working parent rant-ette

[flea]

There's a tendency for discussions about working vs. stay at home parents to divvy up the time spent on various activities. (For example, here: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/parents-who-dont-waste-enough-time/). Then someone asks, "What do stay at home parents DO all day? (Since studies show that SAHP only spend an hour a day playing with their kids.)" And someone replies, "Laundry, dishes, errands, take the kids to the doctor, clean the house, take the kids to soccer practice..."

Here are the things nobody ever says in response to those:

Working parents do dishes and laundry and take the kids to the doctor and all that shit, too! They just cram it into their evenings and weekends, and take mornings off for the doctor part. Um, duh? Yeah, some people outsource housecleaning, and some go out to eat a lot, but most working families (like, say, mine) don't choose to or don't really make enough money to do either of those things, and precious few people outsource the daily breakfast dishes or taking the kid to the doctor. Yes, the house stays cleaner when there aren't people in it for 8-10 hours a day. But the laundry still needs to be done.

The real thing SAHPs do is TAKE CARE OF KIDS. This isn't "playing" in studies, but it is very time-consuming, as any parent knows. Non-play stuff I don't do while my kid is at daycare: make and feed and clean up from morning snack, lunch, and afternoon snack; change diapers/watch potty-trainer like a hawk and plop him on the potty every hour and read a book for 15 minutes while we try to pee; wrangle kid down for a nap (with 2 year olds, this can be an hour-long process if you even get a nap at all, as they want to drop the nap but still *need* it); do activities to keep the kid from running amok and then clean up from those activities. I don't do much housework or errands on days I'm home with kids, except when the TV is on. (And yes, ONE kid can help with housework; I have not figured out how to let two help at the same time without it all dissolving into chaos.)

Comments

[gannet.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[wandsci.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Sometimes you do see the "Hey, working parents do laundry, too!" response, but it doesn't usually go well. In fact, those discussions never go well. I'm not sure why I keep reading them. Probably for the same reason that I look at an accident when I drive by, I suppose.

We've totally wussed out on the nap thing here. We just put in her in the car or stroller and use that to get her to sleep quickly. I used to be embarrassed that day care could get her to nap easily and I can't. But I've gotten over that now.

I have a friend who is a SAHM, and she says the big win for them is that they have more family time on the weekend. I can see that. We try to set aside family time every weekend, but the price of that is a to do list that never seems to shrink.