Why is there such disdain for stay at home parents?

[Anonymous]

A man is not a plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another working mom who doesn't get it. I especially do not understand the disdain some people have for women who stay at home when their children are infants or toddlers -- even if it is not something you, personally, would choose to do (though I would, if it were financially feasible), I don't understand why so many people, so many mothers, act like it's worthless or that someone doing this is mooching off their spouse.

I mean, as someone who pays others to care for my kids, and how really values those people and put a lot of effort into trying to find the best possible caregivers for them if I was not going to be able to do it myself, I cannot imagine looking at any person who cares for young children on a full time basis and thinks their work is not meaningful or important. Is it meaningful and important when you pay someone to do it but not when someone does if or their own kids? That makes no sense at all.

Of course I do think some people disdain their daycare or their nannies and see them as "the help" who are beneath them, but this is so obviously a gross and incorrect belief. And people like this clearly don't really care for their own children, or children at all.

I understand the attitude a bit more with SAHMs of school-age kids, though even there, if you are a parent you understand the incredible childcare conundrum this creates for dual income families who must be continually finding part-time childcare for after school and summers and other breaks for years and years because school is like 60% childcare solution, if that, and it would be so much easier to just have a SAHP who can take that on instead.

I think it really just comes down to misogyny and a societal undervaluing of any kind of care work, whether it's being performed by a woman you otherwise consider a peer, or (as is most often the case for paid childcare workers) an immigrant woman. Since men rarely if ever do this work, whether in a paid or unpaid capacity, we assume it must not be high value. If it was important, men would do it, since they are the important ones whose time matters. Right?

All of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jealousy.

+ 1,000,000

Especially in dmv, the sahp are usually financially able to sah.

[Anonymous]

Thread number 460,670,999,432 about this. Sigh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A man is not a plan.

Maybe your wasn’t

[Anonymous]

Disdain from who, truly? Yeah some ppl on message boards dating X or Y, who cares? People just seem very thin skinned these days

I had a SAHM and I don't think she ever thought or cared what "society" thought about her choices.

[Anonymous]

This is DCUM, there’s plenty of disdain to go around!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A man is not a plan.

Maybe your wasn’t

Nah, I have my own career.

[Anonymous]

Working moms will always think SAHM are lazy.

SAHM will always think that working moms are selfish.

Tale as old as time and will never change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A man is not a plan.

Of course. If you plan to be unmarried and use donor sperm then a man is not a plan. If you are married and have kids ith your DH then you should still have a fall back plan - education, money, insurance, support - etc. That is a given.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could care less about what anyone else thinks. My life, my kids, my choice. I work not because I have to/need to financially, but because it is fulfilling to me. I have my own business and set my own hours, to an extent. I also want my kids to see me as a productive and a finacial contributor to the family. I make a small fraction of what DH makes but I pay for all the kids' extra curriculars. There are always 'mommy wars', you have to ignore and move on from the noise.

Respectfully, I find the “I work outside the home to be a better model for my children“ to be an absolute copout. Nobody really does tnat. They do it because they want to work or have to work. Period. It has nothing to do with “modeling for the children”

SAHP here. I disagree with you a bit. I don't know how much it actually is the sole motivation of somebody's choice, but I do think that a kid raised in your typical SAHM/working dad dynamic is more likely to have the wrong idea bout gender roles. But I also think the same is true of situations where both parents work but the mom is essentially also the manager of the household. That's the downfall of a lot of younger millennial men, I think.

[Anonymous]

I don't usually voice it here but I have disdain for people who complain about it as if it is harder than working. I will grant you that being home with 2+ toddlers/babies is, but I am out of that phase, so most of the SAHMs I know have their kids in some kind of school and complain about how 3 hours of morning preschool doesn't give them time to go to Homegoods unencumbered or meet other SAHMs for tennis. I have a hard time finding that sympathetic as a working mom who is in person full-time, is also the breadwinner, takes care of a special needs kid and all of his appointments, ferries an older kid about to tons of activities, and thus gets no time to herself. My life is harder than the Homegoods browsers, at least at surface level, so I have distanced myself from those people who don't get how good their lives are.

As you can read, I bring a lot of my own baggage into this and it is particular to my situation, thus I do not express this out loud, ever, and rarely on here. But since you asked..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jealousy.

+ 1,000,000

Especially in dmv, the sahp are usually financially able to sah.

I find the opposite. Most of the SAHP I know can't afford the daycare for their brood.

[Anonymous]

Ah, another troll mommy wars post. Nice attempt, OP, not buying it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Working moms will always think SAHM are lazy.

SAHM will always think that working moms are selfish.

Tale as old as time and will never change.

Do they judge working dads for being selfish?