How the Kids View SAH and WOH
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How the Kids View SAH and WOH
| Wed, 08-06-2008 - 10:09am |
Something I heard yesterday in reference to my decision to return to work: "Well, the good thing is you'll be showing your kids that it's okay for a mom to have a career."
This threw me. I've never felt that my children weren't proud of me no matter what
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I think that most kids hardly miss a beat, especially little ones.
My kids have never known Mommy not to have a job.
This is interesting.
Yes. We. Did.
and I think conversely a woman doesn't have to SAH to teach her children that parenting is alot of work either way.
Yes. We. Did.
When DH (mortgage broker)
Dylan's take on my work status (he's 10 1/2, going into 5th grade): He's very happy I work. But if I didn't work, his world wouldn't change much (assuming that our income stayed the same). He'd just go to the Boys and Girls Club every afternoon during the school year instead of just in the summer. In fact, with Joy and her family living with us right now, Dylan doesn't have to go to the Boys and Girls Club but has the option of staying home with her all day. He prefers going to the Club.
I'll ask Joy when she wakes up what her take on my work status was while she was growing up since I was a sah/wahm during a large part of her childhood before I went back to work when she was a teen.
Chris
The truth may be out there but lies are in your head. Terry Pratchett
I absolutely agree and I've said that before, a parent who WOH actually has two jobs (this typically pertains to mom) because *working* doesn't end at 5pm when she goes home from her job.
I also wanted to add that your Liza sounds like a pretty smart young lady.
Yes. We. Did.
I've heard that said, and while I understand the sentiment, I think it - like many other phrases - really reduces a complex set of issues to a single dimensional phrase. Presumably most people are teaching their children ideas about gender roles and relationship equity based on what they themselves live and believe. That phrase tends to imply that, if you weren't working, your kids would automatically grow up to think that a woman's place is in the home, that women are somehow incapable of handling a 'real' job, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think those attitudes are much fewer and farther in between now days, and regardless of a family's SAH/WOH set-up, most families would not be conveying those stereotypes anyway.
For my kids, the issue has never come up - both of us WOH is just what it is. Now, in response to questions about why we work (and not why do *you* work instead of SAH, just why do you work), I've discussed the basic concepts of money and earning income and that both daddy and I work to get paid to afford our home, our food, their clothes and school, etc. I know that with Kindergarten last year, my oldest probably first became truly aware that there are parents that do not work outside the home - the ones that picked up their kids when school let out. He has yet to ask me about that, but I assume he will sometime. I intend to give an answer that different families do things differently and that in those cases his friends moms and dads have decided that one person in the home will work for income while the other one supports the family in other ways.
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