Has women in the work force helped or hurt the family?

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Serap said:
Warrenton;7681691:
I
am a good mother…I am not saying that I “feel” that I am a good mother. I am and I don’t need someone telling me otherwise.
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Who said otherwise?

We are debating what is good for society as a whole; what is optimum. We are not discussing what is expedient.

You accuse me of being ignorant when I say that daycare amounts to paying someone to take the parent’s place. I was responding to a post that extolled the affinity between a nanny and her charge. If we want to have a different definition of daycare, that is fine - just set the definition. But if you do, then the affinity is no longer relevant.
I don’t go around saying that SAHMs must stay home b/c they are uneducated and therefore not able to teach their children as well as a college educated daycare worker. That would also be a very ignorant statement.
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Why would it be ignorant? It would certainly be counterintuitive to the argument: one would expect someone to say that “because SAHMs lack college educations, therefore they should send their children to be taught by college educated people.” It would also be wrong, because there is no correlation between having a college education and being able to teach. It would be wrong for other reasons, too, but let us leave it at that.

In the news, one reads incessantly the criticisms against the public school systems. All of public school teachers are college educated. One could argue that less education might make a better teacher!
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Serap said:
Who knows what views would be if society were different and staying at home was considered as prestigious as being a lawyer or doctor…interesting line of though don’t you think?

If you believe that if this were true, then society would be better, we agree.

If society does not believe it, is there any doubt that the saints believed it?
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this thread is much nicer now…women are supporting eachother 👍

:clapping:
 
themeginthemoon said:
😃 See, I have been secretly training my husband. When baby was really little and had a lot of check-ups, I would sometimes make him go alone and send a little list of questions for him to ask to make sure all the bases were covered with her health and well-being. That way, if something were to happen and I could not make a Dr. Appointment / dress her for daycare or school/ make a parent teacher conference, he would not be totally helpless! Ideally we both try to make these things, but if it is more ideal for one or the other than that person will go.

Some might say I am a ‘product of feminism’ or a virulent product of society. but really, I just want my daughter to be ok if for some reason, something happened to me. I am young, but my health has never been totally stable, and you just never know what can happen. He is prepared to brush her hair, make sure her clothes match, tell her about womanhood, and all of those things. I don’t feel like it’s his job to shoulder all of this alone, but I just like to know he feels secure in being a good parent to our daughter and future children if God decided to take me early.

SAHM’s work SO HARD. I did it for the first year of her life, and boy was it tough! It was not right for me once she was old enough to want more out of her day than to be held, fed, and sung to. Working makes me value my time with her so much more, and it is right for us at this point. No one should minimize the role of a SAHM or a working mom, both do what they feel is best for their family. Ok, the eternal optimist has now left the building :cool:
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You are very smart to do this. If I could go back and change anything, it would be that I never asked my husband to go along to any of the pediatrician, dentist, etc. appointments. He did have to participate when our younger son got sick, and it’s good that he could stand back and see our son with more objective eyesight. I, being with him all the time, was not picking up on how much weight he had lost. Neither of us really snapped to how big his stomach was until he lost so much weight and still had a swollen belly. But I digress. Hubby has never even met the pediatrician. They’ve seen the guy for 17 years now. Not his fault, I’ve never asked him to make time to come along. I figured I was saving him from the stuff he wouldn’t want to do anyway.

I kept thinking all along that if I did enough to make my husband’s life easier, he’d eventually appreciate me for it. Some men would. Mine hasn’t ever gotten it. His mother worked and did everything and he never even had to do chores. He takes having a home cooked meal every night almost completely for granted. He hasn’t done a load of laundry in 22 years. It’s not his fault, though, he’s never had to. I just do it, I figure it’s my job.

But not to turn this into a husband-bashing event. I chose my approach to parenting and being a wife and even if my family is not going to put a monument to me in the front yard, I am still content that I had the best job and the one God meant me to have. Now for the next season of my life…

🙂
 
Serap said:
Katie…get yerself barefoot and pregnant.

Everyone here should read Pope JP II’s “Letter to Women”.

He sums it up perfectly.
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Haha 😛

I agree, it is beautifully worded and anyone on here who thinks that women are only useful in a domestic sense should certainly take the time to read it.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
:confused:

When do you leave for work? Because that is when your job as a mother is put on hold until you return home at 4:45 p.m. You really cannot seriously claim that you are being a full-time mother while you are at work! Your live-in nanny is doing that job during the daytime hours. Not that you stop being your kids’ mom while you are working, but you are not putting in the hours on that job description.
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Are you kidding me? This is bordering on ridiculous now. Do you seriously believe mothers stop being mothers when they are at work and fathers stop being fathers when they are at work? That would mean that sahms are not mothers when their older children are at school. That cannot be what you really mean to say! Parents are parenting even when they are in a different place, whether they are at work, at home with child, or at home while child is in school.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
I know without a doubt that my vocation was motherhood. 🙂
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I feel the same way. My vocation has always been motherhood. I can be a great mother and work. In fact, I feel my working has benefited my children more than when I stayed at home. THey have advantages in life and memories that will last forever because I worked. ANd they are very happy and well adjusted.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
I am not being unsupportive. I am merely challenging your statement that you put in 14.5 hour days as a mother while you are working outside the home. How are you hurt by that? I did not insult you or denigrate your choice, but you can’t have it both ways. We each choose our paths, based on what we feel is best for us and our families. I stand by my choice, why are you defensive about yours? You choose to work outside the home which means you are not in the home during the day, correct? You believe that you are a better mom when you have a job, for reasons that you’ve stated here and elsewhere, which is fine. .
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She is clearly defensive because you told her she is not mothering her child when she is not physically present.
 
Katie966 said:
What? :eek:

I really hope you don’t mean this in the way I am interpreting it.
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Are you of the mind that there are really no fundamnetal differences between the genders, that we are basically the same?
 
sharmin said:
She is clearly defensive because you told her she is not mothering her child when she is not physically present. Besides being highly insulting, it is completely inaccurate and absurd!
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I understand why women work…yet how can you say a woman is mothering her child when she is at work? She clearly is not with the child, so how could she be mothering then?

It is, btw, the same with fathers, they are not fathering their children when they are at work. In both cases the mom and dad are helping to provide financial needs, but that is not the same as mothering or fathering…at least not in my view. 🙂 That is the basis for these talks. Since both parents work, the kids get no direct parenting until much later in the day, if it all. The question is: do parents want relative strangers who hold values not identical to their own spending 40-60 hours of awake time with their kids, or do those parents want to insttill their values into their children? It cannot work both ways.

You know, I created this thread, and I regret it now because I realize that it is profoundly silly. People do not change, so what’s the point, you know? They make their own life choices, they are good with that, end of story. Me posting a thread about these things will not produce anything at all. Nothing. It was quite profoundly silly of me to create this thread, but I did not realize that until just now. It is not as if anyone here cares what I think anyway, it is hard enough to get Catholics to care what the Church and Christ teaches, my views do not even approach the radars of Catholics here (and why should they)!

Oh well–live and learn, right? 🙂
 
irishpatrick said:
Are you of the mind that there are really no fundamnetal differences between the genders, that we are basically the same?
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No. I never said that anywhere. I was responding to the assertion that “women are fulfilled by being mothers, wives, and homemakers” and “men are fulfilled by bringing home meat and providing for their families”.
 
irishpatrick said:
You know, I created this thread, and I regret it now because I realize that it is profoundly silly. People do not change, so what’s the point, you know? They make their own life choices, they are good with that, end of story. Me posting a thread about these things will not produce anything at all. Nothing. It was quite profoundly silly of me to create this thread, but I did not realize that until just now.)
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What exactly were you trying to “change” or “produce”? Do you think all the moms on here, whether they work for pay or not, are somehow misguided and don’t know what is best for their families?
 
Katie966 said:
No. I never said that anywhere. I was responding to the assertion that “women are fulfilled by being mothers, wives, and homemakers” and “men are fulfilled by bringing home meat and providing for their families”.
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Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you did say that. Do you disagree with those ideas?
 
Katie966 said:
What exactly were you trying to “change” or “produce”? Do you think all the moms on here, whether they work for pay or not, are somehow misguided and don’t know what is best for their families?
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Not, not at all. I think the family is in a state of crisis. The major crisis is threefold: fathers and materialism and lack of faith. Frankly, in most cases I think mothers tend to work harder for children, than do fathers. However, I think that the best situation for children is to have one stay-at-home parent, preferably the mother, but the father will do nicely as well. I created this thread to illuminate those views, but I realize now it was silly.
 
irishpatrick said:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you did say that. Do you disagree with those ideas?
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Yes- I am just as much a woman without a husband and children as I will be with them. I expect that I will be fulfilled by those things as well, when I am called to that. But to imply that my fulfillment as a woman depends on them is beyond ridiculous. Not every woman is called by God to be a wife and mother. (And, not every man is called to be a husband and father, either.)

And, that’s not even touching the issue of being fulfilled by being a homemaker. Some women are. Some women are for a time. Some women are not. It’s a family decision, and not so much about whether you are “fulfilled” by it as it is what is best for your family.
 
Katie966 said:
Yes- I am just as much a woman without a husband and children as I will be with them. I expect that I will be fulfilled by those things as well, when I am called to that. But to imply that my fulfillment as a woman depends on them is beyond ridiculous. Not every woman is called by God to be a wife and mother. (And, not every man is called to be a husband and father, either.)
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Ooops, sorry, I thought you were married with kids. Nevermind. 🙂
 
Katie966 said:
Yes- I am just as much a woman without a husband and children as I will be with them. I expect that I will be fulfilled by those things as well, when I am called to that. But to imply that my fulfillment as a woman depends on them is beyond ridiculous. Not every woman is called by God to be a wife and mother. (And, not every man is called to be a husband and father, either.)

And, that’s not even touching the issue of being fulfilled by being a homemaker. Some women are. Some women are for a time. Some women are not. It’s a family decision, and not so much about whether you are “fulfilled” by it as it is what is best for your family.
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BTW, whether or not a person (mom or dad) feels personally fullfilled is completely and utterly beside the point once a couple has children. The raising of the children become 100% the vocation and priority then, and it is these sorts of things that I feel have been. From the birth of their first child their lives cease being their own.
 
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