Care and feeding of the SAHM

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One of my favorites bloggers, the Practical Conservative, has an excellent piece that I’d like to share entitled “The Practical Conservative Guide to the Care and Feeding of a SAHM.”

thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/the-practical-conservative-guide-to-proper-care-and-feeding-of-a-sahm/

There is some controversial (but very interesting) stuff in there, so without further ado, here are some quotes.

“Proper care and feeding of a SAHM is a big problem among Americans, notably and specially the conservative Christian ones. This is meant for guys who want to know what tools and resources their SAHMs need to not just survive but bloom into productive, cheerful wife critters. It’s also meant for women who want to be SAHMs or are SAHMs who don’t know what to ask for before or during marriage.”

“To start with, the baseline income for the household (primarily from the husband working) needs to be about 100k in 2015 dollars. I have to slap a dollar value on the value of lost community, and about 100k is a good starting baseline. If you want to live a functional life on less, you need some combination of the following:”

Here’s a quick version of her list, as I don’t want to steal the whole thing:
  1. actual helpful relatives in the area
  2. “Willingness to rent rather than own.”
  3. a smaller number of children than the current conservative religious homeschooling ideal large family
  4. “Access to safely walkable basics like groceries and parks.”
  5. Think about how pregnancy and breastfeeding will affect the SAHM’s ability to function. " One of the reasons I promote household help for SAHMs is that one woman without any help generally maxes out at three kids. Some women can handle four on their own, but generally things start to break down after that for most women. So if you ignore my first thing and want her to stay home alone with seven or eight kids, don’t expect much. She’ll never have the time or energy to show them how to do chores until it’s too late to be useful."
  6. “Strong church fellowship. Church folks who take care of young mothers seriously are a great blessing and totally can make it possible for a SAHM to thrive at lower household incomes.”
  7. helpful neighbors
“Now those are things that make it possible to be functional, effective and relatively rested as a SAHM on more limited income.”

“Those things also make it possible for SAHMs of smaller families to be truly leisured and able to devote time and care to supporting their local community institutions and providing support to some of their own family or local community members as needed.”

I have a lot of thoughts on this, so I’ll continue in a follow-up. For the moment, I’ll note that the Practical Conservative’s list does a lot to clear up the mystery of why so many of our CAF SAHMs struggle–either they’re missing the income that the Practical Conservative recommends, or they’re missing the compensating lifestyle factors that she gives in that list, or they’re missing both the income and the compensating lifestyle factors.
 
Xantippe said:
One of my favorites bloggers, the Practical Conservative, has an excellent piece that I’d like to share entitled “The Practical Conservative Guide to the Care and Feeding of a SAHM.”

thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/the-practical-conservative-guide-to-proper-care-and-feeding-of-a-sahm/

There is some controversial (but very interesting) stuff in there, so without further ado, here are some quotes.

“Proper care and feeding of a SAHM is a big problem among Americans, notably and specially the conservative Christian ones. This is meant for guys who want to know what tools and resources their SAHMs need to not just survive but bloom into productive, cheerful wife critters. It’s also meant for women who want to be SAHMs or are SAHMs who don’t know what to ask for before or during marriage.”

“To start with, the baseline income for the household (primarily from the husband working) needs to be about 100k in 2015 dollars. I have to slap a dollar value on the value of lost community, and about 100k is a good starting baseline. If you want to live a functional life on less, you need some combination of the following:”
Here’s a quick version of her list, as I don’t want to steal the whole thing:
  1. actual helpful relatives in the area
  2. “Willingness to rent rather than own.”
  3. a smaller number of children than the current conservative religious homeschooling ideal large family
  4. “Access to safely walkable basics like groceries and parks.”
  5. Think about how pregnancy and breastfeeding will affect the SAHM’s ability to function. " One of the reasons I promote household help for SAHMs is that one woman without any help generally maxes out at three kids. Some women can handle four on their own, but generally things start to break down after that for most women. So if you ignore my first thing and want her to stay home alone with seven or eight kids, don’t expect much. She’ll never have the time or energy to show them how to do chores until it’s too late to be useful."
  6. “Strong church fellowship. Church folks who take care of young mothers seriously are a great blessing and totally can make it possible for a SAHM to thrive at lower household incomes.”
  7. helpful neighbors
“Now those are things that make it possible to be functional, effective and relatively rested as a SAHM on more limited income.”

“Those things also make it possible for SAHMs of smaller families to be truly leisured and able to devote time and care to supporting their local community institutions and providing support to some of their own family or local community members as needed.”

I have a lot of thoughts on this, so I’ll continue in a follow-up. For the moment, I’ll note that the Practical Conservative’s list does a lot to clear up the mystery of why so many of our CAF SAHMs struggle–either they’re missing the income that the Practical Conservative recommends, or they’re missing the compensating lifestyle factors that she gives in that list, or they’re missing both the income and the compensating lifestyle factors.
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This is spot on. When my oldest three were very young, we lived within walking distance to two parks, an ice cream shop, a video store and sandwich shop. We went to the park every day and our life was very simple.

We also had grandparents that visited at least one weekend a month, bringing toys and providing free babysitting.

It was a very happy time for us.

I found, when my children were young, that I really needed help and support from grandparents and other sah moms and access to free or low cost recreation. We also had access to affordable housing. Now that my children are older, income has become more important.

I have given up on meeting and having close relationships with other moms at this stage of my life. They are very involved in their childrens lives and it is all-consuming.

Private school, college, cell phones and laptops are very expensive. Homeschooling is not a realistic option where we live.

I look forward to being a grandparent someday and I will be very helpful and supportive to the sahm’s in our family because I know how important it is.
 
I’ve really appreciated the Practical Conservative’s insights because she formulates a lot of stuff that I kind of already knew, but had never verbalized for myself.

As I’ve mentioned on CAF, like a lot of us, I went into marriage very idealistic about the standard conservative Catholic family model: SAHM mom, large family, homeschooling, breastfeeding, babywearing, etc., etc. This without ever having seen anybody I knew do it in real life, as my Protestant extended family that typically produces 2-4 kids per couple and a lot of them rather obviously had their hands full, both economically and logistically.

Here are some thoughts on the Practical Conservative list:
  1. I think that we don’t think in advance enough about what is going to be difficult about being an SAHM, so a lot of us are caught by surprise by a lot of facts of life that should be fairly predictable. I think there’s a lot of over-selling of the SAHM lifestyle among conservatives, rather than thinking about how to make it better.
  2. The $100k number may sound very shocking to a lot of CAF readers, but I think the Practical Conservative probably is correct that that’s how much it does cost if you don’t actually have any of the compensating lifestyle factors she lists.
  3. Helpful relatives can be hard to come by, even when you live close to family.
  4. I think a lot of times, we don’t actually know what is making things work for us. There’s an example in my family of a couple that had LOTS of grandma help and financial support when they were raising their children. This couple raised their children and then when their grown daughter moved in nearby with her family, they had pretty much nothing to offer in terms of practical help or support. And then they wondered why they didn’t have an awesome relationship with their daughter or grandson…
  5. Childhood memories aren’t a good guide to how well our own mothers managed when we were tiny. By the time we were big enough to observe accurately, we weren’t tiny anymore.
  6. I couldn’t agree more about the need to think about the effects of pregnancy and breastfeeding on a mother’s ability to be effective at home. I personally get very sleepy and stupid and slow when pregnant, so at best, I’m no more than 25% of my non-pregnant self.
  7. I also agree that the average mother without help tends to be at the end of her resources at 3 kids. That has a lot to do with why the US total fertility rate has hovered around only 2 kids per woman for the past 40+ years. While there are undobutedly outliers who easily manage much larger families (and I expect to hear from a number of them in a minute), the average US woman finds even 2 children challenging, especially when small.
  8. The need for stronger church communities and local communities is something important to think about and work on. Fortunately, there are lots of nice new electronic solutions–for instance Meetup.
  9. Also, as the Practical Conservative notes, it’s important that SAHMs have enough leisure to be able to think about how to help other mothers and to do so. If everybody is so tapped out that they have nothing to give others, everybody is going to be so tapped out that they have nothing to give others–it’s a vicious circle of exhaustion.
 
Xantippe, I guess you like bloggers who make it a point to throw in uncharitable zingers at people who dare disagree with their Superior Wisdom. I was wondering why you only paraphrased the “smaller number of children” point, until I read the whole quote:
Willingness to accept a smaller family size than is usual in conservative homeschool type circles. This is historically normal in America. People wanting to economize smartly and do without domestic help didn’t have large families. A lot of people will tell you their own sainted mother did without domestic help and raised 4/7/10 kids easily, but those people are nearly all men and are going off their childhood memories, where they didn’t know that the neighbor girl(s) who hung around all day were paid mother’s helpers. Or they’re lying. Sorry!
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Now, if the blogger is stating “smaller family size” compared to, say, the Duggars, I totally agree. But I get the feeling that there are SAHMs even on CAF who do manage to raise a counter-culturally large number of kids without hiring help. Note that per other parts of the blog, the PC believes that the average woman can only raise three children effectively by herself. Three. Not much different than the “2.2” or thereabouts that the average woman does indeed wind up having in the US.

I do however agree with this quote from a different post on her blog:
What is unloving, abnormal and unnatural is the American conservative belief that technology can replace human relationships and that women don’t really have social, spiritual, intellectual or emotional needs that cannot be met in their totality by mothering, no matter how intensively.
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I do see that tendency among some conservative circles, that essentially, God created woman as “Man-lite”, a simpler creature that was created merely to care for her children, husband, and/or family of origin, and hence, couldn’t possibly have other needs. Some even will claim that the story of Adam and Eve shows that women were created to serve men.
 
Oops! I can’t believe I forgot to talk about the renting issue.

I also have to agree with the Practical Conservative on that one. Homeownership may not be immediately feasible, or feasible at all in the case of highly mobile families. I’m very happy that we didn’t have to deal with homeownership stuff as newlyweds or young parents.
 
And it seems you posted this as I was drafting my first post:
  1. I also agree that the average mother without help tends to be at the end of her resources at 3 kids. That has a lot to do with why the US total fertility rate has hovered around only 2 kids per woman for the past 40+ years. While there are undobutedly outliers who easily manage much larger families (and I expect to hear from a number of them in a minute), the average US woman finds even 2 children challenging, especially when small.
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My main issue with this post is that “make mom’s life easier” is treated as the end, and the “don’t have as many kids” is treated as just another means to accomplish this end, much as “hire household help” or “rent not own”.

I guess we’ll see, but I think there are many on CAF who WANT to have a large family and are willing to sacrifice for it. That doesn’t mean I discount the importance of a SAHM having a support network, or her need for “social, spiritual, intellectual or emotional needs that cannot be met in their totality by mothering”.

Also, since the PC is not Catholic, I assume she supports ABC as a way to limit family size? Which is obviously not an option for Catholics. And it seems from what I’ve read on CAF is that while NFP works well for some couples, others very well might wind up with 7 kids or more but not because they really planned it that way.

Obviously the PC wouldn’t suggest such families give their “extra” kids away. So “have less kids” is not as workable as solution as some others on the list.
 
My thought based on reading your summary (not the actual post yet) is that a helpful community and/or family (basically, reliable support system) goes a very long way to making up for the advantages that more income would provide. At least, that’s been my experience.

That said, even though our household income is significantly under six figures, I can have a reasonable expectation that given my husband’s field we will probably be there (or equivalent adjusting for inflation) in 5-10 years. We’ll also be out of debt then. We also are likely to opt for non-homeschool (probably public school, the horror! :p) So regarding our situation as temporary is incredibly helpful for my mental wellbeing. I can do this a few more years. But no, probably not 20 more.

I also think it does matter how hard it is to have lots of littles. But once they get older, I think children can provide quite a lot in terms of household help (without coming close to treating them like slave labor.) Bonus: I’ll hopefully raise several boys to be quite attentive to the needs of running a household and if they are called to be married, I entertain the idea that they will be quite good catches (plus of course they’re all very handsome and I expect them to remain so as they grow up. :D)
 
lax16 said:
I look forward to being a grandparent someday and I will be very helpful and supportive to the sahm’s in our family because I know how important it is.
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I feel exactly the same way.
 
Children typically arrive one at a time, presumably so that parents could decide as they went along how many they can handle.

I was surprised that the conservative blogger did not talk about living somewhere where SAHMs were typical, even if not the norm. SAHMs support each other, provide examples for each other, trade recipes with each other, and so on. If this is your in-laws and all the cousins can run around with each other, so much the better, but you want de facto cousins and aunts and uncles in this equation. It helps SO MUCH to have someone else trying to do what you are trying to do in a non-competitive setting. (If your relatives are into competitive child-rearing, I’d honestly say it is better to live farther away from them!)

If you live somewhere outside a major metropolitan area, you are more likely to find properties with yards–where your children play outdoors while you get something done indoors–other SAHMs, and real estate prices low enough that you can buy instead of rent. After all, if you rent instead of own, how are you building any equity for yourself? When does that part about providing for your retirement come in? The cost of living is generally lower, as well.

I know many very large families, but I do not know any women with very large families who also home-schooled all their children. Maybe one or two who weren’t a good fit for the educational options available, but not all of the children. Raising a very large family is also something better done in an area where a very large family is not unusual. If it is typical, so much the better. When everyone knows what you are up against because half of them are up against the same thing or have been, it makes life far easier.

The women also chose to breastfeed or not based on what was practical considering their personal physiology. When breastfeeding is easy for you, nothing could be handier. When it isn’t, that is another story. The more children you have, the more you have to be willing to choose the practical option over some ideal you dreamt up before you knew what you’d gotten yourself into.
 
ToeInTheWater said:
Xantippe, I guess you like bloggers who make it a point to throw in uncharitable zingers at people who dare disagree with their Superior Wisdom. I was wondering why you only paraphrased the “smaller number of children” point, until I read the whole quote:

Now, if the blogger is stating “smaller family size” compared to, say, the Duggars, I totally agree. But I get the feeling that there are SAHMs even on CAF who do manage to raise a counter-culturally large number of kids without hiring help. Note that per other parts of the blog, the PC believes that the average woman can only raise three children effectively by herself. Three. Not much different than the “2.2” or thereabouts that the average woman does indeed wind up having in the US.

I do however agree with this quote from a different post on her blog:

I do see that tendency among some conservative circles, that essentially, God created woman as “Man-lite”, a simpler creature that was created merely to care for her children, husband, and/or family of origin, and hence, couldn’t possibly have other needs. Some even will claim that the story of Adam and Eve shows that women were created to serve men.
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Some responses:
  1. The Practical Conservative is talking about what is reasonable to expect of the average woman. If an outlier can raise 7-10 trilingual cello prodigy Rhodes Scholar kids with no help–awesome! But, that’s no more of an argument for everybody doing it than the fact that some people run marathons is an argument for everybody running marathons.
Lots of CAF women do obviously struggle with families that aren’t in the 7+ range. Plenty struggle with 1 or 2 or 3.

It’s worthwhile to stop for a moment and figure out why that is. I think the Practical Conservative gives a very good account of why mothers struggle.
  1. There are sometimes invisible factors that make life easier than it would otherwise be and that don’t generalize for other families. For instance, my husband is a college professor. He was out on summer break when our oldest was born and I discovered she wasn’t going to nurse directly. So, I pumped milk and he bottle-fed the baby for the first six weeks of her life before he went back to work–during those six weeks, I barely touched her. Likewise, when our second child (who had the same issues) was born, we were living on campus about five minutes walk from my husband’s office, so my husband was able to pop over and watch the kids while I pumped. (I also had a lot of sitters the second time, but my husband’s close office was very important.)
A lot of other women would not have managed to pump-and-feed as long as I did without that kind of help, which would be logistically impossible for most families given work schedules and commute time.
  1. One thing that is easy to forget is that in a working husband/SAHM couple, there’s often an interesting asymmetry with regard to social interaction. My husband, for instance, often has to talk to people ALL DAY long. By the time he comes home, he’s often all talked out. On the other hand, I might have talked to no adult in person but the Panera’s drive-thru lady, so I’m socially starved. If we were to expect my husband to provide my only adult social outlet, that would be a disaster, and unfair to both of us.
But that issue (the working spouse’s social surplus and the SAH spouse’s social deficit) is not immediately obvious even to couples that are experiencing it. It’s one of the issues that may need to be figured out for a happy SAHM or SAHD.
  1. A lot of her writing is a critique of the “Christian” manosphere, which claims to be traditional, but has a lot of wacky and unrealistic ideas about what traditional means.
 
Xantippe said:
  1. One thing that is easy to forget is that in a working husband/SAHM couple, there’s often an interesting asymmetry with regard to social interaction. My husband, for instance, often has to talk to people ALL DAY long. By the time he comes home, he’s often all talked out. On the other hand, I might have talked to no adult in person but the** Panera’s drive-thru** lady, so I’m socially starved. If we were to expect my husband to provide my only adult social outlet, that would be a disaster, and unfair to both of us.
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(Is that seriously a thing?!)

I agree about the social interaction. I went almost nowhere when my first was born. By the time his brother came along, though, I was making friends (who were also SAHMs) and I had some kind of daytime social interaction 2-3 times a week, which is perfect for an introvert like me. Plus I get a regular “moms’ night out,” so I can get time with friends without kids, too.
 
ToeInTheWater said:
And it seems you posted this as I was drafting my first post:

My main issue with this post is that “make mom’s life easier” is treated as the end, and the “don’t have as many kids” is treated as just another means to accomplish this end, much as “hire household help” or “rent not own”.

I guess we’ll see, but I think there are many on CAF who WANT to have a large family and are willing to sacrifice for it. That doesn’t mean I discount the importance of a SAHM having a support network, or her need for “social, spiritual, intellectual or emotional needs that cannot be met in their totality by mothering”.

Also, since the PC is not Catholic, I assume she supports ABC as a way to limit family size? Which is obviously not an option for Catholics. And it seems from what I’ve read on CAF is that while NFP works well for some couples, others very well might wind up with 7 kids or more but not because they really planned it that way.

Obviously the PC wouldn’t suggest such families give their “extra” kids away. So “have less kids” is not as workable as solution as some others on the list.
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The Practical Conservative is a conservative Baptist of some kind and while she doesn’t mention an exact number, she’s apparently the mother of a homeschooling family. I expect she’s in the 4+ kids range.

I don’t know her views on birth control, but she does have a post here about preferred spacing–she suggests 3 years between kids.

thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/the-practical-conservative-guide-to-proper-care-and-feeding-of-a-sahm/child-spacing/

“A lot of women find out the hard way that it takes three years or more between each child to really develop effective routine and structure (not to mention toilet training issues, children are in diapers/pullups longer these days for many reasons, and this is among them), by having 2-4 kids one or two years apart and being unable to escape survival mode for about a decade. Yes, a whole ten years.”

She’s also a natalist, so she does want Christians to have larger than standard families, but she’s asking people to be realistic about what that entails and how to make it easier and how to do better than “survival mode”.

Her primary argument is that it’s unreasonable to expect the average woman to have a large family, homeschool, and take care of meals and cleaning all by herself with no help and to do all of that effectively. She’s arguing that at least one of those things has to give.

Also (and very importantly), there are going to be bumps in the road. Kid (or two or three kids) turns out to be on the autism spectrum. Mom gets gestational diabetes. Mom gets bedrest for a whole trimester. Mom has twins. Etc. Any family system that only works when there aren’t any problems isn’t much of a system.
 
Thank-you Xantippe.

I make no apologies that I am maxed out at three kids. Financially, emotionally, physically, mentally…pretty much in every single way you can imagine.

If you’re feeling just desperate and your husband is just short of negotiating you off of a ledge some days…then it’s time to re-evaluate your priorities on what you understand as “grave” reason to have another kid.

It’s time to stop listening to everyone on these boards and in real life and just listen to God and maybe your spouse…🙂

I went into parenting thinking I was going to be some crazy, granola, breast-feeding/baby wearing mom who would practice NFP only when I absolutely needed to.
Why would I need to if I was going to EBF and my cycles wouldn’t be around to worry about.

Then life happened…as you can see from some of my past posts.
Not to mention the fact that my lovely baby-boomer parents and in-laws don’t have the word “retire” as a part of their general vocabulary.
All of them work still…and they are all in their 60s.

Plus…one can’t forget the strange phenomena of siblings. I have a sister who is married with kids.
My parents/in-laws love ALL of their Grandkids…not just mine…and free babysitting is limited to if and when my parents/in-laws have a free night and not this whole moving in with us for several weeks while I get settled.

So this whole…“don’t you have help?”…thing is pretty much limited to what our wallets can take.

So, I’m good with 3 kids…thanks. Not looking to have anymore.
 
I don’t have much time to write all my thoughts and comments, but I’ll share this:

When I read the title “The Care and Feeding of the SAHM” I naturally assumed that somewhere in the article, the author would mention chocolate.

The author failed to mention chocolate. Or coffee.

Who writes about caring and feeding SAHM without saying something about chocolate or coffee???
 
ToeInTheWater said:
Xantippe, I guess you like bloggers who make it a point to throw in uncharitable zingers at people who dare disagree with their Superior Wisdom. unlike yourself, of course. :rolleyes: I was wondering why you only paraphrased the “smaller number of children” point, until I read the whole quote:

Now, if the blogger is stating “smaller family size” compared to, say, the Duggars, I totally agree. But I get the feeling that there are SAHMs even on CAF who do manage to raise a counter-culturally large number of kids without hiring help. Note that per other parts of the blog, the PC believes that the average woman can only raise three children effectively by herself. Three. Not much different than the “2.2” or thereabouts that the average woman does indeed wind up having in the US.

I do however agree with this quote from a different post on her blog:

I do see that tendency among some conservative circles, that essentially, God created woman as “Man-lite”, a simpler creature that was created merely to care for her children, husband, and/or family of origin, and hence, couldn’t possibly have other needs. Some even will claim that the story of Adam and Eve shows that women were created to serve men.
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there’s actually a lot of that…even here on CAF
 
gardenswithkids said:
I don’t have much time to write all my thoughts and comments, but I’ll share this:

When I read the title “The Care and Feeding of the SAHM” I naturally assumed that somewhere in the article, the author would mention chocolate.

The author failed to mention chocolate. Or coffee.

Who writes about caring and feeding SAHM without saying something about chocolate or coffee???
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LOL.

Some things are just obvious. Thanks for the reminder though! LOL;)
 
Kelfa28 said:
Thank-you Xantippe.

I make no apologies that I am maxed out at three kids. Financially, emotionally, physically, mentally…pretty much in every single way you can imagine.

If you’re feeling just desperate and your husband is just short of negotiating you off of a ledge some days…then it’s time to re-evaluate your priorities on what you understand as “grave” reason to have another kid.

It’s time to stop listening to everyone on these boards and in real life and just listen to God and maybe your spouse…🙂

I went into parenting thinking I was going to be some crazy, granola, breast-feeding/baby wearing mom who would practice NFP only when I absolutely needed to.
Why would I need to if I was going to EBF and my cycles wouldn’t be around to worry about.

Then life happened…as you can see from some of my past posts.
Not to mention the fact that my lovely baby-boomer parents and in-laws don’t have the word “retire” as a part of their general vocabulary.
All of them work still…and they are all in their 60s.

Plus…one can’t forget the strange phenomena of siblings. I have a sister who is married with kids.
My parents/in-laws love ALL of their Grandkids…not just mine…and free babysitting is limited to if and when my parents/in-laws have a free night and not this whole moving in with us for several weeks while I get settled.

So this whole…“don’t you have help?”…thing is pretty much limited to what our wallets can take.

So, I’m good with 3 kids…thanks. Not looking to have anymore.
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Nice to see you on the boards…you’ve and the children have been in my prayers! 😉
 
Interesting quotes. Having help, in family or friends, makes a world a difference.

I think some angst over SAHMs is self centeredness. Society tells us women that we need to be fulfilled. Just last week, a woman told me that she’s not fulfilled as a mom and doesn’t find that “just being a mom” is enough.

It’s not about me. My job as mom is not to fulfill me. My job is to raise the best kids that I can. Am I fulfilled cleaning up my son’s bed after he soils it? Nope. Am I fulfilled homeschooling? Not really. But it’s not about me. And I think that’s a huge problem. Because who can honestly say that much of what moms do is fulfilling? And when we are constantly asked whether we are fulfilled…and realize we aren’t, we think we aren’t cut out for the whole SAHM business.

When I see my kids acting like Christ, I’m fillfilled. It’s then that I realize all the other junk- sleepless nights, disgusting jobs- was totally worth it.
 
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