Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, bc I feel the same way. But I would never say that to my FT WOH friends, which are the majority, bc they might read between the lines that I’m implying that they’re not raising their own kids (vs me expressing a choice of my own) and that would be hurtful!
I do feel kind of uncomfortable at the “I admire you - I could never do what you do and be w my kids all day full-time” comments though. It comes across to me as 50/50 either fakey, or really sad for their kids.

And you wouldn't say it to your kids' teachers, doctors, etc., who are working women, right?

Can you imagine if all women stayed home to raise their kids and didn't work? How many male teachers are there at your elementary school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nah, I just pity them because I know they must be insecure about their SAHM choices and bored with sitting home with their kids and needing to justify their decisions. Yes, I have less time with my kids because I WOH, but I still raise them.

Oh, come one. If the topic comes up at all it's because someone judgmentally asked them why they don't work. What other answer is there? It is why people chose to stay home. It a dumb question to ask someone if you don't want to hear the answer.

If you think the only time SAHMs make rude comments in is response to judgmental questions I have a bridge to sell you. Have you even read this thread?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's an insensitive thing to say because as women we are all supposed to be empathetic to the fact that no matter what women do regarding work and motherhood someone is going to judge us and we're going to feel guilty.

But also I think people say this sometimes because they are just being honest and it's how they feel. Just like I think women who go back to work actually sometimes do it because they are bored out of their minds at home with babies and want to "use their brains." I also know women who have said that they went back to work because they believe their kids are better off being raised by nannies or caregivers who are "experts" as opposed to a sahm.

All of these things will be hurtful to hear to someone who made a different choice and they are also things people actually think and feel. Women are presented with this impossible choice (if they are fortunate to even have a choice at all which most are not) and there is no answer that will ever be right for everyone so we all do this dance with each other about our choices and we offend each other constantly because there's no way for us to all validate each other and ourselves at the same time unless we all make the same choice.

But we cannot all make the same choice because we are different people with different kids and different professions and different finances and different partners and different resources.

I just try to remember all that whenever I talk to other women about this stuff and when they say things that can be viewed as an insult to my choices. They aren't really talking about me. It's just about them. And that's fine.

But why do we need to be validating our own choices to other people? DH and I made the decisions right for our family (career choices, number of kids, where to live, what schools to send them to, etc.) based on our own personal life circumstances and priorities. I am under no illusion that our choices are the “best ever” or even “better” than what other families have chosen. But I am secure we’ve made decisions that make our family happy.

I can have a conversation with another parent who made different choices than me without needing to justify/explain things in a way that belittle their choices. For instance I have a friend who is a SAHM with a big law DH. When talking to her I 100% understand why it would be logistically a nightmare for her to try to be the primary parent for 3 kids and work since he is gone long hours. Whereas I work FT but my DH also has a super flexible remote job and can help with a lot of the morning routine, shuttling kids around, etc. We can both discuss our lives and the situational decisions we’ve made without making generalized conclusions that our choice is better than the other.

I feel sorry for those who lack the ability to understand their life choices are not necessarily the best choices for others and that we do not need validate ourselves at the expense of putting down others.

This is how most well adjusted people function. The rest don't see how classless they come off putting others down and getting snippy about the decisions of others. I do think there are also genuinely unaware people who are hyper focused on their own reasons (use my brain, raise my kids) that they say it out loud without meaning to imply insult or even that someone else isn't doing that. Honestly, most of us aren't so blatant but likely don't realize all the ways we've insulted others day to day. Still, some people do mean offense and it usually doesn't sting unless you are hearing a chorus of it. Funny enough, I've been hearing one resounding sentiment but from experience on this site, other women get the flip side advised to them by their family so I can understand their defensiveness.

You're almost there. When people talk about their own decisions, they are not putting others down. Others are interpreting other people's statements as if they are reflections upon themselves when other people are just talking about themselves. It is people's insecurity and self-absorption that causes people to be offended by other people's statements about their own situations. People are not classless when they talk about their own situation. People are insecure when they are offended when other people talk about their situation.

It isn't about you.

People’s choices are about them but sometimes the language encompasses other people’s behavior. Do you really not see the difference between “I wanted to spend time with my kids when they are little” and “ I didn’t want someone else raising my kids”?

By your logic doesn’t the bolded imply that the working parent doesn’t want to spend time with their kids when they’re little?

There is literally no way to have a conversation without offending people these days. I’d say most of you should stick to discussing the weather, but I’m sure it would take less than two minutes before someone makes it political and then everyone is taking it personally.

Your logic is wrong. I have made no statements about what other people do or don't want to do. Maybe that's the issue -- some people really cannot see the difference.

There is no difference. You’re just incorrect and too defensive/sensitive to admit it. Which tracks with you being offended about someone saying they want to raise their own kids (or don’t want someone else to raise their kids) in the first place.

I'm not defensive. You have poor logic. Under your logic, I can say absolutely nothing about what I like something and why I did something because it would suggest something about the other person?

This is *your* logic we are talking about, and clearly you are deeply confused. A random woman saying “I don’t want someone else raising my kids” has absolutely nothing to do with you (unless you have just offered to raise her kids).

100% . I am a full time working mom of three children and I am not offended. This is apparently so upsetting to some people that they don’t believe me. I’m a secure person. I’m secure in my decisions and my parenting and in who I am as a person. Someone doing something different from me does not make me feel insecure or invalidated or whatever. I don’t need to police the universe or only hang out with working moms to feel OK about myself. Just own your decisions and be OK with yourself! Someone else’s decision is not a judgement on your decisions.

The majority of people said they wouldn't be offended. They just commented on the stupidity and low EQ of the person saying it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not considering my children's benefit from my being a SAHM when they were born and very young, I am so grateful that I MYSELF was able to be home with my kids. I would have missed experiencing so much and my life is so much richer for that experience. It makes me sad that my husband did not get to experience the same and I will be forever grateful to him for enabling me to have that time.

This.

And many of us are eternally grateful we both could be there and have those experiences.

100%

My kids are way better off having been "raised" by both parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get it, because it’s true, even if people don’t want to admit that’s what’s happening when children are in full-time daycare. But in polite society we avoid saying things that might hurt someone’s feelings, regardless of whether it’s truthful or not.

But it’s not truthful. My kids went to daycare, and, sure, their daycare teachers, who were all wonderful, provided care during the workday. But my spouse and I made the decisions on how to parent, which included finding great caregivers.

If your children go to daycare for 10-11 (7-6 or 7:30-5:30) hours a day for the first 4-5 years of life and sleep 10-12 hours a night then you are not spending 4-5 hours with them each day 70% of the week. How is this controversial? You are outsourcing a lot of parenting duties to other caregivers. Someone saying that they don’t want to do that is not wrong. And I’m saying this as a full time working parent.

I actually did the math with my neighbor who was a SAHM and I did spend more 1-1 time with my kids than she did.

1st. My H's time counted and I know many of SAHP's who are the 1st to tell you that their H does nothing, works late, travels a lot.
2nd: She did not take into account napping, time in front of TV, time they were in the basement playing and she was futzing around.

I don't think a SAHP should be connected at the hip and I think that independent time is valuable but the reality is she was not spending more 1-1 time with her child than I was.

I think you are mistaken. There's just simply not a chance that you spend more 1-1 time with kids than a SAHP unless the SAHP is outsourcing a ton of childcare. Your kids never play in the basement or nap or watch TV when you're with them? And how much time during the day are the SAHP neighbor's kids doing that? 2 hrs out of a 8+ hour work day...your math isn't mathing.

And there’s the rub. I think because she is home so much she doesn’t even think about doing things with her kids.

I think because I’m not home all day as soon as I get home I want to get outside I take them to the park, Or we go for a hike, We hit a museum, Or walk around the zoo.

in fact when I get home from work the neighbor whose H was sick and she asked me to watch her kids, I immediately pick them up and take them with me to do these things.

The woman who is complaining that she wasn’t chosen to be the caregiver is like sure just send them to my house. They can watch TV or play in the yard while I make dinner or entertain my child in the basement.

Assuming this is all true, your neighbor is n=1. Your neighbor is not representative of the vast majority of SAHP. Nor does your post, however unnecessarily involved, get at the original question of whether it was ok for someone to say they didn’t want their kids raised by strangers.

You go hiking, biking, your kids tube on the lake behind your house every afternoon at 2 pm while you drive the boat before going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discuss El Greco for six hours. We get it. You’re amazing! Tahoe by day, NYC by afternoon. You never go to Costco. You work 190 hours per week at work and get out by 3 pm to pick up your kid from daycare and play laser tag before you coach soccer and you make $280K!

Pretty much except I work 40 hours and my H the same.

It can work if you want it to.

But if you want to SAH and have a absent h and that works for you because he needs to work 190 hours a week to pick up your slack go for it just stop being so defensive about how other families have figured out how to work and be there for their kids.

DP here. Except the problem with your argument is that lots of families with a SAHM have a Dad who is not absent at all, works a 35 hour week and has tons of flexibility to be at events, coach teams, etc. I know many families like this, including ours.

Wait, let me guess, your husband also makes seven figures in those 35 hours a week, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have childfree, sahm and wohm friends. If we say, "I did x because I didn't want Y," we assume it is a personal, individual decision and not meant to cast judgement on anyone who did Y who can hear the statement. It's not always about you, people.

I grow my hair long because I don’t want to look like a bull dike.

Does that working in your scenario.

DP but actually yes. This is actually a perfect example. Imagine we’re friends and we’re talking and you have a pixie haircut and my hair is long. And you ask me why I don’t chop it off like yours. See, I might think your haircut looks great on YOU, and maybe you look fabulous like Halle Berry, or Anne Hathaway. But I don’t think *I* can pull off short hair - unless my hair is long I “look like a bull dike”.

See you had to rearrange the words and add something for it to not sound rude.

If your friend said why don’t you cut your hair and you answered because I don’t wanna look like a bull Dyke that would be rude.

But you had a rearranged the words you had to say oh I wouldn’t look as good as you would so I’m not gonna cut it. I might look like a bull dike.

Just like I stay at her, mom could rearrange the words and say oh I just decided to stay home because I can’t really manage working and taking care of the kids. It’s exhausting.

See the difference.

That comment is rude no matter how you say it. Even if you're talking only about how you would look it's offensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Point being that when you work from home and have young kids, you are less efficient at work so something that may take 2 hours can get stretched to 5.

Not if they are napping.

Are you kidding? Kids do not nap all the time. Do you only have one kid? Give it a rest.

I actually used to cuddle with my toddler when she napped. When she was a baby, I napped when she napped.

Kids are mostly at school during their childhood and when they aren't they nap... a lot.

No I didn't nap during the day do you have narcolepsy?

I don't work when the kids are awake. I work when they are asleep or I engage with them, or they are at school or preschool or playdates.

Yes I have more than 1 kid but I don't have 3 under 5 that would make it hard.

No one with a reasonably demanding full time job is providing full time childcare and parenting young children at the same time. You can’t do both at the same time well. Remember? This was proven again and again to many of us during the pandemic.

It’s already been proven by showing schedules that for an infant, They are with nanny for maybe 3 to 4 waking hours.

Children don’t stay infants for long

And that schedules also been shared. The children were with their father in the morning, Went to preschool, Took a nap, And was with a caregiver less than two hours in the afternoon before mom got home.

That's your schedule. That's not a universal or even remotely common schedule for majority of kids of working parents, majority of whom are in daycare for 8+ hours a day.

I don't know anyone who had kids in daycare 8+ hours a day.

For starters, most of us had nannies or au pairs. The ones who used daycare had one parent drop off and one parent pick up and flexed their schedules so that one parent went in earlier (and did not drop off the kids) and then got off earlier (and did pick up the kids) whereas the other parent went in later (and dropped the kids off) and came home later (and did not pick up the kids). I'm thinking of all the parents I know from working at DOJ, a Big 4 accounting firm, a Big Law firm, and private practice, plus the parents I know now that my kids are at school and all my friends from high school and college that I am still friends with. I truly can't think of any except one whose husband was military and she was a lawyer and acted a single mom because he was deployed a lot who had kids in daycare for 8 or more hours a day. Yes, that is my sample size, and yes, my friends are largely UMC and so of course that skews the results, but stop making up statistics. You cannot support your claim that the majority of children are in daycare for 8+ hours a day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it rude to say I didn't want to be a SAHP because I wanted my kids to be raise in a stimulating environment instead of spending their days watching tv and running errands to Costco.

You're just talking about how YOU would be as a SAHP, not how all or most SAHPs are. Maybe your best if you were to SAH would be to turn on TV and take kids to Costco but that certainly doesn't describe the SAHPs I know.

No, if I were SAHP, I’d be at museums and parks and hiking. BUT I Don’t need to stay at home to do that. I have a very flexible schedule and I get home at four and we go to the park and we hike and we go to the museums and we go to the zoo.

I’m talking about all the moms in my book club who were like oh my God I ran so many errands this week. I had to go to Costco three times and then I went to Michael’s and I had to go to three stores before I found the correct fall pillows that I love.

So… do you just never run errands? You don’t have to grocery shop or get the oil changed? You never mow the lawn or do the laundry, either, or scrub the floors, because you’re too busy “working” or taking Larlo to the yoga retreat in the mountains? Do fairies, birds, and mice keep your home running?

No actually I don't do any of those things besides laundry. We have lawn service and a cleaning service, DH does the car maintenance which is infrequent. We optimize so our non-work time is really kid time not random errands etc.

Do you have a cartoon rat who shops for your groceries and makes all your food?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, bc I feel the same way. But I would never say that to my FT WOH friends, which are the majority, bc they might read between the lines that I’m implying that they’re not raising their own kids (vs me expressing a choice of my own) and that would be hurtful!
I do feel kind of uncomfortable at the “I admire you - I could never do what you do and be w my kids all day full-time” comments though. It comes across to me as 50/50 either fakey, or really sad for their kids.

And you wouldn't say it to your kids' teachers, doctors, etc., who are working women, right?

Can you imagine if all women stayed home to raise their kids and didn't work? How many male teachers are there at your elementary school?

Do you think if a woman stays home for 5-10 years to be with her kids, that she must stay home FOREVER?

That’s one of the fundamental problems with our current societal set up, IMO. WHY is it taken as a fact that it MUST be practically impossible to re-enter the workforce after several years off?

Can you imagine a world in which a woman might choose to stay home with her kids for a few years and then have a job again for many decades afterward?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get it, because it’s true, even if people don’t want to admit that’s what’s happening when children are in full-time daycare. But in polite society we avoid saying things that might hurt someone’s feelings, regardless of whether it’s truthful or not.

But it’s not truthful. My kids went to daycare, and, sure, their daycare teachers, who were all wonderful, provided care during the workday. But my spouse and I made the decisions on how to parent, which included finding great caregivers.

If your children go to daycare for 10-11 (7-6 or 7:30-5:30) hours a day for the first 4-5 years of life and sleep 10-12 hours a night then you are not spending 4-5 hours with them each day 70% of the week. How is this controversial? You are outsourcing a lot of parenting duties to other caregivers. Someone saying that they don’t want to do that is not wrong. And I’m saying this as a full time working parent.

I actually did the math with my neighbor who was a SAHM and I did spend more 1-1 time with my kids than she did.

1st. My H's time counted and I know many of SAHP's who are the 1st to tell you that their H does nothing, works late, travels a lot.
2nd: She did not take into account napping, time in front of TV, time they were in the basement playing and she was futzing around.

I don't think a SAHP should be connected at the hip and I think that independent time is valuable but the reality is she was not spending more 1-1 time with her child than I was.

I think you are mistaken. There's just simply not a chance that you spend more 1-1 time with kids than a SAHP unless the SAHP is outsourcing a ton of childcare. Your kids never play in the basement or nap or watch TV when you're with them? And how much time during the day are the SAHP neighbor's kids doing that? 2 hrs out of a 8+ hour work day...your math isn't mathing.

And there’s the rub. I think because she is home so much she doesn’t even think about doing things with her kids.

I think because I’m not home all day as soon as I get home I want to get outside I take them to the park, Or we go for a hike, We hit a museum, Or walk around the zoo.

in fact when I get home from work the neighbor whose H was sick and she asked me to watch her kids, I immediately pick them up and take them with me to do these things.

The woman who is complaining that she wasn’t chosen to be the caregiver is like sure just send them to my house. They can watch TV or play in the yard while I make dinner or entertain my child in the basement.

Assuming this is all true, your neighbor is n=1. Your neighbor is not representative of the vast majority of SAHP. Nor does your post, however unnecessarily involved, get at the original question of whether it was ok for someone to say they didn’t want their kids raised by strangers.

You go hiking, biking, your kids tube on the lake behind your house every afternoon at 2 pm while you drive the boat before going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discuss El Greco for six hours. We get it. You’re amazing! Tahoe by day, NYC by afternoon. You never go to Costco. You work 190 hours per week at work and get out by 3 pm to pick up your kid from daycare and play laser tag before you coach soccer and you make $280K!

Pretty much except I work 40 hours and my H the same.

It can work if you want it to.

But if you want to SAH and have a absent h and that works for you because he needs to work 190 hours a week to pick up your slack go for it just stop being so defensive about how other families have figured out how to work and be there for their kids.

DP here. Except the problem with your argument is that lots of families with a SAHM have a Dad who is not absent at all, works a 35 hour week and has tons of flexibility to be at events, coach teams, etc. I know many families like this, including ours.

Glad they figured it out too. They tend to be absent from these discussions because there’s a lot of … its impossible to work my H is big law or surgeon and I could only find hubs that had me out of the house from 6-6.

But I agree the majority of families working or with a SAHP don’t have these crazy situations where one or the other parent isn’t home most of the time.

The idea kids are in daycare 8 or 10 or 12 hours are just horror stories made up to justify not working. Most kids have about 3-4 waking hours in other people’s care until they go to school then it’s about 7 hours whether you work or not, unless you homeschool …Except teen athletes they are gone all day.

So many families have figured it out but I guess someone has to marry surgeons and big law partners. Actually they usually have a few wives throughout their life.

Lady, you’re officially batsh!t crazy. Or a troll. Or both.

Most working people have a schedule that vaguely falls around 9-5:30 plus morning and evening commute. How can you live in this area and apparently not know a single Fed, let alone dual Fed couples?

Feds can work a 6-2:30 schedule while the other parent works 9:30-6.

That means 1 parent does am and the other does afternoons.

This is what my husband and I did before we moved out of DC. I left early and my husband did mornings. Then I got home earlier and did afternoons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get it, because it’s true, even if people don’t want to admit that’s what’s happening when children are in full-time daycare. But in polite society we avoid saying things that might hurt someone’s feelings, regardless of whether it’s truthful or not.

But it’s not truthful. My kids went to daycare, and, sure, their daycare teachers, who were all wonderful, provided care during the workday. But my spouse and I made the decisions on how to parent, which included finding great caregivers.

If your children go to daycare for 10-11 (7-6 or 7:30-5:30) hours a day for the first 4-5 years of life and sleep 10-12 hours a night then you are not spending 4-5 hours with them each day 70% of the week. How is this controversial? You are outsourcing a lot of parenting duties to other caregivers. Someone saying that they don’t want to do that is not wrong. And I’m saying this as a full time working parent.

I actually did the math with my neighbor who was a SAHM and I did spend more 1-1 time with my kids than she did.

1st. My H's time counted and I know many of SAHP's who are the 1st to tell you that their H does nothing, works late, travels a lot.
2nd: She did not take into account napping, time in front of TV, time they were in the basement playing and she was futzing around.

I don't think a SAHP should be connected at the hip and I think that independent time is valuable but the reality is she was not spending more 1-1 time with her child than I was.

I think you are mistaken. There's just simply not a chance that you spend more 1-1 time with kids than a SAHP unless the SAHP is outsourcing a ton of childcare. Your kids never play in the basement or nap or watch TV when you're with them? And how much time during the day are the SAHP neighbor's kids doing that? 2 hrs out of a 8+ hour work day...your math isn't mathing.

And there’s the rub. I think because she is home so much she doesn’t even think about doing things with her kids.

I think because I’m not home all day as soon as I get home I want to get outside I take them to the park, Or we go for a hike, We hit a museum, Or walk around the zoo.

in fact when I get home from work the neighbor whose H was sick and she asked me to watch her kids, I immediately pick them up and take them with me to do these things.

The woman who is complaining that she wasn’t chosen to be the caregiver is like sure just send them to my house. They can watch TV or play in the yard while I make dinner or entertain my child in the basement.

Assuming this is all true, your neighbor is n=1. Your neighbor is not representative of the vast majority of SAHP. Nor does your post, however unnecessarily involved, get at the original question of whether it was ok for someone to say they didn’t want their kids raised by strangers.

You go hiking, biking, your kids tube on the lake behind your house every afternoon at 2 pm while you drive the boat before going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discuss El Greco for six hours. We get it. You’re amazing! Tahoe by day, NYC by afternoon. You never go to Costco. You work 190 hours per week at work and get out by 3 pm to pick up your kid from daycare and play laser tag before you coach soccer and you make $280K!

Pretty much except I work 40 hours and my H the same.

It can work if you want it to.

But if you want to SAH and have a absent h and that works for you because he needs to work 190 hours a week to pick up your slack go for it just stop being so defensive about how other families have figured out how to work and be there for their kids.

DP here. Except the problem with your argument is that lots of families with a SAHM have a Dad who is not absent at all, works a 35 hour week and has tons of flexibility to be at events, coach teams, etc. I know many families like this, including ours.

Glad they figured it out too. They tend to be absent from these discussions because there’s a lot of … its impossible to work my H is big law or surgeon and I could only find hubs that had me out of the house from 6-6.

But I agree the majority of families working or with a SAHP don’t have these crazy situations where one or the other parent isn’t home most of the time.

The idea kids are in daycare 8 or 10 or 12 hours are just horror stories made up to justify not working. Most kids have about 3-4 waking hours in other people’s care until they go to school then it’s about 7 hours whether you work or not, unless you homeschool …Except teen athletes they are gone all day.

So many families have figured it out but I guess someone has to marry surgeons and big law partners. Actually they usually have a few wives throughout their life.

Lady, you’re officially batsh!t crazy. Or a troll. Or both.

Most working people have a schedule that vaguely falls around 9-5:30 plus morning and evening commute. How can you live in this area and apparently not know a single Fed, let alone dual Fed couples?

Feds can work a 6-2:30 schedule while the other parent works 9:30-6.

That means 1 parent does am and the other does afternoons.

Not all feds can do this. If you work with a lot of west coast or Pacific island folks in a national program, you can't get off at 2:30 (my situation). Plenty of offices have core hours starting before 9 and ending after 3. Some jobs require specific shifts (e.g. any law enforcement or customer facing job).

What's your point? No one is saying that everyone can have a flexible schedule. What people are saying is that working parents aren't a monolith. Somehow you argue that SAHMs aren't all the same but can't fathom that working parents aren't either...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get it, because it’s true, even if people don’t want to admit that’s what’s happening when children are in full-time daycare. But in polite society we avoid saying things that might hurt someone’s feelings, regardless of whether it’s truthful or not.

But it’s not truthful. My kids went to daycare, and, sure, their daycare teachers, who were all wonderful, provided care during the workday. But my spouse and I made the decisions on how to parent, which included finding great caregivers.

If your children go to daycare for 10-11 (7-6 or 7:30-5:30) hours a day for the first 4-5 years of life and sleep 10-12 hours a night then you are not spending 4-5 hours with them each day 70% of the week. How is this controversial? You are outsourcing a lot of parenting duties to other caregivers. Someone saying that they don’t want to do that is not wrong. And I’m saying this as a full time working parent.

I actually did the math with my neighbor who was a SAHM and I did spend more 1-1 time with my kids than she did.

1st. My H's time counted and I know many of SAHP's who are the 1st to tell you that their H does nothing, works late, travels a lot.
2nd: She did not take into account napping, time in front of TV, time they were in the basement playing and she was futzing around.

I don't think a SAHP should be connected at the hip and I think that independent time is valuable but the reality is she was not spending more 1-1 time with her child than I was.

I think you are mistaken. There's just simply not a chance that you spend more 1-1 time with kids than a SAHP unless the SAHP is outsourcing a ton of childcare. Your kids never play in the basement or nap or watch TV when you're with them? And how much time during the day are the SAHP neighbor's kids doing that? 2 hrs out of a 8+ hour work day...your math isn't mathing.

And there’s the rub. I think because she is home so much she doesn’t even think about doing things with her kids.

I think because I’m not home all day as soon as I get home I want to get outside I take them to the park, Or we go for a hike, We hit a museum, Or walk around the zoo.

in fact when I get home from work the neighbor whose H was sick and she asked me to watch her kids, I immediately pick them up and take them with me to do these things.

The woman who is complaining that she wasn’t chosen to be the caregiver is like sure just send them to my house. They can watch TV or play in the yard while I make dinner or entertain my child in the basement.

Assuming this is all true, your neighbor is n=1. Your neighbor is not representative of the vast majority of SAHP. Nor does your post, however unnecessarily involved, get at the original question of whether it was ok for someone to say they didn’t want their kids raised by strangers.

You go hiking, biking, your kids tube on the lake behind your house every afternoon at 2 pm while you drive the boat before going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discuss El Greco for six hours. We get it. You’re amazing! Tahoe by day, NYC by afternoon. You never go to Costco. You work 190 hours per week at work and get out by 3 pm to pick up your kid from daycare and play laser tag before you coach soccer and you make $280K!

Pretty much except I work 40 hours and my H the same.

It can work if you want it to.

But if you want to SAH and have a absent h and that works for you because he needs to work 190 hours a week to pick up your slack go for it just stop being so defensive about how other families have figured out how to work and be there for their kids.

DP here. Except the problem with your argument is that lots of families with a SAHM have a Dad who is not absent at all, works a 35 hour week and has tons of flexibility to be at events, coach teams, etc. I know many families like this, including ours.

Glad they figured it out too. They tend to be absent from these discussions because there’s a lot of … its impossible to work my H is big law or surgeon and I could only find hubs that had me out of the house from 6-6.

But I agree the majority of families working or with a SAHP don’t have these crazy situations where one or the other parent isn’t home most of the time.

The idea kids are in daycare 8 or 10 or 12 hours are just horror stories made up to justify not working. Most kids have about 3-4 waking hours in other people’s care until they go to school then it’s about 7 hours whether you work or not, unless you homeschool …Except teen athletes they are gone all day.

So many families have figured it out but I guess someone has to marry surgeons and big law partners. Actually they usually have a few wives throughout their life.

Lady, you’re officially batsh!t crazy. Or a troll. Or both.

Most working people have a schedule that vaguely falls around 9-5:30 plus morning and evening commute. How can you live in this area and apparently not know a single Fed, let alone dual Fed couples?

Feds can work a 6-2:30 schedule while the other parent works 9:30-6.

That means 1 parent does am and the other does afternoons.

No one does this. Not to mention that your manager has to sign off on it and you probity can’t be in office much. This is not practical or normal. Give it up.

DP. My husband and I did it. I don't really care if you believe me or not. My office (DOJ) had core hours of 10-2:30. Beyond that, you could be there earlier or later as needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get it, because it’s true, even if people don’t want to admit that’s what’s happening when children are in full-time daycare. But in polite society we avoid saying things that might hurt someone’s feelings, regardless of whether it’s truthful or not.

But it’s not truthful. My kids went to daycare, and, sure, their daycare teachers, who were all wonderful, provided care during the workday. But my spouse and I made the decisions on how to parent, which included finding great caregivers.

If your children go to daycare for 10-11 (7-6 or 7:30-5:30) hours a day for the first 4-5 years of life and sleep 10-12 hours a night then you are not spending 4-5 hours with them each day 70% of the week. How is this controversial? You are outsourcing a lot of parenting duties to other caregivers. Someone saying that they don’t want to do that is not wrong. And I’m saying this as a full time working parent.

I actually did the math with my neighbor who was a SAHM and I did spend more 1-1 time with my kids than she did.

1st. My H's time counted and I know many of SAHP's who are the 1st to tell you that their H does nothing, works late, travels a lot.
2nd: She did not take into account napping, time in front of TV, time they were in the basement playing and she was futzing around.

I don't think a SAHP should be connected at the hip and I think that independent time is valuable but the reality is she was not spending more 1-1 time with her child than I was.

I think you are mistaken. There's just simply not a chance that you spend more 1-1 time with kids than a SAHP unless the SAHP is outsourcing a ton of childcare. Your kids never play in the basement or nap or watch TV when you're with them? And how much time during the day are the SAHP neighbor's kids doing that? 2 hrs out of a 8+ hour work day...your math isn't mathing.

And there’s the rub. I think because she is home so much she doesn’t even think about doing things with her kids.

I think because I’m not home all day as soon as I get home I want to get outside I take them to the park, Or we go for a hike, We hit a museum, Or walk around the zoo.

in fact when I get home from work the neighbor whose H was sick and she asked me to watch her kids, I immediately pick them up and take them with me to do these things.

The woman who is complaining that she wasn’t chosen to be the caregiver is like sure just send them to my house. They can watch TV or play in the yard while I make dinner or entertain my child in the basement.

Assuming this is all true, your neighbor is n=1. Your neighbor is not representative of the vast majority of SAHP. Nor does your post, however unnecessarily involved, get at the original question of whether it was ok for someone to say they didn’t want their kids raised by strangers.

You go hiking, biking, your kids tube on the lake behind your house every afternoon at 2 pm while you drive the boat before going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discuss El Greco for six hours. We get it. You’re amazing! Tahoe by day, NYC by afternoon. You never go to Costco. You work 190 hours per week at work and get out by 3 pm to pick up your kid from daycare and play laser tag before you coach soccer and you make $280K!

Pretty much except I work 40 hours and my H the same.

It can work if you want it to.

But if you want to SAH and have a absent h and that works for you because he needs to work 190 hours a week to pick up your slack go for it just stop being so defensive about how other families have figured out how to work and be there for their kids.

DP here. Except the problem with your argument is that lots of families with a SAHM have a Dad who is not absent at all, works a 35 hour week and has tons of flexibility to be at events, coach teams, etc. I know many families like this, including ours.

Glad they figured it out too. They tend to be absent from these discussions because there’s a lot of … its impossible to work my H is big law or surgeon and I could only find hubs that had me out of the house from 6-6.

But I agree the majority of families working or with a SAHP don’t have these crazy situations where one or the other parent isn’t home most of the time.

The idea kids are in daycare 8 or 10 or 12 hours are just horror stories made up to justify not working. Most kids have about 3-4 waking hours in other people’s care until they go to school then it’s about 7 hours whether you work or not, unless you homeschool …Except teen athletes they are gone all day.

So many families have figured it out but I guess someone has to marry surgeons and big law partners. Actually they usually have a few wives throughout their life.

Lady, you’re officially batsh!t crazy. Or a troll. Or both.

Most working people have a schedule that vaguely falls around 9-5:30 plus morning and evening commute. How can you live in this area and apparently not know a single Fed, let alone dual Fed couples?

Feds can work a 6-2:30 schedule while the other parent works 9:30-6.

That means 1 parent does am and the other does afternoons.

This means the kids is still in daycare from 8:30-3:00. Which is a far cry from only a few hours. Idiot.

Yes that was discussed
9am-11 nap with nanny
11-1 nanny cares for child
1-3 nap with nanny
3-4 nanny cares for child

Mom home at 3 or 4

That is 3 hours of care by nanny.

And when they are 3 that is preschool from 9-1. Nap from 1:30-2:30.

Still just few hours for the nanny

Idiot.

9 am-4 pm is not just a few hours with the nanny. It's 7. Does the kid put himself down for these naps and ring the nanny to come over when he wakes up?

7-4 hours of napping is 3 hours with the nanny.

Are you the lady that sleeps in bed with your kid during their nap and count that as part of your parenting time?

Who watches the kid during nap time? The nanny. Even if the kid is asleep, he is still in the care of the nanny. You are really defensive about this. Do you not pay the nanny while the kid sleeps "because she's not caring for the child"? Gah. I hope you don't work in any field that requires critical thinking and precision.

So you count the hours that your child is sleeping as "quality time" that you spend with them. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not an acceptable turn of phrase.

But I am not offended because it shows the low character of the speaker. Just as if they had said they work FT because “I wanted to use my brain”

But working parents say this all the time to SAHP. "I couldn't do NOTHING." "I needed to use my brain." etc.

I've never heard this comment in real life.

[Anonymous]

Women get stuck with a pretty harsh choice these days because the economy is structured on the premise of two incomes -- look at housing costs and college costs and the number of families that can comfortably get by on one income is really small.

At the same time childcare is not only incredibly expensive it's also often inadequate. Ensuring all the hours match up so everyone can get to work on time is hard. And it does not end when kids are in school because school is not structured as childcare -- you still have to figure out summers and school holidays and after school and random days off.

Due to misogyny and uh all of history this problem falls disproportionately on women. Our reward for 9+ months of pregnancy and giving birth is the "choice" of staying home or being a working mom. Society largely exempts men from this "choice" so only men who opt into viewing it as their problem face it. How nice!

When this is the reality there are a lot of unpleasant truths that are both perfectly reasonable and deeply insulting:

Some women stay home because they believe it's a higher quality option than the childcare available to them. It hurts to say this out loud because it's often true (a lot of childcare in the US is sub-standard) and no one using childcare wants to contemplate that.

On the other hand some women work because it's the only way to afford the opportunities they want for their kids -- better schools and more enrichment and better college options. Again this sucks to hear for a sahm who has sacrificed her career to stay home but it's also true for the majority of families.

And then there is a small percent of sahms who don't sacrifice income because they are married to very high earners. There are also a small percent of working moms who don't sacrifice quality childcare because they have another resource for really good care -- they are wealthy enough to afford a really good nanny or they have a grandparent who is willing and capable or even a DH who is willing and capable. All of these are fairly rare situations though. Generally women give something up no matter what choice they make.

What if we all just acknowledge out loud how much this sucks and how dumb it is that we've placed this burden on women and that women then go and criticize and beat each other up about it instead of turning our ire on where it belongs -- a society that scapegoats women when it is actually society-level inadequacies that cause this problem (the high costs of childcare and housing and college plus the way we abandon families to just figure this out for themselves with no collective action to ease the collective burden of raising children).