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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Well yeah of course.  Being a stay at home mom is a full-time job. But being a work out of the home means you have two full time jobs which is exhausting.[/quote]

Being a sahm to school aged is NOT a full time job. I think that’s been clearly established. 
Which is ok. [/quote]

It depends. You can be an intense cook, cleaner, gardener, handyperson, room parent, helping neighbor or family, etc. [/quote]

Right?  Often jobs are as intense as you make them.  I certainly wasn’t working intensely for 8-9 hours straight at my paid employment with zero downtime/breaks/social interaction.  I suspect a lot of other professional jobs are similar.  The only full-time thing about it in many seasons was the fact that I had to be physically present full-time to take care of any tasks as they came up (and those tasks were often mundane and easy and quite frankly pointless).  There were of course busy times where I worked my butt off, but that was not the norm.

I feel like maybe people don’t realize they hold SAHM as a “job” to a completely different standard than they might hold their own paid employment.  Because I don’t think my experience was totally unusual.[/quote]

You were lucky to have an easy job.  But when so. Being away from your home for 8 hours plus commute and having to spend your remaining waking hours caring for a child/children is exhausting [/quote]

That’s the thing - you can do just as much stuff as a sahm if you work and have school aged kids - esp if you have location flex (which frankly I would not take a job without). You’re just more burned out. 
But the ‘sahm to school aged kids is a full time job’ people need to just - stop.[/quote]

You’re missing the point.  You can do just as much as SOME stay at home moms, but not the ones who actually treat it as a full time job.  And the stuff you do undoubtedly won’t be to the same standard.  And that’s fine, but why are you insisting that other women don’t get to call their job a job?  [/quote]

You cannot do as much housework as a SAHM can, that is absolutely true. And your toilets may certainly be dirtier and your ironing may be more erratic.

But for a school age child who is in school in the normal school hours, you can easily do just as much *parenting* at the same “standard” whatever precisely that means.

[/quote]

What do you mean?  Do you mean that working moms spend the same amount of hours with their kid per day as a SAHM?  I don’t see how that’s possible if the mom is working 40 hours per week, so I may be misunderstanding. [/quote]

I wft and this is basically true. I either drop kids at 830a, run home (as in go for a run but end up at home), shower and online on calls by 930, then dh gets kids and they are home by 530. Or dh drops them and I am online by 830-9 then pick them up at 5. I would not get them earlier very often even if I didn’t work bc it’s better for them to be playing basketball or doing music classes at school than in our small apt (nyc). We log off early on Fridays so I get them at 315 that day. I [b]do do a lot of work after they go to bed and I am tired in the evening so prob not gazing into their eyes and leaning into further enrichment (they are also tired and typically watch a little tv or we watch together) so I’m def not bringing my a game to the party as much as I would be if I’d chilled all day. That is true[/b] [/quote]

Op here. This thread has gone off the rails and devolved into a debate mostly about whether elementary school SAHM do as much work, but to go back to the original intention of my post, this is my point. It’s easier to be a present, involved parent when you’re not working because you’re well rested when the kids are around. I too spent a lot of time with my kids when working because I wfh with lots of flexibility, but I didn’t realize how tired I was during those times. Now that I have down time when kids are at activities, I’m so much more engaged and happy and not distracted by the other things on my mind when i am with them. [/quote]

Although - unless you do early drop off at camp- you ARE distracted by dcum when you are with them 😉[/quote]

Ha, I DCUM every morning on the toilet during my morning poo. Usually during 8-8:15. DH is still having breakfast with DCs but when you got to go, you’ve got to go. [/quote]

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