Comments on: Being a stay at home mother is/is not hard http://notesfromhome.com/2007/08/21/being-a-stay-at-home-mother-motherhood-is-is-not-hard/ motherhood in real-time Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:08:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: ellahttp://notesfromhome.com/2007/08/21/being-a-stay-at-home-mother-motherhood-is-is-not-hard/comment-page-1/#comment-1002 ella Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:03:01 +0000 http://mostleast.com/2007/08/21/being-a-stay-at-home-mother-isis-not-hard/#comment-1002 <p>There are two aspects I suppose I wanted to get across in my post. Firstly that someone said that staying at home is easier (it is not the same thing you mention, Frally, but I will be emailing you for the link) and it has been on my mind since I read it. I think it is wrong that someone else feels it is okay to say definitively whether staying at home or working is easier because that makes all sorts of insinuations about a person who finds it hard. If you have worked and stayed at home and think that one is easier than the other FOR YOU then fine. Jenna, you have it absolutely right when you say 'I think the only person who can judge whether staying at home is easier than going out to work is a mother looking at her own life.'</p> <p>Secondly, on a wider societal level, although I have a choice to stay at home (and I am grateful I do), I don't REALLY have a choice if the alternative is putting my children in childcare for long hours all week because the only kind of well-paid, satisfying job that I can get involves working long hours. Geepeemum, you seem to have the near-perfect combination: a job you love with hours to suit and a family member to look after your children when you work. We need more part-time, well-paid, career jobs available to parents. And we need more support for parents who want to stay at home. </p> <p>I suppose a third point is that I DO often feel lonely and I wish the whole mothering experience - money, career prospects, isolation and so on - wasn't so all or nothing.</p> There are two aspects I suppose I wanted to get across in my post. Firstly that someone said that staying at home is easier (it is not the same thing you mention, Frally, but I will be emailing you for the link) and it has been on my mind since I read it. I think it is wrong that someone else feels it is okay to say definitively whether staying at home or working is easier because that makes all sorts of insinuations about a person who finds it hard. If you have worked and stayed at home and think that one is easier than the other FOR YOU then fine. Jenna, you have it absolutely right when you say ‘I think the only person who can judge whether staying at home is easier than going out to work is a mother looking at her own life.’

Secondly, on a wider societal level, although I have a choice to stay at home (and I am grateful I do), I don’t REALLY have a choice if the alternative is putting my children in childcare for long hours all week because the only kind of well-paid, satisfying job that I can get involves working long hours. Geepeemum, you seem to have the near-perfect combination: a job you love with hours to suit and a family member to look after your children when you work. We need more part-time, well-paid, career jobs available to parents. And we need more support for parents who want to stay at home.

I suppose a third point is that I DO often feel lonely and I wish the whole mothering experience – money, career prospects, isolation and so on – wasn’t so all or nothing.

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