"Working mothers choose to work--they don't have to"

[JesusFightClub]

My brother is a single parent, because the mother of his kid is dead. The wean goes to daycare 5x per week because strangely he needs to provide for them, which involves having a job and earning money.

It makes me so angry when people judge mums and dads for arranging their family lifestyle and work the best way it suits them. What business is it of such onlookers?

I bet the vast, vast majority of FJists are stellar mums and dads. Intelligent, engaged and happy. One of the things which makes me saddest about fundies is their relationship or lack thereof with their kids. Since they can't admit some women aren't suited to motherhood, you get phenomenon like Bathroom Baby and Emily and Dna.

[CanticleoftheTurning]

Canticle, my son is EXHAUSTING. He's hyperactive, but we didn't know that when he was a toddler - just that he had to be watched every single minute, couldn't be confined easily (started vaulting out of the crib around 9 months, before he could even walk), didn't sleep well, and because of his sensory issues had a lot of inexplicable bouts of unhappiness (once he could talk they turned out to be from things like the bumps inside his socks and distracting noises or motion)

So, one of the reasons we chose a center over a home day care was that I wanted the caretakers to ALWAYS have a backup. Knowing how much I loved him and how short of patience I was by the end of a day with him, I wanted him to be in a place where any adult who was on her last nerve with him could hand him off to someone else - and that's exactly what he did, he bounced back and forth between the two rooms with different teachers, on days when one couldn't handle him constructively all day.

And, also, I could tell that he was loved. Not by every other kid and not by every teacher, but about the same ratio as inside our extended family :)

Thanks again to people for sharing their daycare stories--it still is helping. I don't know why listening to a bunch of strangers on the internet is helping me feel better about needing day care in the future, but it is :D

Rosa, does your son have sensory integration disorder, then? DH has it too, and in particular is sensitive to tactile annoyances. He wasn't hyper at least, from what I hear--his parents say he was born a little old man so I presume he sat around and yelled for people to get off his lawn at 3 years old, lol.

[apple1]

... So when SAHMs tell me that they are working the hardest job in the world, I get bitchy thoughts.

This statement always made me think, "Exactly what part of that hardest job in the world do I NOT have just because I work outside the home?" No less laundry, no less meals, no less cleaning, no less homework management, no less bill paying... IYKWIM. Still confuses me.

[apple1]

duplicate post - sorry

[Rosa]

...maybe? Our insurance doesn't cover any sensory issue treatment, and the diagnosis was iffy anyway - his pediatrician, physical therapist, and shrink didn't agree. In any case, we did some pt (and more at home) and did daily brushing for about 5 months, and he got older, and now he's got way less sensory issues.

Also I think all the talk about it made kiddo deliberately work through some of them. He spent a lot of time this spring walking barefoot on surfaces he hated, til he could cope.

His dad DEFINITELY has sensory integration issues. One of the big symptoms is feeling tickling as pain, and his dad has that all over his body, and will walk outside in socks rather than get grit or grass on his bare feet.

[annalena]

People over here tend to tell everyone "Private daycare, if anything!! Not ever a public daycare!"

Yeah right. I sure would chose

- a single person who could get sick

- with no professional training (it's an apprenticeship here that you need to have in order to work in a public daycare)

- in a private, probably not very child- appropriate environment

- with no supervision

over a public daycare with usually at least 5 people who've had professional training, public access, an environment that is made for children, fixed schedules.

Yeah, right.

[Clementine]

Last night I was talking to my (fundy) family about babies and how much my mother likes them and half-joked that she'd love to work at a daycare--all that holding and playing with babies. My brother mentioned that that's so, except for how my mother feels about daycares. My mother came in at this point to sort of agree. She rather disapproves that daycare has to exist. She says she's glad care is available for kids whose mothers 'choose to work'. I raised my eyebrow and she explained that 'if she had had different values she'd have thought she 'had' to work too' but instead of her working they made sacrifices, living in a single-room apartment, renting bedrooms from relatives, etc. Apparently she thinks that since she made it work, everyone else can too.

Who wants to live in a single-room apartment with kids or rent a bedroom from a relative? Not me! I'd do anything, including _working outside the home_ to not end up in that situation. I do not believe that a SAHM who has to count every penny, live under horrible conditions or can my homegrown crop is the best mother for a child.

I like to have a comfortable life and be able to travel and purchase the necessities and more than that. I also like to have my own savings account, my own retirement plan and the knowledge that I can support myself and not depend on a man and have to submit to his every whim because I'd be homeless without him.

This is 2011, not 1811.

[apple1]

There is nothing wrong with canning homegrown crops. Actually, it's a great thing for those who can do it.

Of course, it would be a problem if it cannot be supplemented with needed foods to make a balanced diet.

[kayray]

I am not having children, but I can darn well say that if I had chosen to have them, I certainly would be choosing to work. I also see absolutely nothing wrong with those who do choose to work, even if they do not, according to some objective third party "have" to work. Working is about much more than an income I enjoy my career, have worked hard to get here, and would have no desire to stay at home. I find personal fulfillment in my work, as well as independence, confidence, and my curiosity and passion for learning and intelligent adult interaction are also satisfied. However, I also would be required to work in the sense I am the main breadwinner in my family. I also would want a comfortable life where we were financially stable and had financial freedom.

My mother was a working mother, and I have tremendous respect for her for doing as well in her career as she has, even with three kids (and a single parent during many of those years). She is very high up in her career, and started from near the bottom. I am proud of her. Sometimes I know she wished she had stayed at home longer with my younger siblings (my dad leaving did not allow that to happen) but I am so glad she has a career she enjoys. Oh, and she was still a mother who had to raise her children and do all the same things stay-at-home mothers do (like laundry, homework, errands, cooking, etc).

I totally recommend the book The Feminine Mistake to anyone who is interested in something a bit more empowering to women working outside the home (it talks about the more recent trend again for women to stay at home again, and the detriment it is in creating dependence and removing them from the work force).

[Rosa]

There is nothing wrong with canning homegrown crops. Actually, it's a great thing for those who can do it.

Of course, it would be a problem if it cannot be supplemented with needed foods to make a balanced diet.

I didn't get to can when I was a SAHM because I had to, you know, pay attention to the baby. Now, lacking J'slaves, to get canning done either his dad takes him to play outside or at the zoo, or I use the TV as a babysitter.

Doing things with big vats of boiling water isn't conducive to having a baby underfoot - much less so than paid jobs I've had (like technical editing - I didn't get much done while parenting at the same time, but it wasn't actively dangerous for him to be in here bothering me while I worked on the computer.)

[ilovetchotchkes]

I didn't get to can when I was a SAHM because I had to, you know, pay attention to the baby. Now, lacking J'slaves, to get canning done either his dad takes him to play outside or at the zoo, or I use the TV as a babysitter.

Doing things with big vats of boiling water isn't conducive to having a baby underfoot - much less so than paid jobs I've had (like technical editing - I didn't get much done while parenting at the same time, but it wasn't actively dangerous for him to be in here bothering me while I worked on the computer.)

My toddler logged a lot of "elmo" time when I was putting away my garden. I put a baby gate across the kitchen door and kept an eye on him the entire time. And I used a steam canner so its not like it was a huge pot. However, my toddler was TICKLED to sit and watch the exploits of big bird, ernie and grover. Some kids would want to be with mom, making such a task impossible. I would do it in spurts, cut up everything and put it in the jars and if he was especially clingy wait til nap time to boil the water.

I have no idea what I'm going to do this coming summer. I will have a newborn at th beginning of August if all goes well.

Tending the garden w him was easy, as I allowed him to eat as many tomatoes as he wanted. He would help me water, weed and he had his own little tykes playhouse tha kept him occupied.

[mbeezer]

Count me in as another mom who "has" to work. Both my kids are adults now and I have worked their whole lives. It was never an option for me to stay home because of the cost of living in our area (suburban DC). I would have loved to stay home with my kids until they were in school, but it didn't work out. My daughter's father walked out on us when she was 6 months old and I didn't marry until she was 9. When my son was born I was able to stay home with him for a year and then back to work.

As far as daycare goes, my daughter did very well and made many friends. It was a disaster for my son. He hated every minute of it and he was hard to handle. More than once we were invited to take our business elsewhere. My husband and I argued quite a bit during that time and he refused to see that day care wasn't a good fit for our son, he was just obsessed with having two incomes. Of course now that the kids are grown he agrees with me! Gee thanks.

I firmly believe in a woman's right to choose whether to work or not. For me it was never an option to be a SAHM. If I did have a choice my unhappy little boy would have stayed homne with me.

[2xx1xy1JD]

I find the whole issue of "choice" to be a red herring, personally.

Why is making a choice a bad thing, exactly?

Sure, we make choices in life. Everybody does. Own it.

If I hadn't gone back to work after baby #1 was born, I would have had to make other choices - move into a building with less security and more crack and cockroaches, run up debt until we'd max out, eat nothing but white carbs and donations, have hubby moonlight on top of the 80-100 hours per week that he was already working, etc.

Now, some people do make extreme choices in their quest to stay at home. They may rarely see a husband who works 2 or 3 jobs, they may live in substandard housing, they may skip proper medical and dental care, they may pop out babies that they don't have the physical or emotionally ability to raise like AD's mother did, they may feed their kids corn meant for animal feed and tins of cat food like the Pearls did, they may choose to have an unattended homebirth in a shack without running water like one couple described on the Pearl's website.....

These are all choices.

The better question is "how do we decide between various choices?" For me, the answer was to gather all the information and evaluate what would be the best option for my child(ren) and my family, taking into consideration what my child would be doing 24/7, and with both parents.

I didn't think that it made sense to concentrate on only one parent, or to only consider what was happening from 9-5, Monday to Friday.

I didn't make any automatic assumption that I was the only one who could ever provide care for my child. Yes, time with me was important, and bedtime was especially so, but I'm not the best at teaching, or art, or music, or running around and playing.

I also didn't place a high value on time spent where I may be physically present in the home with my child but mentally absent. I tried that for a few days with baby #1, when I had to suddenly do a ton of accounting while on mat leave, and Baby was not impressed.

[emmiedahl]

Choice is what this comes down to. Parents should make their choices based on an analysis of the benefits and drawbacks compared with their own values.

If you need extreme isolation in order to pass on cult-like religious beliefs, then obviously daycare will be a non-option. If you need for your wife to be economically helpless in order to keep her in a crappy patriarchal marriage, then of course two incomes are not an option. But most of us do not have these specialized needs. Daycare and second incomes come at a high cost to whack-jobs; for most of us, they are viable decisions.

[IReallyAmHopewell]

Theoretically working IS a choice.......of course it's a choice between starving/homelessness and working but it IS a choice!

[changemanagement]

Re Childcare:

Once I knew I was returning to work, it was time to find day care for my child. I asked people I knew for recommendations. We ended up at a private licensed home. The lady and her two adult daughters were licensed by the state. The lady had been doing day care for over 20 years. She was fabulous.

The back yard looked like a childrens wonderland. She had 2 rooms set up as class rooms. She had breakfast ready when I dropped my kid off every morning. I was jealous. The homemade muffins were as big as my head!!

The lady took the kids out to lunch in a limosine for her birthday. There never more than 4 children at any time. My daughter ws there from 6 months until she was 4 years old, when she started pre-K.

My best advice is to ask around, and visit and interview. You need to find a provider that makes you comfortable and makes your child comfortable.

[desertvixen]

This statement always made me think, "Exactly what part of that hardest job in the world do I NOT have just because I work outside the home?" No less laundry, no less meals, no less cleaning, no less homework management, no less bill paying... IYKWIM. Still confuses me.

Not to mention those of us doing it without partners... I have times when I want to strangle my male co-workers (most of whom are good guys and engaged with their families) because I do everything they do and that their wives do.

As far as daycare centers/providers, like anything else major, you have to research it and go with a little gut feeling. My daughter went to daycare at just over 2 months (military doesn't give that much maternity leave) and the place was awesome, the people were wonderful. She was there for just about 2 years, and only when they changed management did we start to have any issues. While I was deployed, and she lived with my parents, they found a wonderful place.

Now I have her in a home environment but 1) the military system polices these up pretty closely 2) my day care is literally across the street, which is awesome at 0500 3) friendship with provider. It also cost me about 10K this year. But too, with my current job and hours, the on post center would be inadequate. Not sure what we'll do this next time.

[Feberin]

As far as daycare centers/providers, like anything else major, you have to research it and go with a little gut feeling.

Definately research and look into many options. Also remember unfortunately you get what you pay for in many cases. We went with a low cost option of a in home daycare run by next door neighbor and I was very unhappy with her.. I'd looked at a center and while it was clean and full of educational opportunities for the older kids and lots of fun toys for the little ones the staff seemed to have a lot of turnover and they closed for snow days just like the schools, which would have left us in the lurch frequently since around here the schools close at the drop of a hat. I wish I'd toured multiple centers but I kinda just too that as what to expect at a center. My next door neighbor's husband is a screamer. We can hear him screaming at his wife and kids while we were home at night. But we reasoned he wouldn't be home during the day so no big deal. While in her care she left my son alone to take her kids to the bus stop, which is several houses down at the end of the street. My husband found her and her kids without my son and was none to happy. We considered switching at that point but thought I wouldn't be working for much longer but his job crazyness just dragged on for longer. She was also unable to give me a schedule and when I demanded one after months of asking gave me a long run on paragraph that didn't make sense and just listed random things they did but no times or order. She didn't see naps as a priority and my six month old would come home exhausted because they were too busy playing so he hadn't napped all day and would promptly fall asleep at home, which messed with his nighttime sleep schedule. He didn't sleep through the night until a week after I stopped working and has barely woken up since. But she did use cloth diaper and fed him pumped breastmilk for eighteen months. He was never hurt and his face lit up whenever he saw her. She did get very upset when we stopped using her (even though we repeatedly said that the plan was for me to be at home once we could afford it) and my son was the only child she watched full time (she watched one part time and had three kids). She also would let me know last minute about week long vacations and when I told her that I would soon be staying at home in like another month or so she put in her two weeks notice forcing me to leave work sooner. So overall I did not like our daycare situation but even in a not ideal situation my son was never abused although I felt she was neglecting him when leaving him home alone. If I had to choose again I would go with a center just because there is more oversight or with somebody who ran a larger home daycare with an extra person and a dedicated space (mine just used the normal rooms of her house). Here is a blog I stumbled upon about a woman who does in home daycare and sounds amazing! http://daycaredaze.wordpress.com/

[fakepigtails73]

Where I live daycare cost $7 a day per child the rest being paid by the "evil govt." They are very popular and I know people that had to put their kid on a waiting list while the woman was preg. with that child, and that kiddo would go to the daycare after the parental leave (2 yrs for mothers).

When I was kid I went to day care twice a week. The owner was a german matron who smoked like a chimney and parked me in front of the 3-channels TV for the AM, then she fed me alfaghettis or Kraft dinner for lunch, then nap, then I did a puzzle that missed pieces.

Daycares have come a long way since!! :lol

[CanticleoftheTurning]

...maybe? Our insurance doesn't cover any sensory issue treatment, and the diagnosis was iffy anyway - his pediatrician, physical therapist, and shrink didn't agree. In any case, we did some pt (and more at home) and did daily brushing for about 5 months, and he got older, and now he's got way less sensory issues.

Also I think all the talk about it made kiddo deliberately work through some of them. He spent a lot of time this spring walking barefoot on surfaces he hated, til he could cope.

His dad DEFINITELY has sensory integration issues. One of the big symptoms is feeling tickling as pain, and his dad has that all over his body, and will walk outside in socks rather than get grit or grass on his bare feet.

That's what DH has too--he hates to be tickled, and he definitely prefers to wear shoes, and there's other quirks that he has related to sensory integration. He was able to work past a lot of it, too, so the biggest issue with his sensory integration is his dysgraphia. So glad your son is able to work through the worst of his SI issues.

One thing I do know is that people with sensory integration issues tend to be smarter than the average bear, so that's one upside to it ;)

[Clementine]

There is nothing wrong with canning homegrown crops. Actually, it's a great thing for those who can do it.

Of course, it would be a problem if it cannot be supplemented with needed foods to make a balanced diet.

Absolutely. I'm just greatful that I don't have to live like my grandmother did in the 30's: if you didn't grow and can your own vegetables, plus all the mushroom and wild berries you could collect in the woods, you didn't have anything to feed the family with during the winter.

Canning can be a great hobby if you like it, but it doesn't sound so cute if you have to do it because of poverty.

[treemom]

Last night I was talking to my (fundy) family about babies and how much my mother likes them and half-joked that she'd love to work at a daycare--all that holding and playing with babies. My brother mentioned that that's so, except for how my mother feels about daycares. My mother came in at this point to sort of agree. She rather disapproves that daycare has to exist. She says she's glad care is available for kids whose mothers 'choose to work'. I raised my eyebrow and she explained that 'if she had had different values she'd have thought she 'had' to work too' but instead of her working they made sacrifices, living in a single-room apartment, renting bedrooms from relatives, etc. Apparently she thinks that since she made it work, everyone else can too.

WTF does it matter if I choose to work?

I never get the idea that somehow choosing to work even when I can eat food and have a house on one income is so bad.

[treemom]

Ok the idea that working mothers are horrible people and choose to work because they're selfish honestly makes me sick. My step grandmother was abandoned by her first husband when my step uncle was a toddler and she had no support system. She HAD to work. My grandmother managed to scrape up enough money to put herself through business school and then managed to find a job in a small Michigan bank as a teller. The money she made went to paying rent on a small house and other selfish things such as heat so my uncle wouldn't freeze and food so he could eat. And while she was at work my uncle was in day care...however he has really fond memories of his day care provider (especially her dog, a boston terrier!). The decision to work wasn't really chosen by my grandmother, she had to work in order to provide for her child.

Oh, this story has a happy ending. Divorced the husband meet my grandfather (my mother's father) and worked her way up to being VP of the bank :)

But even if she did choose to work so she could travel, save aggressively, and donate to charities wouldn't make her selfish.

Working for money doesn't make anyone selfish. And if it did why aren't Dads judged for 'choosing' to work.

[VeraAnne]

Treemom, I think that a lot of the problem is that when we were growing up there were some truely terrible daycare centers out there. I was sexually assulted by another child at my daycare center, and the adults did nothing to stop it. Come to find out, the little boy who abused me was being abused by his father (not too shocking) but his mother was one of the day care workers!

I think that some people get hung up on the terrible situations and vow to never let their child experience such horror, without realizing that the vast, vast majorities of child care centers are NOT horrible at all. So the judgement of other women choosing to work comes in when they think "How could anyone WANT to send their child to such a horrible place...they must be terrible mothers!" It's all about a skewed perspective about what's really out there in terms of childcare.

[GolightlyGrrl]

Alte claims working women make us poor

http://traditionalchristianityDOTwordpr ... e-us-poor/