Anonymous
10/13/2024 08:29
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A question for working moms: if you ask a non-working mom "what do you do?" what do you prefer she says? Is there any response we could give that you would approve of? Just curious.
“I stay at home with my kids.”
Why is this a complicated question?
I feel like SAHMs make things super complicated, maybe because they are out of practice in planning and executing complex things. A week’s worth of dinners can’t get cooked without 5 harried trips to the grocery store…
So you get offended that a stay at home mom says she stayed home so her kid didn’t have to be raised by strangers in the early years - probably saying that your chosen community of your daycare was super intentional - and then you go and put down women who choose to stay home with their young children? It’s actually really hard to provide full time care to young children well every day. It’s emotionally and physically and intellectually taxing. And what your comment tells me is that you actually didn’t care about the likely brown and black underpaid women watching your children every day while you worked (your “community”). It tells me you thought the work of taking care of children, including your own child, was beneath you. I’m a full time working mom and I have a ton of respect for the people who provide care to my three children between the ages of 1 and 5 every day and maybe that’s why I’m standing up for stay at home moms. Because it’s hard work and I respect it and I respect them and their decisions.
Posts like this are so bizarre to me. The first nanny we hired worked for us for 7.5 years and grew up 10 minutes from our house. (She also happened to be white, though I'm not.) We must have paid her okay, since she managed to buy a house during that time period.
We are still in touch with her, and I have nothing but respect for her abilities and her intelligence. I'm good at my job, and I think I'm a pretty good parent. But I'm bad at managing a household and some of the day-to-day of childcare. I hire people who are better than me at this. And if DH said this, no one would bat an eye.
Are you the PP who wrote that SAHMs are out of practice planning and executing complex things? If so, I can see why you would think it’s bizarre that I responded in the way I did. Someone who has no respect for a parent taking care of their children all day (ie not planning and executing complex things) has no respect for anyone taking care of children all day. You can pretend to spin this in any way that you want but what this PP (I’m assuming you) said was really ugly. It says so much about you. And just because you supposedly paid your nanny well does not mean you respected her (yes, I’m sure her entire down payment was from her weekly paycheck conveniently from you! Look at you! Saving someone who can’t execute complex tasks). Your example is the equivalent of saying they aren’t racist because you employ a nanny who is Guyanese.
The silver lining here is that your nanny probably spent as much if not more time with your kids when they were young and since she’s probably a way better human they you are that least your kids have a fighting chance, assuming nurture over nature.
No that was me. And your word salad kinda proves my point! Anyone who rambles meaninglessly like that cannot plan and execute complex things.
Well you’re the idiot because I make close to $400K at 37 and I’ve never taken a break from working despite having three children. I’m not carefully editing my post, because your EQ is so low that you wouldn’t understand anything I was saying anyway. You’re an ugly human and your children were lucky to be raised by someone who was a much more fit caregiver than you.
Anonymous
10/13/2024 08:13
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
NP.
I’m a SAHM now, but worked for many years (had nannies / Au pairs). SAHMs, please stop using this phrase! It makes you sound so dumb!
Maybe there’s a disconnect on what “raising” means here. I think some people are using it interchangeably with “caring for”. To me, “raising your kids” means:
- financially providing for them (as a family unit, not that a mom needs to have an income)
- overseeing their education
- overseeing their health needs
- overseeing their social development
- celebrating milestones / holidays with them
- being there for them emotionally and physically
- making sure their needs are met
So yeah, I think most moms are “raising their kids”.
I’m a SAHM now, but worked for many years (had nannies / Au pairs). SAHMs, please stop using this phrase! It makes you sound so dumb!
Maybe there’s a disconnect on what “raising” means here. I think some people are using it interchangeably with “caring for”. To me, “raising your kids” means:
- financially providing for them (as a family unit, not that a mom needs to have an income)
- overseeing their education
- overseeing their health needs
- overseeing their social development
- celebrating milestones / holidays with them
- being there for them emotionally and physically
- making sure their needs are met
So yeah, I think most moms are “raising their kids”.
Anonymous
10/13/2024 07:55
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Anonymous wrote:I see little difference in parenting between SAHMs and WOHMs when it comes down to it. Either way, kids know who takes care of them in the middle of the night, during emergencies etc. It's nice to have more time with them when they're little. It's also okay to want to have professional accomplishments. Before you know it, they're in school and the difference in time spent becomes far smaller.
It can depend on the situation. My kids definitely noticed the difference between me being home or going to work. Even when they are in school they notice. I'm not saying it's bad (I have to work, both for money and my sanity, though due to a layoff and covid closures I wound up a SAHM for 2 years) but the idea that it's no different of kids don't notice is untrue. My DD in particular struggled with me going back to work. It's less parental attention and focus for them and little kids notice. I'm guessing by MS a lot of kids don't care as much because they are less emotionally reliant on parents.
I also think in terms of who is "raising" the kids it depends on the nature of the childcare. IME if you are sending kids to daycare you are still raising your kids yourself. Daycares don't make decisions the way SAHMs or nannies do and the struct hours and group setting just alter the nature of it. Whereas I think some nannies, au pairs, and grandparents serving as primary childcare ARE helping raise the kids as parental stand ins. However I actually think that's good-- I wish we'd had that kind of childcare when our kids were small because it would have helped share the load more.
Anonymous
10/13/2024 07:45
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
I see little difference in parenting between SAHMs and WOHMs when it comes down to it. Either way, kids know who takes care of them in the middle of the night, during emergencies etc. It's nice to have more time with them when they're little. It's also okay to want to have professional accomplishments. Before you know it, they're in school and the difference in time spent becomes far smaller.
Anonymous
10/13/2024 07:35
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
It’s true and I do think it, but I don’t say it to people because I can see that it would be hurtful.
Anonymous
10/13/2024 07:28
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A question for working moms: if you ask a non-working mom "what do you do?" what do you prefer she says? Is there any response we could give that you would approve of? Just curious.
“I stay at home with my kids.”
Why is this a complicated question?
I feel like SAHMs make things super complicated, maybe because they are out of practice in planning and executing complex things. A week’s worth of dinners can’t get cooked without 5 harried trips to the grocery store…
So you get offended that a stay at home mom says she stayed home so her kid didn’t have to be raised by strangers in the early years - probably saying that your chosen community of your daycare was super intentional - and then you go and put down women who choose to stay home with their young children? It’s actually really hard to provide full time care to young children well every day. It’s emotionally and physically and intellectually taxing. And what your comment tells me is that you actually didn’t care about the likely brown and black underpaid women watching your children every day while you worked (your “community”). It tells me you thought the work of taking care of children, including your own child, was beneath you. I’m a full time working mom and I have a ton of respect for the people who provide care to my three children between the ages of 1 and 5 every day and maybe that’s why I’m standing up for stay at home moms. Because it’s hard work and I respect it and I respect them and their decisions.
Posts like this are so bizarre to me. The first nanny we hired worked for us for 7.5 years and grew up 10 minutes from our house. (She also happened to be white, though I'm not.) We must have paid her okay, since she managed to buy a house during that time period.
We are still in touch with her, and I have nothing but respect for her abilities and her intelligence. I'm good at my job, and I think I'm a pretty good parent. But I'm bad at managing a household and some of the day-to-day of childcare. I hire people who are better than me at this. And if DH said this, no one would bat an eye.
That may be your situation but the PP is correct about many families-- 99% of the nannies in my area are immigrant women and none of them are buying houses on their salaries. And the salary issue is interesting-- nannies here make around 50-60k per year, which families view as highway robbery (and indeed it's an incredible amount of money for a family to spend annually on childcare) yet it's also nowhere near enough for someone to be able to save a down payment on a house because housing here is do expensive-- their rent will eat up a lot of their income and what is leftover for savings is not enough to help buy even a modest home. Daycare workers make even less.
Within that context, for a parent to denigrate the work of caring for children as unimportant and dull is incredibly insulting to these women as well as to SAHMs (many of who SAHM specifically because they cannot afford this kind of high quality care do choose instead to perform it themselves). It betrays a troubling attitude about the labor of raising children.
It sounds like you likely live in a different sort of area, one with less expensive housing and overall cost of living, which may change these dynamics.
Keep telling yourself this if it makes you feel better. Or maybe accept that some people who WOH are not terrible parents and also not AHs who think nannies are garbage people incapable of providing quality care to children.
PP here and I'm a working mom. I was replying to someone acting like all nannies are highly paid which they are not. And that poster was replying to someone talking about the class and race dynamics of childcare and why it's really offensive to talk about people who take care of kids all day (whether their own or someone else's) as though it's not important or valuable work. Try to keep up.
If you work and your kids are being taken care of by a nanny or daycare worker all day, but you want to sit there and denigrate SAHMs as stupid and lazy, then yes you are an AH. Any parent who thinks caring for kids all day is easy and not productive or very valuable from a societal standpoint deserves to be snarked on in my opinion.
Anonymous
10/13/2024 07:06
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Dcum has always been heavily tilted towards SAHMs (they are now called tradwives), as this thread exemplifies. I wonder why that is. Do most upper class white women in this area stay at home, and so this board is a genuine reflection of that?
SAHMs have more free time on their hands. WOHM are being productive (or at least being paid) at their place of work--don't need to spend hours searching for social connections on a DC parenting site.
+1
Anonymous
10/13/2024 03:31
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Why is this trash clickbait thread still going?
Anonymous
10/13/2024 03:30
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
I initially wanted to stay at home with my child, until I realized that the years of full time care were short and I would be giving up a career position that I worked hard for. Instead, I could be a role model for my daughter on how women could work and also have families. I sent my daughter to daycare after 18 months because I realized the importance of peer socialization. She was happier having friends and she was also learning to share and take turns. She would also be better prepared for the school environment.
Anonymous
10/13/2024 02:52
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Anonymous wrote:Dcum has always been heavily tilted towards SAHMs (they are now called tradwives), as this thread exemplifies. I wonder why that is. Do most upper class white women in this area stay at home, and so this board is a genuine reflection of that?
SAHMs have more free time on their hands. WOHM are being productive (or at least being paid) at their place of work--don't need to spend hours searching for social connections on a DC parenting site.
Anonymous
10/13/2024 00:22
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Anonymous wrote:NP. It’s not meant to be offensive. If you find it so, that’s on you. I was an elementary and middle school teacher for several years, and now I want to raise my own kids. There’s simply no other “truth” or way to say it. I absolutely don’t want someone else raising my kids. I would never dream of it.
The last few months alone have been magical. We did things like planting, growing and harvesting several bushels of vegetables in our raised garden beds — which we built ourselves. (Our freezers are full of tomato sauces and pestos we made from scratch!) The very idea of my kids missing out on that kind of childhood makes me want to cry.
The idea of doing that sh$t makes
Me want to cry. Let’s celebrate being different. Some moms are out there getting paid $$$$$ per hour, and their time is incredibly valuable for their families’ resources and future. It’s also incredibly important to me that my daughters have autonomy and aren’t at home making pesto.
Unless they want to make pesto. But I make pesto on my days off. Like many other women I’ve also managed to hold down a very tough very high paid job while raising three kids for 15 years and be there for a huge chunk of the day. The times we spent apart due to school and activities and sometimes child care were great for my kids and for me and now they’re older I still have a career. I wouldn’t miss that time. I wouldn’t call some “months” at home with my kids some great departure from what most working moms do, either. Is someone else “raising” your kids when they go to school? Nope, right? Come on now.
Anonymous
10/12/2024 23:52
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Anonymous wrote:NP. It’s not meant to be offensive. If you find it so, that’s on you. I was an elementary and middle school teacher for several years, and now I want to raise my own kids. There’s simply no other “truth” or way to say it. I absolutely don’t want someone else raising my kids. I would never dream of it.
The last few months alone have been magical. We did things like planting, growing and harvesting several bushels of vegetables in our raised garden beds — which we built ourselves. (Our freezers are full of tomato sauces and pestos we made from scratch!) The very idea of my kids missing out on that kind of childhood makes me want to cry.
raising kids =/= caring for kids
Unless everyone SAHP with a WOH spouse would argue that their spouse did not raise their children.
Anonymous
10/12/2024 23:50
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A question for working moms: if you ask a non-working mom "what do you do?" what do you prefer she says? Is there any response we could give that you would approve of? Just curious.
“I stay at home with my kids.”
Why is this a complicated question?
I feel like SAHMs make things super complicated, maybe because they are out of practice in planning and executing complex things. A week’s worth of dinners can’t get cooked without 5 harried trips to the grocery store…
So you get offended that a stay at home mom says she stayed home so her kid didn’t have to be raised by strangers in the early years - probably saying that your chosen community of your daycare was super intentional - and then you go and put down women who choose to stay home with their young children? It’s actually really hard to provide full time care to young children well every day. It’s emotionally and physically and intellectually taxing. And what your comment tells me is that you actually didn’t care about the likely brown and black underpaid women watching your children every day while you worked (your “community”). It tells me you thought the work of taking care of children, including your own child, was beneath you. I’m a full time working mom and I have a ton of respect for the people who provide care to my three children between the ages of 1 and 5 every day and maybe that’s why I’m standing up for stay at home moms. Because it’s hard work and I respect it and I respect them and their decisions.
Posts like this are so bizarre to me. The first nanny we hired worked for us for 7.5 years and grew up 10 minutes from our house. (She also happened to be white, though I'm not.) We must have paid her okay, since she managed to buy a house during that time period.
We are still in touch with her, and I have nothing but respect for her abilities and her intelligence. I'm good at my job, and I think I'm a pretty good parent. But I'm bad at managing a household and some of the day-to-day of childcare. I hire people who are better than me at this. And if DH said this, no one would bat an eye.
That may be your situation but the PP is correct about many families-- 99% of the nannies in my area are immigrant women and none of them are buying houses on their salaries. And the salary issue is interesting-- nannies here make around 50-60k per year, which families view as highway robbery (and indeed it's an incredible amount of money for a family to spend annually on childcare) yet it's also nowhere near enough for someone to be able to save a down payment on a house because housing here is do expensive-- their rent will eat up a lot of their income and what is leftover for savings is not enough to help buy even a modest home. Daycare workers make even less.
Within that context, for a parent to denigrate the work of caring for children as unimportant and dull is incredibly insulting to these women as well as to SAHMs (many of who SAHM specifically because they cannot afford this kind of high quality care do choose instead to perform it themselves). It betrays a troubling attitude about the labor of raising children.
It sounds like you likely live in a different sort of area, one with less expensive housing and overall cost of living, which may change these dynamics.
Keep telling yourself this if it makes you feel better. Or maybe accept that some people who WOH are not terrible parents and also not AHs who think nannies are garbage people incapable of providing quality care to children.
Anonymous
10/12/2024 23:41
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
NP. It’s not meant to be offensive. If you find it so, that’s on you. I was an elementary and middle school teacher for several years, and now I want to raise my own kids. There’s simply no other “truth” or way to say it. I absolutely don’t want someone else raising my kids. I would never dream of it.
The last few months alone have been magical. We did things like planting, growing and harvesting several bushels of vegetables in our raised garden beds — which we built ourselves. (Our freezers are full of tomato sauces and pestos we made from scratch!) The very idea of my kids missing out on that kind of childhood makes me want to cry.
The last few months alone have been magical. We did things like planting, growing and harvesting several bushels of vegetables in our raised garden beds — which we built ourselves. (Our freezers are full of tomato sauces and pestos we made from scratch!) The very idea of my kids missing out on that kind of childhood makes me want to cry.
Anonymous
10/12/2024 23:21
Subject: Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:A question for working moms: if you ask a non-working mom "what do you do?" what do you prefer she says? Is there any response we could give that you would approve of? Just curious.
“I stay at home with my kids.”
Why is this a complicated question?
I feel like SAHMs make things super complicated, maybe because they are out of practice in planning and executing complex things. A week’s worth of dinners can’t get cooked without 5 harried trips to the grocery store…
So you get offended that a stay at home mom says she stayed home so her kid didn’t have to be raised by strangers in the early years - probably saying that your chosen community of your daycare was super intentional - and then you go and put down women who choose to stay home with their young children? It’s actually really hard to provide full time care to young children well every day. It’s emotionally and physically and intellectually taxing. And what your comment tells me is that you actually didn’t care about the likely brown and black underpaid women watching your children every day while you worked (your “community”). It tells me you thought the work of taking care of children, including your own child, was beneath you. I’m a full time working mom and I have a ton of respect for the people who provide care to my three children between the ages of 1 and 5 every day and maybe that’s why I’m standing up for stay at home moms. Because it’s hard work and I respect it and I respect them and their decisions.
Posts like this are so bizarre to me. The first nanny we hired worked for us for 7.5 years and grew up 10 minutes from our house. (She also happened to be white, though I'm not.) We must have paid her okay, since she managed to buy a house during that time period.
We are still in touch with her, and I have nothing but respect for her abilities and her intelligence. I'm good at my job, and I think I'm a pretty good parent. But I'm bad at managing a household and some of the day-to-day of childcare. I hire people who are better than me at this. And if DH said this, no one would bat an eye.
That may be your situation but the PP is correct about many families-- 99% of the nannies in my area are immigrant women and none of them are buying houses on their salaries. And the salary issue is interesting-- nannies here make around 50-60k per year, which families view as highway robbery (and indeed it's an incredible amount of money for a family to spend annually on childcare) yet it's also nowhere near enough for someone to be able to save a down payment on a house because housing here is do expensive-- their rent will eat up a lot of their income and what is leftover for savings is not enough to help buy even a modest home. Daycare workers make even less.
Within that context, for a parent to denigrate the work of caring for children as unimportant and dull is incredibly insulting to these women as well as to SAHMs (many of who SAHM specifically because they cannot afford this kind of high quality care do choose instead to perform it themselves). It betrays a troubling attitude about the labor of raising children.
It sounds like you likely live in a different sort of area, one with less expensive housing and overall cost of living, which may change these dynamics.