<p>This is why I would advise anyone staying home to get a post nup agreement which also covers loss of potential career possibilities. I don’t think splitting 50/50 up til the end of the marriage does the whole stay at home cost justice. It’s not just the years spend not earning that need to be compensated for, it’s the loss of experience and career opportunities experienced when a stay at home spouse re-enters the work force. </p>
<p>I’ve seen this among a few very highly educated friends who made this choice.</p>
<p>A post nup should cover this, as well, since alimony is rarely awarded anymore. YMMV</p>
<p>^a SAH parent ,regardless of gender, needs and deserves this protection.</p>
<p>colllegealum: I seem to recall once spending a few days on a thread arguing the same points to some of the same participants here, though my arguments are never as clear as yours. I remember PG didn’t need anyone to support her choices. She did need a nanny to make her choices a reality.</p>
<p>PG: I am reading your posts the same as atomom and tried to point out some gender stereotypes, but you read me too “literally” - joke alert- And I really hope you don’t feel any guilt about your path. I don’t about mine.</p>
<p>Romani: Ironic that feminists claim to be all about letting women define themselves. But you want to say that a woman who has a “career as a homemaker/SAHM” can’t use the Webster’s dictionary definition of “career”? She must use your definition instead?
So she isn’t really free to define herself–but you are qualified to define her? (I wasn’t the one who made “paid work” part of the definition of “career.” So who is it that is so locked into the Capitalistic framework?)</p>
<p>“She likes to think/imagine/pretend that she has a ‘career’ as a homemaker, but it isn’t really a true “career” like my career. . .” Just another example of women putting women down. </p>
<p>But back to the original question–I do not like to call myself a feminist. I lived in Africa for 2 years and the main thing I learned is that, if I had to be born female, I was fortunate to have been born in the USA/20th century. Oppression of women is still horrific in some parts of the world. I am concerned about things like lack of access to education/jobs, arranged/child marriages, genital mutilation, rape/sexual slavery, etc. I have personally paid for the education of several girls/young women in Colombia, India, and the Philippines. But when I think of feminists in the US, I think of pro-abortion protesters and nuns who want to be priests, and I wouldn’t put myself with them. I doubt I would’ve been on the front lines seeking votes for women in the old days. (More likely barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and not unhappy with it. . .)</p>
<p>Well, I really must go spend some time as a consumer, and do laundry. Or I might get fired ;)</p>
<p>My question is- a single parent who may hire out repair & maintenance for his house, his yard, his kids, his car and perhaps even his meals, to have those responsibilities taken over by someone who considers those tasks their " life’s work", Why is it not considered a career/ life’s work, if one person was responsible for all of it?</p>
<p>My career as stay at home parent was forced onto me because of my husbands hours and his temperament.
From a struggling blue collar household with two kids with learning differences in a mediocre school district which fails to serve students with special needs, I raised two women who have completed college ( and one graduate school), and are successful in their personal lives and doing meaningful work. ( one even gets paid well for it!)
Sure I wish I could have had help to do that, the toll on my self worth and my sleep was enormous.</p>
<p>What would our schools and communities be like if we didn’t have individuals who were willing to put time & effort into them without compensation?</p>
<p>We just need to look at schools with a high FRL to see that. Even with targeted funding to increase equity, schools without parent volunteers have lower performing students and more behavior problems.
Even the private school D attended requires parent hours in the classroom.
Many of the parents did work outside the home, with jobs that were high enough up the ladder that they could take off work without being penalized.
But some of them were totally oblivious to the reality of blue collar life. I was often questioned at evening events about where my H was. When I replied that he was " at work", they were puzzled because in their world people had their evenings free.</p>
<p>I suppose if you have a two earner upper middle household, you can afford to move to a district that either can pay for extra adults in the building &/or has a cohort of involved parents who step up for tutoring/car pools & coaching, as opposed to one where the parents are overwhelmed with life.</p>
<p>Which is why I have always been an advocate for diversity in schools, by socio economics not race. </p>
Since I work outside the home and also am responsible (no hired help) for all things at home unless one of my kids or husband helps out, does that mean I have TWO careers??? </p>
<p>2) Regarding the “guilt” that people feel - whether it is “guilt” because they are SAHP or “guilt” because they work outside the home - isn’t “guilt” only a problem if you FEEL it - in other words, if someone tells me I should’t work outside the home but I know what I am doing is totally the right thing for me, I don’t feel guilt. But if I was having shortcomings/conflict with the fact that I’m not home all the time, then I WOULD feel guilt. So isn’t “guilt” more of a conflict with yourself over your choices??? </p>
<p>well - I’m definitely lining up with the pro-abortion supporters and nuns who want to be priests - and at times hauling along a stroller full of little ones to the protest. Although I have certainly been happy barefoot and pregnant (once the morning sickness subsided) I still would fight for the vote and for other women to have access to their own bliss.</p>
<p>I don’t really see how we change patriarchy unless we take political control. So it’s really important and valuable work imho</p>
<p>OK, here’s a question for the people who have stayed home to raise their kids: If doing that is a “career,” why aren’t you going out and doing it for pay after your kids are grown? What are your “career” responsibilities now?</p>
<p>It’s also important to remember that those of us with full-time jobs ALSO have many of the parental responsibilities of SAHMs. We don’t outsource everything. And I disagree with whoever said that parents aren’t being parents when they are at work. Throughout my working life as a parent I have always been acutely aware that my kids might need me at any given time, and as a single mother I have had to juggle all the “kid stuff” along with a demanding career–the appointments, the calls from the nurse’s office, the errands for school projects and sports and activities. MANY of these requests and needs come up between 8-5. I don’t know any WOTH (working-out-side-the-home) parent who can shut down and focus only on their jobs without exception during that time.</p>
<p>I do not have a degree, so the things I was doing, tutoring, college advising, advocate for families with special needs, fundraiser… ( in the schools not with my own kids) etc are not viable career paths for me.
Which is why I am also an advocate for kids in higher Ed, even if they think they dont need education past high school to work. Even if my degree was not related at all to my work, I would be more employable than I am now.</p>
<p>Rom, you weren’t around during the horrific mommy wars of 1960s-1980s feminism. At that time, mothers were still discouraged from working outside the home, though of course lower income women had been doing it all along . Many prominent feminists went way too far, denouncing stay-at-home mothers and declaring that no woman would/should stay at home with her children voluntarily. There was plenty of talk about how awful the lives of at-home mothers were. </p>
<p>Be glad you didn’t experience that. But be aware that people in your mother’s generation did experience it, and we remember it. I’m a proud feminist, but I’m not going to deny the excesses of the feminist movement.</p>
<p>I think that both " sides" are envious of the other, which spurs internal justification that they are doing the right thing.
Which is perhaps dying out with my generation to some extent, because I don’t see young people in my area, now rushing to pair up and start raising a family, and if they do, they are better about making the concious decision to do so, and have a clearer eye about what that entails, having lived through their own parents attempts.</p>
<p>Men need to be more engaged in the dialogue. I never could get my husband to understand that if he gave more than lip service to my going back to school, he wouldn’t have to stay in a job with forced overtime and odd hours to support the family. </p>
<p>My sister’s ex was a SAHD for a while. He would sit the kids on the bar stools next to him while he got drunk. Root beer and Cracker Jacks were their lunch. I don’t think he deserves a post-nup for lost career earnings.</p>
<p>Most people have enough similar examples in their lives to understand that parenting doesn’t always equate to a full-time, high-stress job no matter how much we argue that it does.</p>
<p>sally: You are defending your choices and asking SAHMs to defend theirs. If everyone gets to choose their own path, that should be unnecessary. I will freely admit most mothers working outside the home have more difficult lives than I did. I see their juggling as admirable. I respect they are doing good outside the nuclear family. Atomom, with seven children, definitely had a more challenging mothering/homemaking experience than I have had. Again- is this a competition?</p>
<p>My path has been more selfish because it has been more narrowly focused. And it has been an elitist path. I see my life as a piece of performance art, radical or edgy looking from a certain perspective. I always was walking on eggshells when meeting academic women who wanted to know what I did and then felt they had to explain to me why they weren’t homeschooling their own kids. I wasn’t trying for any mother of the year award. I was just doing what was entertaining and valuable to me. For a while, when folks asked what I did, I answered, “nothing” and that was pretty interesting. The last five years, I’ve said I’m retired. “From what?” “Child raising” That provokes a different, interesting kind of response. I see my answers as “feminist” political statements. I doubt almost anyone else does, though I did sit next to a man recently at dinner that immediately got it and we had an absolutely wonderful time.</p>
<p>alh, I don’t think anyone needs to defend their choices and I am not asking them to. I was simply questioning the logic of calling unpaid homemaking/childrearing a “career” when it isn’t. </p>
<p>“So it’s a career when you explicitly get paid to do something in someone else’s home. If you do it in your own home and the financial renumeration is not explicit but you have access to household income, then it is not a career.”</p>
<p>When I manage my own money by checking the Wall Street Journal, looking at funds to invest in, moving money around, etc., it’s not a career. It’s a responsibility, but it’s not a career. If I were to be paid to manage someone else’s money, then yes, it would be a career. If I choose paint chips for my own living room, it’s not a career. If someone pays me to choose paint chips for their living room as an interior decorator, then it’s a career. What is so difficult about this?</p>
The last five years, I’ve said I’m retired. “From what?” “Child raising” That provokes a different, interesting kind of response. I see my answers as “feminist” political statements. I doubt almost anyone else does, though I did sit next to a man recently at dinner that immediately got it and we had an absolutely wonderful time.</p>