<p>Absweetmarie: that must have been so painful. It was long ago, I know, but I still want to acknowledge your loss.</p>
<p>Thank you, mythmom. Your point about being prepared to do 100 percent of the work really resonated with me! I never in a million years would have chosen to have a baby if someone had told me I was going to have to raise a child on my own, but I was doing just that a scant two and a half years after my daughter was born.</p>
<p>absweetmarie, I am also very sorry for your loss. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been.</p>
<p>Just read the first page of this thread and wanted to chime in.</p>
<p>As far as SAHM’s degrees going to “waste”–in my generation (women born in the 50s) a lot of women did earn a degree, get married, and stay home for 15-20 years with the kids. BUT they were also using their skills to volunteer heavily for women’s organizations, cultural organizations, and so forth. They benefited the organizations greatly, and built up their skills which they used after the nest was empty, for gainful employment.</p>
<p>Thanks, zoosermom. I bring up my case just to point out out that the cost-benefit proposition of having a child is not really calculable because of all the unknowns, good (mostly!) but sometimes not. Yet into the void many of us have gone, without a calculator and spreadsheet to guide us. I hope I’m not scaring the young people!</p>
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<p>I look at my mother’s generation (born in the 40’s) and yes, a lot of them, including my mother, stayed at home and volunteered heavily for various worthwhile organizations. And that’s truly great. But it also begs the question - what difference does it make if mom’s not home because she’s volunteering for the local school board or art museum or she’s working at a paid job? It seems to me that moms get a pass if they are doing something altruistic but no pass if they make money for it.</p>
<p>It seems to me that moms get a pass if they are doing something altruistic but no pass if they make money for it.</p>
<p>A pass?
From whom?
From what I’ve seen, you get a "pass"if you are making money, practically no matter how much time it takes away from your family, but not if you are a volunteer.
Perhaps my area, is just more mercenary?</p>
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<p>This is exactly what I would do if I had the choice, and what we are trying to make possible for me to do someday with the choices we make now-- I am 23 now, childless, and just starting to plan my wedding so I have a while before we get to that point. My mom, who has always been a self-employed work-at-home mom, totally gets it. Everybody else, mainly the men in my family and the much older women, are appalled and think I wasted my time and money getting my degree. I just want to do what I want to do, I didn’t go to school just to make money. </p>
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<p>This is what I see, too. I feel like I am made to feel bad for wanting to make my family my top priority. And heaven forbid my community be a main priority, too, that’s just unspeakable.</p>
<p>We can definitely sympathize with the idea of not having children due to financial reasons in our household. We do want children but are hoping we won’t change our mind about only having one or two, which is a financially driven decision… I am aware we are naive to think we will know how many children we really want before we start having them, but financially only having one or two would be great. I want to be able to put that one or two through school and let them take music lessons and play sports and take them on vacation, I don’t want to have four or five kids like our parents and not be able to do those kinds of things for them.</p>
<p>Practically everything I was thinking as I read thru this thread has been said. Just a few additions:</p>
<p>I became a single parent when the worm was quite young. My health issues ruined my relationship and kept me from having more little worms. After a few years of au pairs, I moved nearer my parents. They loved being involved in his life, even if that was one day a week. In elementary school, granddad would pick up the worm on Friday, which was early dismissal, and they’d go swimming together before Shabbat meal. That’s one example.</p>
<p>I chose a career where I could set my own hours. I think it is critical for a parent to have flexibility in their job, if they want to be able to participate in their children’s lives. I did fall off the career path, because I was no longer working at a teaching hospital and respected women’s college. I use to publish yearly, present at hospital rounds, and spoke at national conferences. </p>
<p>My son and his s/o are deep into the discussion of balancing work and family. They both want at least 2 children. They talk of favorite places to live and the kind of work that will enable them to have a family life. I think he knows that being his parent gave me my greatest joy in life. I’m touched that he wants to be a hands-on dad.</p>
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<p>You can be a SAHM or a WM and have your family top priority, emaheevul. It doesn’t do the debate any favors if you suggest that only SAHMs have family as top priority. Priority gets shown in different ways. It can be SAH - or it can be working so that the kids can have opportunities not otherwise available to them, including but not limited to better schooling. Neither one is indicative of family being more or less a priority.</p>
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<p>Like there aren’t tons of debate boards and the like, proclaiming that it’s ok if a mom has to work but not if she wants to work (and dad could support the household). What’s the difference if kid is in childcare because mom is a single mom and has to work vs she isn’t but she wants to work - other care is other care regardless of the reason for the care. Similarly with at-home mothers who do a lot of volunteering and thus require childcare. What’s the difference – I see none. If your kid is in other-care, it makes no difference to the KID if what you’re doing with that time is getting your nails done, working for pennies, working for big bucks or volunteering.</p>
<p>^^^What she said.</p>
<p>I didn’t “have to” work, in the traditional meaning of finances. But I “had to” work to be the best mother I could be. I don’t think this made me better or worse, I just know that after six weeks at home, I felt as if I was melting into nothingness. I don’t know how this would have been better for my daughters. A mom who had gone spirit, or a mom who was interested in what their lives were like and also interested in her own pursuits.</p>
<p>Let me be clear, though, I never felt "at odds’ with the SAHMs in our area, and we happened to be in one of those places where there are still SAHMs in a large, tennis playing population demographic. I was glad for what they did and always a willing participant when I had the time. Same with my husband, who was one of the more visible dad types with the willingness to lend a hand.</p>
<p>It takes all kinds. We actually had a few SAHDs in the area, too, and they were a hot commodity at the volunteer table, as well. One of them became very good freinds with my husband since they coached together, and, even now, they have the occaisonal beer.</p>
<p>mythmom wrote:
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<p>^^ If we all could become immune to what society (right?) thinks wouldn’t we be better off? Then we wouldn’t have to worry how we are being judged for our choices: hands-on basic childcare, earning a salary and paying for excellent childcare or having a partner or relative doing basic childcare, doing important volunteer work and paying for excellent childcare or having a partner or relative doing basic childcare. Don’t we need women doing all those things? Even deciding to be childfree? Isn’t it great for society if some women decide to be childfree and provide positive role models for other women considering that choice?</p>
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<p>I think it is an excellent point that so much of life is outside our control. Absweetmarie - I am so very sorry for your loss. Being prepared to take 100 percent control of child rearing if you choose to have a child seems one of the best pieces of advice so far on this thread imho. Thank you both for addressing that.</p>
<p>I do think my life has been extremely lucky and essentially an ideal situation. However, my ideal situation would not have seemed ideal to lots of other people. I have had the luxury of choice… like not needing to earning a salary for most of my adult life. However, my life path is probably not one the majority of women would have chosen or wanted. There is a huge loss of prestige in my social circle when the main work product of your life has been basic childcare. Homeschooling increased my social standing a little…a very little. That is okay with me. I’m like mythmom, not really caring about what society thinks. In my opinion, it’s useful for young women (and men) to consider lots of different options as they plan their lives and keep as many of those options open as possible for as long as possible. I think, almost inevitably, choosing to have children does tend to limit other opportunities.</p>
<p>I really like your post mythmom, and agree that a lot of life is unpredictable and irrational but I think we need to start with a life plan that we can adapt to circumstances as they arise. If a young woman feels strongly she wants to be childfree, she shouldn’t partner with someone who desperately wants children. It’s a waste of both their time. imho ymmv And if someone feels compelled to have children, it makes sense to me to think ahead of time about how that is going to play out. I was fortunate enough to read something by Margaret Meade in my early teens where she said she wasn’t as thoughtful as she could have been about the man with whom she had children, that she should have chosen better. Of course, then she wouldn’t had had Mary Catherine Bateson and what a tragedy that would be for all of us. Still I think we should all be starting with a plan and adapting as we go along, understanding that much is outside our control but controlling as much as we can. Of course the best laid plans… sometimes a woman who assumed she would want to stay home finds it unbearable and sometimes a woman who always imagined her career as the primary focus of her life, just can’t bear to leave her baby with anyone else without huge emotional hardship. Tragedies happen. Again so very sorry absweetmarie. This sort of thing is really impossible to plan. Shouldn’t we still be very thoughtful about our decisions and life planning?</p>
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<p>While there are certainly plenty of mommy wars online, if there’s a SAHM in my area who “objects” to me or any other mother working, it’s a tree falling in the forest as far as I’m concerned. That’s her problem if she feels that way, not mine, and I don’t need to justify or explain (much as she doesn’t need to justify or explain to me). </p>
<p>I think one of the major ways in which women hurt ourselves is that we all feel we need “validation” from people around us for our choices. Well, no. The only people who need concern themselves with SAHM/WM choices or my other life choices are my immediate family. Everyone else can go nicely pound sand as far as I’m concerned. If I’m the neighborhood pariah, I’m blissfully unaware of it.</p>
<p>When my D1 was younger, in my community moms of young kids generally didn’t work outside the home. My D was excluded from everything, as was I, and it was very painful for both of us. Thankfully, as the kids got older, the moms did go to work so the playing field leveled. It was never an issue with my younger kids.</p>
<h1>116 romani - Thanks for coming back to report. I sure wish I could have been a fly on the wall.</h1>
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I love this ^^</p>
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<p>I kind of interpreted her response differently but may have been projecting what would have been my own feelings. We are never really told exactly what was going on with the child. I assumed that when faced with a very troubled teen, both parents decided to make their child their top priority. They were in a financial position they could afford to do this. She perhaps lost some career opportunities by making that choice. That was the tension… that you may not be able to have two different aspects of life as your top priority at the same time. (My husband pointed out that dads deal with this issue all the time, too.) We really can’t plan for what happens when we have teenagers. Sometimes parents may have a small window of time to act before the consequences of a child’s behavior become life altering. Sometimes it is all completely beyond our control and nothing will change the outcome. There may be some consolation in knowing you did all you could.</p>
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<p>This is where being an introvert comes in handy, as I simply wasn’t aware of anything I was being “excluded” from. Like I said, trees falling in the forest and making no sound!</p>
<p>Like there aren’t tons of debate boards and the like, proclaiming that it’s ok if a mom has to work but not if she wants to work (and dad could support the household). What’s the difference if kid is in childcare because mom is a single mom and has to work vs she isn’t but she wants to work - other care is other care regardless of the reason for the care. Similarly with at-home mothers who do a lot of volunteering and thus require childcare. What’s the difference – I see none. If your kid is in other-care, it makes no difference to the KID if what you’re doing with that time is getting your nails done, working for pennies, working for big bucks or volunteering.</p>
<p>You are saying the " pass" is given by people on Internet debate boards?
Really, who gives a $h-+ , what they say?
I also have seen it makes a huge difference with a parent volunteering, because where they volunteer is often their children’s school, with the result that they see their kids more than if they were working in a different direction.</p>
<p>Where I see volunteer moms getting disrespected in at social events in the community by people who depend on them to do the volunteer work, but then look down on them because they don’t have an office and a big house.</p>
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<p>That wasn’t what I meant at all, and I think you are being oversensitive by jumping to the conclusion that this is what I meant.</p>
<p>What I was referring to was the fact that if I am not willing to work 60-80 hour weeks because I have a responsibility to be home by 6 to make dinner for the family, I am a bad employee. The culture where I am is that you should be prepared to drop anything and everything to work late whether you really need to in order to get your work done or not, and if anything else in your life takes precedence you should find another job.</p>
<p>For me, personally, I would rather be at home taking care of the home and family than working outside the home. That is how I personally make those things my top priority, even though that is not the only way to do it-- it is the only way for ME to do it. And to my family, that makes me lazy and a waste of education. I think that’s a shame. Women fought for years for us to have CHOICES, just because we have more options now shouldn’t mean that we all still have to make the same choice. </p>
<p>That was all I meant.</p>