What would you give up to stay home?
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| Sat, 08-05-2006 - 8:36am |
Hi everyone.
I have always said that staying home is so important to me that I would give up many things to be able to do that. We live in a very small home, I have no jewelry and we buy all our clothes at Walmart. I know that if I went back to work, we could afford more. But I would never trade being at home for a larger house or more luxuries.
However, after reading this board I have started to suspect that there are things I would not want to give up. If I couldn't send my kids to preschool a couple of hours a day, if I couldn't afford any after school activities like ballet lessons or if I could'nt afford any kind of summer program for them, I think I would have to find a way to go back to work. So basically, I'm perfectly happy to deny myself "things." But I would not want to take much away from the kids.
Of course I would probably have to find a new career becuase I could never work the 80 hours a week my old career entailed.

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Income levels of SAH families? The wage penalty paid by ex SAHM's when they return to the work force. Lost years vesting towards retirement. The number of posts here talking about sacrificing to SAH if you look back through the older posts. Today's divorce rate. etc. etc. etc...
Seeing as this is a SAH/WOH debate board and this is a possible downside to SAH (unless you have a career impervious to the issues and lots of money in the bank to cover anything lost), I thought it worth discussing. I have yet to read a thread on this board about how well prepared SAHM's are for their futures. WOHM's might not be either but, at least, they're not taking a pay cut for having taken time out.
Edited 8/13/2006 4:02 pm ET by kbmammm
Sabina
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A woman taking time out can't expect to hire back in at what she quit at let alone where her peers are who didn't quit. Her skills and education are stale. She has to retrain and will, likely, be paid less during that time.
Also, the time value of money being what it is, you have to save more if you wait to make up for interest not earned.
"This one bugs me because it indicates that it may be wasted effort to have removed my kids from the neighborhood school. They may not end up doing any better than they would have otherwise. However, on the bright side, they do have that which predicts success. Parents willing to move them."
Are you kidding? You actually have this thought process going on? Do you honestly base your life on studies, reports and data? You're actually "bugged" because data indicates your children may have done just as well at the neighborhood school and maybe you wasted effort and/or resources to move them? Why did you remove them from the neighborhood school? Did you read a study? Were there issues with the environment or education they were receiving? By being bugged by such data, you must not be very confident in your decision.
Kathi
Kathi
Mom to Emily 16, Michael 12, and Miss Kimberley, diagnosed with autism at 2-1
Sabina
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
It's not poor time management if the parent felt no need to always be there when the kids got home. It was just a choice they made in how to use their time."
Let me rephrase. Its worse than bad time management if the kids were really "quite little" like the OP suggested. If the kids were under 10, IMO, its negligent parenting.
MM
"What the research tells us is that parental values matter more than parental actions. Sometimes, actions are just going through the motions."
Buying books is an action. Buying books and never reading them is an example of just going through the motions. The value that stocking a library but not reading transmits is that books are decorations- that they are part of any well-dressed house and serve a function very similar to art prints and lovely figurines. They show the world that you are a person with good taste and an eye for appearances. In the home of somebody who doesn't read they transmit the value of reading about as much as hiring a lawn service to keep the shrubs manicured transmits the value of gardening.
I remember those ubiquitous encyclopedia sets. They could be found in the home of nearly everybody I knew (including those who had few other books) but not my own. My parents shunned them (loudly) as a lazy substitute for actual books. My parents were and still areintellectual snobs, a value they passed on to me because that bit of research actually does reflect my family. They said (loudly) that the encyclopedia sets were just a way to avoid reading books- just a very expensive set of Cliff notes. They had books of every description spilling from shelves and they read them...often. This transmitted to me an intellectual snobbery that valued source material over the things that are a condensation of that source material (no Readers Digest ever!) and also the value of reading that borders on addiction. I'll start reading advertising pamphlets and fliers aimed at somebody else if nothing better is available.
So I do agree that parents transmit values (although kids may reject those values if they overtly clash with what the kid experiences outside the home). But certain actions may transmit values other than what the parent thinks they are transmitting. Buying books but not reading them transmits the value of books but not the value of reading. Reading becomes a means to an end (getting a good grade on a paper, catching up on research as an adult) but not an end in itself. Of course, if all you are trying to transmit is that one should read to get good grades, then the "bang for buck" of buying books but not reading them is definately there.
Your approach to life decisions via data is exactly what I'd expect from somebody who over valued an expensive encyclopedia because it was the only source of facts in the house. Like an encyclopedia, studies claim to give the facts in a comprehensive and objective fashion. You've got an encyclopedia, so why do you need to go through 10 history books? You've got a study so why do you need other sources of information? I've picked up my parents bias (value) against encyclopedia sets because- like studies- they give you a set of facts that completely misses the big picture that you get from going to multiple and diverse sources of information.
edited to add; I own "Freakonomics" too. What it (and the study) said is that book-owning homes have kids that do better on school tests than bookless homes. But that reading to the kids or in front of them did not affect the scores. So if the only value you wish to transmit to your kids is to do well on tests, then you get the "bang for your buck" by simply buying books. Looking behiond the numbers, I suppose books are valued as a way to study for a test. But the mere ownership of books can't transmit the value of reading as an end in itself. It does the exact opposite. If the books are bought but not read by the parents, the clear message is that books are not for people who aren't in school.
Edited 8/13/2006 5:23 pm ET by susannahk2000
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