Reply to SAHM -Being a role model for daughters

Forum Index » Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

Reply to "SAHM -Being a role model for daughters"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You really, really don't need to worry about this.  It's so common to hear this at this age.

What this means is, we love you and we like our home life, and our baby brother is adorable.  We're having a great childhood.

Nothing to do with what they will think in a couple of years, let alone heading off to college.

My mom was a SAH and I went through the typical pattern of thinking she was the best ever, thinking she was pathetic and I never wanted to be the least bit like her and then gradually coming to understand that she was, in fact, super awesome and did precisely what she most wanted to do in spite of sometimes open contempt from other women with small ideas about life choices.

I'm a SAH, my daughter has also talked about SAH (along with a bevy of other life plans), and here's what I do:  try to have a lot of neat women with a wide variety of life choices in my circle, talk openly about our lives with our kids around, and speak admiringly of my friends' abilities and the ways they've solved problems to get what they want.  She knows women who have followed the typical path of achievement and have high-powered jobs, and she knows women who were teen mothers and are going back to school in their 30s (and kicking ass).  She knows artists with young babies who work during naps, women with SAH partners, SAHs who are respected community organizers, professional women who are part time for family or pleasure, women who combine flexible well-paid work with running a nonprofit or volunteering.  She knows very intelligent women who have lived partially or fully on public assistance, and a few who have chosen poverty for various reasons.  She has heard me congratulate these friends on every micro and macro achievement under the sun, and has seen us share support and heard my friends talk about my work experience, abilities and future work.  She's also, incidentally, seen that my SAH friends are not all as financially secure as they could be, and that some of the less educated SAHM are working for much less money in part-time jobs than the ones who built careers first.

What she will never hear me do is push WOH to the extent that she might suspect I'm denigrating SAH.  That, I think, could backfire.

I'm trying to give her access to many realities, and not just see and know this variety of women, but hear their choices articulated.  This is the part that was missing for me growing up - there was very little discussion of how women's complicated lives actually *worked.*  I didn't enter one profession because it was so male-dominated and I had no examples or mentors for how to make it work with a family, which was a non-negotiable goal.  Since then, I've met many women in that profession who forged a different path.

I want her to have the sense that there are an infinite number of choices, and tradeoffs with every choice, but every choice can be made to work if it grows organically out of the woman's strengths and honest self-understanding.  [/quote]

What's a reasonable, intelligent, and kind person like you doing here?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics