Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Parenting
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
 
Old 01-25-2018, 04:40 AM
 
274 posts, read 290,319 times
Reputation: 419

Advertisements

SAHM's may or may not complain more than anyone else, but definitely desire to vent and a listening ear when they have one available.

Perhaps it's because being a SAHM is a job? A difficult job without a cent of pay? Think about it...many mom's have stages of their lives with their children in which they get no sleep, maybe a few hours here and there, or must get up at any hour possibly due to an ill child or something else. Some don't realize it's a 24/7 job - there is no PTO, sick days, floating holidays, 15 minute bathroom breaks, 30-60 minute lunch breaks, or vacations. Many mom's handle quite a few professions without making a dime: cooking, cleaning, taking kids to school/appointments, help settles disputes between one another, style hair, taking care of ill children, teaching basics (ABC's, 123's, colors), teaching potty training, doing repairs (unclogging toilets, fishing that crayon out of the s trap under the sink, fixing the vacuum cleaner), etc. The list is exhaustive and the pay? We don't do it for a dollar amount.

Even though some of these SAHM's you have in mind have a cleaning lady that comes by - I can imagine that helps take off some stress, but there are still kids to be looked after and maybe diapers to change depending on the children's age and such of course. Sometimes people can have many things available to them and still stress about the material things like, "Why can't we have a better/bigger house? When can I finally get that newer car?" There's a lot of sacrifice involved with being a parent, too, like giving up buying that one thing you really wanted to buy to get your child something that they wanted for their birthday or needed for school. Sometimes this can be a cause of stress.

I can say being a SAHM is never easy, but unfortunately, it is too easy to complain about your husband. A lot of cases, it's not that he's a bad father, a terrible worker, or an irresponsible husband. Sometimes it's being jealous of him because he gets a break from the house to go to work, come home, and then put his feet up and watch television and then getting to bed perfectly at 9 p.m. because he has to go to work the next day. All while you struggled to get dinner on the table after watching kids all day, seeing your husband put his feet up when you haven't gotten the chance, and knowing when he goes to bed you'll be responding to every call from children that may get up in the night (usually younger children) so you may not get a full night's rest. It's not always easy for mom's to cope with when the children are young. Then there are times husband's done always think before they speak and say something hurtful like, "It must be so easy to stay at home./I wish I could stay at home all day with the kids instead./If you don't like it, then you go get a job./At least I...etc."

As a response to your theories:

1) Of course, many SAHM's have a lack of adult interaction. After all, they may have tiny humans that take up what feels like every second of every waking day of their time. It's not only that, though, sometimes friendships change when women become mothers and they have friends that can't relate to their situation and this makes it harder. SAHM's can't just hang out with friends whenever they would like because it often revolves around the kids and sometimes we may even fear having friends over because they may not understand, our kids might do something totally embarrassing, or we are afraid we may not get the chance to sit and actually talk because there are little hooligans chasing each other from room to room and interrupting our conversations with, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" Let's face it, even being a SAHM, it's hard to keep your home spotless if you want to have someone over.

2) There sometimes is resentment for not being able to work. It can be for different reasons. A lot of mom's end up fired or have to quit their jobs shortly before or after baby (not all, but some) and end up staying home with the baby, missing out on a career which they probably worked hard to achieve or have a student loan they need to pay off and the stress of not having that extra income doesn't help. It's difficult when we can't find something to work around husband's schedule, or the childcare is not work the cost of going back to work and in the long run it's cheaper to stay home. In some ways, I would love to have an income, and feel terrible that when there are those times we could use some extra money to save up for something or dig out of debt, it feels near impossible to do so with the kids at home and their immediate needs at the time. Different things will work for different families and there are many factors and scenarios to consider, most of which aren't easy.

3) It always feels like an imbalance of household duties. I mean, before kids, it didn't feel this way because I had literally all day for chores and cooking. It took me like 2-4 hours max to get everything done, take a few hour break, do what I wanted, and then make sure dinner is on the table when my husband gets home. After kids, I don't always get the chores done when I would like, or dinner done at the time I had wanted. I feel horrible sometimes welcoming husband home and dinner hasn't even been started, but there are days like that. Sometimes it feels like husbands aren't doing enough because we are overwhelmed with the workload. It's not that we think our husbands leave for the day and sit around and do absolutely nothing for a paycheck - we know they work hard, but become resentful of their break away from the kids during the day or the fact they are the ones earning the money, or perhaps that they can relax when we aren't able to at home. It's usually the simple things that I would want my husband to do like pick up after himself because he's not a child like putting his laundry in the laundry room at least, rinse off his plate or bowl instead of leaving food to dry and stick making my job a million times harder when I do the dishes, and basically pick up after himself. That's generally what I expect, but I love it when he goes a little bit further and does even a 5 minute chore because it helps sooo much like scrub the toilet, the bathtub, or the sink. Maybe wash, dry, and put away one load of laundry for me. Maybe load the dishwasher just once and run it so I have more clean dishes the next day. Some chores are so simple, but SAHM's can't always get to it and feel frustrated as to why their husbands can't take 5-10 minutes or essentially a commercial break to go and do a chore and then go right back to what they were doing. Sometimes we feel our husbands think or know that they think that once they go to work that we're at home so we must sit around on the couch all day long and pretty much be lazy with the kids, but it's far from the truth. Husbands expect to work all day and have a break, and the conflict is that SAHM's do often times as well because they did their work for the day and they are exhausted, too. This can of course put some strain on the parents, but it's a phase that will pass.

Although, I don't feel that it is healthy to have a group of SAHM's that just complain. It doesn't sound like a lot of healthy or emotionally supportive interaction going on there. In fact, it sounds a bit toxic, even if they are all on the same page and have the complaining in common - I doubt they're leaving those moments of hanging out feeling refreshed or something. Even as a SAHM, I don't want to sit around wasting my valuable social time on complaining. Of course people can have deeper things going on in their lives, but it shouldn't always come out as complaints. Hopefully they will be able to focus on the positive things

 
Old 01-25-2018, 06:01 AM
 
3,570 posts, read 3,735,146 times
Reputation: 1344
Quote:
Originally Posted by viridianforest View Post
SAHM's may or may not complain more than anyone else, but definitely desire to vent and a listening ear when they have one available.

Perhaps it's because being a SAHM is a job? A difficult job without a cent of pay? Think about it...many mom's have stages of their lives with their children in which they get no sleep, maybe a few hours here and there, or must get up at any hour possibly due to an ill child or something else. Some don't realize it's a 24/7 job - there is no PTO, sick days, floating holidays, 15 minute bathroom breaks, 30-60 minute lunch breaks, or vacations. Many mom's handle quite a few professions without making a dime: cooking, cleaning, taking kids to school/appointments, help settles disputes between one another, style hair, taking care of ill children, teaching basics (ABC's, 123's, colors), teaching potty training, doing repairs (unclogging toilets, fishing that crayon out of the s trap under the sink, fixing the vacuum cleaner), etc. The list is exhaustive and the pay? We don't do it for a dollar amount.
My issue about SAHM complaints is that they complain about things that they have to do, that working mom's also have to do. Example: Get up when kid is sick. Do working mom's take vacations without their children? Do working mom's not have to cook dinner, clean the house, juggle kids appointments, settle disputes? The same exhaustive list, also without pay?

The biggest thing for me is that I have to RUN home from work. I have almost no time to think about meal planning and even less time to actually food shop. By the time I get home, and get dinner on the table, it's pushing 7pm, if I'm lucky. By the time the dishes are done, it's close to 8. I fall asleep in the 9, 9:30ish zone because I'm exhausted. Mind you, I'm up at 5am to cook my daughter breakfast and help her get ready for school. I don't have to leave till 8am to get to work by 9. My weekends are almost entirely filled with catching up all the things SAHM's can spread out through the entire week, like meal planning, real cooking (not just quick meals), house cleaning, laundry. Only I get to do that on the weekends. If I actually take time for myself and try to have a semblance of a social life, I have to squeeze in all those activities into ONE day. Making medical appointments for her or myself... It's a constant juggling act trying to coordinate her school schedule and my work schedule. It's really, really hard. I'm lucky that my daughter is 12 now so she is a little more self sufficient. But she wasn't always 12. When she was a baby and a child, this was even harder.

So while I have sympathy, I just can't fathom why the conversation always comes down to doing tasks that EVERY PARENT has to do with the idea that it is exclusively relegated to SAHP.
 
Old 01-25-2018, 07:15 AM
 
16,825 posts, read 17,630,475 times
Reputation: 20851
Quote:
Originally Posted by Magritte25 View Post
Thanks for the advice and illustrating so very clearly why I was so hesitant about posting on this thread.

Any grown, intelligent person - man or woman - should understand dishes should be scraped before going in the sink and even possibly placing them in the dishwasher and pressing "wash."

But I get it. I'm just a stupid SAHM who has too much expectations of everyone but herself.
The above is not a universal truth. In fact, if your dishes don't have some amount of "stuff" still on them the dishwasher doesn't work as well. So now we are getting into levels, i.e. how much scraping is "enough"? So when you pretend it is a function of growth and intelligence, when it is in fact quite subjective, people (man or woman) are more likely to ignore you as being irrational.
 
Old 01-25-2018, 07:24 AM
 
16,825 posts, read 17,630,475 times
Reputation: 20851
Quote:
Originally Posted by markjames68 View Post
Why be angry about it?

I have had the benefit/necessity of cooking, cleaning and doing laundry since the age of 13, so these are things I am comfortable doing. When in college, my roommate knew NOTHING about anything as his mother basically took care of everything (including unpacking his bag when he arrived). A female friend of mine knows nothing about cooking (she "burns water" as she puts it). I also learned how to do repairs around the house, but a good friend of mine can't even change a light fixture or fix a small leak.

I wouldn't assume that anyone automatically knew about scraping dishes. Or to separate whites from colors. Or rebuild a deck. These are skills that have to be learned.

When I went through middle and high school we had "Home Economics" and "Industrial Arts" courses, the former being taken by girls and the latter (aka "shop") by the boys. I wish schools still had these, but for both genders. Call it "Real World Preparation".

I don't think you are unreasonable at all. I don't know why your husband/partner is unwilling or unable to do these things, especially as it's clear they upset you. But as my wife and I deal with, there are things that upset her that don't faze me and vice versa. We try and get the big stuff right and don't sweat the small things whenever we can.
People are angry about the things they feel are unfair. That is sort of an easy one.

And it is unfair for one person, in this case Margritte to do everything AND be responsible for everything getting done even when she isn't doing it herself. That is a huge burden and thus unfair.

The parents or family should together decide what needs to be done. That means each person choosing one or two things that really matter to them and letting the rest go a bit. Meanwhile the rest of the family should honor those particular things. Because it is also wildly unfair to arbitrarily decide that your way is the "right way" to do something. For example the dishes, we all agree dishes need to get done. But whether they are washed before going in the washer, left to sit all day, done at night or in the morning, with running water or a sink full of water, ultimately those things don't really matter, even if the dishes have "spots" on them ::gasp:: it will be ok. It is entirely likely that Margritte's family also feels it is unfair that when they have done the dishes, there efforts are dismissed as "wrong" because they didn't scrape the dishes her way first.

All of that leads to conflict. It is less about communication and more about expectations.
 
Old 01-25-2018, 07:37 AM
 
28,164 posts, read 25,155,697 times
Reputation: 16664
Quote:
Originally Posted by lkb0714 View Post
The above is not a universal truth. In fact, if your dishes don't have some amount of "stuff" still on them the dishwasher doesn't work as well. So now we are getting into levels, i.e. how much scraping is "enough"? So when you pretend it is a function of growth and intelligence, when it is in fact quite subjective, people (man or woman) are more likely to ignore you as being irrational.
Really?

Example number 2 of why I shouldn't have posted in this thread. I knew it was going to devolve into ridiculousness.

How much scraping is too much scraping? REALLY? Okay then. Oh the fun of internet forums where legitimate common sense goes out the window in order to prove some ridiculous, fallacious point.

ETA: Waiting for the "I feel so bad for your husband and children" and "Perhaps YOU are the problem" remarks in 3, 2, 1...

Last edited by Magritte25; 01-25-2018 at 07:46 AM..
 
Old 01-25-2018, 07:50 AM
 
1,347 posts, read 934,723 times
Reputation: 3958
Quote:
Originally Posted by roseba View Post
So while I have sympathy, I just can't fathom why the conversation always comes down to doing tasks that EVERY PARENT has to do with the idea that it is exclusively relegated to SAHP.
Exactly. This is one of my primary quibbles with those attempts to quantify the value of a SAHP - they include a long list of items that ALL of us have to do, regardless of whether or not we are employed outside the home.
 
Old 01-25-2018, 07:52 AM
 
6,039 posts, read 6,015,182 times
Reputation: 16753
Quote:
Originally Posted by Magritte25 View Post
Really?

Example number 2 of why I shouldn't have posted in this thread. I knew it was going to devolve into ridiculousness.

How much scraping is too much scraping? REALLY? Okay then. Oh the fun of internet forums where legitimate common sense goes out the window in order to prove some ridiculous, fallacious point.

ETA: Waiting for the "I feel so bad for your husband and children" and "Perhaps YOU are the problem" remarks in 3, 2, 1...
When we bought our Thermador DW we got a lecture on how much scraping is recommended for the unit to work properly. So it IS a thing.
 
Old 01-25-2018, 08:18 AM
 
1,830 posts, read 1,342,379 times
Reputation: 2986
In addition to all of the points mentioned:

An appreciation for the mental and physical work of shaping the development of complex humans (your child) and helping to provide a stable and enriching home life for the family, while giving up a the autonomy a career offers for educated SAHMs.

Unless someone has been there, it is difficult to understand the daily grind of routine chores needed to sustain the family, without any of the financial and thus, personal, control over one's life. There are no formal markers of appreciation for being a productive and successful SAHM - no awards, no raises, no promotions, no increase in power and autonomy (in fact, less).

In a career, one is recognized in ways big and small for personal accomplishments, via the aforementioned awards, raises, promotions. One gets to see tangible results over the course of a working career. You do not have that as a SAHM. Instead, because it is such a behind- the -scenes job of subtly shaping complex humans (your child) and sustaining your family - in ways big and small- your results really come in the end: when your child/children become fully formed, healthy (mind and body), functional, contributing adults. So, after many years.

Thus, the quality of their work has direct and indirect implications for society in the short and long term, due to the quality of the adult now produced, who now forms a part of "society". Manners, ethics, morals, behaviors are more learned than innate.

But during those years, you are often taken for granted for your efforts, which will lead to anger and resentment. Why do we feel the need to have a formal Mother's Day celebration? A day to show appreciation for all the work a mother does? Is it because a conscious effort is needed to do so, otherwise we would forget? Why did so many women jump at leaving the home and pursue high-flying careers, once those options became more available? Was it because being a SAHM was such a awesome life, all the time, for every woman? (Not that being a careerist/working stiff is, either.)

Working moms or SAHMs, no one has it harder or easier than the other. It will vary greatly, based on so many personal variables. But one advantage a working mom has, in addition to a wider range of personal interaction, is that formal sense of being recognized and appreciated for personal accomplishments in their job. And financial freedom, and all that buys, literally and figuratively.

Last edited by mingna; 01-25-2018 at 08:30 AM..
 
Old 01-25-2018, 08:57 AM
 
26,646 posts, read 13,577,925 times
Reputation: 19104
Quote:
Originally Posted by roseba View Post
My issue about SAHM complaints is that they complain about things that they have to do, that working mom's also have to do. Example: Get up when kid is sick. Do working mom's take vacations without their children? Do working mom's not have to cook dinner, clean the house, juggle kids appointments, settle disputes? The same exhaustive list, also without pay?

The biggest thing for me is that I have to RUN home from work. I have almost no time to think about meal planning and even less time to actually food shop. By the time I get home, and get dinner on the table, it's pushing 7pm, if I'm lucky. By the time the dishes are done, it's close to 8. I fall asleep in the 9, 9:30ish zone because I'm exhausted. Mind you, I'm up at 5am to cook my daughter breakfast and help her get ready for school. I don't have to leave till 8am to get to work by 9. My weekends are almost entirely filled with catching up all the things SAHM's can spread out through the entire week, like meal planning, real cooking (not just quick meals), house cleaning, laundry. Only I get to do that on the weekends. If I actually take time for myself and try to have a semblance of a social life, I have to squeeze in all those activities into ONE day. Making medical appointments for her or myself... It's a constant juggling act trying to coordinate her school schedule and my work schedule. It's really, really hard. I'm lucky that my daughter is 12 now so she is a little more self sufficient. But she wasn't always 12. When she was a baby and a child, this was even harder.

So while I have sympathy, I just can't fathom why the conversation always comes down to doing tasks that EVERY PARENT has to do with the idea that it is exclusively relegated to SAHP.

Stay at home parents complain, working parents complain, parents in general complain. You just vented in this post about your mom related duties. And I'm not knocking you for it. Parenting is tough. I just don't see this as something unique to stay at home moms.
 
Old 01-25-2018, 09:09 AM
 
7,704 posts, read 12,541,309 times
Reputation: 12300
Women complain entirely too much period. It's not just stay-at-home moms.

Last edited by allenk893; 01-25-2018 at 10:16 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top