Running a house hold, caring for children, providing personal services to busy professionals; these are real jobs that people hire other people to do. The people who do these jobs earn enough to live on, some doing better than others, but there are a lot of factors at work: Demographics, geographics and marital status.
The job description for any of these positions can be long and open ended. Things happen that need to be taken care of immediately. The necessary skills required for jobs like this are varied, and being able to do one, doesn't automatically mean ability to handle another. In the working world that is. In the world of a stay at home mom, it's all a part of the job.
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Comments
NanciArvizu, The MOM/WOW position description also includes emergency doctor/nurse for the household's animals and people and security specialist in making sure doors and windows are closed and locked.
You can say that again, ALL OF THAT! I left the corporate world, a management position and good money, really good money to become a stay home Mom. Found my way and been doing so ever since, tools like Wizzley here are a few of the good ones in every successful stay at home working at home MOM.
I think, as a male, that prejudice against stay at home mothers is the problem. But the prejudiced ones have to appreciate that stay-at-home mothers have exercised skills. Take an example: when I was eight I fell dangerously ill and was off school for several months. During that time my mother nursed me,with only my father to support her financially, and in North West England he had not the opportunity to get a decent job,so we were poor. My mother budgeted,nursed, cooked and looked after other children at the same time, a multi-skilled role done with little money, while she herself was ill with a chronic condition. And some people think that being a stay at home mother is not evidence of competence. It is proof of survival skills and an indomitable will to survive. Who is more competent than a stay-at home-mother in such circumstances. I must also celebrate my father, whose quiet heroism backed up my mother's devotion and provided the economic basis for its success.
I haven't seen a better presentation of this point of view!! It's not angry or bitter but very objective and true in my mind. I've actually been ashamed in interviews when I admit to being home with the kids for the past 14 years. !!! Ridiculous. But the value of the job is the time spent with the kids if that's your thing and no amount of money can make me regret the supposed lost professional experience. Moms who decide work should not be judged or penalized either.
Self employment has its difficulties, I know, I am self-employed. But it has advantages as well. My mother supplemented our income for a time by baking cakes, though in the end she went into employment, but that was when we were older.
It's an incredibly messed up perception that leads women down a path to ... where? No pay, means no savings, no retirement. How many times has a first wife, who has stayed home with kids for 10 years or so, been replaced by wife #2 - and forced back to work? Or a woman who is widowed with kids still to raise - or not? What about the stay at home all her life wife, who's husband dies in retirement - and his benefits are now gone too? This races women to poverty who have in fact worked their entire lives.
Self- employment... considering the numbers of businesses that are started each year and fail - it's certainly an "easier said than done" kind of thing. Yes, many women "work from home" and bring in some money which benefits the family - doing it part time while raising their families! This type of work is not going to pay the bills, especially if it suddenly becomes the only income.
You are right to say that staying at home with children is work. The problem is that economists in the nineteenth century defined work as being what is done in return for cash, and so many women who looked after children were defined out of the system and were said to not be working. This gave rise to the silly view that work is a male thing. Idiotic!
In Britain some women have been discovering the value of self-employment, as this gives them the control that they need to manage their complex lifestyles. These self-employed women are to be considered as business women and should not be considered second best to career women. After all, a self-employed woman [or man] is the chief executive of their own life.
Women do multi tasks all their life and it is not easy. Moms who want to consider reentering their careers should be given opportunities to work. I hope part time jobs and work from home should become possible in future for mothers who have to look after the family.