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Yes, I think science and math are incredibly important. Before I had a child with moderate autism (where I was forced to stay home), I had two degrees-- one in computer SCIENCE and the other in METEOROLOGY. My daughter is a math whiz and we are encouraging her to utilize her gift with mathematics. Women scientists are hard to come by.
I mentioned before that my adult brother has special needs, and my 57-year-old mother still stays home and is his 24/7 caretaker. He has 18q- syndrome and autism and is a tremendous amount of work, but my mother wouldn't change it for the world. So I just want to say, I have great respect for what you do, jojo.
Well, I don't work hard on my days off and my days off should be busier than a SAHM's days home.... SAHM's do every day what I do when I'm on vacation or off for the weekend and I don't call that work because it isn't. There is so little work to be done at home that you can work full time and still manage to do it.
You don't work hard on your days off but you do have to work to do all the things a SAHM does while their husbands are at work. I do not have to work on my husband's days off--we have plenty of time to enjoy ourselves, and when our son was still home, we had lots of time to spend doing things together as a family. I don't think that it is when you work but how you use your time when you are with your family.
And kids are not going to pick SAH as a career choice when their friends are picking the likes of doctor and lawyer. There is peer pressure you know.
If we expect our children to choose careers based on peer pressure, every third girl of my generation would have become a model or a rock star. I'm quite sure none of them would have chosen to be a hospital administrator, a master horticulturist, or a lobbyist-- and of course, anything to do with IT would have been out the door.
Parenthetically, my mother worked outside the home from the time I was an infant. Pretty much the only thing she modeled for her daughters, career-wise, was that all of us refused to take typing in high school so no one could force us to be secretaries.
Military spouses do it too. I have been a single stay at home parent for the last 6 weeks, and I have 4 more left to go.
Tried to rep you but it said I must spread it around--My dad was a career Marine --my mom did the single stay at home parent thing many times. Several times it was over a year. She was 19 when she married--two weeks later Dad was in the South Pacific (WWII) for four years. No kids till he got home
easier said than done. Sure, they can pick up their toys, but that is a small fraction of the messes they actually make.
IIRC, when mine were five, most of my cleaning involved the bathroom.
Now that mine are thirteen, Young Miss Aconite cleans the bathroom. I still have to go in there and give it a good scrub every week or so, though, because her standards are closer to "shared college apartment" than "family living space".
Oh absolutely. And it DOES take at least three times as long to both get them to understand what and how to do than it does to just do it. But in my mind, it is worth the investment over time.
My kids are 10 and 8, so not THAT much older. I never, ever, ever clean up their stuff. I might come in and say, take a look around with your eyes and tell me if there is anything missing.
You know bringing it back to a conversation about stay at home motherhood. I think *this* is one of the benefits we realized with my period of staying at home with the kids. I HAD the time to do this. If I had to establish these habits now that I am working all day, from scratch, I don't think I would. But for US since the habit was developed (albeit somewhat painfully) when I WAS home, they are accustomed to doing it now.
But in the final analysis, your (not yours but "one's") kids are not going to grow to adulthood unable to clean up after themselves. Mom never taught me to do laundry or iron, but somehow I figured it out.
I agree with you, I also had time to do this--my son even did his own laundry starting in the 6th. grade--although he got very lax when he was a teen. This probably took a lot of my 30 free hours. I also forgot how to iron, after many years of ironing too many dress shirts. They all go to the cleaners now. I don't even know where the iron is.
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