Give up your carier for me....would you?

[xiinfaniin]

Nevins is "truly passionate" about her job, but after seven years, she's about to leave it. When the baby arrives, she will take off at least a year, maybe two, maybe five. "It's hard. I'm giving up a great job that pays well, and I have a lot of respect and authority," she says. The decision to stay home was a tough one, but most of her working-mom friends have made the same choice. She concludes, "I know it's the right thing."

 

Ten, 15 years ago, it all seemed so doable. Bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, split the second shift with some sensitive New Age man. But slowly the snappy, upbeat work-life rhythm has changed for women in high-powered posts like Nevins. The U.S. workweek still averages around 34 hours, thanks in part to a sluggish manufacturing sector. But for those in financial services, it's 55 hours; for top executives in big corporations, it's 60 to 70, says Catalyst, a research and consulting group that focuses on women in business. For dual-career couples with kids under 18, the combined work hours have grown from 81 a week in 1977 to 91 in 2002, according to the Families and Work Institute. Email, pagers and cell phones promised to allow execs to work from home. Who knew that would mean that home was no longer a sanctuary? Today BlackBerrys sprout on the sidelines of Little League games. Cell phones vibrate at the school play. And it's back to the e-mail after Goodnight Moon. "We are now the workaholism capital of the world, surpassing the Japanese," laments sociologist Arlie Hochschild, author of The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work.

 

Meanwhile, the pace has quickened on the home front, where a mother's job has expanded to include managing a packed schedule of child-enhancement activities. In their new book The Mommy Myth, Susan Douglas, a professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, and Meredith Michaels, who teaches philosophy at Smith College, label the phenomenon the New Momism. Nowadays, they write, our culture insists that "to be a remotely decent mother, a woman has to devote her entire physical, psychological, emotional, and intellectual being, 24/7, to her children." It's a standard of success that's "impossible to meet," they argue. But that sure doesn't stop women from trying.

 

 

..............

Despite such misgivings, most women who step out of their careers find expected delights on the home front, not to mention the enormous relief of no longer worrying about shortchanging their kids. Annik Miller, 32, of Minneapolis, Minn., decided not to return to her job as a business-systems consultant at Wells Fargo Bank after she checked out day-care options for her son Alex, now 11 months. "I had one woman look at me honestly and say she could promise that my son would get undivided attention eight times each day--four bottles and four diaper changes," says Miller. "I appreciated her honesty, but I knew I couldn't leave him."

 

read on: The Case For Staying Home

[ElPunto]

^That's where the extended family common in non-western countries could step in and alleviate the burden. But life in the West seems to encourage people to be constantly harried.

 

Edit: Xiin - is there ever a case for the father staying at home or is it always the mother who must?

 

Originally posted by Faynuus:

I think CL, hardline feminist she is, didn't compare daycare with stay at home parents but she compared the outcome. do kids raised by parents at home grow up to be scccessful and disceplined than the daycare ones.

Which is a mistake - in that case - we have legions of orphans who grow up to be decent and successful people - let's simply abandon our kids to the state and I'm sure they will be alright.

[NinBrown]

Bus drivers earn more than nurses even specialist nurses.

 

qayli ama ha qaylin...hooyo weligeed hooyo bey ahaaneysaa. and is not just Somali women who decide to give their careers..below is an extract from an article I was reading.

 

-----

There are many more women than men in higher education - over a million, in contrast with 785,000 men. Sixty three per cent of undergraduates at British medical schools are female, as are 60 per cent of law students. On business courses, 55 per cent of students are women. After graduation, they are recruited by top firms in all fields.

 

Then they stop. Despite all those women qualifying from medical school, only 20 per cent of hospital consultants are female. Although they outnumber male law graduates by 10 per cent, only 37 per cent of solicitors are women and just 24 per cent of those are partners in the firms where they work. In the top 10 law firms, the number of female partners is only 15 per cent. Among the FT Top 100 companies, 22 now have more than one woman on their boards, yet 32 have no women at all. There is still just one woman chief executive, Pearson's Marjorie Scardino, and one female chairman, Baroness Hogg at 3i.

-----

[Aaliyyah]

Aliyah distastful eh. um I don't know. Khadijah R.A didn't think so, did she?

She was exactly in the same position that some women find themselves in. Older, succesful and looking to fulfil half her deen (as some say)

thats true but khadija R.A was in her 40s. I am not sure how I would feel at that age, but right now younger guys don't appeal to me

 

Anyways, Hayam it seems to me you intend to bring a younger guy from back home..wouldnt that be sort of like buying him ? i mean whats the chance that at 30 plus or 40 that dude would find you appealing? he would most likely see you as a way to reach his goals. Doesn't seem healthy relationship to me. But, best of luck

[- Femme -]

Depends on the pay, perks & benefits of the job. Oh yessiree...I'd give up a lot for the right type of job.

[Emperor]

This topic has not taste

 

What is career? and how can somebody be so attached to their career, what level and to what extent? Would they give up for a better or more rewarding position.

 

NinBrown, thats damn statistics, you are a lurking mysoginist, your point is damn if you do damn if you don't, so either way education or no education Woman's place is the Kitchen miyaa xaalku?

[Miriam1]

Oh Aaliyah, didn't you hear 65 is the new 35! personally I age incredibly well. Its a family thing :cool:

 

Buying him? I don't want to get into this too much, I was just joking. But how can't you apply that very same logic to the Prophets wife. True, he did have his own money, but he was just starting out at the time. In my example, the man will be wealthy with human capital and potential.

 

I am not trying to be rude, but from your posts, I almost feel like your trying to recapture something of the past, that is really irrational, a romantized notion of marriage, well atleast the Islamic version.

 

I wish it did exist, and maybe it does. But it isn't the only way to marital happiness.

[Cara.]

Originally posted by ThePoint:

Which is a mistake - in that case - we have legions of orphans who grow up to be decent and successful people - let's simply abandon our kids to the state and I'm sure they will be alright.

Of course there are exceptions one way or another, but the question is general outcomes. If there's no difference in overall achievement and well-being between children raised in daycares and those with stay-at-home mothers, then all this guilt-tripping must stem from ignorance or arrogance.

 

The truth is that children have never had mommy staying home to take care of them. It's a modern, largely Western conceit. Women stayed home to take care of the house and the farm, and children were free labor when they came along. When everything from making food to washing clothes to preparing for winter is an all-day full time endeavor, then it made sense to have some division of labor. But modern conveniences like baby foods in single-serving jars, washers and dryers, vacuum cleaners, etc have suddenly freed women from unending and largely underappreciated labor, but have also made children the center of stay-at-home moms' lives, and I think the kids suffer from all that neurotic over-attentiveness. And the rest of us suffer from all the moralizing of women who fantasize their children will someday say "I would be a drug addict if you had followed your dreams." :rolleyes:

[Che -Guevara]

^Typical constructivist

[Valenteenah.]

Originally posted by ThePoint:

Edit: Xiin -

is there ever a case for the father staying at home

or is it always the mother who must?

*Gasp* You didn't just ask that out loud? Dude, there Somali males within hearing distance. Don't give them a heart attack.

[Cara.]

^LOL. They probably missed it the first time, but hada way dideen.

 

hururuf hururuf

[Sir-Qalbi-Adeyg]

A man who stays at home while he's wife/girlfreind works is called a pimp.

[Faynuus]

really? i thought a pimp had a totally different meaning and i hope u dont mean that dayuus thing.

 

There is nothing wrong with a husband letting his wife work while he takes care of the home.not that it is a traditional thing but if they concent to it, there is nothing wrong with that. Remember we are governed by shariah and letting the wife work outside the home is not HARAM as long as she adares to the islamic teaching. the man must also provide for his family but what if she is more competent or capable than him?

[Sir-Qalbi-Adeyg]

There is nothing wrong with it, wrong is relative anyways, but it's not natural for a man to stay at home, nurturing is best left to women as they are genetically better equipped for it. But whatever works for you, any man with an ounce of pride would not let he's wife work while he stays at home like some curyaan.

[ElPunto]

Originally posted by Cara:

Of course there are exceptions one way or another, but the question is general outcomes. If there's no difference in overall achievement and well-being between children raised in daycares and those with stay-at-home mothers, then all this guilt-tripping must stem from ignorance or arrogance.

You're using the wrong metric. When you get your little bundle of joy - the goal is to help fulfill his/her maximum potential by investing time and energy to help him/her grow up in the formative years of 0-5. One can hardly compare a mass daycare with harried workers there, for the most part, for pay to an attentive, loving parent.

 

 

The truth is that children have never had mommy staying home to take care of them. It's a modern, largely Western conceit. Women stayed home to take care of the house and the farm, and children were free labor when they came along. When everything from making food to washing clothes to preparing for winter is an all-day full time endeavor, then it made sense to have some division of labor. But modern conveniences like baby foods in single-serving jars, washers and dryers, vacuum cleaners, etc have suddenly freed women from unending and largely underappreciated labor, but have also made children the center of stay-at-home moms' lives, and I think the kids suffer from all that neurotic over-attentiveness. And the rest of us suffer from all the moralizing of women who fantasize their children will someday say "I would be a drug addict if you had followed your dreams." :rolleyes:

Yes and no. It wasn't soley about children but children were at the heart of the whole entreprise. What was the point of keeping up the farm if you couldn't pass it on to your children who would then care for you in your old age(as you cared for them in their formative years)

 

I agree that there can be too much time devoted to the children because of all the time saving conveniences. But ultimately daycare I think is just 'good enough' - but never equivalent to a stay at home parent. And if some women feel guilty about that - tough noogies.