Women/mothers at home?

Question

Why do some men fail to see the value of women/mothers at home, particularly if they want her there in the first place to cook, clean and look after the children?

If men are against "special treatment for women" by assuming that stay at home moms do no work, why are they not supporting mothers who do return to the workforce?

Why do they want women at home apparently doing nothing?

Or could stay at home moms really be contributing and what they do be considered a form of work after all and not to be taken for granted?

Answer 1

SAHM are doing the most important job of looking after the children.  Because they are not actually in the workforce then it's not seen as a job but that doesn't mean it's any less significant.

Answer 2

being SAHM is hard work, its not all soap operas and bon bons.

I am a single working mother, but my mother was a sahm and she worked hard each day, and when we all got home from work/school, she didnt sit down and relax like the rest of us, she had dinner to cook ,homework help, ...etc etc.

Being a sahm is no joke.

I think in order to be appreciated, a sahm should go on strike when feeling taken for granted. Lets see how that works out.

Although im a single working mom, kudos to sahm!

Answer 3

Great question!

I think part of the answer lies in how these men define "value."

They recognize the intrinsic value of a SAHM, but they have a hard time when it comes to placing a dollar value on it....especially if the dollar is gonna come out of his paycheck!

I suggest these men think in terms of how much money she is SAVING him, not how much she will COST him in divorce.  Wouldn't that motivate them to do what it takes to remain married?

Answer 4

I can not speak for other men on this issue. I value my stay at home wife tremendously. She runs the house-hold: pays the bills, raises our children, does most of the shopping. Frankly, I couldn't do it with out her. Personally, I have never met another man who didn't value his SAHM.

Answer 5

I'm sure that there is the occasional man who takes for granted the contributions of a SAHM( I still hate that term, it undervalues the position completely) but I am also certain that there are women who don't take the position seriously.

A SAHM *shudder* is more than a mother who stays at home. She is a financial manager, homemaker, teacher, nutrition specialist etc. lol If a SAHM *sigh* is fufilling her duties with the zeal required to do such work, there is no reason that she should be taken for granted and not seen as an equal contributor.

Answer 6

I don't know.

I've done both (home nearly four months on maternity leave before I went back to work) and know full well that the one who gets to go off to work each day is the one who has the far easier job.

Answer 7

As Robert G said, people who devalue the job of being a SAHM were either never put in that situation (of having a SAHM mom or wife or relatives), or they havent experienced the freedom that the 'to each their own' thought brings to them. Some of the responders above have a valid point in questioning the beliefs of men who speak high of SAHM's sometimes and at other times say they respect working women. In my opinion, stay at home moms shouldnt be taken for granted. When we have kids, she is planning to stay at home for sometime to take care of the kids.

Answer 8

The people who devalue stay at home moms tend to be 1) women or 2) men who do no have wives or have wives who work.

What realy bugs me are the men who support draconian prenupts where the woman doesn't get a penny she didn't earn and then turn around and say they want  stay at home mothers. To me thats just a blatent form of hypocracy

Answer 9

Nobody except the husband of the woman in question is even eligible to judge the contribution that the SAHM mom does to the family. The only thing I can say is that the role/job of the SAHM/SAHD is tremendous. Your assertion that " some men fail to see the value of women/mothers at home, particularly if they want her there" is presumptuous. It is closer to political connotations than it is to reality.

Answer 10

Men want it both ways - they want the support of a SAHM but they don't believe there's a dollar value attached to it - assuming it's "a woman's natural role."  I also think most men (I didn't say ALL) who do value their SAHMs-personal assistants- accountants-maids-nannies-house cleaners and chief-toilet-bowl-cleaners, have girlfriends on the side for some 'spice.'  Why?  Because SAHMs begin to resemble their mothers.

How do I know?  I've dated plenty of them - one for over two years.

Answer 11

I think to most men...they think staying home all day is a "break" because they have to go out and work so hard everyday. The truth is, if many men were to experience staying home to take care of the house and kids, they would be so exhausted at the end of the day. I have been a working single mom, and now I am a married stay at home mom....I guarantee you staying at home is much harder than getting to go to work everyday! In fact, I am considering going back to work just so I can get a break! lol

Ironically, I think some men fear their women going into the workforce because they know they will have to dress up/look nice, and potentially be around other men. They fear another man will either hit on their wife, or appear more interesting to their wife. This is very chauvinistic, but true.

I think a lot of men don't realize that staying at home while fun at first, can be very debilitating to a person. That is, if they don't get the chance to get out, be around other adults, or wear any other clothes besides sweats or jeans/t-shirts.

I understand many women love being a stay at home mom and they wouldn't want it any other way. I love it sometimes, but hate it other times. But, if you were to pay someone to come in and do all the chores that need to be done at home, I guarantee you it would be up and around $100,000 a year.

Answer 12

So are men supporting stay at home moms or working women?  Make up your mind.

Answer 13

I think modern society is work-obsessed and assumes that the only valuable way to spend your time is in some form of paid employment.

Feminisn is largely to blame for this.  Betty Friedan started it in The Feminine Mystique. She dismissed the role of the stay-at-home wife as irrelevent in today's society.  Housework, she averred, was now so easy it could be done in an hour, therefore women at home needed something else to occupy their time, i.e. a career.

Bafflingly, though, modern women who go out to work are always complaining how tired they are and how they don't get enough help with the housework from their spouses, which is really weird.  How come they can't get everything done in an hour like Ms Friedan said they could?  it's all very mysterious.

The point is that feminism first decided that staying at home was not a proper occupation in the modern world, and men, being no fools, naturally embraced this concept with enthusiasm.  Naturally men prefer to have wives who are going out to work and earning money AND doing all the housework, cooking, childcare etc, why wouldn't they?  it's like Agatha christie said in her autobiography:

"The position of women over the years has definitely changed for the worse.  We women have behaved like mugs.  We have clamoured to be allowed to work as men work.  Men, not being fools, have taken kindly to the idea.  Why support a wife?  What's wrong with a wife supporting herself?  She wants to do it.  By golly, she can go on doing it!

it seems sad that having established ourselves so cleverly as the weaker s*x, we should now be broadly on a par with the women of primitive tribes who toil in the fields all day, walk miles to gather camelthorn for fuel, and on trek carry all the pots, pans and household equipment on their heads, whilst the gorgeous, ornamental male sweeps on ahead, unburdened save for one lethal weapon with which to defend his women."