The other day, someone told me that being at home and taking care of kids while the husband is away at work is damn easy. This person herself didn’t have children and was working, but was of the opinion that all single mothers were using the excuse of “it’s so tough” as a way of protecting their cushy lifestyle. Based on what I’ve heard, I tried telling her about how tough it was, but she asked me for a specific breakdown of the jobs that a parent would do at home with one kid starting from the time they got up.
Not having kids, I couldn’t answer this of course. She strengthened her point by saying that Indians can hire maids to do the housework, cooking, washing and cleaning so there’s not much pressure on that score. And if the child is old enough to go to school…well, there’s nothing left for the homemaker to do at all!
Another point put forward was that many working people also take care of the home such as doing the cleaning, washing, grocery shopping and educating their children. So those who remain at home full time have it much easier than them since they don’t have the additional burden of earning.
Anupa and I are very open about the fact that we don’t want kids. Too much responsibility, financial commitment and hassle for my taste. I’m a lazy person and kids would completely ruin my lifestyle.
I keep hearing horror stories of how much effort kids are. For a while, I watched the series “Desperate Housewives” where Linette – a mother of four literally broke down from the stress and pressure. Her house was in a mess, the kids were running around breaking things, no one was listening to her…and she lost it. Her husband was off at work, providing the financial resources for the family. So I’m well schooled and taken these warnings to heart.
But I find it very difficult to answer specific questions. So I decided to ask those of you who actually have this kind of job. It’s an important question because it has links to things like alimony and property division where a woman’s contribution to the household needs to be valued if she is to get her fair share. But if people think that there’s not really much work going into it, then that notion loses a lot of its power.
So what kind of response does one give when faced with the question of what exactly a homemaker does hour by hour starting from the time she gets up to the time she goes to sleep? Let’s assume there’s one child in the household and a maid to help with the work.
It kind of sucks that we need to provide this kind of justification in the first place. Staying at home and taking care of kids and house is part of the agreement between two spouses. Even if we find that one spouse has it easy, the agreement is between them to share everything equally. Suppose we found that the earning partner – say the man – has a really cushy job where he just has to sit in one place without doing anything and still earns a lot of money, would we complain and say that he has it easy? Probably not.
But like I said, I’ve seen enough indirect evidence to believe that being a homemaker is a lot of hassle. I’m just not able to put it into words. How do I respond to questions like the one above?
very nice post ! the grass on the other side ….always seems greener !
I am working woman , no kids, who took a break recently of 4 months due to health issues(mostly told to rest at home), what i found was i was busier at home than at office…..even with the cook and maid!!!!
to want to know what a woman does…..errands errands and more errands!!
http://sushmita-smile.blogspot.in
In reply to shooting star
I wish a homemaker would one day pen down stuff she does at home throughout the day…just for reference for purposes like this!
In reply to shooting star
@Shooting Star, I agree, we are more busier at home.. I work part-time…and what I found is that on the days I go to work, I am more satisfied with what was done, cause 1. I know I am paid for the time I am working. 2. I know only the most IMPORTANT, basic things around the house can be done, so my list gets ticked off and I dont feel bad for the not cleaning on those days. But the days I am home, I always end up finding that I have to “get this done, that done, the other done” and its never ending and leaves me unsatisfied that I couldnt get something done. Theres always something to do and to top it, I never get anything tangible, like money, for all the things done. Yes! I do get hugs, smiles, “I love you’s” but I cant prove how happy that makes me feel right? I can say that they are all of more value than the Money I can earn but then I wonder, arent we justifying value? Could we really compare apples and oranges? Can a price be put on Satisfaction/Contentment/state of being?
I know I’m going to get killed for this. But I have been on both sides of the fence. I was a stay at home mother for one year, to our two yellow labradors. One was a puppy at that time,and it is no different than having a toddler at home, with potty training, feeding, exercising and so on. It was hard, waking up 2-3 times in the middle of the night to take the puppy out. In the morning I’d have to watch the puppy every second as they get into everything possible, like a toddler. All this was done without any maids, or help from family, as we do not have any in the US. But at the end of the day, your time is yours. You can nap in the afternoon, or take a break go to the library, watch a movie, or go for a walk/run. There are no dead lines, nothing to deliver, your ass is not on the line! If someone even dares to say anything, all you have to do is say it’s my life, my kid, go mind your own business. Unfortunately the same does not fly, if you were to tell the same to your professor or your boss. If you have 4 toddlers at home, what are you whining about? It was your choice to have them in the first place. The easy thing to do then would be to dump them off with a baby sitter and go to work :) Most kids are in school anyway from the ages of 3-4. They are gone for at least 5-6 hours. They come back and maybe nap. There’s all that free time! Ok, so you have to do the house work, so does a working mother, she does all that and goes to work. She is probably sacrificing a lot of sleep and personal time. No work is less important, but I tend to lean towards the side that says working mothers have it harder than stay at home mothers.
Speaking from personal experience of having been a home maker without domestic help. Being the first to get up, i attend to my toiletries and prepare coffee for my husband; wake him up and serve it to him in bed lovingly with a good morning kiss.A our eldest son has not yet started school so its ok to let him sleep while i retire to the kitchen ( primus stove ) to prepare breakfast – idlis/dosais/ aloo parathas and raitha/ channa batura etc. I also prepare lunch which i will pack for my husband to take with him to work.A is up and he is taken to the loo etc and then breakfast is served to both.After my husband leaves for work, i eat my breakfast.. A is then bathed and settled down to do some ” learning ” while i wash the dishes, make the bed. sweep and swab the room and soak the clothes, which will be washed and then put out to dry shortly.Then i bathe and A and I spend the rest of the morning reading, learning nursery rhymes, learning to write, doing experiments with science kits and fixing lights on toy engines etc, till it is time to have lunch and maybe take a nap.
Husband comes home in the evening and is served tea. Sometimes we go out on the motor bike, shopping or to the local market or to a bookshop and return home.Most days A and i leave my husband alone to study so that he is not disturbed for about 3 hours; walking to wherever we can; playing in the park etc.Returning home I get down to preparing dinner which is then served and after it is eaten the kitchen is cleaned. We all say our prayers and very tired retire for a good nights sleep. When A was younger he would get up often and i would walk him up and down singing him songs to get him to go back to sleep :) Loved being a home maker except for the times when i was ill and too tired to do what HAD to get done.There was no one to help.
By the time Bhagwad was born, life was easier for me;we could afford domestic help and most of my time was spent teaching him at home :)
In reply to tusnap
Life would probably have been easier if we could have afforded a maid at that time…
Once i started my part time clinic at Jabalpur ( 5pm to 9pm ) we were once again devoid of domestic help because our Faithful Ram Singh had left us to become the Collector’s cook !. So i was back to cooking and scrubbing and washing while Bhagwad teaching Bhagwad at home. Sometimes when i was ill and overwhelmed – i WAS desperate. Once finished off half a bottle of whisky because i had no one to understand or help me and was so tired and depressed :(
I am increasingly coming to believe that I live on a different planet where these questions were asked and answered some 50 years ago; I’m always kind of amazed when I hear people ask these sort of questions. Why don’t they just Google. There are entire library sections devoted to the topic with intelligent discussion. Yet the ignorance continues.
If one wants to go into specifics, the answer would be different depending on whether there are children or not and the age of the children:
1. Very young children – it is a LOT of work, round the clock. And if you are the one at home, it becomes your job mostly because it is assumed (as someone suggested above) that you can take naps and breaks when you want. Again it is subjective, some babies are easier than others. But still… no baby is easy. You are still feeding them every couple of hours, rocking them to sleep, dealing with poo (frankly the easiest part), worrying worrying worrying. You do not get to nap when you want. You get to nap when the baby wants and this is not always possible because you can’t always fall asleep when they want. Women who have no other help have to do chores at this time – even something simple like taking a bath. Even if you have help, in the very early stages, many new mothers respond physically to sounds of their baby crying in another room; they cannot just fall asleep. OMG, I’m getting enraged while typing this. Why do we have to explain this to people? Arrrgh.
It is not like having a puppy. I have had a puppy. It is different, harder. Puppies prepare you somewhat. But human beings come out of their mothers probably the least developed of other mammals. Their systems are not fully developed… they remain dependent on their carers for way longer than other species. There’s a term for this, the fourth trimester, and for some babies last longer than others.
Also, we seem to forget that the normal state of things is not for one parent or even two to raise a child alone. The normal thing is that it does take a village. So having help with your babies is normal and frankly, necessary, except in the case of a combination of superwoman and supereasy baby. Having help with your baby does make it easier but does not make it easy.
It is harder than any office job. I have done both. My husband has had a taste of full-time caring for an infant. He agrees.
2. Older children – Again, people … especially in countries where help is ubiquitous… seem to forget that children need someone to raise them. Even if they start school, it’s generally half-day… and full-day school ends at 4 pm. Most full-time work goes on longer. If both parents want to work outside the home, they have to get someone else to do it – a helper, daycare, their family members. Someone is doing that job – attending to the kids before they go to school, getting ready all the stuff they need for school, attending their co-curricular stuff, taking them to the doctor. We recently went on a short trip with the two babies…just two extra people but there’s so much more to think about. So you can imagine that every single day with an extra person that is not independent yet, there is extra work to be done. Many people do not have the luxury of finding someone to replace them, others might (often rightly) think noone can. Someone above mentioned that when she works outside, there are things she does not do. I think all of us who work de-prioritise certain things. And I’d wager, those of us who have kids and choose to work outside, also do this. There are only a few superhumans who can truly manage both without any compromise to themselves or their children. So some people might say – I’d rather do all that stuff which involves the kids and the home myself and not omit stuff. And yes, some people do have help even while they choose to stay at home because it is A BIG JOB. Kids are extra work and all of us vary in our capacities to single-handedly deal with it.
3. No kids: This seems to be the most contentious category. What do they do at home all day? Some of them even have help when they are home all day? Shock and awe! Well, the one person I know in this category is extremely busy because she uses the time to : a) keep a beautiful home and cook beautiful meals, including baking b) pursue her own interests such as painting c) handle all the bank stuff, errands etc. for the family (funnily enough the bank refuses to believe she is in charge of finances) d) do volunteer work like for an NGO, for her building committee etc. So these people use their time to do things that satisfy them and yes, some of them are busy doing that and may say so. Why is that a problem?
Frankly, as you said, noone needs to justify how they spend their time to anyone except maybe their own immediate family who is affected by their choices. I went back to your post and I find myself confused by your friends question – it started off about single mothers which is completely different situation…moreover, using the excuse “we’re so busy” to protect themselves from what?
In reply to The Bride
I feel your rage :) . If I was a homemaker, I would probably just ignore all these questions. I guess the reasons why they still need to be discussed are two fold:
1. If statements are made that it’s tough, then others are justified in asking why and questioning it.
2. It matters if women are to be treated as equal contributors to the home and assigned their rightful share during divorce. Though personally I think that when two people live together, the home they live in is theirs equally regardless of who takes how much effort to maintain it.
To answer your last question “to protect themselves from what?”. To defend against people who say that it’s easy, women’s work is not as valuable as a man’s in earning etc etc.
In reply to bhagwad
Ok I see your point. I think I lost sight of it a bit in trying to list out what actually happens as far as I know it. Hope you don’t mind another long comment about the two points:
1. With regards to the babies in the 0-2 category, I think noone who has looked after one for even a short length of time (by which I mean at least a week or two at a stretch) will describe it is as less than tough or busy. Even up to two, children may wake up at night for feeds, fall sick often, have all sorts of developmental things to be bothered about, need special food. It gets progressively easier as the child grows older but you still need at least one adult to be hands on 24/7, if you can identify an adult capable of that kind of mental and physical stamina, otherwise you need two adults. Don’t forget that there are other things to be done at home, not just the baby looked after. So parent + help is what is needed not some kind of luxury.
When the child goes to primary school, there will be about four hours where the parent is technically “free”. This could be seen time spent doing nothing, but rarely is. In fact, it is time spent doing things for the child, for the home, for other family members or for oneself that one neglected to do in the 0-3 agegroup. Presence does make a difference. Companies that can afford it prefer to have someone on-call, on site. It’s the same thing. How many of us do jobs that are nuts-and-bolts? We are all mostly the value-add and we consider ourselves busy even though we are ‘only adding value’. As the kids grow older, homemakers may be troubleshooters and managers or specialists and that does add value. They are busy adding value to their homes in the same way we are presumably busy – though I doubt most of us are going by the number of comments on FB at all hours – adding value at office.
I think a whole lot of this discussion comes from insecurity and defensiveness. It’s like a zero-sum game: if those who work outside acknowledge that those who stay home add value, then does that mean that we are depriving our kids of something? Noone wants to face that. But well, I would say that that parents who are home add qualitatively, in most cases, to their kids. How this value-add squares off against other factors like mom-going-crazy-as-its-not-her-forte or finances suffering or presence of good substitute care, for example, would be what determines whether one stays home or not. Right now it sounds like the Arts vs Science – Which is More Difficult Debate, which is frankly just childish. They are both difficult and how so depends a lot of the individual capacities of the person involved.
2. Quantifying in monetary terms is tricky. I have often heard that if a woman’s work in the home is quantified, husbands would not be able to afford them. I think this is a Western viewpoint because of the labour conditions there. But in Hong Kong, a price has been put on work in the home – it is 4000HKD, the minimum wage for domestic helpers in HK. If I were to stay home and do the tasks they do – cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, looking after the kids – honestly a lot of work, I would be paid that sum, which is several times less than what I earn doing relatively easier work outside. The amazing fact to me is that my work as an editor is paid so much more highly than my helper’s simply because apparently there are less people that can do my job. It’s a supply thing rather than a value or difficulty level thing.
BUT…even that sum only includes basics. What about the value-add in terms of education. Many HK working parents send their kids to playgroup because they do not believe their helpers/old parents can effectively stimulate their kids minds. That can go up to 3,000 a month. Then stuff like planning nutritious meals and snacks…I’m sure there’s more that if quantified in monetary terms adds value.
Even for those who do not have kids – how do you quantify the value of a home that always runs beautifully so that the working member does not have to expend any stress on it? How do you quantify the value a woman who networks behind-the-scenes or attends parties and makes the right remarks adds to the family?
Thankfully, the law in most civilized country recognize this and decide alimony of a case-by-case basis accordingly. However, since so much of the value-add is not easily quantified, I’d recommend timely payment not at the point of divorce where everyone is in a bad mood and less likely to be fair in judging contributions.
In reply to The Bride
I think you made an excellent point about some professionals being “on-call” even though they don’t have an hour by hour breakdown of their work. That’s a pretty good analogy and not one I would have thought of myself.
I think its subjective .. there are lazy moms who stay at home , look after the kids , look after the home .. but her care can be of poor quality . i.e more time spent lazying around … sleeping , watching tv . and occasionally yelling at the kids ..
again there are some stay at home mom’s who devote herself to keep the house clean, cook , and really look after the kids , like well cooked healthy meals for the kids , playing with them , studying with them .. those work at home moms are doing a lot of hard work ..
i am a single father , . i take care of my kid ,, but just barely … the quality of care is much lower .. but thats because i am lazy .. i have seen many other single moms , who have same jobs like me , but yet provide a better lifestyle and care to their kids .. but because they are inherently hard working .
so i think its subjective , a hard working person will work hard at what ever task he or she is given ..
In reply to rishi
This point seems to come up frequently – that certain tasks are vital. Others are not. Many of those who stay at home take it upon themselves to go over and above what they need to do…
I honestly feel that sometimes women take too much upon themselves. I have a home of my own, which I sometimes just let go. I mostly work from home these days, and I have a maid. There is always work to be done at home in spite of this, which does not go away just because I would go out to work in an office. The point is that many women are trained to do household work, and they take themselves too seriously about having an eagle eye for scrubbing the black spot in the corner that no one else is ever going to notice! I don’t have any such problem, and I am quite all right with a little dust on my table, until I actually have the time and mood to deal with it. It’s a matter of perspective.
On the other hand, I really do not subscribe to the idea of homemakers, meaning someone staying at home and not working at all. Of course, everyone has a choice, but financial independence is way too important for me to condone this choice.
In reply to Fem
I think for the first few years of the child being born, staying at home is essential no? After that, maybe not so much. And yeah – there are a lot of optional tasks that need not be done!
And I still think that some woman glorify their parenthood , and try to always prove that they are having the hardest job of all . I agree that till 4-5 years a kid needs constant attention and love .. but definitely after the kids are 5 years old , they dont need constant attention . and they are at school most of the time you just need to ensure that when they come home , they get some play time , study time and a decent cooked meal .
A woman does not need to stay at home ALL day for that . But if she does .. thats her choice . Neither should she still behave that staying at home = work at hard .. nor should the outside world pass comments on her life