry I hit the post key too early.

JJ, your comment sums up for me why I feel it is so crucially important for all girls to plan for being working mothers regardless of whether they want to be or not. A lot of the time life simply forces you to be that way whether you want to or not. And if you have the necessary skills, qualifications and experience, you won't find yourself wiping tables, but instead you could be writing reports and articles after the kids have gone to bed, or be like a friend of mine with two children with cerebal palsy, who can earn enough doing two long days a week as a lawyer that she is able to stay at home the rest of the time, and afford to pay for all the bits and pieces that the healthcare system doesn't (some, not all the therapists that her children need are covered by NHS for example).

I've now seen quite a number of friends thrown into absolute grinding financial situations, where they're working all the hours just to keep a roof over their heads, because the primary breadwinner has walked out or died.

[Gipsy]

>>In fact, it ends up that what you do for money is quite often something you would be doing anyway for interest,<<

That pretty much sums up how I feel.

>>Does anyone REALLY prefer clearing tables in a cafe or plying a cash-register or mopping floors or weighing raisins into bags or anything like that to being at home with their kids? <<

Goodness me no. I've known quite a few mothers who've done those jobs, and they do them because a) they need the money and b) they are jobs that can be fitted around their kids ie while kids are at school or with the times granny is available for childcare. It is the need to earn money (in nearly every case because the woman has ended up solo) and do so in a way that doesn't cost them a lot in childcare that has meant they've taken those types of jobs. But for career satisfaction? No I don't think so. For financial independence or just to have enough cash to live? Yes.

[Jean Jones]

J - your last para says exactly what I was trying to say.

Gipsy - about feeling there need to be two breadwinners - my husband (aged 55) has always been extremely happy to be the main breadwinner and would have been appalled at the thought of being a househusband and FT father. Don't get me wrong, he is a wonderful Dad and the kids are devoted to him, and he does his bit at evenings and weekends and always has, but we have both been very contented with me doing the bulk of what needs doing at home and him doing the bulk of the earning. Traditional but true in our case!

And as to SAHMs having nothing left once their kids go, one way or the other - nope, never ever felt that way. I can truthfully say that I am never, ever bored, I have so many things I want to do and read and learn. I would feel it was a failing in me if I *needed* to have a job to give me something to do as opposed to a way of earning money, but I think that comes from never, in some ways, havinbg got past being a student, which to be brutal is what working in the academic sphere does to you. In fact, it ends up that what you do for money is quite often something you would be doing anyway for interest, apart of course from the tedious necessity of teaching it. I have never had another job that I felt like that about, and I've had a few. Does anyone REALLY prefer clearing tables in a cafe or plying a cash-register or mopping floors or weighing raisins into bags or anything like that to being at home with their kids? Because, like it or not, that's the sort of job the majority of women do and that I've done at different times.

[j]

sorry, to clarify, child B will live for more than 15 years, mentally she will not get beyond that age.

[j]

ACtually my wonderful Mrs A is one of 8 from Scotland and her sister actually *does* run a hotel on the outer hebrides..I quite fancy it some days.

Have held off but ought to weigh in a little bit alongside JJ on the disabled parent front. It is a big difference I think if you have (a) a disabled child who will die young or (b) a disabled child who will never grow up. My brother of course did both- took 28 years to get to any kind of independence and then died anyway. Then my dad died, and that's when I went back to work part-time, having seen the effect on my FT mum of losing all her duty and care overnight and being left with really very little. Child C will do the same thing- take 30 years to get to 8 year old stage and then probably not live for much longer. Child B will never get beyond about age 15. So in my case there is a very strong element of self-protection in working- as there is in my music. I simply cannot allow it to be my entire universe, becayuse there is no natural end in sight.

I guess it also makes me more tolerant, cos I think that if your child is unimpaired then he/she will probably turn out just fine and happy, whichever you choose, and frankly any issues they may have with your working life are peanuts compared with what they would have to deal with if they were seriously impaired.

So sorry guys, but sometimes this FTM/SAHM fight can be very trying to those of us who would love it if that were our children's only problem.

[Kieransmum]

Ho hum. And I was so hoping that this wasn't going to be the same old row.

BoB had a bad experience of work.
SM had a good one.
Gipsy likes her job, and is confident that she's a good mother.
J doesn't want to live in the Outer Hebrides.

Please, is there anything that I've missed?

Actually, serious question for BoB. I'm SAHM too but have a very clear plan for how I want to be in the workforce, and what I want to be doing, in ten or twelve years time. When your children are old enough not to fill your days, secondary school+, what are you going to do?
I'm not debating, just asking. Surely you must have made (non-career-related) plans.

[Gipsy]

JJ - what sort of tweaked my buttons was that I felt that you were indeed saying that your choices were the right ones for everyone, and I rather felt that WMs and SAHMs were polarised in what you were saying. Thank you for putting things in context, as I can see that you don't mean for your posts to come across as such staunch generalisations.

I don't think that any SAHM, whether they are 100 percent so or just for part of their child's life, is a parasite by the way! It is a bloody hard job being a mother, and those of us that work get a little bit of a break from that while those that don't work a lot harder. I tend to view my time at work as the easy part of my day, and the least rewarding, whereas when I'm being a mum at home it is the hardest part of my day but the most rewarding.

You are never wrong to put across your viewpoint! All viewpoints, as long as they're not negative personal attacks, are good in a discussion forum. It is just that you came across as so staunch in your viewpoint, and it felt so judgemental towards those who do things differently, that I reacted in kind. I can see now that it was just the way you had worded your posts - that in fact you're not being judgemental at all. If that makes sense? Sorry it is early in the morning.

LM put it beautifully and perfectly when she said

>>making sure my husband doesn't feel isolated as sole breadwinner is very important <<

I can't say it any better than that. It is a value that is important for me to teach my son, and my step kids, as well. We all have different ways of putting across our values to our children. This is how I put mine across. It was the comments earlier that sounded like you were telling me, and others like myself, that we weren't teaching our kids values that we were paying someone else to teach our kids values, that I really strongly disagreed with.

I do fully accept and respect everyone's right to put across a point of view - freedom of speech is very very important to me - but at the same time, if someone says something that I disagree with, then I will say so. It doesn't mean that I think you're wrong to say it - just that I think what you've said is wrong.

[Lazy Mummy]

JJ,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments and for answering my (rather nosy) questions; the context does help. I didn't post a response before because it was a rather hectic day & I needed time to think about what I wanted to say (like you, I wrote & deleted a couple of things, I do that more than I intend to).

I agree, I'm sure that anyone with a disabled child views their children differently just as anyone who's suffered from infertility (as Gipsy & I have) views their one child as a bloody miracle whereas their friends who have several, all conceived at the drop of a hat, probably take the size of their large families a little for granted. (That's not intended as the start of a flame war & I'm a little tired & inarticulate tonight, but I think you know what I mean - I said it better elsewhere on AM recently).

There's more I'd like to say but it's late here & I'm tired and have a paper to write before a meeting tomorrow so I'll end by saying that Gipsy's comments mirrored a lot of my own thoughts on the subject. I'm under 45 and to me, making sure my husband doesn't feel isolated as sole breadwinner is very important and a strong reason for me to work.

[Jean Jones]

Nobody has to justify their own choices, except to themselves and their families. That, I think, sums it up as far as I'm concerned. And if an individual and his/her family is happy with their choices (grammar starting to get a bit intricate here...), and stays happy with their choices when the results of them are visible (in our case, when the other kids are grown-up), then what else matters? We chose some things; others choose other things. We feel our choices were right for us, and that's all i can say with certainty. And forgive my old-fashionedness in saying 'mother' when of course I mean 'parent'. It so happens that in many families where the parents are now, say, over 45, it happened to suit both partners to take traditional roles. It did for us, but others will feel differently.

I know not that many people have a grown-up handicapped son/daughter, and certainly not many are in the position my friend with the son who died was in. But both things have had an influence on how I got to where I am now and I thought it might be helpful to say that. Perhaps I was wrong.

Just one more thing - there's an awful tendency in this particular set of comments, it seems to me, to polarise SAHM and WM, as if every mother (or father!) either stays at home full-time for their child's whole childhood, or else works fulltime from the time their child is 3/6 months old. Obviously it's not like that, it wasn't like that for me and it isn't like that for others. I had other forms of paid employment at different times after I had children, some of them involving earning money while at home and some working in the evenings or weekends while my husband took care of the children. I haven't gone into detail about all of them because it's not necessary, but they were there nonetheless. I have not been a parasite, financially or any other way, at any time in my life, and I would be willing to bet that the number of women who are 100% non-earning SAHMs for years at a time really is minute.

[Gipsy]

JJ - I do truly appreciate how lucky I am. My sister wasn't so lucky, with problems that weren't apparent until her child reached 18 months/2 years. I live every second of my life with my son appreciating his very existence. I shan't be able to have any more. I was lucky to have just this one. When I am with my son, I am with him 100 percent. If he says 'play mummy' then that's what I'll do. If I have something to do then I look at ways to engage him in what I'm doing.

I can't be with him all day every day. And even if a parent is, it doesn't mean they're actually doing anything with the child. I love my mum, she was fantastic as a parent, but I have absolutely no memories whatsover of her ever playing with us. Painting, mucking about with play dough, sticking bits of cardboard together - those were all things that we did at playschool never at home. Board games, eye spy in the car, or even simply sitting and playing tickle games or making daisy chains - none of these things were in her repertoire. Like the majority of mothers when I was growing up, she mostly stayed at home but also always worked either part time or from home doing piece work or knitting commissions. We weren't rich enough as a family for her not to work at all.

It is important to me that my son grows up knowing that I consider him important enough to engage in his world and that I will always make the time to do things that he wants to do.

But, just like I can't keep my son from every danger, making sure that he is never in risk at all by keeping at my side all the time, neither can I provide him with the best mother he deserves if I stay at home full time. So, I need to let him be a bit independent, go to the shop on his own when he's old enough, etc. Likewise, I want to teach my son that while my life, and his father's life, won't revolve solely around him he is important enough to us to be a major priority (the other priorities being his older brother and sister).

The best I can do is try to get my work life in the best position possible to fit around him. Which isn't as easy as some other posters here seem to have found it. Good for them if they can do work that can be done in the evenings at home. Of course I'm a little bit jealous. But not every job or occupation offers that sort of opportunity. Like Bushra, it is also very important to me that I have my financial independence, and it is important to me that I'm a good role model for my son as well. And being a good role model means being the best mother or father that a parent can be. For some, such as yourself, that means being a stay at home mother, for others it means mix and match - a little bit of both - and for others such as myself it means being a full time working mother.

I can understand the beliefs of those like SM who feel that it is a duty of all women, to those women that will follow, to have a career and work outside the home. Objectively I can understand the reasoning behind that. But subjectively my gut feeling is that the parent should be able to choose. The point of the story here is that mother's are experiencing less choice in this matter - even if they want to stay at home they can't.

There is one thing that I'm getting through your posts JJ. I get the feeling that you are talking solely about mothers. In this last comment your point seems to be about how I might feel if I wasn't lucky to have a normal child. What about the dads? What if the dad is the stay at home parent - would you still pose the same question to the mother? If the dad is working, does he have a right to feel cheated on that time with a 'normal' child? Should the father also have the right to stay at home with the child throughout the early years just in case they're not 'lucky'? Is it fair to say that only mother's have this right? And then how do you decide who it is that does go out to work? After all someone does - we have to pay the bills somehow.

[bushra]

JJ: who wouldn't? for us it's still a case of boys being favoured more than girls, can you imagine the dismay on some elder's faces when their latest grandchild is yet another daughter? no matter whether your child is a boy or a girl, whether they are perfectly healthy or not, my personal take is 'you've been given an amazing gift here, try not to f*ck it up'. and you can't predict what is around the corner, so take what you have and make the best choices you can make. it's how i'm going about it anyway.

[Lazy Mummy]

Gipsy - Sorry, I wasn't trying to speak for you, but it's interesting that we both read completely different things into what JJ was saying, because the message I got was the one I mentioned.

[Jean Jones]

And something i meant to add to my post yesterday about the different attitude that you develop when your child's period of heavy dependency carries on a lot longer than most - something that haunts me is the case of a woman I knew at work when we were both pregnant with our first child. Hers was a boy who seemed to be fine, and she went back to full-time work when he was 6 months old, putting him into day nursery. At 18 months he started to regress, and turned out to have a dreadful genetic condition that meant he gradually regressed to the state of a newborn and died at the age of 10. She couldn't conceive again. One of the things that was bitterest of all for her, in the end, was that she had, voluntarily, missed a lot of the time when he was like other children and when they didn't know there was anything wrong. OK, this is a rare and extreme case, but she was someone I knew. Long before I had my own handicapped son, she said to me that parents of children like hers would just like the parents of normal children to appreciate how lucky they are. I think she was absolutely right, but then I would feel that way, wouldn't I?

[Jean Jones]

If you really want to know:

I worked fulltime till my eldest child was born. Then I was a SAHM until my youngest (of 3) was 8. Then I started working p-t in higher education, which I still do 10 years later. I do not regret anything about any of this. It all worked for every member of my family, including me. I do not prescribe what anyone else should do: it just intrigues me why some people do what they do and am interested to hear their reasoning, which sometimes seems strange to me. No doubt there are many who can't understand the choices my family made. That's life.

[bushra]

J: a village is exactly what i would call it, i have a sister living on the same street with her children, another sister round the corner, as well as three more related families on the same street as the latter. just the fact that they are all living neearby can be quite suffocating, but at other times it really is quite handy!

[Baggofbones]

Delilah - here's a thirtysomething perspective: my own experience of having a SAHM is the one big thing that has convinced me that SAHMing is the biggest favour I can do our children!

[j]

bushra, v interesting as always ( see, you do think about things..)

Its a bit like living in a small village, being part of a big supportive family. Great if you fit in totally and it provides all you ever needed, but for some of us, a bit lonely and claustrophobic.

What I like about your story is the way you are gently renegotiating things while staying true to your traditions and loyalties. I bet there are a lot of younger girls watching you with quite a bit of relief, thinking, I could do that when I'm older...

[bushra]

hey Delilah, here's my soon-to-be 30 take.

i have just returned to work full time after the birth of my first child, he is in a private nursery and loving it.

i can't ignore my background when i post on here, it adds context. i'm a pakistani girl born to immigrant parents, the women stayed at home while the men work, so the typical route daughters take is to marry just after hitting their twenties and having at least three kids by the time they are thirty, staying at home while the mister goes out to work.

we grew up in Birmingham and by '98 were a family of ten kids. we didn't have much money, not that i resent my parents.

somehow i have ended up with an education and a career the teenage me could never have foreseen. but i never felt driven to achieve this, i think there must have been some belief buried deep down that i did not want a repeat of my childhood for my child. much as i love him the childhood also represents numerous let-downs from the dad, if you look at my situation now you'll find that if i had to, my son and i could cope just fine without the mister. not that that is my intention, i just don't like depending on men...

i would love to spend all day at home with my son, and i originally planned to take a full year's maternity leave. but seven months in i could see my son was bored and i was too! not with each other, but sitting at home all day (i moved to bradford after marriage, so have very little social options). right now going back to work for me and nursery for him has been the best thing really. it got a bit wobbly when the elders couldn't hide their dismay, but it didn't take a genius to realise they were just afraid of change.

when either of us is unhappy i'll renegotiate :) i tend not to have an ideal vision of how i'd want my family life to be, i know what i don't want it to be and tend to work in the other direction.