WHAT ARE OUR CHILDREN THINKING?

cassandra

Wed, May 28 2008, 5:24 pm

marina wrote:

Actually, I really don't want my kids to think they ALWAYS come first. In my experience, that's how I will get bratty children, if I teach them that their needs and wants supercede everyone else's. Of course, my children know that all decisions that I make, from what I buy for supper to where we live, are based on what is best for them. But to worry that they might think they do not come first because I have a report to work on tonight or a phone conversation that I need to take care of? That is part of life. You are not going to always come first and you should not expect to. (This does not apply if you are under one year of age.)

I don't agree. I don't think kids need to feel that they come first on a minute to minute basis, but they should feel like at least one of their parents is there for them most of the time to the exclusion of everything else. That helps their self-esteem. A child feeling like he is the most important thing to his parent does not preclude structure and discipline. My kids learn they can't always get what they want or have my full attention, but at least they know I'm there. It's a certain sense of security that you can give your kids that you can't give them if you work.

And honestly, the brattiest kids I know are the ones whose parents work because they rule their babysitters and then get bought off by their parents who are juggling more than they can handle.

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I am happy to elaborate. No, I do not mean we will all turn into superwomen. I just mean that if something is not okay in, say, motherhood, you will draw strength from the other area to help you in motherhood and vise-versa. So say that my 7 year old is going through a rough patch at school and has been suspended from school. If my estimation of myself as a person is intimately tied into my success as a mom, I will be very upset. I will feel like a total failure as a person. On the other hand, if I am also nurse and helped a new mother deliver a healthy child that day, I will consider myself capable and not fall into a funk. Instead I will brainstorm and problem solve what to do with my 7 year old just like I do when problems come up at work. Same with wife roles and other roles. I have seen this with my friends often. Those who put all their eggs in one basket often lose it when some of the eggs don't work out as well as they hoped.

Again, if you define your self worth by what you do then you are in trouble, no matter how you spend your time. I stay at home with my kids but I don't define myself as a mother. That's silly and unhealthy, but unfortunately all too common. But getting a job is just a band-aid solution to that problem. A person who will feel like a failure for these reasons needs to work on their core self-esteem issues.

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And yes, I agree that developing many facets of your personality does not have to be accomplished by going to work and can be done through other means, volunteering, hobbies, etc. But all of these require time away from the children, usually.

Time away, yes. But there is no added responsibility, and that is key.

marina

Wed, May 28 2008, 6:03 pm

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My kids learn they can't always get what they want or have my full attention, but at least they know I'm there. It's a certain sense of security that you can give your kids that you can't give them if you work.

How does this security manifest itself, do you think? Like say my kids and your kids met up for a playdate, how would an objective observer tell the difference between the one who has a SAHM and the one who doesn't? Would it be confidence? Sharing? Interpersonal skills? Academic prowess?

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And honestly, the brattiest kids I know are the ones whose parents work because they rule their babysitters and then get bought off by their parents who are juggling more than they can handle

Yes, I know these kids and their parents too. But truth be told, these parents would probably be the same way even if they both stayed home. It's about parenting skills, mostly. Okay, to be honest, I will have to exclude situations in which parents work 20 hours a day and so on.

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I stay at home with my kids but I don't define myself as a mother. That's silly and unhealthy, but unfortunately all too common

Interesting. How do you pull that off? How do you define yourself then? I define myself by what I do all day, whether that's parenting or my work or something else that I am accomplishing. How else can I define myself?

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Time away, yes. But there is no added responsibility, and that is key

I don't know what you mean. Is it that you don't "bring work home?" Because there are plenty of jobs where you don't bring work home and there are plenty of volunteer obligations where you do "bring work home."

cassandra

Wed, May 28 2008, 6:22 pm

marina wrote:

I don't think it's any of those things, and I'm not sure you'd be able to tell among individual kids. It's a feeling that they have, and if your primary goals for your children are to have them be confident, have good interpersonal skills, and do well in school then it may not matter. I want my kids to feel safe and loved to the greatest extent possible. To me that is an end in itself. Since I don't need to work for the money I choose to stay home because by being here I make them feel secure to the greatest extent possible. I am willing to sacrifice a few years of intellectual stimulation for this goal.

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Yes, I know these kids and their parents too. But truth be told, these parents would probably be the same way even if they both stayed home. It's about parenting skills, mostly.

It sounds like you are saying that the mothers who work for their own stimulation are bad parents anyway. Maybe the working is part of it? If they were less self-absorbed they would choose to stay home despite having to give up certain things?

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By the kind of person you are. That has nothing to do with the job you do. What will you be if you become disabled and can't work anymore? Who will you be when you retire? You are right that if you define yourself by what you do then you need to work. I personally think it's a sad way to approach life.

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True, a volunteer obligation that required you to be out of the house at certain specific times or bring work home isn't ideal either. What I mean is that you are there for your kids and you can work your own "breathing time" around them rather than having a job where you have to be in a certain place at a certain time doing a specific thing. I guess people who have jobs that are completely flexible have it best, but most people do not have this luxury, and even those people often have a clash between work and their kids. I just think kids are better off if it is at all possible to have one parent who doesn't have to straddle the line between work and home.

marina

Wed, May 28 2008, 6:51 pm

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if your primary goals for your children are to have them be confident, have good interpersonal skills, and do well in school then it may not matter.

No, I don't know that those are my primary goals for my children. Although they are not bad goals, I did not write those examples to reflect any goals. I just want to know how being a SAHM will reliably and tangibly influence my children for the better. Say that they feel safe and loved more than Susie and Johnny next door whose mom goes to work, this will translate into what?

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To me that is an end in itself

I don't know if this is true for you, but sometimes people say this type of thing when they really mean to say "Society has conditioned me to believe that better parents stay home with their kids and so I will stay home with my kids so I can view myself as a better parent."

If that is the case for you, that is fine, I find myself there too often, although not about the SAHM issue, more about healthy food or academics or middos.
Otherwise, I'm not clear on what it means that this is an end in itself. Maybe you can clarify.

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Au contraire. The people who have bratty kids who rule the babysitters- those people just don't have enough parenting skill sets and would have those same child-rearing problems if they stayed home with their children. It is possible that working exacerbates the problem in some cases.

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By the kind of person you are. That has nothing to do with the job you do.

I am a kind, smart, funny, creative person. Humble too. There are many millions of people out there just like me. So that's not really defining myself.

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What will you be if you become disabled and can't work anymore? Who will you be when you retire?

If I become disabled, I will take up a hobby or write a book or something. If I become a quadriplegic, I will probably need to think of some way not to get depressed. I imagine most people in that position go through depression for these very same reasons, their sense of self-definition is permanently altered.

How do you define yourself? What kind of person are you that makes you different than the other SAHM who are smart and witty and write well?

ora_43

Mon, Jun 02 2008, 9:30 am

friedasima--
I'm not disputing that many women need to work. In fact, I fall into the category you're talking about, namely, any woman in Israel who marries a guy under the age of 25 or 26 and then has to work while he finishes school (or vice versa).

I just disagree about how easy it is to find childcare, and the quality of that childcare. As a young woman working, I can tell you that I and most of my friends are not making the kind of money to get a private babysitter/nanny in our homes. So automatically, best case scenario we can find a good maon. I don't know what maon used to cost, but these days a good one can be easily a third of your salary. And while jobs tend to go from 8-4, maon tends to go from 8:30-3 making private babysitting a necessity as well. If you have the typical young-mother job (secretary, teacher, social worker, typist, etc), by the time you have two kids your take-home pay after daycare is under minimum wage--if you have three kids, you're paying to work...

Honestly this doesn't have very much to do with the original discussion. I just got caught up in the mention of daycare in Israel because it's a topic that's been on my mind a lot. Personally I've made it work (mostly) by working strange hours so that I can avoid full-time daycare. Most of the young mothers I know have done the same thing, and work evenings or have taken low-paying jobs that are baby-friendly. In the long run it saves money, and means moms and kids get more time together.

As for stay at home moms, I think you're blaming things on being a SAHM that aren't really linked. A woman with 8 children ages 10 and under will almost always find it doesn't pay for her to work, or barely pays. If she gets home at 4 with the kids she won't have to clean up a mess they made, but she'll still have all of the day's laundry and cooking and regular cleaning and errands to do. In other words the situation in the case you're discussing is hard for a lot of reasons, the macho husband who (I assume) isn't making much money... the many kids which apparently is something she found overwhelming... her inability to keep up her job skills on her own... these are not problems inherent to being a SAHM, they are issues unique to this situation. You are picking a very extreme case to illustrate "SAHM," one that in my experience is not at all the norm.

freidasima

Mon, Jun 02 2008, 1:48 pm

Ora I agree with you about the fact that my friends' situation is unique, but it wasn't before she had so many children...and it was her husband who forced her to be a SAHM something she regrets horribly until today. But that's another story.

Maon only from 8:30-3? That defeats the purpose of maonot. In my day the emunah and naamat and wizo meonot were ALL from 7 to at least 4 and you could pay more and have until 4:30 and sometimes 5. All ganim in my area were from 7-1 and you could pay for tzaharon at the gan until 4-5 so we all had good childcare even if we didn't use a metapelet...