I often hear people say that it is a "privilege" or "luxury" to be able to afford being a stay at home mom but is it really? Like most of the time it would cost more sending kids to daycare vs staying at home to watch them.
It seems to me like this is just another way people shame moms by calling it a luxury to make it seem like what they are doing isn't a real job
Selected "It's a real job.", but it's a little more nuanced than that. It is also a luxury, because you must be in a privileged place of being able financially to afford not going to work at a paying job. It also depends on the person. For me, being a stay at home parent would absolutely be a luxury. I would love to be at home or out in my community with my little one (s), teaching them, cleaning and organizing and improving our home and our lives. Being with family is a joy, as opposed to work, which is... laborious.
But in terms of workload, yes, being an at-home parent and housekeeper/chef/maintenance/&c., is really actual work. It takes time and effort to prepare food, clean up messes, do laundry, clean and organize a house, go shopping, &c. I happen to enjoy many of those things. I used to cook professionally, and enjoy cooking. I like to organize and having things clean makes me happy. I enjoy caring for others and doing things like bathing a baby or cleaning up their dirty diaper, or playing a game with them, reading to them, teaching them things, these are all on the pleasant side of the spectrum for me. Yes, even dirty diapers. They are rarely of a truly disastrous nature, and even then, the whole kit and caboodle can be cleaned up in and back to fresh and clean in less than 15 minutes.
But for some people, these types of tasks are burdensome, tiring, boring, or otherwise unpleasant. For them, being a stay at home parent is/would be a nightmare. So it also depends on the person and what they enjoy.
I think you're misunderstanding what most people mean when they say it's a luxury to have the mom stay at home with the kids. You are correct, that it generally costs more to send them out to daycare (which is developmentally probably not as good for them as time with their mom), but in those cases (sending the kids to daycare) then the mom typically works a paying job as well that generates more money than the daycare costs. So after all income and all expenses the household has more money under the 2-parents-working (in the labor market) set up.
IF that's the case (which can be a BIG if depending on how expensive childcare is in your area, and what your income would be if you worked) then the decision to have the 2nd earner forgo her salary and instead take care of the kids herself would be a decision that reduces household income after childcare expenses. In that sense, it would be a "luxury" to forego that income. You'd only do it if the household didn't "need" that income, so the primary earner needs to generate enough income for the household to be able to "afford" foregoing the second income.
So it's not meant to be any statement as to raising the kids not being a real job. Quite the opposite.
Stay home mom / housewife is no longer a job that it used to be.
100 years ago, laundry was an all day job. Women woke up before sunrise to fetch gallons water from the well to heat it up on the stove to do laundry. Then they would spend the next 4 hours scrubbing each individual garment. They even dried clothes completely by hand. All of this took 10-12 hours a day to accomplish.
Nowadays, the washing machine does all the work for you.
100 years ago, women made their own bread and butter. They rocked the butter back and forth by hand. They kneaded their own bread by hand. This activity alone took HOURS to make.
What do you do? you take a simple drive to the store to buy a tub of premade butter and already made bread.
You have vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, diapers. 100 years ago, women washed baby pooped underwear BY HAND!!! Nowadays what do you do? you throw them away and just buy a new one.
This is why I don't see housewiving / stay home moms as a true job. It might be a handful when the kids are young. But once the kids are over the age of 7, its definitely not a hard job anymore.
Plus, being able to work for your children instead of a boss is already a luxury and a blessing in itself.
NO bc I’m not a f’ing moron and bc that was basically my job with my guardian from age 9 to 14 ( it only stopped bc I ran away tho that wasn’t the reason the reason was she was psycho and unintentionally dangerous) except I was a ward, not a mom. It’s hard work and people who claim otherwise are full of 💩 and can suck it.
Appple I have so much respect for you as a person, a mom, & worker. in my opinion you’re an absolute warrior & I wish you the absolute best. I’m truly sorry people suck. It’s stupidity and arrogance.
💚💚💚 💪🏼
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It is absolutely a real job. It is actually the most important job in the world. Getting to spend time with and raise your kids right as well as running the family as efficiently as possible is far more important than being a soulless corporate drone who hates themselves and their miserable existence. Imagine not having a commute, or a boss, or asshole coworkers? Imagine a job where the work you do matters and that you get to profit from the results instead of some corporate fat cat in a different state or country? If your family means more to you than the opinions of people who hate you or climbing the corporate ladder for someone else's profit, being a stay at home mom is a great and rewarding and fulfilling real job. I wish more people would do that job, we would probably have a nicer, happier, more socially competent society if more people were stay at home parents. The corporate system would lose a lot of workers and have to raise wages, gasp! Anything that screws the system is a win for us little people.
Not only is it a “REAL job” it is one of the most important jobs there is! The likelihood of future success for a child who is raised by her/his own parent vs a day care worker, is astounding. Second, a child who is under constant supervision is less likely to be abused, as abusers know to look for unsupervised kids. Parents taking care of their children give them one on one early education and can teach them the alphabet by early 3yrs of age, and basic or even advanced (for age) reading skills by four, as well as math. This head start can leapfrog a child ahead of their peers in school. Also the bond between parent and child can become so strong that as the child grows they are more comfortable taking to and confiding in their mom/dad. So when the child faces difficult, otherwise embarrassing situations they are more likely to tell their parent about what’s going on, than their peers who were raised by strangers in a day-care.
Both unfortunately for a lot of people in the U. S. dollar related economy post running out of gold in 1971.
A baby needs his/her mother for the first few years of life to teach it everything from how to bond, think, walk, talk, socialize, and love.
A lot of our modern problems with both men and women can be attributed to the fact that a very large share of us born after 1971 didn't have that.
So we are NOT bonding, thinking, socializing, or even loving each other as we should have. Too many of us are acting like the little machines we were raised as in our collective daycare systems.
I’m semi-old fashioned and personally prefer if my future wife would stay at home with the kids (if financially possible). Not because I want a servant, like some men back in the past, but because I would feel a lot more comfortable with her looking after and rearing them while I’m at work in the years before they start school than having strangers do it. I personally think it’s more healthy for a mom and the kids in way.
Of course, I want to be there to help when not at work. I grew up where my dad didn’t do a lot and I want my kids to know that their father not only loves them but their mom as well.
I think it's both. It's a luxury that you can afford to actually stay at home with your children. Much better situation than sending them all to daycare. And there's no doubt it's a full-time fucking job. My hats off to any stay-at-home mother
I think it is a real job, one that most men can not afford , and that is the reason moms need to be cherished and not cheated on. We could never afford to pay someone to do everything that a stay at home mom does. And far beyond that is the emotional and psychological support that children don't get from childcare or the street. I am saying this because my wife and I both worked and we are the guilty ones. My wife wishes many times that she had stayed home with our son and daughter. But half of my weekends were on-call and I was anchored to the house. In 40 years there are 52 weekends time 2 days. That is 4160 day that I sold cheap. Children rarely want to stay home but I was obligated to do just that. Raise your kids!
My opinion does not fit either poll option. I say it is BOTH a privilege and a real job.
Why it is a real job: Maintaining a home is just as important as earning an income. No point in coming to a home that is falling apart or so nasty that you feel depressed coming home. It takes a lot to maintain a peaceful home. Also, kids often have needs that do not fit nicely around a work schedule. Having one spouse stay at home is a huge benefit to helping ensure these needs get met. Same with certain tasks.
Why it is a privilege: Bills and inflation are so damn high that it is damn near impossible to support a family on one income alone. Even if it is possible, what happens if the ONLY person earning income gets hurt/sick and loses work? It is AMAZING if one person can stay at home fulltime and hold down the home front, but there is no point if that home is going to be foreclosed/evicted.
I was a stay at home mom and I did not like the way other stay at home moms raise their kids (lost of what a mom is supposed to be).
So I stop hanging out with them.
nowadays…stay at home or not…moms are doing terrible job raising kids
to answer…it’s a luxury because they are not doing what they are suppose to do.
very few still hold true to what a mom is suppose to be.
DISCIPLINE KIDS!! Teach them, engage with them…etc!
Omg it’s totally a real job! Are you kidding! It’s very difficult, challenging and like you said a job to care for the house and kids! I can relate to that! I do all that on the side and I always thought even if I had a full day dedicated to all that, I’d still never get everything done! You gotta manage appts, kids and schedules, shopping, managing money, house cleaning, cooking, etc. The only luxury in it I could even see would be that you can stay home, manage your own schedule and not have to work for the man at a typical 9-5 meaningless job and have flexibility?
It’s both really.
On one hand I’m sure that when the kids are there it can be rather difficult but otherwise it’s mostly just house work and getting prepared for the gremlins to come home.
I’m not saying it would be easy but rather it just sounds like MOST of that time would either be spent doing nothing or just doing household chores at a really slow pace.
The 2 big things that make it privilege is that #1 you can spend more time with your kids and #2 your day is spent at home. You might have extra household chores but unless it a really small child the kid is probably spending most of its time at school anyways
Being a housewife is not a job, in fact women wanted to be housewives throughout history because they did not want to do the brute force jobs that men did, after the industrial revolution, when jobs became more easy, women did not want to continue having children and chose to work, but they chose easy office jobs, never brute force jobs, today, as women no longer have many children, women hope to get a beta provider man with a lot of money who will maintain and thus be housewives and live without working.
Yeah, people assume that being a stay at home mom means you can afford to stay home but don’t realize how much stay at home moms sacrifice financially. It’s also a job you can never leave and rarely get real breaks from. It’s not to say that working moms are lazy or don’t work hard but stay at home moms don’t have it easy either.
I think it's both and there's nothing wrong with it.
Kids require care, at least when they're younger and if they've got a parent who's around for the most part, then assuming the parent knows how to raise them, it's not an issue.
The reason why I think it can be a luxury, is because not all family can afford to live off of one person's income, which I think is often times the case with say at home moms and I think this may have something to do with the economy apparently changing to the point where it's harder to achieve that, like it apparently was back in the day or the 1950s.
Depends who is your husband. Its a luxury when husband can afford and cover anything, literally anything including wife’s personal expenses and travel. I won’t consider it a bless to be a house wife when you live in tight budget though. Working at home is super tiring. Clean the house and do the laundry not as easy as it seems. Let alone rising your child without any help. Also its difficult to wisely spend the money with tight budget, and most of the time its the wife works.
Raising a life is a huge deal and being a mom is super rewarding , I don’t know if I personally would ever be a stay at home with my future kids because I like going out and working but I suppose time will tell, nowadays you can find work from home jobs however if you are able to multitask with the little ones and make an income.
A stay at home mom has the most important and respectable job in the world. They are raising the next generation to be upstanding and productive members of society. That and they are acting as home maker and keeping the roof above the heads of the whole family. I have nothing but respect for stay at home moms!
Only ignorant idiots would say that a mom, thus a mother taking care of her household and children, lives a luxury life. Keeping a household is a full time job. The time has come for people, whatever gender, to pay respect for the work a staying home mom does.
Well its definitely hard work especially seeing my cousins kids who are always running around and acting wild😅 I dont think it has to be one or the other and you have to make sure your partner can afford to have the woman at home taking care of the kids. Some will need 2 incomes just to pay bills which wouldn't allow the woman to be a full time stay at home mother. Just because it may cost more to send them to day care doesn't mean the alternative isn't a privilege/luxury.
My wife was a stay at home mom for many years and there is absolutely no question or doubt... it is a real job! Spending a day with a baby and then 2 under 3 years old and then 3 under 5 etc... she loved it but it was work. When they got older and she went back to "work", she felt like it was a vacation lol :)
Both, it's a luxury since not all moms can do that these days, I really hope I'll be able to when I have my kids some day. And it's a difficult job that never really ends, helping kids grow and teaching them everything is a very hard thing to do, raising a new person who doesn't know a thing about this world is a job that takes years, in my opinion the rest of your life since you'll always be ahead.
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