Housewife (girlfriends, girls, younger, spouses)

[TabulaRasa]

Originally Posted by Ivorytickler

I think we all have stress. We just pick which stresses we'll have. If you read bulliten boards (I used to belong to a mom's board when my kids were little) you would not get the impression that stay at home moms have less stress. They seemed more stressed and often angry that they didn't get recognition for what they did and always complaining their husbands didn't do enough when they came home. Maybe they vent more on the boards or maybe the boards attract the kind that vent but they sure didn't seem to have less stress.

I live in an area that has mostly stay at home moms. It's rather comical. Around 5:00 the parks fill up with dads and kids. Mom kicks them out of the house so she can get a break. I, seriously, do not see the advantage of being home with a mom who is just waiting for dad to come home so she can get a break from you. (I used to talk to the dads because as a working mom, I hit the park with my kids at 5:00 too.)

Depends on the mom, the kids, and the situation. I know my mom was never a "get these kids out of my hair" type, ever. We've talked about it at length as adults, and she genuinely enjoyed being around her kids and didn't find them taxing. She's still the same...maintains very strong friendships with her adult children, and absolutely adores spending time with her grandson and doesn't tire of that, either. She works outside the home these days, and has since her kids reached an appropriate age of independence, but would vastly prefer that her time be spent with her grandchild, versus going to work (which is also with small children).

[Shysister]

Originally Posted by TabulaRasa

Depends on the mom, the kids, and the situation. I know my mom was never a "get these kids out of my hair" type, ever. We've talked about it at length as adults, and she genuinely enjoyed being around her kids and didn't find them taxing. She's still the same...maintains very strong friendships with her adult children, and absolutely adores spending time with her grandson and doesn't tire of that, either. She works outside the home these days, and has since her kids reached an appropriate age of independence, but would vastly prefer that her time be spent with her grandchild, versus going to work (which is also with small children).

That's how the SAHMs are that I've encountered. They love being around their kids and being actively involved in their development. When their husbands come home, they don't push the kids off on them, it's the husbands who want to spend time with the kids because they've missed them while being away at work. My friends husbands walk in the door calling out for their kids, it's so cute.

[TabulaRasa]

My dad played with us EVERY SINGLE DAY when he got home from work. Baseball outside when weather was nice, sledding when it was snowy, board games, reading story books, etc.

[lovesMountains]

Originally Posted by Djuna

Personal anecdotes aside, because we all know someone who worked and raised great kids and someone who stayed at home and raised great kids, the converse is equally true as well.

Research shows evidence for both stay at home Mothers and working Mothers. In the end it comes down to what you can afford and what you want to do. At least we have choices now days.

And after all, that was supposed to be the whole point of the women's movement in the 60's and 70's - CHOICE

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by lovesMountains

And after all, that was supposed to be the whole point of the women's movement in the 60's and 70's - CHOICE

That and eliminating about 80% of housework and birth control. Do you realize how much less we have to do than women did before the 1960's? I don't know how they did it.

I once made the mistake of whining to my grandmother about how hard it was to be a working mom. NEVER whine to grandma. She gave me a blow by blow of what her day was like raising my father and my uncles and she managed to come up with over 80 hours of work BEFORE she changed the first diaper or wiped the first snotty nose. She spent more time on laundry alone than dh, and I do together on everything that we do in the house.

We have it so much easier. As a full time working mother, I have about 20 hours more a week to spend on my kids than grandma did hers and I have half the kids to spread my time among.

[Ceece]

NEVER whine to grandma

[Ivorytickler]

Just wanted to post a link to a discussion of the time study I referred to earlier. I find it fascinating that an extra 45 hours a week more at home nets so little extra time with the kids. It's one of those things you wouldn't have thought. It's over 10 years old but there's no reason to think things have changed.

Cornell Science News: Child-rearing time by parents

My memory was off by two minutes. It's a difference of 23 minutes per day spent on children between households with working moms and those with stay at home moms.

" "When mothers don't work throughout the child-rearing years, the parents together spend about 7.7 hours a day on child-rearing, compared with 7.3 hours when the mothers work throughout their children's youths," said Keith Bryant, professor of policy analysis and management in Cornell's College of Human Ecology, who collaborated with Cathleen Zick (Cornell Ph.D. '82) of the University of Utah. "That's a difference of about 23 minutes a day." "

Another that gives break downs on time for mothers based on education level. (I can't find the study relating child outcomes to maternal education at birth but this one shows a correlation to maternal teaching)
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1358


Solutions at Work | Working Mothers Spend More Time with Children Than Their Parents

"Research has shown that surprisingly, married and single parents today spend more time teaching, playing with, and caring for their children than parents did 40 years ago. Time spent on child care activities increased to an average of 12.9 hours a week in 2000, from 10.6 hours in 1965. And, for married fathers, the time spent on child care more than doubled, from 2.6 hours to 6.5 hours weekly."

And this one just because I want to make sure that all the moms out there know there is no reason to feel one bit of guilt for working.

Working Moms Need Not Feel Guilty: Children Do Just as Well When Mothers Work Outside the Home

"
This information agrees with a previous study, completed in 1999 by The University of Massachusetts, which concludes that “a mother’s employment outside the home has no significant negative effect on her children.” "

I had some other links explaining how working mothers manage to make up the time and the benefits to children when moms work but the links have gone bad. I'll have to see if I can find the research.

[Yiuppy]

I do. I hate working a grind doing something I don't enjoy. When I want to have a career, I could always have a part-time family law boutique next door. Other than that, I'd rather marry rich and be a housewife so that I could enjoy things that actually matter to me like volunteering, advocating, and homeschooling the babies without having to worry about not having a salary.

[janelle144]

My older brother's wife didn't work outside the home when her kids were little. My brother had our grandmother keep him when our mother worked and that was in the depression and she had to work. He says he considered our grandmother his real mother, not our mom. He was only 8 when my mother started to stay home after she had her second baby. I know, he is strange. LOL Our grandmother spoiled him though.

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by Yiuppy

I do. I hate working a grind doing something I don't enjoy. When I want to have a career, I could always have a part-time family law boutique next door. Other than that, I'd rather marry rich and be a housewife so that I could enjoy things that actually matter to me like volunteering, advocating, and homeschooling the babies without having to worry about not having a salary.

Snce your plan hinges on marrying rich, do you have a plan to accomplish that?

May I make another suggestion just in case you don't have the chance to marry a rich guy? I had a friend, in college, who knew she wanted to be a stay at home mom. From the time she married until the time her second child was born, they banked 100% of her income and lived off of his. They used what they saved from her income to buy a really nice house and pay cash for it and by the time she left the company (she worked 10-12 years) she had enough in her 401K that she's set for retirement (maxed it out starting year one and it had 30 years to grow after she left).

You'l be surprised what you can save if you spend your 20's living as frugally as possible. This woman ended up buying a 3000 sq. ft house around the time her first was born and then quit to stay home when her second was born. The realy beauty of her plan is it was recession proof. Since they own their house outright, they don't have a mortgage payment. While she may have lost equity, the only impact the recession has had on her is that her taxes went down because the value of her house went down. She's still raising her kids in a great area to raise a family and more than able to live off of one income because they're missing that morgage payment. They also pay cash for cars and other major purchases.

She knew what she wanted and was smart enough to make it happen even though she didn't marry rich.