At home mom’s should do what they feel, but just know the risks, but life is a risk so throw the dice and live.
It’s pathetic the damage that Betty Friedan and her clan have caused our children, marriage, morals; our country and it’s future.
What intrigues me is the amount of guilt-tripping that each side of this issue tries to do on the other, to rationalize their own choices. No man could get away with demonizing a group of women the way that women do it to each other.
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IMHO, if there is a “flaw” in the system it’s this. If you take a leave of absence or are unemployed for 10 years, you lose all your SS credits.
I worked for 15 years, full time before I had my son and decided to be a stay at home mom when he was born. I stayed home and homeschooled until he went into the dual credit program during high school (so I was unemployed for 15 years.)
When I started back to work, I noticed on the statements that SS sends every so often that once you’ve been out of the work force for 10 years, you lose all your SS credits and you have to start to earn SS credits again (credits that would come into play if you happened to sustain a disability etc.)
I probably wouldn’t have ever paid attention to this, but while I was out of work I was diagnosed with MS. I’m no where near needing to file for disability, I can work just fine. But there are MSers whose disease is more severe than mine.
If they would have been in my same position, they would not be able to receive SS disability even though they had paid in for 15 years prior to deciding to stay home. On the other hand, a young person, just diagnosed that has only paid in for 5 years, could be considered for disability.
My point is, I don’t think it’s right to remove the credits you earned early on in your career, just because you drop out of the work force for a certain period of time.
I never paid attention to Ms. Friedan when her little book came out, early in my adulthood. I thought she was a kook then, and her ideas haven't gotten any better with age. If it weren't for stay at home moms, kids in schools would never be able to go on field trips because of the lack of adult supervision, and those kids' education would suffer because there would be no classroom volunteers available.
Of course, Ms. Bennett would truly be horrified to learn that with our younger two, not only did I stay home, but our kids did, too! We've homeschooled our two younger ones since middle school, and I must say, hubby and I have enjoyed the last six years tremendously because we've come to know the kids SO well, and have enjoyed our time with them. And since they were not immersed in the sometimes brutal, mostly negative, and always smart a$$ed teenage culture in high school, they are much more pleasant kids with whom to spend time.
An attack on men, there, assuming they will just up and leave and that it is reasonable to set your financial plans around failing marriage. Consider the statistics that show 2/3rds of more of divorces are initiated by women. why is that not mentioned? Why not instead advocate make sure such an event *wont* happen by focussing on that relationship right?
And just why should they work instead of being a Mom?
It's always amusing to see uninformed, foolish people ridiculously claim that "at-home-moms" don't WORK!
I was a stay-at-home mom. Enjoyed every minute of it, too.
My sister also happily made the choice to stay at home with her children. Her husband was very supportive. They got married when she was right out of college and had very little work experience. Several years ago he suddenly left her for a gal in her twenties. My sister was devastated because she truly loved the SOB and thought that if she stayed slender and loving this would never happen. She has had a very, very hard struggle financially because she never worked outside the home.
Both of our daughters are looking at this sad situation and thinking carefully. I would not advise my daughter to be a working mother, but I would suggest she keep her hand in something besides diapers. Divorce aside, other things might happen to necessitate that the wife bring in an income—chronic or catastrophic illness, job loss, death, etc.
By Leslie Bennetts
http://personals.yahoo.com/us/static/relationships_home-equity-tango#author
I admit that my husband helps out more than many men, but here’s another news flash: It isn’t because he’s such a fabulously enlightened being. Left to his own devices, he would doubtless park himself in front of the TV like some sitcom male-chauvinist couch potato while I did all the work. The reason Jeremy “helps” as much as he does (an offensive terminology that itself suggests who’s really being held responsible) is simple: He doesn’t have a choice.
FROM THE BEGINNING of our relationship, I made it very clear that I wasn’t going to be any husband’s unpaid servant. If Jeremy wanted to be — and stay — married to me, let alone have kids, he couldn’t stick me with all the boring, mundane stuff nobody wants to do. We were going to share the work, or we were going to forget the whole deal.
Unlike my first husband, who announced after our wedding that he didn’t like the way the French laundry did his shirts and he now expected me, the Wife, to wash and iron all of them, Jeremy recognized both the righteousness of the principle involved and the intransigence of the woman he’d married, and proceeded to pitch in.
~
So how have I accomplished this? By holding my husband’s feet to the fire every single day of our lives, of course.
Yes, dear readers, it’s true: Maintaining some semblance of parity in your marriage requires you to deploy the same kinds of nasty tactics you swore you would never stoop to as a parent but nonetheless found yourself using the minute you actually had a kid. Bribery and punishment work; so do yelling and complaining. Threats are also effective, as long as everyone knows you mean business. With husbands, tender blandishments and nooky are particularly useful, as is the withholding of the aforementioned.
These strategies admittedly take a lot of energy, but not as much as performing all the functions necessary to maintain home and family by yourself. When my husband has lingered too long over the sports section and I’m feeling overwhelmed by the number of errands that must be run, I hand him a list.
“This is what I need you to do today,” I say in a tone of voice that brooks no equivocation. He may moan and groan, but the jobs get done. And while I still have to mastermind the operation — somehow he is never the one who remembers that our son needs new mosquito netting, baseball cleats, and basketball shoes for sleepaway camp — I’m not the only one schlepping around town checking items off the To Do list.
~
The fact that guys, when left to their own devices, rarely rush to offer more toilet-scrubbing and diaper-changing is not in itself surprising. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once observed, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
~
And while I recognize that gender stereotypes are risky, in my experience husbands are a lot like children. They will get away with whatever they can get away with. When you put your foot down and make it clear that you won’t take no for an answer, somehow the kids’ rooms get cleaned, the groceries bought, the laundry folded. It really does work, I promise.
But you don’t have to trust me on that. Try it. Just make sure they know you mean it.
When I was young enough to have kids, I didn't think I'd have been happy being a SAH wife and mom. But I knew plenty of women who were perfectly happy with that choice. Why can't they have what they want, and why can't I have what I want, without the, bashing each other?
I used to live next door to two different SAH mommies who looked down on me for not being a SAH mommy. Sheesh.
We ALL FOUND A WAY TO KEEP OUR KIDS OUT OF DAY CARE (night shifts, not working, working part-time)
OUR KIDS ARE ALL:
Mature
Self-confident
Successful
At home moms should work-I do!
I work harder than most “working” Moms!
My daughter is 15. A month ago she got her first "real" boyfriend.
All thoughts I had about doing something outside the home flew out of my head. Right now I am her confidant, her adviser, her guardian... at the very least, I'm a *presence* that holds her accountable.
She's a very good girl, but I don't trust any teenager. I feel that she needs me now more than ever.
I am 33 male, married with no kids. For the most part, my friends who have wives that are stay at home mom's fit the above quote. All of my friends complain that their wives expect not to have to cook or clean (the have cleaning ladies and go out to dinner or order in), are either fat or have personal trainers, and run up thousands of dollars on credit cards shopping for designer clothes or things they want to decorate the house. Basically, they live a life of luxury, expect to do no work and do not, in any way, fit the traditional role of house wife.
My mom was a stay at home mom and the only thing my dad had to do was go to work and mow the lawn. My mom ran the house and took care of everything else. A woman who does that adds tremendous value to a family. A stay at home mom that feels she is entitled to a life of luxury does not. I think most stay at home moms in my generation do not earn their keep.
Divorce. A husband losing his job. A husband dying. All of those, Bennetts warns, could be catastrophic for a woman and her children. And if the woman decides she'll get back to her career later, once the kids are ready? Stop dreaming, Bennetts says — a woman takes a huge salary hit after a relatively short time of being absent from the work force — that is, if she can get back in at all.
Blissful? Clearly this female has no clue what life is really about.
As far as some catastrophe causing a woman to need a job and she won't be prepared by not working; I should worry about something that's not likely to happen to me? Those are lousy reasons for insisting a woman go out into the workplace.
There's so much wrong with her thinking that it's unreal.
Divorce. A husband losing his job. A husband dying. All of those, Bennetts warns, could be catastrophic for a woman and her children. And if the woman decides she'll get back to her career later, once the kids are ready? Stop dreaming, Bennetts says — a woman takes a huge salary hit after a relatively short time of being absent from the work force — that is, if she can get back in at all.
This author raises a very good point. Girls who either fail to receive an adequate education, or let their marketable skills decline, will have a very tough time re-entering the workplace if they need or wish to. I've told the girls in my high school Sunday School class that they need to be able to be self-reliant, and able to support a family in the event their husbands cannot.
At the same time, there are some careers that are tough to manage if you take time off. I wouldn't recommend someone who really wants to stay at home with her kids go to law school, for instance. Law is tough to stop and pick up again.
Thoughts?