Reply to Wisdom from Moms of Older Kids- When is the right time?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Highly personal.   I loved being at home with DS when he was 0-6.     Now he is on school property or engaging in an organized activity (at which I am not present) from 8 a.m. to 5:00 pm most days.   Soccer, chess, instruments, math club, student council, etc.

Me personally, I don't see the point of "staying at home" while DS is in another building, by law or by his choice, KWIM?  What would be the point for me to sit at home while he is not even here?

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To be fair, SAMs don't "sit at home" and wait for DCs to come home. KWIM?  [/quote]

Actually, I did just that for a whole lot of those 9 hours (8-5) ***when zero children were at home.****

No one will ever convince me -- because I lived it, remember -- that it takes 45 hours a week to grocery shop, prep dinner, take the dog to the vet, plant a garden, visit my gym and do a few chores/ errands.  Unless someone is wildly crazily inefficient.

Of course I know that a woman need not sit at home while all her kids are gone from 8-5. She might hang out with friends, go to Pilates, get her hair blown out, take tennis lessons, participate in junior league and visit museums.  And work on junior league committees that support museums.   A steady schedule of these sorts of things would definitely fill many hours. 
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Are you kidding me?  For starters, most schools do not actually take nine hours. The nine hour schedule you describe is probably from you walking your kids to and from the bus stop. A lot of stay-at-home moms drop their kids off and pick them up because it's so much faster than the bus and their kid has more time to do other things with their life then sit on a school bus for an hour every day.

Secondly, you are acting as though kids are in school all day five days a week year-round.  Kids are out of school for about 14 weeks a year Saulet (winter spring and summer breaks).  In addition to those weeks, are the many many sick days, days off for doctors, orthodontics etc. appointments, holidays like Martin Luther King or Presidents' Day, teacher workdays, and in years like this a whole slew of snow days.  Having a designated adult on call for all of those days can be incredibly helpful to the overall stress level of the household.

It seems that you are arguing against something that no one here has said. No one here believes that being a stay-at-home mom is 100% necessary because the life of a family is so incredibly busy and frantic. What people are saying is that being a stay-at-home mom reduces the pressure and stress on an entire family. That is absolutely true.

0P, I agree that going part time when your kid is in middle school is a great option.  As someone who worked as a nanny for many years, this is my perspective: kids younger than about 12 need an adult. That adults can be any competent loving and involved caregiver.  In the middle and high school however, kids need an adult with whom they have a long-standing relationship. I think the reason that people say your kids need you then more than at other times is not that they need more care, but that they need you as a caregiver more than just a generic nanny/babysitter/aftercare worker.   With teenagers, I think they really need someone who knows them personally and individually and that that knowledge and relationship makes a big difference.  They are going to be moody and noncommunicative with any caregiver they have at that age, but when it is mom or dad, their caregiver knows them inside and out and has the tools to interpret what it is that is actually going on with them. When it is just a babysitter, coach, afterschool nanny etc. or when they are old enough to stay by themselves for hours at a time, then there is no one around who actually knows them well enough to interpret what's going on underneath their moody teenage cover.[/quote]

I am not kidding you. If you read my first post you would remember I said that 1. It's "highly personal" and 2. My kid is on school property most days 8-5 because of school 8:15 bell to 3:30 bell) then an organized activity such as a sport or math club.

He doesn't want to quit lego robotics club in order to have these deep meaningful middle schooler conversations that some PPs insist are key reasons to be not-at-a-job  after last bell. I could see where other Tweens might feel differently though. [/quote]

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