SomeLady

You sound like a real peach of a husband!

Yeah, my husband reacts positively to me when I've put a little effort into my face and hair. I'm one of those women who doesn't look great au naturel, but scrubs up very well.

Anyway, yeah, small children really are exhausting. They don't let you get into a groove. You can't zone out and do your own thing, unless they're sleeping. You'll be cleaning something and then realize that it's much too quiet... and discover the 2yo pouring maple syrup on the carpet or something. That sort of constant vigilance, and inability to really focus on any one thing, is tiring in its own way.

Kricket

I think the amount of free time matters on the ages of the children. I work part time from home. My work hours can range from 10 to 35 hours a week. Since most of that work requires concentration, it tends to take me longer than it should with two small children. If my children were in school, then I could ideally finish my work during the school day, clean the house, and cook dinner every day without missing a beat. I still do all of those things, but I would love to put more effort into it all.

Right now, one of the hardest things for me to deal with is the fact my children are little tornadoes. I have found that it is much better on my sanity to wait until the end of the day to straighten up the house because cleaning up after them all day is like shoveling the driveway during a blizzard.

I did give up a good career to be home with my children and don't regret it one bit. They are both clearly ahead in everything compared to other children their age. To give them that head start is worth it all.

I have found some free time (obviously I am here on TAM) and have committed to take a couple of online classes starting in May. I suggest that if you have free time, spend it furthering your own education. I feel like I am losing some of my mental sharpness if I look at mind-numbing websites or play solitaire all day.

FrenchFry

LOL. I do my hair and makeup in the morning too. No shame. I hate feeling mommed out.

It's the little things like you said that make SAHMing exhausting. It's the kids cartoons in the background that drive you nuts. It's your kid busting the babyproofing and trying to reach for the bleach. It's getting them down for a nap and the minute you finish your sandwich the wake up howl. The "mama jungle gym." I had to replace two remotes last week because my son decided they were biscotti and dunked them in an open coffee cup.

I'm not saying it's the most difficult job but it absolutely requires a skill set and a level of patience most people don't consider or discount as easy.
Posted via Mobile Device

Ten_year_hubby

This would be a primary motivation for me to stay home myself, you have started to answer your own question.

I consider bringing children into adulthood the most important task parents have on their plate. Unless we had excellent role models from our own childhood (not me) or we have great examples to follow in our friends and family (not me again) or we are just naturally gifted in effective techniques of parenting (third strike, I'm out), I see a need to research, read, collect and assimilate materials which coordinate an overall plan to get the desired result. This takes some time.

Also, regarding cooking and diet, I would be inclined to work at replacing prepared or highly processed foods with more basic alternatives. Another time consuming activity made very difficult by working outside the home

SomeLady

Yeah, that's what I do IRT food. I don't go so far as to bake all our bread, but I do make a lot from scratch. Today I made pizza from scratch and also baked a cake.

SomeLady

A couple of people have suggested that I get a part-time job or do an online course. I was wondering why?

I may have given the impression that I'm bored or unfulfilled or something in my OP. I'm sorry if I did. I was just wondering if I had it too easy or if I should push myself to work as hard as I did when I was, say, a waitress years ago. Mostly, though, I was wondering what other people - especially men - felt a SAHW ought to do with her time.

tobio

I've been a stay at home mum for four years now, not primarily by choice, I was working but got made redundant, started looking for another job then got pregnant and logistically it made more sense for me to be at home. We have four kids aged 8, 5, 2 and 1.

I find I am VERY busy all day! Gawd knows my OH says he couldn't do it with our lot.

OH gets up for work and I do at the same time. He leaves before breakfast. Getting four kids ready to go out to school is basically carnage no matter how much you organise things!

The day then consists of washing up, clean kitchen from breakfast, loads of laundry in the washing machine, loads of wet laundry in the tumble dryer (repeat this around four times for each plus a couple of extra loads as the toddler is potty training), put away dry laundry, vacuuming, clean the bathrooms, scrub table and highchairs of weetabix aftermath, clean kitchen, clean living room, baking (make all cakes and biscuits from scratch), snacks, lunch, wash up from lunch, more vacuuming, more dry clothes to put away, tidy bedrooms, run errands to shop/bank/town for OH/us/dinner/bills/etc, prep dinner (from scratch), school run, cook dinner, eat dinner, wash up and tidy kitchen and living room from dinner, homework and reading for older two, packed lunches for next day, bathtime, bedtime, more laundry, more laundry, more laundry, plus the stuff you can't get done with kids about...

Much of this is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out by carrying either a crying baby or a cuddly toddler on my hip at any given time: I have perfected the art of washing both my hands without putting the baby down amongst many other things!

As a treat I get to sit down when driving and occasionally when eating a sandwich at lunch

I never, ever get chance to spend ages on the internet. I treat being at home like a job. The trouble is I'm actually a stay at home mum, I HATE being called a housewife because I don't stay at home to do housework, I stay at home to look after the kids. Yet I feel terribly guilty that I don't spend enough time with them. I mean, I do spend time with them and doing fun stuff but MY GOD it is hard to find the time with four of them. It is terribly easy to think I have when I've sort of been *alongside* them so I do prioritise it now, albeit in lots of inventive ways at times!

I'mInLoveWithMyHubby

Ooooh, I love making homemade bread. 95% of our food is from scratch, we raise chickens for fresh eggs.

Here's my braided Lemon bread(King Aruthor recipe with homemade lemon curd(allrecipes). It is so far the best dessert bread I made yet!



I make homemade 100% whole wheat and a white bread. My pizza, tacos, and pies are all my own recipes. We eat nicely here.

sisters359

Now I'm hungry!

Seriously, though (and I haven't read all the posts), I'd be bored to tears as a stay at home mom if I devoted myself to housework and related stuff. I stayed home some with each child before they started school, but even then worked part-time a lot, worked on a graduate degree, etc. I guess if I had had extra time, I would have worked out a lot, b/c I enjoy it. But I was more in need of intellectual stimulation than physical, at that time, anyway, so my stay-at-home time was never full time and I never had what felt like "free time."

SimplyAmorous

I love being a SAHM ! ...it is what my husband wanted for our family (I have a few small jobs on the side but they are insignificant).... we have 6 kids (oldest living at college), a large old farmhouse & acres of grass to cut in the summer & weed wack.

For me, I feel it is my role to do everything I can possibly DO to make my husbands life easier ... I am thankful I am a woman & not the man who gets stuck with eveything that breaks down.... (3 vehicles, house repairs/ projects, snow plowing, chain sawing etc etc -I am not a handyman).... plus he has his 40 hours at work -blue collar job working in the freezing temps, summer heat, welding, works with some real idiots /boss from hell -and just getting out of our driveway in the winter is tricky.

I Do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, calendars, scheduling appointments, paying every bill, making every phone call, researching anything & everything (vacations, help with projects, I've posted on Chevy forums to get advice for my husband), I get up every am to cook for him & pack his lunch, I do all the dishes.

I try to cut the grass while he is at work -but sometimes I wreck the rider -breaking belts on rocks..He never seems to get mad at me -but often asks that I wait for him to get home. Then we both do it together -we have 2 riders.

My laptop sits in our kitchen while I do my mundane chores throughout the day-I feel I have oodles of free time to be online -my posts shows that. Often I go to do one chore, get sidetracked with another -cleaning a room before I walk out or it , I live & breathe by 2 extra loud timers to stay organized.



Things must be in their place or I am irritated. And I am not a procrastinator, I like to get it ALL done so I can have that "free time", I enjoy kicking back.

My kids play with each other many times, I am not the type of mom to sit down with them & watch Sesame Street, but they have a happy atomosphere to enjoy & get all of thier needs met -plus they have each other to play with & annoy, I never say no to a friend coming over or them going somewhere .... I also allow tons of kids to filter through our house, they appreciate this about me...On weekends, It is common place to have another 4 teen boys spending the night here. I get up & cook about 40 pancakes for them all in the am. I enjoy the chaos somehow.

I keep them all in line. They do good in school, for the most part my kids are easy. I seem to have to remind them to brush their teeth too often but besides that, I can't complain too much.

We grocery shop when we run to town -for their after school activities or we have to kill time when daughter is in gymnastics...I don't make special trips ... This helps save gas as well.

But my husband helps with the homework, cause I hate donig that & he has more patience.

__________________
"Love Good Blog"

effess

Up till last fall my wife was a SAHM. The women I work with thought I was some superstar for "letting" her stay home. It was decision we mutually came to once she was pregnant with our first child.
My wife is project-oriented and is VERY pragmatic. So she always and I mean always keeps busy. Cooking, laundry, fixing stuff around the house, doing things with the kids, taking them places, cleaning, organizing closets to better utilize our limited space, etc. So I never begrudged her for wanting to stay home.

SomeLady

I do crave intellectual stimulation. I volunteer a few hours a week at a museum and I read a lot. I'm in an online book club that reads classic literature. That helps.

CrazyGuy

I am not slamming SAHM's. I have seen some that are amazing... But...

My wife was always "overwhelmed" but she did it to herself. She stayed up late until 2 am. She would wake up at 10 or 11. She would spend all day running around going to the pool, out with other moms, restaurants ect. She never had time to clean or household stuff.

She would get home an hour or so before I got home. I would leave for work at 6am and get home about 7pm. So when I would get home it was a mess, it is always a mess. She would expect me to help clean up and I would be like what the heck do you do all day? Sometimes she would mow the yard although I never told her to do that. I think she just liked being outside or away from the home.

The days I would have off where "cleaning days" for the whole week. So I was expected to work and do nothing but clean when I was home. That was our family time, cleaning together.

To me she always had it all backwards. Stay at home Mom should be just that. STAY AT HOME. Do the work that needs done at home first. Then when I got home if she needed a break I could watch our son or we could go out as a family. Looking back I should have got rid of all the cars except the one I drove to work.

I surely would have loved to change positions and be the stay at home parent. I would have loved to see my son grow up.

I have no problem with the moms out there that do the household stuff and manage to have free time. That's great. But I also get irritated when I hear how rough stay at home moms have it.

Depends what you call a stay at home mom though. For my wife she was nothing more then a baby sitter with a set of wheels going every place.

chillymorn

IMO

being a stay at home mom is very hard when they are little.and the husband should help with in home chores as much as possible.As the children get older they require less time and is less stressfull and the mom should transition into making sure the chores get done with the extra time they have while the kids are in school and make an effort to have a nice dinner for the family etc

if she ends up with some extra time when everything is squared away the she should enjoy it. moms are only human and deserve some down time also.

after the kids are in school full time then it would be nice for her to try to earn some extra income for the the extras in life like vacations etc. the feeling of helping financialy will make you fel good about helping espically with the way the economy is.

just like moms liking when the husband helps with chores the husband likes when the wife starts helping with earning money.

DawnD

completely!!


As soon as both my kids started school, so did I!! But I think I got to appreciate being a SAHM more since I didn't get to do it until my oldest was 3.5 years and the youngest was 1.5 years.

I ask very little of my husband even now, just because he does work all day. I get paid to go to school ( my GI Bill) but it brings in a fraction of the money his paycheck does. So I carry most of the cleaning/cooking/dr appts/ kids homework load and he carries just about all of the financial load. Seems very fair to me.

I will admit that its nice when he offers to take the oldest to one of his therapy appts ( autism). But I certainly don't expect it.