Stay at Home Mothers

Over the last couple of days, I have been reading - mainly newspaper articles - about stay at home mothers (SAHM). There is a lot of controversy about mothers in general but especially about mothers who stay at home to raise their children. While for some it is a choice, for lots (and I expect for the majority in Cheetham Hill) it is a necessity, mainly due to the costs of childcare and lack of support for mothers. In most cases, as one article said, the wages a mother would be paid at a job would mostly be spend on the childcare needed to enable her to work, thus making it slightly pointless to work instead of raising her children herself.
There are also cultural traditions at play in Cheetham Hill, where it is assumed that the woman of the house stays at home to raise the children and keep house while her husband goes out to earn money for the family.

This doesn't stop women who stay at home from feeling isolated and lonely.

From what I have read, I think that some of the loneliness comes from the lack of understanding of the hard work involved unless you are a SAHM. One article I found was written by a husband who's wife didn't work in order to look after their young twins. He talked about encounters with women who worked and asked '"What does she DO all day?"' Reading this article, and ones like it, has given me a better understanding of stay at home mothers and I am going to be able to develop a more specific programme for my building. 

To get some first hand responses, I contacted one of the many SAHM support page on Facebook and asked about some pros and cons of being a SAHM. I had a great response, and although the page I think is mainly American, the replies were mainly what I was expecting to hear from the reading I had been doing. 

The general response was that it was great to stay at home and raise their children and not working meant that they wouldn't miss a moment of their child growing up, they wouldn't have to take time off work for doctor's appointments etc, but the lack of adult conversation would drive them crazy and there was a lot of negativity towards mothers who didn't work. One woman's response was that depending how long you remained at home, moving back into the world of work could be intimidating. 

Knowing more about what it's like to be a stay at home mother means that I can now start to really work on my programme and start making marks on the site. 

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