Reply to Going back to work after SAH with zero regrets

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Has anyone said that or are you assuming due to their reaction? I and so many of my friends stayed home for a while and went back to work when the kids are older. That's so normal. I guess you can say that was always your plan? Or, even if it wasn't always your plan, now you realize that's what you want to do at this point in your life.
And of course, stick up for SAHMs (and all the other moms! and dads!) out there. I wouldn't want to be friends with someone who belittled someone else's choices, even if it wasn't my choice.
[/quote]

I’m a sahm and used to be a working mom. Everyone is different.

I admit I used to look down at SAHMs when I was NOT a mom. I did not understand. When I had a big career and barely saw my baby, that was miserable for me. I am infinitely happier spending time with my 3 children. I’m busy planning our spring break and summer, all things I could not be doing if I were working.[/quote]

So OP if you at all said things like this, this is why you are now getting less than positive responses to your news you're going back to work.[/quote]

Pp here. Did I say something offensive? I used to work long hours and barely saw my kid. Then I got a less demanding lateral job and had a second kid. Then I stayed home and had another kid.[/quote]

People who work are also able to plan spring break and summer.   There are women with "big jobs" who are able to spend time with their children.   I understand you were conveying your personal experience though.[/quote]

Pp here. We did not always go away during breaks. For winter break, I put my kids in camp for a week and then grandparents visited for a week. I have memories of putting kids in Lego camps for various teacher work days. The year I stopped working, there was a huge blizzard and school was closed for two weeks. Many of my coworkers did not have kids or had stay at home wives so I felt I was constantly missing work due to sickness, doctor appointments, snow days, etc. I could have continued but I didn’t want to.

[b]I know that on dcum everyone has these magical flexible high paying jobs[/b] that allows them to be home whenever or not miss school events and pick kids up from school or meet kids at the bus stop but that was not the case for my jobs, even ones that were supposedly flexible. I had meetings and calls all day. I couldn’t just go to some random school reading cafe at 10:30 in the morning. I used to hate all those school things because it would stress me out. Now I see those parents who seem annoyed and stressed about the same things and I know how they feel. I used to hate teacher work days and snow days. Now we all love them.[/quote]

My job isn’t perfect but it is flexible. I make $250k at age 35, which is much less than I could have been making right now if I had continued on my original trajectory. But yes, I block off my calendar to participate in random events at my children’s school about 2x a month, and also block off time to leave the office for pickup 3-4x per week. And I can wfh if the kids are sick or on holiday, provided I don’t have a super important meeting where I want to be in-person. We have a FT nanny, but at least I can relieve her during breaks between meetings and also spend some extra time with the kids. I feel like every job needs to provide some of this flexibility or else it is a terrible job.[/quote]

+1. I don't think it's that rare. I make just over $200K and work fully remote with a very flex schedule. Pre pandemic I only went in 2x a week usually.

DH makes significantly more and still makes it to all of our kids' games, etc.

It's not magic, and I'm sure there are people making a lot more with less flex as well, but it's not rare. [/quote]

Jobs that pay that much are out of reach for the majority of Americans. Flexible jobs that make that much are out of reach for the vast majority of Americans.

But people do need to avoid assuming that people who work demanding jobs don’t see their kids and obviously they shouldn’t say that to somebody’s face. If somebody left a job because they wanted to spend more time with their kids and wants to share that information,  they should be mindful of how it comes across. [/quote]

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