Men, how do you feel about SAHM?
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I'm about to make OP vomit.
I'm just a lazy SAHM. I'm in the PTA, army FRG leader, run a group that organizes and find sponsors for troop care packages, volunteer at healthy eats in my district which helps get farm produce to the poor, and I volunteer and my child's school 3 times a week. I am always cooking brownies for bake sales, hosting a fundraiser, planning a field day at the school, or pestering the working parents about volunteering.
Because of me and people like me, my child and 400 other children (including those of working parents) have new PE equipment, our PTA funds the music program 100%, including the music teacher's salary, our troops have letters, baked goods, toiletries and other essentials they wouldn't otherwise have, and other military wives have a place to go when they need help. When my husband gets back from deployment, I will be contributing to bake sales and fundraisers for the troops and spouses.
Yet I'm supposed to be ashamed of being so "suburban" and cliché. I'm lazy, wasting my education, and have no dreams or aspirations, eh? I'm the coolest PTA mom you will ever know, and my dream is for my child and his classmates to have PE and music despite state budget cuts. My dream is to get every child to read 200k words each year through our reading program.
You can be a lazy SAHM just as easily as you can be a lazy employee. One doesn't make you better than the other. What matters is the effort. Next time you want to ask a SAHM "what they do all day", remember that SAHMs are the reason your children's school run efficiently, your troops get care packages, and any other cause taken up by busy SAHMs.0 -
If you're a SAHM and truly do find it that difficult then you maybe should not have had children!
Um...
Parenting is BY FAR the hardest job I have ever had. EVER. If you don't think that raising a productive, contributing, well-rounded, respetful, loving, empathetic member of society is "that difficult" then you may be doing it wrong.
AND, to be clear, I am not a SAHM. Parenting, whether you are physically with your child all day, or not, is hard.0 -
Every couple that has kids makes their own choices, people do what works best for them.0
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My mom left her engineering career to take care of me when I was a kid while dad worked and I grew up handsome and pretty damn smart.
Now I can easily provide for them with a six figure income. I'd say it was a good investment on their part.0 -
If you're a SAHM and truly do find it that difficult then you maybe should not have had children!
Um...
Parenting is BY FAR the hardest job I have ever had. EVER. If you don't think that raising a productive, contributing, well-rounded, respetful, loving, empathetic member of society is "that difficult" then you may be doing it wrong.
AND, to be clear, I am not a SAHM. Parenting, whether you are physically with your child all day, or not, is hard.
LOL...I am not a parent nor will I ever be. My husband and I have spent hard-earned money to ensure that it never happens. But thanks.0 -
If you're a SAHM and truly do find it that difficult then you maybe should not have had children!
Um...
Parenting is BY FAR the hardest job I have ever had. EVER. If you don't think that raising a productive, contributing, well-rounded, respetful, loving, empathetic member of society is "that difficult" then you may be doing it wrong.
AND, to be clear, I am not a SAHM. Parenting, whether you are physically with your child all day, or not, is hard.
LOL...I am not a parent nor will I ever be. My husband and I have spent hard-earned money to ensure that it never happens. But thanks.
Wow :noway:0 -
Well duh.
It's obvious that unless you are economically productive you have no worth to society. At all.
Time to get rid of volunteers, carers, artists, charities, artists, philosophers, poets....0 -
i just can't stomach a child saying "I want to be a stay at home parent when I grow up".
kids' goals are like the wind. they change. they go from one direction one minute, and another direction the next. and to a kid, being a SAHP need not necessarily preclude being, say, an astronaut. c'mon. kids can't always think things through and they change their minds, so why worry? ask the kid again next week what they want. then keep asking. save your stomach and dwai.
nothing wrong with full-time SAH parenting. SAH with all the kids, it's good for them: and idc if it's a parent, a relative, or trusted neighbor that SAH.
now: if a kid somehow manages to grow up into an adult whose ONLY ambition in life is to build someone else's, i'd be sad for that person. there is more to living life than making more of it. We have bloody well enough already.Can't stop facepalming0 -
Oh boy. Quite the hornets nest here....
I have nothing against SAHMs.
But, being a child of divorce, my biggest concern is financial. I don't think I will ever feel comfortable giving up my ability to earn enough money to support myself (and my child) well. Leaving the workforce for a number of years is just too risky to me. At the same time, I would have a problem being the sole breadwinner. In fact, I'd probably advocate separate bank accounts, even in marriage, with one that we both contribute too for communal expenses.
It's a tough one for me. Tough enough that I question if I even want kids in the first place.0 -
I thought there would be more in this thread about pintrest.
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bump0
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I'm about to make OP vomit.
I'm just a lazy SAHM. I'm in the PTA, army FRG leader, run a group that organizes and find sponsors for troop care packages, volunteer at healthy eats in my district which helps get farm produce to the poor, and I volunteer and my child's school 3 times a week. I am always cooking brownies for bake sales, hosting a fundraiser, planning a field day at the school, or pestering the working parents about volunteering.
Because of me and people like me, my child and 400 other children (including those of working parents) have new PE equipment, our PTA funds the music program 100%, including the music teacher's salary, our troops have letters, baked goods, toiletries and other essentials they wouldn't otherwise have, and other military wives have a place to go when they need help. When my husband gets back from deployment, I will be contributing to bake sales and fundraisers for the troops and spouses.
Yet I'm supposed to be ashamed of being so "suburban" and cliché. I'm lazy, wasting my education, and have no dreams or aspirations, eh? I'm the coolest PTA mom you will ever know, and my dream is for my child and his classmates to have PE and music despite state budget cuts. My dream is to get every child to read 200k words each year through our reading program.
You can be a lazy SAHM just as easily as you can be a lazy employee. One doesn't make you better than the other. What matters is the effort. Next time you want to ask a SAHM "what they do all day", remember that SAHMs are the reason your children's school run efficiently, your troops get care packages, and any other cause taken up by busy SAHMs.
Thank you for posting this. I really think some people believe that working and paying taxes is enough to make the world go 'round and that it's the only contribution that matters. They don't seem the realize the number of people who step up and offer their time and expertise to keep things functioning and how much more it would cost each of us in taxes if people like SAHMs were not doing these things.0 -
I can say I have experience as a full-time working single mother, SAHM and full-time married mother to 3. The full-time wokring single mom was rough. My son was 2 and in daycare of 9 hours a day. I was always stressed and never had time for him. I ended up cutting back on lots of things and down sizing my apartment to a 1 bedroom so that I could work part-time and be able to enjoy him rather then always being too busy to listen to what he had to say.
I re-married when he was just shy of 5 years old and was a SAHM for 7 years. At which I returned to work part-time due to my husband being laid off from work. I also finished my college degree in that time.
I have been back to work full-time (out of my home from 7 am until 5:30 pm Mon-Fri) for a little over a year now. I can honestly say I miss the healthy balance of working part-time. I was still contributing financially yet I was always there when my kids came home from school. I cooked every night, I never missed a class activity or my oldest honor roll awards. NOW I miss everything...field trips, field day, class activities, my oldest soccer games, awards ceremonies etc etc.
I would give anything to be home with my kids again!!!0 -
I feel like it's hard to justify staying home once the kids go to school full time. Except for summers... I wouldn't want to send my kids to day care all summer. Luckily their mom is a teacher and also has the summer off.
We have a cleaning lady that comes once every two weeks for a few hours. We spend a lot of time doing laundry and cooking, but nothing we can't handle outside of work hours. I don't understand why people seem to think it's so difficult.0 -
I think the OP is just trying to stir the pot, but being a SAHM is not the right choice for everyone and is not always even the best choice for the children. I know several moms that are BETTER parents because they are working and really can't deal with being home. I have tried working full time, part time, staying home, working from home. Right now I am staying home but still take projects from a law firm when I have time and work when the kids are in school or at night. In each situation I feel like I am "missing out" on something. I'm a lawyer and I'm still paying off my student loans to an ivy league school. Yes, part of me feels like I am "wasting" my education. But when I was working full time or part time in an office, I felt like I was missing out on raising my kids. I know at the end of my life I will never wish I had billed that extra hour and will always cherish the extra time I have with my kids, but that doesn't mean that women don't crave more than just being mommy sometimes. It is just not that clear cut. I was raised in the feminist era and was told repeatedly that we can be whatever we want and can do anything a man can do. But the reality is that we can't do what a man can do without a lot of mommy guilt.0
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I'm about to make OP vomit.
I'm just a lazy SAHM. I'm in the PTA, army FRG leader, run a group that organizes and find sponsors for troop care packages, volunteer at healthy eats in my district which helps get farm produce to the poor, and I volunteer and my child's school 3 times a week. I am always cooking brownies for bake sales, hosting a fundraiser, planning a field day at the school, or pestering the working parents about volunteering.
Because of me and people like me, my child and 400 other children (including those of working parents) have new PE equipment, our PTA funds the music program 100%, including the music teacher's salary, our troops have letters, baked goods, toiletries and other essentials they wouldn't otherwise have, and other military wives have a place to go when they need help. When my husband gets back from deployment, I will be contributing to bake sales and fundraisers for the troops and spouses.
Yet I'm supposed to be ashamed of being so "suburban" and cliché. I'm lazy, wasting my education, and have no dreams or aspirations, eh? I'm the coolest PTA mom you will ever know, and my dream is for my child and his classmates to have PE and music despite state budget cuts. My dream is to get every child to read 200k words each year through our reading program.
You can be a lazy SAHM just as easily as you can be a lazy employee. One doesn't make you better than the other. What matters is the effort. Next time you want to ask a SAHM "what they do all day", remember that SAHMs are the reason your children's school run efficiently, your troops get care packages, and any other cause taken up by busy SAHMs.
^ this was my sister for YEARS. She didn't have a job outside the home but did all of this kind of stuff and then some. She was always doing for others, helping out where she could and had her kids in tow as she did it all. Now she works part time at a school (while her kids are in school, still home whenever they are) and STILL does the extra curricular stuff.
I couldn't do it. No way. It takes a special kind of person to be able to do it.
Are all SAHMs like this? No. But as the poster I quoted points out, there are lazy employed people everywhere. Just because you get out of bed everyday and leave your home to "work" doesn't mean you're actually doing more or contributing more.0 -
Not a man, but a mostly Stay at Home Mom.
I say mostly because I do work outside the home at my own business... 1 day a week most weeks, and then there is one week a month where I work 2 days.
I homeschool my kids, so I am working as a teacher at home, not sitting around watching TV. I also am an artist, so I work at that at home when the homeschooling is done, and I build frames for my paintings in my woodshop, and I sometimes repair small engines at home, and this week I'm repairing a vacuum for our homeschool co-op. Also during the "art show" season I do a lot of running around from one show to another.
Really, I think its a matter of individual choice, if I wasn't homeschooling, I think staying home all the time would be difficult for me. Once the kids were off to school I'd start feeling really useless... unless of course I disciplined myself into doing something productive like painting, woodshop, or repair work.0 -
I'm about to make OP vomit.
I'm just a lazy SAHM. I'm in the PTA, army FRG leader, run a group that organizes and find sponsors for troop care packages, volunteer at healthy eats in my district which helps get farm produce to the poor, and I volunteer and my child's school 3 times a week. I am always cooking brownies for bake sales, hosting a fundraiser, planning a field day at the school, or pestering the working parents about volunteering.
Because of me and people like me, my child and 400 other children (including those of working parents) have new PE equipment, our PTA funds the music program 100%, including the music teacher's salary, our troops have letters, baked goods, toiletries and other essentials they wouldn't otherwise have, and other military wives have a place to go when they need help. When my husband gets back from deployment, I will be contributing to bake sales and fundraisers for the troops and spouses.
Yet I'm supposed to be ashamed of being so "suburban" and cliché. I'm lazy, wasting my education, and have no dreams or aspirations, eh? I'm the coolest PTA mom you will ever know, and my dream is for my child and his classmates to have PE and music despite state budget cuts. My dream is to get every child to read 200k words each year through our reading program.
You can be a lazy SAHM just as easily as you can be a lazy employee. One doesn't make you better than the other. What matters is the effort. Next time you want to ask a SAHM "what they do all day", remember that SAHMs are the reason your children's school run efficiently, your troops get care packages, and any other cause taken up by busy SAHMs.
^ this was my sister for YEARS. She didn't have a job outside the home but did all of this kind of stuff and then some. She was always doing for others, helping out where she could and had her kids in tow as she did it all. Now she works part time at a school (while her kids are in school, still home whenever they are) and STILL does the extra curricular stuff.
I couldn't do it. No way. It takes a special kind of person to be able to do it.
Are all SAHMs like this? No. But as the poster I quoted points out, there are lazy employed people everywhere. Just because you get out of bed everyday and leave your home to "work" doesn't mean you're actually doing more or contributing more.
Totally agree.0 -
We have a cleaning lady that comes once every two weeks for a few hours. *snip* I don't understand why people seem to think it's so difficult.
Really? :huh: :noway:0
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