<p>I would retire the second I had enough money to do so. I’m wasting my life in an office; I could find a million better things to do than go to work every day.</p>
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Nighttime upchucking - that’s something I hope never to have to deal with again. But I must say that dh and I worked like a synchronized swim team when it happened. We’d both roll out of bed, and one of us would clean up/comfort/diagnose the kid, while the other took care of sheets/floor/whatever else had been in the way. I still remember trying to go to back to sleep while the washer churned on and on.</p>
<p>Moms are always the go-to person, aren’t they?! I don’t think that will ever change, no matter how old our kids get!!</p>
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<p>So true. My D is well into adulthood and I am still the one who gets the how-to-handle-a-problem phone calls while DH usually hears about the fun stuff.</p>
<p>Lol my dad was always my go-to person, at least as far back as I can remember. Maybe it’s because he was essentially the stay at home dad from 7th grade onwards. Perhaps before that it was my mum. My dad’s much better at fixing things than my mom is. He was the one who got up with the night time upchucks.</p>
<p>romani that is interesting.</p>
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<p>isn’t this the truth? My kids will actually have one conversation with H, and then call me up to tell me what is going on in their life. He will say, “She seems like she’s doing great!”</p>
<p>And, I’m like, HUH??? Did we just speak to the same kid? LOL.</p>
<p>I quit working (for pay) when I had my 3rd kid (18 years ago). Since then I spent 13 years homeschooling some of my 7 kids and running the household. Now my oldest kids are off, and the youngest was in school full-time for the first time this year. It was very strange–I remember the first day I was in the house alone without kids in 23 years! I spent a couple weeks napping, hanging out, watching TV. I felt lazy and stagnant. I’d done some part-time tutoring before, so I got some regular tutoring jobs, which were sometimes satisfying and interesting, but also frustrating, too, and took a lot of mental energy. Now that the school year is over, I feel that it was a bit too stressful for me to add those jobs to my regular duties, housework, house/yard maintenance, running kids around, etc. (still 5 at home this year.) H has an extremely demanding job and works very long hours. We really need one person around to deal with “everything else.” I still “have” to work–still raising young kids, but I don’t need to take on extra jobs for $ and probably shouldn’t. I need to take care of my own household first. When kids are grown up, I’ll probably spend more time gardening, doing volunteer work, tutoring, or maybe writing a novel or screenplay. I do like having a schedule that forces me to get out of bed and out of the house at a certain time. I like to feel like I’m accomplishing something outside my own house. (I don’t really like homemaking/decorating/cooking, etc., --I want to do something I’m good at!)</p>
<p>I have been home since my oldest was born 20 years ago. My middle child just graduated HS yesterday and my youngest is going to be a junior in HS next year. I have loved being home. I have volunteered a bunch, and am now babysitting a few days a week. I was able to be there everyday as my dad was dying and now my elderly mother is diagnosed with cancer and I will walk this journey with her as she navigates all of the appts, etc. There are days when I feel bad when people dismiss the idea that SAHM’s do nothing, but I don’t let that change my goal of being here until my youngest goes off to school and I have taken care of my mother. I originally stayed home because I would have lost money paying childcare. I have filled my time with PSO events, church events, etc. I enjoy being there as my kids come in each day. I feel very blessed being able to do that. I love being with my kids. I know their time is coming to move on in life and I am most grateful to have been able to spend the time I did with them.</p>
<p>SAH to take care of the family is a real job, sometimes it is a thankless job, but often it is very rewarding. When one spouse has a very demanding job, there is usually another spouse who is providing support at home, H was that person in our family. Now kids are going off, he is going to give more of a push to his business, and I am going to start a new job doing something I like more. I am leaving finance and getting back to technology, working with a start up company and getting my hands dirty again.</p>
<p>I do not workoutside of the home because there is no time for it and we are ok without my salary. Dh works very long hours and travels for his job. My kids missed eleven days of school this year for sickness alone. I would have lost my job had I had one. I took went on leave and then a buyout after I delivered my twins. Daycare costs were just to high to justify my staying at work.</p>
<p>No, never. not in what I currently do. not at all. nights , holidays, weekends,( do not care much about that, but sometimes i do) constant stress, 13 hour shifts, sometimes 16-17. nope. would quit now if i won a huge lottery. The only reason I have ever had a job is for the money, health insurance etc. I had fun jobs ( restaurant/club industry) in the past when I was younger but none that were more fun than if I was a customer there!!! I would not get borred, I would go to the gym a lot and watch plenty of tv.</p>
<p>I grew up in a family where women typically just don’t work… they get married at 18-19 and raise kids. My mother was an outlier because she worked from home… when we were very young she worked part time at a department store, leaving for work after my dad got home from work at dinner time, so we never had nannies or daycare and rarely even had sitters. That wasn’t working out well so she started working from home… my dad hoarded money and wouldn’t give my mom money to buy clothes for us so she worked from home to be with us during the day and to still have some of her own money. Her youngest is 19 now and planning a wedding (and the tradition continues…) and mom as no plans to retire. She’ll always need her own money. But she hasn’t had a career track job since before kids, and the only women who have only did so out of necessity after divorce.</p>
<p>I am in a weird spot because I am the first woman to go to school and pursue a career… I grew up watching women in my family trapped in unhappy marriages because they didn’t have the financial means to leave and was determined not to be like them and to be a “career woman” and all of that, I know I said some not so nice things about their decision making when I was a young teen. Then I demanded to go to school and to do internships and all that you need to do to succeed in the rat race, looking down my nose at my female relatives the whole way, when really circumstances were such that I probably shouldn’t have gone the traditional college route… everbody here knows why, the financial issues, the disabilities, etc. But I was unrelenting and just INSISTED that I had to be “better” than the other women. </p>
<p>Then I actually finished school and started a career and contemplated having a family in the near future, and now my foot is lodged firmly in my mouth… Being a wife and mother are full time jobs, I stand in awe of people who can do everything, maintain a career, and not screw everything up in the process. It’s a shame that there is so little respect for those that choose to focus on the homefront… sometimes I feel like the womens movement was not as successful as we think it was. We went from society expecting us to stay home with scorn for those that want to work, to society expecting us to work with scorn for those of us that would choose to focus on other things. Different arrangements work for different families. My sister has five kids and would never even break even with daycare costs if she worked outside the home, and she gets crap regularly for being “lazy” – there is nothing lazy about raising five healthy kids!</p>
<p>I would have loved to be home with my kids when they were younger, but finances didn’t allow, so I hauled my breast pump to work at 10 weeks and commuted the commute from hell. However, there was a period of about 6 months when my son was an infant that I worked three days a week at my regular job. That was perfect. I felt productive, had an anchor to my week, earned money for myself, but yet my family was still the heavier weight on the scale. During that time I was the happiest, most grateful, most productive employee anyone could ever want. If I had a choice, I would work part time.</p>
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The women’s movement was about a relatively small group of privileged women imposing their choices and values on everyone else. It was not a success.</p>
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<p>It’s true. Plus, try being a stay-at-home dad. Then you’re just seen as flat-out lazy and a loser who can’t provide for his family.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, I do not believe SAHM’s are lazy, in the slightest. I have great respect for that work. I just would have felt isolated in that position, but that’s just me. But, I have no feelling that I did more or less than those who stayed home. There are only so many hours in a day and I think all of us women are stretched to the limit, regardless of how we spend our “working hours.”</p>
<p>JMO</p>
<p>I was a SAHM until my youngest turned three. I loved that job and would have been happy to continue it if the circumstances had been right. I also worked part-time as an adjunct professor a couple of evenings a week. It was great to get out of the house and get a paycheck. It felt like the best of both worlds. When DD turned three, that all fell apart, and I had to work full-time. I hated being away from her, and it was difficult to balance work and kids. </p>
<p>When DD was 14, I was able to stay home full-time. I LOVED it. After a very stressful period of working full-time, it took me 5 months to decompress and get off the hyper-active highway. DD and I grew very close. I was there for her when she needed me, and I rediscovered all the things I like to do. Now that I’m an empty-nester, I am back working a full-time job in a completely different field from all previous work. I am my own boss, set my own hours, and enjoy my work (most of the time.) </p>
<p>To answer the OP’s question - When I was working a stressful job, all I wanted to do was quit. Now that I have a job I enjoy, I am content to be employed.</p>
<p>Its getting to be less fun doing what I do because of the hassle involved in being able to do it the way I want to do it. So I am thinking about retirement maybe in a year or so, but am still not sure what it is I want to do when I grow up.</p>
<p>It looks like the majority of posters in this thread are female. We likely wouldn’t even be having this discussion if it were not for the equal rights movement. Matters not to me who started the movement. Matters to me that women are seen as equals vocationally, professionally, interpersonally, academically (well they are now in the majority in terms of representation in college) and intellectually. Salaries should be equal too, but from what I read they still are not in some fields. Thats really sad.</p>
<p>They may be seen as equals, but not paid as such.
[Female</a> Stockbrokers Make Less Than Male Counterparts, Study Finds](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Female Stockbrokers Make Less Than Male Counterparts, Study Finds | HuffPost Impact)</p>
<p>Cross posted, EK. I added my last sentences just before you posted, so it seems.</p>