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Day cares can very far and wide in part due to very differing licensing by state . Many are professionally run but not all.
I also was lucky enough to find a great daycare but I do recognize that they are not easily available everywhere.
It's up to the parents to look around. The parents I feel sorry for are the budget strapped ones who have to price shop. I never had to. I found what I wanted and then asked what the bill would be. You do get what you pay for here.
No they aren't easily available everywhere. That's something we need to work on as a society. It's to all of our benefit to make sure our children are well cared for.
No, I didn't want to stay home. I wanted her supervised more. There's a difference. The easiest way to accomplish that was just to not take a summer job that year so I didn't. Supervising her as closely as she needed would have ben a problem with her home all day and me at work. I would have had to have hired a nanny and that would have eaten up what I could make with a summer job. When you have a child you know is a problem, you make sure they have the supervision they need. What's funny is that we never had a problem at our house even though she was coming home alone. She knew the neighbors would report back to me. The problem was her going to his house and his mom was home. I'm glad things have changed. I'm happy to say her new boyfriend lives 16 miles away from us...there's no walking to his house. And his parents are on top of things. She just got hooked up with the wrong kid from the wrong family. It's scary.
Let me start by saying I am a working mom. I am actually the one in the family with a higher earning power, so I will probably never become a SAHM. **Keeping my fingers crossed for that lottery win**
I am also a daughter of a SAHM. I would like to post as the daughter of a SAHM rather than the WM. I grew up in an area where SAHMs were the norm. There wasn't even a day care in our city. My dad got up early and went to work and my mom stayed home to take care of all of us kids. I never once in my life thought my dad was above my mom or more important in any way.
My mom was magic. She could do everything and I looked up to her so much as a person. I still do. I learned from my mom that I can be anything I want to be. I can be an astronaut, the President, own my own business, be a CEO for a major corp, be a SAHM. I KNEW that I could do anything because of the person my mom is. If she can do anything, so can I. She could bake 20 dozen cupcakes and decorate them better than any store while playing with my little sister and I out in the yard and somehow change the oil in her station wagon at the same time. If I needed something, she would move mountains to get it.
It is because my mom stayed home with me and is such an amazing mom that I am the person I am today. I just hope that I am setting as good of an example for my daughter.
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Originally Posted by num1baby
It makes me kind of sad that I have to work even though I would be a horrible SAHM because I have very few memories of my dad from when I was living at home. He had a 9-5 job, but to a kid it was like he was *insert dramatic kid voice here* never there. I knew he left the house and went somewhere all day and we had a house to live in because of that, but other than that all I knew was where he worked. His working had absolutely no influence on my decision to work or be a SAHM.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
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 anohter 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 accomplsih 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).
So you are saying that my mom's job (SAHM) didn't matter? If she wasn't a SAHM, I wouldn't be the person I am today. As I said above, my dad going off to work every day didn't influence me at all in my later decisions on college and career. My mom being there for me and my siblings did.
Just wanted to state once again that there is much more to staying home then housework. Housework is not even on my list of reasons for staying home. I hate housework but I do a lot of it because it comes with the territory.
How much more? Seriously, time studies only show about 3 more hours a week of housework being done in SAHP households. Certainly not enough to make a job out of it.
I always hear this argument but it's stupid. Anyone with a brain knows we're talking less than an hour a day of actual work more and the SAHM has 9 more hours at home to get it done. Considering all the extra time she has to get it done, it's inconsequential. She, definitely, does less housework than my dcp did while watching the kids.
You talk as if you know exactly what goes on in everyone's household. You have no idea how much housework or how much time anyone has to do it. You don't know what stay at home moms are dealing with or what other problems or issues they may have on their plates. I don't know what's so hard about doing what you feel is best for your family and let everyone else do the same without the superior attitude.
I have been a working mom until recently, but I just don't share your condescending attitude. If you feel what you do is so great and important, there's no need to convince us. Really.
How much more? Seriously, time studies only show about 3 more hours a week of housework being done in SAHP households. Certainly not enough to make a job out of it.
I always hear this argument but it's stupid. Anyone with a brain knows we're talking less than an hour a day of actual work more and the SAHM has 9 more hours at home to get it done. Considering all the extra time she has to get it done, it's inconsequential. She, definitely, does less housework than my dcp did while watching the kids.
Seriously, you are looking at studies to show you how much more housework a child at home creates vs. a child in a day care setting 10 hours a day? I see from nuala's post that your children are teenagers. It all makes a lot more sense now. As I mentioned, my children are little. You have clearly forgotten how much destruction a toddler/preschooler can cause since its been a while for you.
I'm just going to say this before I quit banging my head against a brick wall.
It's not about housework, or who brings home the bacon, or whether or not your daughter's going to college (as if a person has no need for education, regardless of their sex or parenting).
I have one child, I'll only ever have one child, and I want to be with her, or her Daddy to be with her, while she's little. It's what WE want. It's why we had her, so we could be with her.
That's it. And it's important to us, and that's the end of the discussion. All the other rationale is a bunch of baloney. As she gets older, it'll be a changing scenario. But everyone's choice is valid in their own lives. For them. That's it.
You talk as if you know exactly what goes on in everyone's household. You have no idea how much housework or how much time anyone has to do it. You don't know what stay at home moms are dealing with or what other problems or issues they may have on their plates. I don't know what's so hard about doing what you feel is best for your family and let everyone else do the same without the superior attitude.
I have been a working mom until recently, but I just don't share your condescending attitude. If you feel what you do is so great and important, there's no need to convince us. Really.
You do realize that WM's are home all day about 1/3 of all days, right? You do realize that we're also home every evening, right? We know how much more housework we have on daysevenings we're home than days we work and it's measured in minutes per day (except for the stuff we put off until the weekend). It's all relative.
You act like we have no idea what it's like to be home with a child all day when we do it every weekend!!!
How much more? Seriously, time studies only show about 3 more hours a week of housework being done in SAHP households. Certainly not enough to make a job out of it.
All the studies I have seen on the matter are not distinguishing between SAHMs with kids in school and those with preschoolers, therefore it is averaging in the population with WAY more work with the group with the exact same amount of housework. So an average of 3 more hours maybe as high as double digits for those with preschoolers.
Quote:
I always hear this argument but it's stupid. Anyone with a brain knows we're talking less than an hour a day of actual work more and the SAHM has 9 more hours at home to get it done. Considering all the extra time she has to get it done, it's inconsequential. She, definitely, does less housework than my dcp did while watching the kids.
I do not agree with this in terms of degree. To clarify I think we have to differentiate between those with preschoolers vs those with ones in school or old enough to clean up after themselves. Clearly all SAHMs have more time for housework but the preschooler SAHMs have significantly more to clean than WMs of preschoolers.
I had two 2 1/2 yos (daughter and sister) at home at once. It was more like riot control than parenting sometimes. So the additional hours I had at home and (9 does not sound unreasonable for my situation), was not all available for housework. I really only had naps as a solid block of time to clean. I would steal maybe 10 mins an hour besides those to straighten up so that worked out to maybe another hour and half. Two and a half hours a day MORE for a SAHM compared to a WM is not an large amount of time compared to the amount of cleaning up (laundry was the worst part I swear it was breeding in the laundry room) having the kids in the house was generating.
I supposed it is vastly different for SAHMs with school aged children but regardless of jobs I have had or schooling I was undergoing, my responsibilities I signed on for always swelled up to take up all of my time, I can only imagine it is mostly the same for the SAHMs.
So again Ivory, since you ignored the question, what would happen if your DH lost his job? Would your teaching salary cover the bills?
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SAH isn't important. It doesn't accomplish anything you can't accomplsih 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).
