Stay at Home Mom or Working Mom? - Was it Worth it?

This hub is written in answer to the second of three questions asked by TamCor at the end of her hub http://hubpages.com/hub/Stay-at-home-mom-vs-Working-Mom--How-to-decide-which-to-be

The question is

‘Were the hardships and/or benefits of either worth it in the long run?’

I gave a partial answer to this question when wrote in my previous hub that I was a stay at home mum and I have no regrets regarding the choice that I made. Were there hardships associated with this decision you bet there were, in fact there were more than a few.

The seventies, was the time into which my children were born, it was a time when women were being bombarded with all sorts of new ideas that challenged the traditional role of women in the home and workplace.

Magazines like Cosmopolitan told every female that would listen how they deserved to have an orgasm, or they deserved to be paid the same as a man in the workplace. It is a woman’s right to have… was a phrase that was put in front of a multitude of statements. In all this talk of women’s rights there was hardly any talk of the cost and responsibilities that go along with these rights. This led to a lot of women being very mixed up as to what exactly it was that they wanted and /or didn't want.

It seemed like everywhere you looked there were stories being told of women who managed to have it all, high flying careers, motherhood, homemaking and still manage to be at the end of the day a sex goddess and sexy wife as well. Of course it really helped if you had the first on that list a high-flying career that paid big money then you could afford lots of paid help with all the others.

How could women like me who were ordinary working class mums perform at the same level as these superwomen? The playing field was anything but level we ordinary mums had only held jobs that paid relatively little. Even full time work would not have given me enough money to pay even for the resulting childcare that would be required for my two children if I went back to work.

The traditional role of women in the home and all that this entailed was continually being rubbished and such women were seen as being used and abused by the male dominated systems that were prevalent at the time. It was a time when the Hippie revolution and flower power had changed things forever.

Women had burned their bras and sex was no longer just for inside of marriage and procreation alone. We were told over and over again, that it was all right for women to engage in sexual activity just for the sheer fun of it and thanks to the wonder of the pill it was thought with little or no negative consequences.

Sex outside of marriage was no longer just the domain of men alone. In fact in the late sixties and early seventies you were made to think that you were somehow inferior if you chose to wait until you got married before becoming sexually active. Going into a marriage as a virgin was now widely a source of ridicule rather than pride, people began to think that not becoming sexually active and having more than one sexual partner before marriage was strange. Everything was changing; the old roles were not enough to cope with the new choices available to women.

Like most women of my generation from a working class background I left school at 15 years of age, looking back the quality of the education we received was pathetic. Schools like ours fed the factories of the main industries in the city, which for Nottingham was Boots the Chemist, Players, Raleigh, The R.O.F. (Gun) Factory, Textiles (lace making and knitwear) and the coal mines.

Most of our school would take up jobs in factories a lucky few would get apprenticeships that would lead to a better paid job. I managed to get a job as an office junior working in the head offices of Boots the Chemist.

There was a mindset among working class parents at that time that education for a girl was a waste of time and not important as she would only get married have children and leave work. This mindset was also adopted unquestioned by a large number of the girls themselves their only ambition was to get married and have babies.

By the seventies many of the ideas of the traditional role of women in the home were being challenged and questioned. The writings of Women’s Liberation stalwarts such as Germaine Greer were being read and digested. Unfortunately the ideas and ideals of the liberation movement were overtaken and exchange for those of the feminist movement. The feminist movement instead of striving to free women to explore what they were capable of becoming settled for striving for equality with men who were just as trapped by their imposed roles as the women were. 

There were so many things open to women now that had in the past been denied to them that it was natural that expectations of the young women of my generation changed dramatically. For the first time there was a feeling that you could be anything you wanted to be it was your right, equality was being sought in many arenas such as equal pay, equal sexual freedom and equal job opportunities etc.

This then was the background in which I made my choice to be a stay at home mum. At first this choice caused me no trouble at all as most women still left work when they had their first child. Maternity leave and job protection opened up the opportunity for new mums to return to work just a few months after the birth of their child. Some women were taking this opportunity up to safeguard their jobs and their promotion prospects.

It was not until both my children started to go to school that my choice deviated from most of the other mums. For most mums the start of their child’s schooling was also the signal for them to go back into the workforce. The prevailing thought was now that the child is at school is that there is no longer a reason that justifies the mum staying at home.

A mum that refused to go back to work once their children started school was thought of as either selfish or lazy. My choice to stay at home was often felt by those who did choose to go back to work as a criticism of them as a mum. It was as if my choice to stay at home in their mind stood in judgement on their choice not to and found them lacking. Such criticism and judgement had not come from me and I had trouble understanding why they thought it did.

I would see these working mums when they dropped off their children at school and when they picked them up after school. The chat at the school gates often seemed to turn into an interrogation as to why I didn’t want to go back to work and it was with almost religious zeal that some of them wanted to convert me into being a working mum.

It seemed to me that my choice to stay at home was perceived, as some sort of threat and that as such it was ok to attack both my choice and me. To me it seemed that this new found freedom that women were experiencing only belonged to women that chose to go down the new path that was being forged for women.

This new path was the path of ‘I can have it all’ and I don’t have to give anything up to get it. If this was not your chosen path then you came under a lot of pressure. This pressure came from both those who were going with the flow into the ‘I can have it all’ stream and also often from within the woman herself.

Not going out to work meant that we could not afford many of the things that those who did go to work could afford. We had no foreign holidays in fact we didn’t have many proper holidays at all when the children were young.

The one exception was our very first family holiday when we went out of season to a self-catering holiday chalet. It was the end of May and we paid more to put the dog in kennels than we did for our accommodation.

The dog’s accommodation had central heating ours had damp bedding and condensation running down the walls with electricity on a prepayment meter that ate our money at an alarming rate. Money was not plentiful but we never went without the essentials of life.

Also one of the other prices I had to pay was that of the criticism and judgement of other mums regarding my choice. I had thought that this part of the hub would have been longer but I really had to struggle to come up with even these few.

The benefits of being a stay at home mum for me far outweighed any of the negative costs of this choice. My time was my own and I could spend it how I liked.

I was indeed fortunate that I was able to be always there for my children when they got home from school. I got to play with them, to nurse them when they were sick, to tell them stories, and to help them with their schoolwork if they had problems.

I had the time when they were at school to shop for the bargains and the time to cook meals from scratch at a fraction of the price of food that was already processed. I had time to get an education that eventually culminated in obtaining a BA Hon’s degree.

It was a time when I enjoyed my life and my family to the full. Was it worth it in the long run, oh yes a thousand times yes I’d make the same decision again in a heart beat I have no regrets about the choice I made to be a stay at home mum.

The third and final question that TamCor asked is the subject of my next hub and is

‘If your kids are grown, how do they feel about the choice you made?’

If you want to know the answer to this then you will have to read my daughters answer to this question in my next hub.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Stay-at-Home-Mom-or-Working-Mom-The-choice-of-a-Working-Class-Mum-part-three

If you enjoyed this hub I have put links to some of my other hubs that deal with similar material below.

All these Hubs have the common theme of coming from a Working Class perspective which differs quite a lot from that of the Middle Class and which has virtually nothing in common with the Upper Class perspective.

There is one period in modern times when all three classes had experiences in common and that was during the second world war.

I hope that enjoyed your foray into Working Class England if you did please leave a comment perhaps some feed back or if I didn't cover what you were looking for let me know and perhaps I can do another hub about that,

• • Working Class Life in the 1930's
  • Working Class life in the 1950’s – Train Sets and Train Spotting
  • Working Class life in the 1940’s and 1950´s Britain ~ Train Travel
  • Working Class Life in the 1940s & 50s
  • Working Class Life in the 1940’s
  • A Victorian Woman of Substance
  • Stay at Home Mom or Working Mom? The choice of a Working Class Mum
  • Stay at Home Mom or Working Mom? Was it Worth it?
  • Stay at Home Mom or Working Mom? How my kids felt about the choice I made
  • A 1950's Working Class Mum's Answer to Children Biting
  • Working Class Girl in Singapore in the late 1960's
  • Bonfire Night in a Working Class area in the 1950’s