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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s really amazing to me that so many smart and well educated women seem to believe that the only way to be intellectually engaged is by working some job. [/quote]

What other ways do you suggest?[/quote]

Idk, I’m a working mom and my job at a F500 stopped being intellectually stimulating around the time I returned from my first maternity leave six years ago. I am burnt out from trying to be both a mother and employee to my standards. Frankly, I’m not sure why people feel it’s their place to pressure women to be “intellectually stimulated” through full time work while also carrying most of the weight of childcare.

I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but it’s okay to want to be a present, full time parent and make room for that in your life. It’s okay if being “intellectually stimulated” takes a back seat to raising your kids in that season of life.

And yes, there are ways to be intellectually stimulated without working in some corporate job. Most jobs are not exactly intellectual or stimulating. I work in a stuffy corporate financial services environment and my job bores me to death.

[b]I’d rather be reading, at a book club, writing, reading a NYT article, teaching my kids their alphabet, or spending time with the amazing people they are and are becoming. All of those things are both more stimulating and meaningful to me than redundant meetings and town halls done by one of thousands of cogs in the wheel. [/b]I am replaceable at work, but I’m not replaceable to my kids.

If I could afford to, I’d quit and go back to work when I was ready[/quote]

I’m baffled by really anyone who would rather work for a corporation/organization than be free to do whatever they’d like. I can possibly understand if you own your own company that is somewhat interesting work. But a corporation or the federal government? No way. I have a desirable career and know at the end of the day I’m a cog in the wheel. I have to attend pointless meetings, enter leave in a system, spend most of my day responding to emails and Teams chats, and subject to ridiculous RTO rules where I commute to sit alone in a conference room in Teams. I am working because they pay me money. Reading a book of my choice is more intellectually stimulating than this.

[/quote]

I agree with you in theory but in practice… the SAHMs and hobby-jobbers I know personally are among the most vapid and shallow women. I don’t think they are all reading the NYT and intellectual books all day. I think they are scrolling Insta and TikTok and obsessing over their own and their kids’ social lives.[/quote]

SAHM here. I don’t know one SAHM like this. I barely post on social media. Almost none of my friends post on social media.[/quote]

I am a longtime SAHM and I have to say that once the kids aged out of playdates and activities where parents were present, I’ve struggled to maintain friendships. I don’t feel like I have much in common with or much to talk about with the (relatively few) other SAHMs who did not go back to work. Most of my good friends now work, even though when my kids were small, most of my friends did not. The loneliness is my biggest complaint SAH with older kids, even though it otherwise works for our family. [/quote]

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