working fulltime | Imamother

amother

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 11:05 am

Mrs Bissli wrote:

amother wrote:

amother from 9:05
I was not talking about grocery shopping or other household responsibilities. Rather, about having say 3 kids under 5 when one/two/three of them are sick and you work ft. You can't take sick kids to daycare, not with flu, strep, conjunctivitis or who knows what else as long as they are 1. sick/fall apart/need extra medical care 2. contageous (and that is normally min. 2 days while you take them to a doc and antibiotics kick in).

Either parent takes time off, work from home/make up time, or have someone else (babysitter, grandparents, neighbour you know/trust) stay with the kids.

Can't really think of any other alternatives, like let them roam around by themselves or send the sick kids to nursery, right? Just like any other parenting, you gotta do what you need to do to.

Hello, the post you're referring to specified that there are no grandparents to take over. And you can't take your sick kid to your neighbor - she has kids of her own, no? otherwise, how come she's home at all?

louche

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 11:12 am

You do what you have to do.

1.You learn to simplify. You either live with tarnished silver or you wrap it up and put it away till the kids get older.

2.You compromise: you prefer homemade from scratch, but certain things or at certain times you give in and buy prepared. And you discover to your amazement that your children don't suffer or turn into sociopaths because their Shabbos cookies are from Duncan Hines or from Shoprite.

3.You relax standards: you admire the look of a preschooler in starched and pressed clothing but realize that he can still grow up into a fine and presentable human being even if he does go to cheder in unironed shirts.
Or, if you can't bring yourself to relax your standards, you make the money vs. time tradeoff and pay outsiders to do certain things you don't have time to do yourself. Cleaners need to make a living, too.

4.You get off the competitive mommy track and base your self-esteem on something other than having the cutest birthday party decor or most creative mishloach manos themes on the block. If that makes you a bad mother, you're quite willing to be a bad mother.

5.You learn to strip tasks down to their most basic elements and discard what's not necessary. You will never waste precious time burning the pinfeathers off another piece of chicken if you pull off the skin and cook the chicken nude.

6. You teach your children how to do things for themselves and you will never be their slave. Of course, to do that successfully, you have to go point #3, relaxing standards. Your dd may not make her bed the way you'd like, but the fact that it's made, and by someone other than you, puts you ahead of the game. It also puts dd ahead of the game, because now she has a skill that not all her friends necessarily have.

7. You share and delegate. That this also requires passing step #3 is self-evident. You learn that it's far better to have your color-blind dh dress the little ones in mismatched outfits or put their Shabbos shoes on them midweek than to be stuck dressing all 4 under 4 yourself.

8. You plan everything. On days off from work, you don't have the luxury of idling around half the day while you try to decide what to do, so you make your time count. You plan not one but several activities; you get the kids up, dressed and fed early in the day so you can get out of the house and be the first ones at the museum, finish by lunchtime, and still have time for a science project or art activity or trip to the library in the afternoon.

And so on and so forth.

As to what to do with sick kids when you have no family nearby and you work f/t, you either hire a sitter if you can get one on short notice, or you take off from work. What do people do when they work f/t and THEY get sick? Take the day off, that's what, and the world doesn't fly off its tether and go streaking out into space beyond the galaxy. What's that you say? What if they work on an hourly basis and don't get sick days? Well, what do they do on Yom Tov? That's right, they don't work, and they don't get paid. If their dh can't take off from work --or dare I say it, stay home from kollel (I'm wearing my flameproof underwear)--then the mothers do, and they lose a day's pay. Hey, you asked how people do it--I didn't say it was easy.

gold21

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 11:15 am

Smilingmom, your husband is in kollel, right? He doesnt work full time, he learns full time. That explains why he does so much in the home. Many kollel men help at home, while many working men cannot. Kollel is much more flexible than most jobs.... Having 2 parents working full time sounds extremely challenging... Fox, you mentioned that you are looking for boys for your daughters whose mothers worked, so as to decrease pressure on your daughters to be top-notch balebustes. Please bear in mind that there are women in this world who work many hours and still keep a spotless home and make elaborate meals, while there are women who stay at home but their priority is the children and not the housework, so the house is not spotless and supper is simple.

saw50st8

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 12:23 pm

gold21 wrote:

My husband works full time and here are the responsibilities he takes on:

Daycare drop-off/pickup
Packing up lunches
Making dinner if hes home first (50/50)
Cleaning up after dinner, including washing the floor
Laundry
Garbage
Emptying dehumidifiers
Straightening up

I do:
Dishes
Folding/putting away laundry
Bath time
Cleaning bathrooms
Cleaning kitchen
Dusting

Anything not mentioned here we share responsibilities for. And we each pitch in where we need to. He understands that since I am working full time also, he needs to take on 50% of the household responsibility. While I was on maternity leave for 6 months, I did much more and he did less. Life was much more relaxing.

Fox

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 12:31 pm

ora_43 wrote:

Fox wrote:

However, I have come to believe that kids need to see their parents work! My own mother worked full-time, and DH's mother was a SAHM. Ninety percent of our shalom bayis problems result from this. My DH has household standards are are consistent with a SAHM. That doesn't mean he wasn't expected to help at home as he was growing up; simply that he expects a lifestyle in which there is a full-time homemaker juggling all the little day-to-day tasks as well as delegating labor.

Since we cannot afford for me to be a SAHM, this causes a lot of tension. I feel put upon because of his expectations, and he doesn't realize his expectations are unreasonable. Truthfully, I expect that one of my "crazy" questions about shidduchim for my DDs will be about the potential chosson's mother's work. I really don't want to put my daughters into a no-win situation where their husbands will (a) be unable to afford for them to stay at home; and (b) not realize that life without a SAHM is a whole different kettle of fish!

Why deliberately have a worse lifestyle just to keep expectations low? Isn't that kind of like deliberately earning less so that your kids won't get used to being able to eat their favorite foods, or wear nice shoes, etc, and then fight with their future spouses about it?

(I'm talking about your theory - I get that you personally can't just quit your job.)

gold21 wrote:

to the amother who mentioned that staying at home today doesnt require the effort that was necessary a few generations ago, and therefore being a sahm can lead a woman to become idle (whatever thats supposed to mean): staying at home is about your KIDS, not about your HOUSEWORK. capiche?

Here's my take on both these questions: I think it's perfectly fine for a mother to cut back her work hours or even take a few years off when her children are young and need constant supervision.

But I know many, many women whose children are at school all day -- and yet they're still "SAHMs". I can certainly understand the appeal; I would love to be able to make wonderful meals; set the table; keep on top of housework, etc. But frankly, I don't want my DDs to marry someone who's been raised in that environment.

And, yes, I do believe that many of these women become inappropriately idle. Some become shopaholics; others immerse themselves in some lifestyle-oriented hobby; others become commercial connoisseurs, traversing the region to find the perfect napkin rings or pillows in just the right shade of taupe. Of course, some women turn to chesed in this situation, but their lack of experience often results in mistakes or poor judgment, and they're not really accustomed to answering to others in a chain of command. Ultimately, they feel useless, so they begin to badger their grown children and grandchildren, plan unrealistically grandiose family events, and generally cause eye-rolling wherever they go.

Is this a characterization of every women who doesn't work outside the home in a signficant way? No. But I see it entirely too often to consider it simply anecdotal.

louche

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 12:46 pm

Fox wrote:

Is this a characterization of every women who doesn't work outside the home in a signficant way? No. But I see it entirely too often to consider it simply anecdotal.

And not just in the frum world. A coworker of mine, a nonjewish single mother, lives in a fairly affluent neighborhood of young sahms. Most have considerable paid domestic help and far more leisure time than is good for them. They spend much of this leisure time gossiping, spying on each other, shopping for clothes and jewelry, ogling the pool boy and meter reader, and criticizing my coworker for being a bad mother because she works. Meanwhile, she probably spends more time interacting with her son than these women with their live-in nannies do.

Barbara

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 1:15 pm

GetReal wrote:

gold21 wrote:

So why are there so many questions about how one cooks and cleans if one works?

The point, however, is that the paradigm of mom staying home and doing arts and crafts with the kids only dates from the late 20th century. Before that, caring for the home was a lot more difficult. I clean the rugs by pushing an electric vacuum, not be pulling it off the floor, hanging it outside, and beating it with a rug beater. I do laundry by sorting it and placing it in an electric machine with detergent that I bought in the store, not by scrubbing it on a washboard then running it through a ringer to extract the water. Etc etc etc. I'd venture a guess that most women who work FULL time have more leisure time to spend with their kids than women who did not work outside the home did in 1910.

I'd agree more that the point is the kids if most families home schooled. But where the norm is to send little Chaim to cheder when he's 3, well, what's the difference if Mom is home or at work?

Barbara

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 1:18 pm

louche wrote:

Fox wrote:

Is this a characterization of every women who doesn't work outside the home in a signficant way? No. But I see it entirely too often to consider it simply anecdotal.

There's also the recent trend of the helicopter parent. From Wikipedia:

Quote:

Helicopter parent is a colloquial, early 21st-century term for a parent who pays extremely close attention to his or her child's or children's experiences and problems, particularly at educational institutions. The term was originally coined by Foster W. Cline, M.D. and Jim Fay in their 1990 book Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility[1], although Dr. Haim Ginott mentions a teen who complains, "Mother hovers over me like a helicopter..." on page 18 of the bestselling book Between Parent & Teenager published in 1969. Helicopter parents are so named because, like helicopters, they hover closely overhead, rarely out of reach, whether their children need them or not. In Scandinavia, this phenomenon is known as curling parenthood and describes parents who attempt to sweep all obstacles out of the paths of their children. It is also called "overparenting". Parents try to resolve their child's problems, and try to stop them coming to harm by keeping them out of dangerous situations[2][3].

Some college professors and administrators[who?] are now referring to "Lawnmower parents" to describe mothers and fathers who attempt to smooth out and mow down all obstacles, to the extent that they may even attempt to interfere at their children's workplaces, regarding salaries and promotions, after they have graduated from college and are supposedly living on their own. As the children of "helicopter parents" graduate and move into the job market, personnel and human resources departments are becoming acquainted with the phenomenon as well. Some have reported that parents have even begun intruding on salary negotiations[4]. An extension of the term, "Black Hawk parents," has been coined for those who cross the line from a mere excess of zeal to unethical behavior, such as writing their children's college admission essays.

gold21

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 1:23 pm

Saw50st8, I agree that when two parents work full time the housework must be split fairly, and its really great that you do that. It seemed that smilingmom says her husband does like 90 percent of the housework, so im responding to that. I have worked full time while my husband learned in kollel/ I have worked full time while my husband worked full time/ I have worked part time while my husband worked full time/ I have stayed at home while my husband worked. so, I know that the dynamics in each situation can differ. Fox, I definitely hear your point in reference to moms whose kids are out all day, but when the young ones are home or only out for a couple of hours a day, it is truly a busy, fulfilling, and important occupation to be a sahm- no shopping or manicures necessary.

Barbara

Fri, Jun 04 2010, 2:11 pm

gold21 wrote:

barbara, please quote me as to where I bashed working women? on the contrary, I am merely defending stay at home moms... I have no problem with mothers working when necessary... I am not anti-working-mom, I have worked myself and plan to work again at some point IYH... But lets be real, you ARE putting down stay at home mothers.... why??

Tell me where I am putting down SAHMs. *MY* position is that everyone has to determine what is best for their own families. Unless you believe that staying at home is never best, I haven't put down SAHMs. (I did, however, note that the idea of a mom largely devoted to fun activities with kids is a very recent phenomenon.)

You, OTOH, ARE putting down women who work. Otherwise you wouldn't ask how I could possibly contend that its not best for women NOT to work particularly when their kids are young.