Anonymous wrote:RE: how many of us have a mother or MIL who never worked outside the home in her lifetime?

It's such different world than raising kids 30 years ago. In our case my mother stayed home and my MIL pretty much stayed home but taught ESOL (def not called that in the 1980s) part-time.

We have two small kids. I have found that the BIGGEST CHANGE between the generations are with the FATHERS. Fathers in America have to be way more involved in parenting and running a household than "back in the day." An educated, career-oriented wife would not put up with the likes of DH and the kids being waited on 24/7.

The problem is not Grandma wasn't working full-time, it is Grandpa not being a 2016 role-model husband or father. So unless your DH speaks with a range of peers, co-workers, cousins, siblings on how to work out managing a household in this day and age, his father figure won't be of much help. Could even be a huge negative, depending on how clueless your DH is.

30 years ago? Like, 1986? Hardly the Stone Age. Most moms in 1986 were born well into the Boomer generation. They were the people on Thirtysomething, not Archie and Edith.

Anonymous wrote:RE: how many of us have a mother or MIL who never worked outside the home in her lifetime?

It's such different world than raising kids 30 years ago. In our case my mother stayed home and my MIL pretty much stayed home but taught ESOL (def not called that in the 1980s) part-time.

We have two small kids. I have found that the BIGGEST CHANGE between the generations are with the FATHERS. Fathers in America have to be way more involved in parenting and running a household than "back in the day." An educated, career-oriented wife would not put up with the likes of DH and the kids being waited on 24/7.

The problem is not Grandma wasn't working full-time, it is Grandpa not being a 2016 role-model husband or father. So unless your DH speaks with a range of peers, co-workers, cousins, siblings on how to work out managing a household in this day and age, his father figure won't be of much help. Could even be a huge negative, depending on how clueless your DH is.

I don't know. These days married couples both usually work before they have kids. They have two careers, housework, meal preparation, bills, laundry, yard work, in laws, etc before they have kids. So by the time the kids come along they have a division of labor pretty well established and they also have an idea as to how they are going to handle childcare together.

If they remain clueless they are willfully so.

Anonymous wrote:It's a class thing and a generational thing. Poor women have always worked. Women n their 70s married to an attorney ? It was a status thing back then. They are the same women who started the " women's movement " giving women the right to work.

+1 My grandmothers both worked, both working class -- one inner city, one rural. One was a wife of an unreliable alcoholic who then left her a widow with two young children. She worked in the cafeteria of a large corporation for many years. My other grandma ran the family farm after she was widowed during the Depression, left with three young children. My mom worked as a secretary from age 18-25 (no college - not an expectation for working class girls in her neighborhood), quit when she got married, was a SAHM for 16 yrs, and then worked for almost 20 years, again in secretarial positions.

My mom has been supportive of both my time as a SAHM, my return to work, and my sister being a WOHM all the time that she's had kids. Different choices make sense for different people at different times.

I don't know anyone who never worked, but I know a lot of people who worked, then stayed at home, and some who eventually returned to work.

Many paths in life.

Anonymous wrote:RE: how many of us have a mother or MIL who never worked outside the home in her lifetime?

It's such different world than raising kids 30 years ago. In our case my mother stayed home and my MIL pretty much stayed home but taught ESOL (def not called that in the 1980s) part-time.

We have two small kids. I have found that the BIGGEST CHANGE between the generations are with the FATHERS. Fathers in America have to be way more involved in parenting and running a household than "back in the day." An educated, career-oriented wife would not put up with the likes of DH and the kids being waited on 24/7.

The problem is not Grandma wasn't working full-time, it is Grandpa not being a 2016 role-model husband or father. So unless your DH speaks with a range of peers, co-workers, cousins, siblings on how to work out managing a household in this day and age, his father figure won't be of much help. Could even be a huge negative, depending on how clueless your DH is.

I think everyone is just multi-tasking more.
Women are now working FT and doing house stuff.
Men are now doing house stuff and working FT.
Probably results in the need for more and better verbal communication.
Neither sets of our parents are in a positive to give us advice or set an example for our current, 2 kids/ 2 working parents/ nanny situation.

RE: how many of us have a mother or MIL who never worked outside the home in her lifetime?

It's such different world than raising kids 30 years ago. In our case my mother stayed home and my MIL pretty much stayed home but taught ESOL (def not called that in the 1980s) part-time.

We have two small kids. I have found that the BIGGEST CHANGE between the generations are with the FATHERS. Fathers in America have to be way more involved in parenting and running a household than "back in the day." An educated, career-oriented wife would not put up with the likes of DH and the kids being waited on 24/7.

The problem is not Grandma wasn't working full-time, it is Grandpa not being a 2016 role-model husband or father. So unless your DH speaks with a range of peers, co-workers, cousins, siblings on how to work out managing a household in this day and age, his father figure won't be of much help. Could even be a huge negative, depending on how clueless your DH is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds as though your mom may have been depressed?

Yep, I think she was/is, and it's kind of funny (not in the ha-ha way) that she was getting a masters in psychology but refuses to admit to her depression.

Some folks go into Psychology hoping to understand themselves better.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did she not raise the fine man that you are married to?

No, but she hired the best nanny that money could buy.

Then she had the good sense to hire a freakin' fantastic nanny. You really do not want to give this lady credit for any part of raising her son? Is that true?

Anonymous wrote:No one hates on the life choices of women more than other women. Most of you need to get over yourselves and stop judging the choices others make in their lives.

How is "being rich enough to not have to work" a "life choice"?

Anonymous wrote:It sounds as though your mom may have been depressed?

Yep, I think she was/is, and it's kind of funny (not in the ha-ha way) that she was getting a masters in psychology but refuses to admit to her depression.

Anonymous wrote:Did she not raise the fine man that you are married to?

No, but she hired the best nanny that money could buy.

Nope. My mom was a nurse; my MIL was a legal secretary.

I don't have a grandmother who never worked either. One grandmother ran her own business. The other grandmother was a cleaning lady. All of my great-grandmothers were farmers.

The SAHM/WOHM debate is strictly for upper middle class families. It's a shining example of a first world problem.

No one hates on the life choices of women more than other women. Most of you need to get over yourselves and stop judging the choices others make in their lives.

It sounds as though your mom may have been depressed?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mother tried a few half-hearted jobs but never really had a career. I hated it and always wished she worked. She was outrageously suffocating and just a total drag on the family. It got to the point that when I was a teen my brother and I told our dad we'd support him if he wanted to divorce her.

She's like the perfect example of everything NOT to do as a SAHM.

+1. My mom never worked. It was just because she was lazy, not because she cared about raising fine children. She now gets along with no one, takes everything as a personal insult. She's never been forced to get along with personalities as a result of work environment or anything of the sort. Also things like "having to go to an appointment" is a huge ordeal for her because she has to be somewhere at a certain time and it screws up her schedule of nothingness and tv shows.

I worked for many years before I had kids but my kids have no memory of me working because I stopped working after they were born. Does it matter that I ever worked if they never saw me working?

I'm the bolded poster. My mom had my older sibling when she was 24. She worked at the nursery school we went to for a couple of years. She was getting her Masters degree at night when I was in elementary school but stopped before graduating. She substitute taught here and there. I loved that, because kids behaved HORRIBLY for subs and then she'd come home and think we were WONDERFULLY behaved with all our "please" and "thank you" manners. Every time she subbed she'd come home at like, 3:45 and collapse on the sofa and we'd bring her an ice and Coke and sit in the floor listening to her complain about how disorganized the school was, how she got lost, the bad behavior of the kids, how exhausted she was.

Being an adult now who works, I know that when you start a new job, there's a ramp-up period of about a week, where you ARE exhausted when you get home - meeting new people, learning where everything is, getting up to speed on procedures, etc. But after the first week you find your groove. I think because my mother only worked one or two days here, and then two days there, she never completed that ramp up period. When she wasn't working, she was sleeping and leaving us notes of what to do around the house and what time to wake her (15 minutes before Daddy gets home!) which let her imply to him that she'd been up all day accomplishing things.

At this point she's 65, my dad is 68 and still working, and my mom hasn't worked at ALL since 1990. Her ability to accomplish anything on a deadline is nil. Literally. I was once meeting her in my city, for dinner. She was staying at a hotel two blocks away. I was coming from three miles away. I got there five minutes early. She was a half hour late. I was coming from work. She'd ... been napping all day (no jet lag). She's ALWAYS late, because there's zero sense of urgency. I just have very little respect for her. She's a total homebody, hasn't driven in over a dozen years so relies on my father to take her everywhere, and has minimal social skills. Last year at a dinner with other people, she told stories about me that involved a bathroom. People could be talking to her and she'll yawn and literally nod off right in front of their faces.

Oddly, she judges my SIL and brother for having a nanny for their baby. As if she was some great stay at home mom. Yet my mother never made my lunch for me. Never made my breakfast for me. There were never freshly baked cookies coming out of the oven as I came home from school. She went on two of my school field trips. I was rarely allowed to have friends over (fewer than ten times in my entire childhood). I grew up watching Donahue and As the World Turns because she watched it. She didn't do laundry. She didn't cook dinner. She didn't clean. Didn't ever put gas in her car. Never raked leaves or shoveled snow.