Let’s iron out some home truths about stay-at-home mothers
HIGH mortgages and shrinking wage packets mean staying at home to look after the children is increasingly considered a luxury.
Some critics will murmur about ‘gym mummies’ enjoying morning coffees and book clubs, but increasingly, it seems, stay-at-home mums are the focus of a backlash in which derogatory attitudes are expressed in cliches like “gain a baby, lose a brain,” or “coffee morning groupie”.
Leading British academic, Dr Aric Sigman has taken up the cudgels against what he sees as the rise of ‘motherism’, pointing out that the implication is that full-time mothers are lazy, stupid and even sexually unattractive.
Certainly staying at home full-time is no longer as common as it once was.
The number of Irish housewives is falling rapidly — by some 10,000 per annum according to the CSO which records a drop of some 13% between 2006 and 2011.
According to a 2011 report by the OECD about 55% of Irish mothers work outside the home.
The impact of a grim recession which saw the construction industry implode, increased educational opportunities for women, and the mounting personal debt caused by a partner losing his job, has left women under pressure to take up the slack by re-joining, or remaining in the workforce.
And, given that many will have spent years training for their career, lots of women find it difficult to walk away from the independence and job satisfaction involved.
It’s an international trend — in Britain almost 200,000 women from two-parent families with dependent children have re-entered the workplace and around two-thirds of working-age women with dependent children are in employment.
In Germany there are about 27 million women of working age, of whom just under 40% have either a full or part-time job compared with 80% of men.
And in Sweden around 75% of women work, as is the case in Denmark.
Top British psychologist Oliver James, says research shows that most women with young children “don’t want to have to work all the hours that God sends.”
However, he says, our system of free market economics values money and the status of work highly, whereas stay-at-home mothers “take on the status of someone slightly lower than a street-sweeper”.
A former office clerk and mother-of-three children aged 22, seven and three, she took what she calls a “lifestyle” choice to stay at home and never regretted it:
“You’re the one to see their first step, hear their first word.
“When they’re sick children want their mum. They feel very secure when they have their mum around,” says the 45-year-old, who adds that she was quite shocked by what she has read about ‘motherism.’ It’s both “both unfair and inaccurate,” she says, because it gives the wrong perception about stay-at-home motherhood.
“It’s a hard job, much harder than people realise. The work is repetitive, unpaid and often invisible.”
“My day starts at about 7.30am and finishes at 9.30pm.”
Another downside, she believes, can be the lack of a social life.
“I spend much of the day in the house or the car,” says the Celbridge-based mum, who believes it “would be nice” to get some form of state allowance.
“You can be running all day. Gym sessions, morning coffee and the book club are not my life.”
“I’d always intended being a stay-at-home mum,” says McNeill, who gave up work after the birth of her eldest child.
“I loved it. I loved being a mother, I loved being at home and being with the babies and being there for them.
“I think that having me there from very early on was good for them.”
They felt her absence “acutely” when she began her part-time job, she says.
McNeill, whose children are aged 17, 16, 13 and nine, has had the occasional brush with ‘Motherism’ :
“I remember being out with friends one night for a few drinks when someone I didn’t know turned to me and asked me what did I do.
“When I said I was a stay-at-home mum she just turned her back and started talking to somebody else!”
On other occasions, she recalls, people have changed the subject the moment she mentioned being a housewife.
“There are pros and cons to being a stay-at-home mum. It’s very satisfying, but at some points you do lose your own identity, particularly before they go to school.”
McNeill answers the prejudice which holds that stay-at-home mums are unattractive, lazy or just plain stupid.
“I stopped wearing make-up because I didn’t have 20 minutes to put it on in the morning.”
“As regards clothes, she says, “I’d just pull on what was comfortable because for me it’s about caring for the children.”
And what about being labelled stupid and lazy?
“I think a lot of people presume that because you’re at home and not in the workplace your brain is going to mush.
“On top of that people tend not to see housework per se — unless it’s not done so basically what you do is not seen and people think you’re lazy.
“After I gave up working as a hairdresser I realised that working at home was much harder.
“I get up at 6.30am and don’t finish ’til 8.30pm.”
She doesn’t believe the government should pay mothers to stay at home.
“I don’t think someone else should have to pay for my decision to say home and look after children.
“I chose to stay at home for those 15 years but I chose to go back to work to help make ends meet in the recession.
“Being a stay-at-home mum was the greatest privilege.
“I was very lucky because I know there are people out there who wanted to do it and couldn’t.”
WHEN legal secretary, Joelyn McGuire, became pregnant with twins in 2004, people were disapproving when she returned to work.
“Everyone said to me that I should give up work to stay at home with the kids, but I brought the twins to a crèche and, at that time, people seemed surprised I was going back to work. They couldn’t believe it,” says the 34-year-old Mayo woman.
She worked until her employers were hit by the early stages of the recession, and took voluntary redundancy in 2007. Joelyn found another job, but that, too, was lost to the downturn, in 2011.
“I’m a stay-at-home mum now. I’m always defending myself when people ask if I’m working now. 10 years ago, people were surprised and a bit disapproving that I was working when I had twins. Now, they seem to be surprised and a bit disapproving that I’m a stay-at-home mum with three children, and a fourth on the way.
“I used to feel embarrassed about saying that I wasn’t working — however, now I feel much more positive about it, because I can see the benefits to the kids.
“I’m spending more time with them. I’m not coming in from work at 7pm in the evening and putting the kids to bed at
7.30pm. Family life is much more relaxed.
“When I was working and the kids were in and out of the crèche, I was juggling everything and it was a big strain.
“I find that I’ve more time for my two-year-old daughter than I had for the twins, when they were two and I was working.
“I’ve seen both sides of the coin. When the twins were young, I was stressed and wound-up because of the busy schedule.
“I wanted to be at work, work was my life, but it was too much in the end. Now, I find that, with my toddler, I am so much more relaxed. I sit on the floor and play with her. When I was working, I didn’t have time to do any of these things — I literally ate standing up.
“Before, it was always a case of having to get the next thing done. If one domino fell, the whole lot fell. That doesn’t happen anymore.
“I’ve heard references to ‘motherism’, and any intelligent person knows that any mother worth her salt is not sitting around all day in her pyjamas, watching daytime TV — she’s cooking, cleaning, minding the kids and keeping the house and family on track.”
Losing her job was initially a negative, she says: “It was never my plan to be a stay-at-home mum, but that is how it happened and I made something positive out of something that could have been very negative.
“Realistically, stay-at-home mothers will never get paid for staying at home, even though it’s the toughest job ever, some days. In an ideal world, though, it would be nice to get some sort of payment to stay at home.”
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