SAHMs - what made you decide to SAH? Question from new SAHM

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It's not the "personal experience" part that bothered people. Reread the posts. You mean to tell me that if I said "in my personal experience, the SAHMS I know were all not talented enough to make it in the workforce, and couldn't wait to have kids so they could quit" and that the kids of SAHMs "are clingy and aren't able to socialize as well" you wouldn't comment? Please. There are ways to talk about your "personal experience" without being nasty and having an agenda. And several posters chimed in, not just a few, so clearly what these two said (I still think it's the same person) offended people.

I really don't care if someone stays home or not. I have done both. But to generalize and imply your kids will do better, be more successful, that is going to get people riled up. And it's simple not based in fact.

How would you feel if three teachers all come here and said essentially the same thing -- we have been teaching elementary school for many years, and we have noticed that kids who went to daycare since age 3 months all seemed to do much better in the classroom than those who stayed home with a primary caretaker? So, based primarily on wnating that result for our kids, we teachers all decided to stay at work and send our kdsi to daycare?

Would you be intersted in hearing the anecdotal comments and observations of those teachers? Or would you be so quick to criticize them for not having done studies, for only sharing their own experience, and for making generalizations that might not hold true for all kids?

I have a feeling a lot of the anger here isn't being directed at the teachers who are daring to make generalizations -- it is anger at the conclusons they are coming to. You'd be nothing but supportive if they were coming to conclusions you liked.

[Anonymous]

Actually the first teacher who posted was very careful to say that she wasn't sure if the observations she saw was true on a grand scale or just specific to her environment. In fact, she seemed curious to see if there were any studies that showed whether what she saw was true overall or not. The very next poster called her an idiot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's not the "personal experience" part that bothered people. Reread the posts. You mean to tell me that if I said "in my personal experience, the SAHMS I know were all not talented enough to make it in the workforce, and couldn't wait to have kids so they could quit" and that the kids of SAHMs "are clingy and aren't able to socialize as well" you wouldn't comment? Please. There are ways to talk about your "personal experience" without being nasty and having an agenda. And several posters chimed in, not just a few, so clearly what these two said (I still think it's the same person) offended people.

I really don't care if someone stays home or not. I have done both. But to generalize and imply your kids will do better, be more successful, that is going to get people riled up. And it's simple not based in fact.

How would you feel if three teachers all come here and said essentially the same thing -- we have been teaching elementary school for many years, and we have noticed that kids who went to daycare since age 3 months all seemed to do much better in the classroom than those who stayed home with a primary caretaker? So, based primarily on wnating that result for our kids, we teachers all decided to stay at work and send our kdsi to daycare?

Would you be intersted in hearing the anecdotal comments and observations of those teachers? Or would you be so quick to criticize them for not having done studies, for only sharing their own experience, and for making generalizations that might not hold true for all kids?

I have a feeling a lot of the anger here isn't being directed at the teachers who are daring to make generalizations -- it is anger at the conclusons they are coming to. You'd be nothing but supportive if they were coming to conclusions you liked.

Maybe. I'd like to think if someone posted the other way I would still be critical of their conclusion. I would hate to think that there are teachers out there who have that kind of bias about kids based on something as common as having a WM. Imagine if the teacher thought, "well, I'm not going to waste my time, that kid is not going to do that well anyway." There are real implications for this. Of course I suppose she could go the other way and say, this child is doomed, I'd better help her!"

Either way, I think teachers should of all people should be more open minded and accepting and not so quick to write a child off based on something out of his or her control.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's not the "personal experience" part that bothered people. Reread the posts. You mean to tell me that if I said "in my personal experience, the SAHMS I know were all not talented enough to make it in the workforce, and couldn't wait to have kids so they could quit" and that the kids of SAHMs "are clingy and aren't able to socialize as well" you wouldn't comment? Please. There are ways to talk about your "personal experience" without being nasty and having an agenda. And several posters chimed in, not just a few, so clearly what these two said (I still think it's the same person) offended people.

I really don't care if someone stays home or not. I have done both. But to generalize and imply your kids will do better, be more successful, that is going to get people riled up. And it's simple not based in fact.

How would you feel if three teachers all come here and said essentially the same thing -- we have been teaching elementary school for many years, and we have noticed that kids who went to daycare since age 3 months all seemed to do much better in the classroom than those who stayed home with a primary caretaker? So, based primarily on wnating that result for our kids, we teachers all decided to stay at work and send our kdsi to daycare?

Would you be intersted in hearing the anecdotal comments and observations of those teachers? Or would you be so quick to criticize them for not having done studies, for only sharing their own experience, and for making generalizations that might not hold true for all kids?

I have a feeling a lot of the anger here isn't being directed at the teachers who are daring to make generalizations -- it is anger at the conclusons they are coming to. You'd be nothing but supportive if they were coming to conclusions you liked.

Maybe. I'd like to think if someone posted the other way I would still be critical of their conclusion. I would hate to think that there are teachers out there who have that kind of bias about kids based on something as common as having a WM. Imagine if the teacher thought, "well, I'm not going to waste my time, that kid is not going to do that well anyway." There are real implications for this. Of course I suppose she could go the other way and say, this child is doomed, I'd better help her!"

Either way, I think teachers should of all people should be more open minded and accepting and not so quick to write a child off based on something out of his or her control.

You're reading way too much into the initial comments, things that weren't there. Nowhere did anyone say that she was writing a child off or having a bias against kids of working mothers. For Pete's sake.

[Anonymous]

I'm one of the teachers who responded. I did not "write off" students with WM, and it in no way affected how I treated them. In fact, for the majority of my students I had no idea whether they had WM's or not. I knew more about the work status of my top students' moms because they were very involved in their schooling and I got to know them better. This is how I came to notice that most of these kids had sahm's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And of course there are studies that show children of sahms have better outcomes. That's part of what drives the debate. Every few months there's some study that says one thing or another regarding this topic. One thing I have noticed is that it does seem to go in phases. For a while I was seeing a lot of favorable sahm studies, it does seem that lately most of the studies say there's no major difference, I suspect that the pendulum will keep swinging on this for quite awhile.

Please provide references for this claim.

[Anonymous]

http://jech.bmj.com/content/63/12/999.abstract

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm one of the teachers who responded. I did not "write off" students with WM, and it in no way affected how I treated them. In fact, for the majority of my students I had no idea whether they had WM's or not. I knew more about the work status of my top students' moms because they were very involved in their schooling and I got to know them better. This is how I came to notice that most of these kids had sahm's.

Cool - thanks for clarifying.

[Anonymous]

Oh go take your stack of studies and put them under your pillow, and sleep well knowing you made the best choice on paper. Something tells me you won't though, because anyone secure in their choice to be a WM wouldn't feel the need to act like such a psycho.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh go take your stack of studies and put them under your pillow, and sleep well knowing you made the best choice on paper. Something tells me you won't though, because anyone secure in their choice to be a WM wouldn't feel the need to act like such a psycho.

Ding ding ding we have a winner!

[Anonymous]

I am a SAHM since my husband makes enough money and I hated working... I worked until age 30 before we got married and was always unhappy. Plain and simple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm one of the teachers who responded. I did not "write off" students with WM, and it in no way affected how I treated them. In fact, for the majority of my students I had no idea whether they had WM's or not. I knew more about the work status of my top students' moms because they were very involved in their schooling and I got to know them better. This is how I came to notice that most of these kids had sahm's.

so it could have been that most of your students had SAHMs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm one of the teachers who responded. I did not "write off" students with WM, and it in no way affected how I treated them. In fact, for the majority of my students I had no idea whether they had WM's or not. I knew more about the work status of my top students' moms because they were very involved in their schooling and I got to know them better. This is how I came to notice that most of these kids had sahm's.

so it could have been that most of your students had SAHMs?

Anything's possible. Who knows?

[Anonymous]

To 17:47: That is your proof?

Seriously?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I decided to be a stay at home mom for pretty much all the reasons everyone else gave, but what sealed the deal for me was that as an elementary school teacher I noticed that pretty much all of my really "top" kids had stay at home moms. I know many working moms are going to slam me for saying that. Of course there are well-behaved, high achieving students who also have full-time working moms. But based on what I saw from teaching for 10 years at three different schools the "better" students seemed to disproportionately come from families with involved stay at home moms.

A nice anecdote, but the studies don't support this.

I agree. It seems a lot of people on this thread are unaware of the studies around brain development in the first 3 years. A good pres-school program from the start (yes, I'm talking about infants here) has such an enormous impact on social-emotional as well as cognitive development. Also, I was surprised by the ignorance on this thread regarding children of working moms. It seems a lot of this is coming from bored SAHMs who need to justify their decisions? Why not just live your lives and be happy with your choices?