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UGH. I said, IF you want to find out how important a job is, take it away. If you take away breadwinner, you have no house or food. If you take away SAHM, you have the equivalent of a WM household. It's an exercise to determine the importance of the job. Yes, you can get another job. That's not the point. The point is to show that the job of breadwinner is MUCH MUCH MUCH more important than the job of SAHM. SAH isn't important. It doesn't accomplish anything you can't accomplish with a WM. Good parenting is important. Child care is important but you don't have to SAH to be a good parent or to make sure your children are cared for. Breadwinner matters. SAHM doesn't. (That is not to say MOM doesn't matter. MOM matters. It just doesn't matter if she's a SAHM or a WM).
To a loving couple, whether the wife stays home or not, each of them is equally important--at least that is how it is with my nuclear and extended family, as well as close friends. My son is grown and has a family of his own. Now I'm a stay at home wife which would make me really unimportant in your book.
Right. My cousin used to work at a day care. She barely had a high school diploma. She eventually quit that job to move on to greener, higher paying pastures working as a stripper. That is part of the reason I'm afraid to use day care.
Daycare can be a scary prospect but there really are great ones out there. When my daughter was 3 she went to the one at the local college. They had glass walls, online security cameras, open drop in policy (and this was 14 years ago) and the requirement that all their "assit-teachers" have at least an associates in early childhood degree and their head teachers to have a bachelors.
Personally, I am far more nervous regarding in home daycare but that is just me.
Now I know a lot of people have their backs up at this point, which I completely understand, but I do not remotely think it is fair to say that people who use housekeepers, nannies or day cares have "hired out their responsibilities as mothers".
Personally, I see housework as a chore and I am only responsible for making sure it is done. Whether that means making sure my family are doing their parts, I am doing mine, or dream of dreams, paying someone else to do it (!!!) I am still being responsible for it.
As for day care or a nanny, if someone is working outside the home, making sure their child is well cared for during that time, is meeting their maternal responsibility. I mean you have used babysitters? I am fairly certain that you wouldn't think a WM with a SAHD is shirking their responsibilities, right?
My responsibility is to raise my kids and part of that is making sure they are well cared for. THAT does not require me to be there 24 x 7. If that were the requirement, then all fathers who are working would be hiring out their responsibility as fathers. No one ever says a dad is doing this.
The funny thing is, you can say that SAHM have handed off their responsibility to support their children. If you look through history, you'll find the modern SAHM is a very new invention. Throughout history mothers have worked to support their famillies. There was cottage industry and the work mom did on the farm that put food on the table. I f her husband ran a business, she, likely, worked beside him. Even in the household there was value added by her work (for exmple, turning wax into candles). It's only been recently that mothers have had the luxury of not contributing to the support of their families. In an historical light, it's not the working moms who have handed off responsibility. Life is just structured differently. Instead of working my husband's business or the farm while my kids watch themselves, I hire a DCP to watch my kids and go off to a job. As my grandmother told me once, "At least SOMEONE is watching the kids now". In her day, the kids watched themselves while women did all the work that was necessary to keep a household running. I'm so glad I live in a day and age when they took the work out of the home.
To a loving couple, whether the wife stays home or not, each of them is equally important--at least that is how it is with my nuclear and extended family, as well as close friends. My son is grown and has a family of his own. Now I'm a stay at home wife which would make me really unimportant in your book.
Just wondering, is your daughter in law also a SAHM?
And what was she paid???? Most day care centers have child care development experts on staff running the program. That's one of the things you're paying for when you pay your tuition.
Maybe the person running the day care. The people doing the legwork of watching your kids need no other qualifications then to pass a background check. And I never asked her what her pay was, that's usually not an appropriate question to ask someone.
Daycare can be a scary prospect but there really are great ones out there. When my daughter was 3 she went to the one at the local college. They had glass walls, online security cameras, open drop in policy (and this was 14 years ago) and the requirement that all their "assit-teachers" have at least an associates in early childhood degree and their head teachers to have a bachelors.
Personally, I am far more nervous regarding in home daycare but that is just me.
I think this is totally fair - the quality of daycare can vary immensely, as can the cost and the two need not necessarily be correlated.
Nope. I'd say not having kids home alone is valuable. You don't have to stay home to avoid kids home alone. It's just as easy to hire someone to keep an eye on the situation and a lot cheaper since you're not giving up an income. And I have news for you, the kids of SAHP's have sex too. Sometimes, with their parents home. I'm a high school teacher. You don't want to know what I hear. Trust me, having someone home is no guarantee here. If it were, I'd hire a full time housekeeper who was required to be there when my kids were home and pay her handsomely. If kids want to have sex, they will. One way or the other.
BTW, kids brag about having sex when their parents are in the house and their favorite liquer store is your bar or fridge. My suggestion is you install an whole house alarm that your kids don't know the code to and set it as soon as the family is in for the evening.
Have you ever in your life known anyone to hire someone to watch their high-school aged kids for an hour or 2 after school? Really? A housekeepers job is to clean the house, not police the teens. This conversation is just ridiculous.
Regarding housekeeping. Have you ever heard the phrase, "Cleaning with kids around is like shoveling snow in a blizzard". There is a lot more cleaning to be done when you are at home with your kids. The cleaning load is not the same for a working mom and a stay at home mom because your kids aren't home as much to mess everything up. Sorry.
While I agree I think part of that is just the aging process. I mean once they go to school not only are the kids not in the house as much, they are the age where they are really beginning to clean up their own messes.
Now I know a lot of people have their backs up at this point, which I completely understand, but I do not remotely think it is fair to say that people who use housekeepers, nannies or day cares have "hired out their responsibilities as mothers".
Personally, I see housework as a chore and I am only responsible for making sure it is done. Whether that means making sure my family are doing their parts, I am doing mine, or dream of dreams, paying someone else to do it (!!!) I am still being responsible for it.
As for day care or a nanny, if someone is working outside the home, making sure their child is well cared for during that time, is meeting their maternal responsibility. I mean you have used babysitters? I am fairly certain that you wouldn't think a WM with a SAHD is shirking their responsibilities, right?
I generally don't discuss my reasons for wanting to stay home because inevitably it will end up offending someone but after all of Ivory's digs at SAHM's, you are right, my back is against the wall. I have reasons for choosing to stay at home that are important to me. The biggest one is that I personally felt that it was very important for me to be with my infant daughters rather then send them to daycare. Others may not feel the same way and that's fine. I have no problem with that. Staying home with my kids is very important to me.
Have you ever in your life known anyone to hire someone to watch their high-school aged kids for an hour or 2 after school? Really? A housekeepers job is to clean the house, not police the teens. This conversation is just ridiculous.
Not that I would ever do it but I actually had a student last year (and her brother the one before) who still had a NANNY!!! They had a younger brother but he was 13. So now 3 of their 5 kids are in college and the other two are in high school.
Granted that is only one of two times I have heard of that out of a thousand or so students, just wanted to share because I thought it was odd too.
I do think that the family feels about the nanny as if she is a part of the family but I wonder what will happen when the youngest goes to college.
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SAH isn't important. It doesn't accomplish anything you can't accomplish with a WM. Good parenting is important. Child care is important but you don't have to SAH to be a good parent or to make sure your children are cared for. Breadwinner matters. SAHM doesn't. (That is not to say MOM doesn't matter. MOM matters. It just doesn't matter if she's a SAHM or a WM).
My responsibility is to raise my kids and part of that is making sure they are well cared for. THAT does not require me to be there 24 x 7. If that were the requirement, then all fathers who are working would be hiring out their responsibility as fathers. No one ever says a dad is doing this.
