Reply to Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It is not an acceptable turn of phrase.

But I am not offended because it shows the low character of the speaker. Just as if they had said they work FT because “I wanted to use my brain”[/quote]

But working parents say this all the time to SAHP. "I couldn't do NOTHING." "I needed to use my brain." etc.[/quote]

I've never heard this comment in real life. [/quote]

I've heard it many times. Fully 70% of the new moms group I was in said some version of this in our meetings -- "I'm so bored -- I can't wait to go back to work" or "I feel like I'm getting stupid spending all my time with a baby." It's a very very common sentiment among women who have established careers before having kids and especially highly educated women.

I think people are expressing their genuine feelings when they say this stuff but I remember silently thinking how it didn't resonate with me at all and I loved being on maternity leave and had essentially zero interest in going back to work. I didn't miss my office AT ALL and I felt plenty intellectually stimulated at home (I found learning about child development fascinating and also had more time and bandwidth to read more widely than I had when working). I still wound up going back to work but was miserable and quit my job to stay home for the next two years because it's what I wanted to do.

When I hear people say things like "I couldn't do NOTHING" or "I need to use my brain" I simply know they are wrong. That's it. I know it to be a a false assumption about what it is to stay home with kids. Or sometimes I think they would do it wrong -- there is a way of being a sahm that involves being brainless and lazy but there's also a way of going to work like that isn't there. You get out of it what you put into it.

But I also think when people say stuff like this they are likely trying to quiet doubts they might have within themselves about their own choices. It's not about me even if they are trying to turn me into some kind of foil.[/quote]

You're making pretty ridiculous assumptions. FWIW I don't think it's true that you're not "using your brain" or doing nothing as a SAHM, but for many people (myself included) there simply is not a way to recreate the intellectual challenge that you get from working. It's just different and they're not doing anything wrong. [/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