I will try to answer Freidasima. The SAHM idea is that when Mother mainly stays home, her presence has the profound effect of kids associating home with Mother there. Home is Mother's domain and focus, a la tzofia halichos baysa. This does NOT mean that Mother never leaves, or that the children never leave!
Of course a working mom has to cram more into the hours she is home. The SAHM idea is that she has more hours to devote to her family and home - precisely to avoid the stressful cramming, fragmented, attention-divided atmosphere. And when kids go out for part of that time, it avoids a mother being "extremely overwhelmed", as curlgirl suggested on page 98 that one just do because that's life. It's not the best life for families, okay? I don't know if tzedaka is a feasible answer, but this point should be acknowledged.
Along these lines, Shalhevet asked why a woman needs to sleep. I am a woman who needs to sleep! No way could I have raised all the kids I did/continue to do without napping (or alternatively sleeping late) most days of all these years.
B"H I feel very accomplished. I believe that I have pushed myself BEYOND my limits to raise my family. Some years I worked out of the house part time. Working out of the house more? Something would have collapsed along the way. I am trying to work a little now, from home, according to what my kids and I can handle.
Yeah, it IS a contest. Suffering is holy (for some), or shows you are strong as man (for others). I don't see anything praiseworthy in effort or suffering you could avoid.
I guess you lost the contest then Ruchel, but be of good cheer. You always seem to be pretty happy. I guess that's the trade-off!
Quote:
To me doing it all alone or taking the kids out while in labour or refusing painkillers (unless you think they are dangerous) is a waste when you could avoid it, not something I would do even if I could (out of choice).
As my dad says life is hard enough without spoiling it for ourselves and our family. Keep your strength, you never know. Be nice to yourself, others may not be. Know your rights and not only your duties.
I happily lose the contest!! Though some would say my migraines and my daily treatment causing low blood pressure are no piece of cake either! But yes BH, I have a good life, and I do not run myself to death, and I do not feel the need to do more than I do. In fact sometimes DH will tell me to stop doing so much. And my doc told me I should be proud every day I don't stay on the couch, because I would be entitled (not a softy doc, a retired military colonial one)
My poor dad went through some nasty things, the war, parents surviving the war just to die after, loneliness, poverty, working from 14 yr old on, caring for sick relatives, betrayals by "friends", blah blah. So yeah, he knows on the topic and it has made him wise...
So far today I ran a bunch of errands and will now clean up and start supper and then out for more errands before picking up my son from his school. Normal life bh.! :-)
Of course a working mom has to cram more into the hours she is home. The SAHM idea is that she has more hours to devote to her family and home - precisely to avoid the stressful cramming, fragmented, attention-divided atmosphere. And when kids go out for part of that time, it avoids a mother being "extremely overwhelmed", as curlgirl suggested on page 98 that one just do because that's life. It's not the best life for families, okay? I don't know if tzedaka is a feasible answer, but this point should be acknowledged.
So to clarify: Absolutely, the BEST is to be relaxed, happy, patient with ones's kids and generally full of energy.
The REALITY for me and many people I know is alot of pressure, alot of rushing and wearing ourselves out completely.
Isramom, if you take tzedaka out of the equation you're missing my point.
My point is, absolutely wear yourself out (like the rest of us) before accepting tzedaka.
Do you think most women out there are NOT overwhelmed?! I really want to know what their secret is ;-)
And yes, IMO that's just life. And we have to deal with it.
I,missed the cell phone discussion. I have prrpaid cell phone for $30 a month. I need to be reachable when I'm not home. This phone is actually a semi- smart phone; it has a qwerty keyboard and was on sale for $40. I dont yet have a landline in my new place and no internet, so I'm using the limited internet on this phone. But as a person with a very fast 10 finger typing speed, I;m finding it hard to get used to 2-thumbed typing. I still make tons of mistakes.
Along these lines, Shalhevet asked why a woman needs to sleep. I am a woman who needs to sleep! No way could I have raised all the kids I did/continue to do without napping (or alternatively sleeping late) most days of all these years.
I hope you weren't deliberately misunderstanding me.
I asked why a woman needed to sleep exactly when her children needed her to help them get off to school in the morning making her husband would miss davening with a minyan, assuming she hadn't been up with a child half the night and wouldn't have a chance to catch up later.
Of course a mother needs to sleep. The question is when.
But I think asking for unnecessary luxuries from tzedaka is unholy.
Why is being proud of what you can accomplish called suffering?
Yes, who here mentioned suffering? Suffering is rolling in the snow or lying on a bed of nails.
There were several posts from women who feel it's worth making an effort and not playing the swooning weak woman so as to accomplish things which are important to them - like caring for their children, enabling their husbands to learn more Torah or daven with a minyan, and building their homes.
Why is it holy to demand things from others that we are capable of doing for ourselves?
A cell is not a luxury nowadays. The only reason it's stopped being a luxury is because everyone expects you to have one. Any office or place of business you are involved with asks for your cell number first and only then your home number. I guess no one is home anymore. It has happened to me so many times in a specialist's office that I end up needing to call my doctor from there and they tell you to use your cellphone and they don't allow outsiders to use their office phone.
I can tell that a cell has stopped being a luxury because I don't have one. I bought a real cheap Tracfone which we share and I bought only for emergencies and it costs us $20 every 3 months. Pennies compared to what everybody else pays. I take it with me when I leave my neighborhood (not often). And I know that if I hadn't had it at those specialists' offices, I'd be pretty doomed.
Hey, if a person has the money for camp and wants to send their kids, geh gezint a heit! But we all know that's not what we are discussing here, but rather taking zedoko for it.
Isramom, what you write about a mother being identified with "home" sounds totally amorphous. Working mothers can also give the kids the feeling that "tzofia halichos beiso" and that the children are her focus. Because if you make the HOME her focus that gives a good excuse for her to want the kids out to clean the home and cook...as we saw some posters saying.
What about the KIDS being her focus?
Because we are talking about little kids, not big ones who go to school and we are talking about camp and not school which is a legal necessity to send to, if you aren't homeschooling and haven't gotten permission to homeschool. And we aren't talking about "being identified with home and keeping homefires going" because I was a full time working mother when my kids were little and you can bet your bottom shekel that they identified me with home and keeping the home fires going more than they did for any other adult, because they knew that even if I came home late and left early, and worked at home, if there were cookies or a cake waiting for them the next morning it was MOMMY who baked their favorite cake (no cake faries around here) and it was MOMMY who got them their favorite foods and it was MOMMY who called out when they were about to fall asleep "did you say your shma?" and it was MOMMY who made sure that their clothing and toys and everything were in the right place as they knew there was no cleaning woman.
Ruchel it is NOT a contest but for each woman on her own it IS a challenge. For me it is a challenge to see how much I can get done, how clean and nice I can get my house to look, how nice a meal I can prepare from scratch and what a nice garment I can sew for myself or one of my kids etc. I do not complain about it, it's a fact of life. I don't look to make life harder but there is a reason for everything I do, if I don't use disposables or make things from scratch or make my own clothing there is a good reason for it as either I enjoy it, I need to do it, or it is one of my priorities.
Same for getting my husband free of chores so that he can have strength to learn and teach. Including to teach our kids. Women and men are taught differently how to do things. I don't know too many men who could be washing the floors while talking to the kids and teaching them something. Why? Because men don't multitask. There are loads of biological and psychological studies about sequential versus multitasking and today they know through bio-neurology that men's brains really DO work differently than most womens because of hormonal and other factors. So they either teach or they clean floors. I want my husband to teach. I on the other hand as a woman am perfectliy capable of cleaning the floor, talking to my older kids, teaching them something, watching my grandson, and in the corner of my brain also watching the pots heating up supper on the stove to make sure they don't boil over.
HR, you live in a house or an apartment? In older apartments like ours, with slat and not rolling trisim, and with pocket windows it is impossible to put in screens.
Also if you didn't use dry cleaning how did you clean your husbands wool suits?
You obviously dont' know any full time professional women if you don't know people who work the hours I mentioned. Any hospital doctors, lawyers, high tech and IT people among your friends? What about full time secretaries who work at top law offices etc? Office managers? They also put in the hours I mentioned because that's when their offices are opened. Of course you have to give lunch but there are people who prefer not to take it so that they can leave, for example at 5 and not at 5:30. And there are still many many many people who work six days a week in EY, you just don't know them.
You talk about buses full of people with staggered hours. True. But on a full time job, whenever you start, you don't finish until nine or even ten hours later. Whenever you start. So someone starting such a shift on a full time job at 1 PM...well he or she won't finish that job until 10 or 11 PM and only then do they start their journey home...so it's not like the person you see at 1 PM is the same person who comes home at 5 PM if they are working full time, which is what I explicitly referred to.
Ruchel, when I refer to educators it's not only teachers. My husband and others in high up administration of big organizations take their job with them 24/7. And yes, I mean 7 not 6. Because when a big donor is here in Yerushalayim in the center of the city near where we are and can walk, do you think that my husband doesn't go and shlep the donor after shul to come to his shiur? Or walk them to the kosel in the late afternoon when it is cooler? And when he has to speak to NY or Argentina to donors and he has to do it on American or South American time, he has to wait for calls at 9 or 10 PM at night which is still the middle of the working day there..when the "Friends of X yeshiva" or "friends of X organization" in NY are working. So yeah, you bring your work home with you all the time. It's just part of the job. Like a doctor is really never off duty. Or a Rabbi in a different sense.
Back to the sleep issue - If a mother who isn't getting up nightly to nurse several times needs to sleep in every morning something is really wrong, she should get a check up! Of course if she spends her late night hours or middle of the night hours doing this and that, and she has to sleep late and keep her husband from minyan, maybe she should examine her priorities. And how come the same woman if chas vesholom her husband is an ovel and has to go to minyan for kaddish every morning, THEN she manages to cope, even with nursing babies etc? I have never heard of a woman whose husband is saying kaddish for a mother or father say to him "Dear, don't go to minyan this morning, skip kaddish for your father because I want to sleep late!"...
Last but not least, when I made that list of what working mothers do, I see it as normal. Not superwoman. Not super anything. I think that it is a privilege to do all these things for the people I love the most in the world, my husband, my children, my grandchildren. I enjoy it, believe it or not. Even if I am tired, I enjoy being with them and making all these things for them - when they are around me. I don't need them out to do it, nor did I need them out when they were younger. So the walls or closet doors weren't perfectly clean..but they were clean enough and yes as the kids did help in some of the things as they got older, but again, it wasn't their job, their job (the boys) was to learn and to prepare themselves for their future, some of that included learning to do things around the house and helping when necessary, but I really DO see a dichotomy of male sphere and female sphere with each one KNOWING how to do everything but there being a practical division of tasks. As I said, when the day comes that the Ribono Shel Olam gives us a revised and annotated (verteiched and verbessert) version of the torah in which it says that women get sachar for limud torah, then I will toss a coin with my dh which of us goes to learn and which of us cooks and cleans and hangs laundry (which he often tries to help me with to keep me company and tells me about his day and his shiurim, and he ends up going over what he taught or is going to teach so it's a "shtikl tora" if you stretch a point).
Until then though, I don't mind doing the bulk of housework and childcare if he doesn't mind doing 100% of the limud torah of the Freidasima couple.
freidasima -
I agree with chanchy that maybe it's a generational thing.
I disagree somewhat with your math. I'm in OK shape and have years of experience doing sponga (professionally, even), but my dh can still out-sponga me any day. Something about being 150% my size with 300+% of the muscle power.
So for us at least, it's not "should I spend an hour doing cooking and sponga or should we take 30 minutes each," it's more, "should I spend 30 minutes cooking and 30 minutes cleaning the floors, or should I spend 30 minutes cooking while he spends 15 minutes cleaning the floors."
The difference isn't always that pronounced (although sometimes it's even more pronounced, for instance if the wife is pregnant), but the point remains, sometimes having one person do most/all of the housework is just not as efficient as splitting it. When that one person is too tired or worn out to do the work quickly, it can end up taking more man-hours than splitting would have.
shalhevet wrote:
Isramom8 wrote:
Along these lines, Shalhevet asked why a woman needs to sleep. I am a woman who needs to sleep! No way could I have raised all the kids I did/continue to do without napping (or alternatively sleeping late) most days of all these years.
I hope you weren't deliberately misunderstanding me.
I asked why a woman needed to sleep exactly when her children needed her to help them get off to school in the morning making her husband would miss davening with a minyan, assuming she hadn't been up with a child half the night and wouldn't have a chance to catch up later.
Of course a mother needs to sleep. The question is when.
When else would she sleep? Presumably she's either working or caring for kids during the day.
Maybe if minyan is at 8 am, right across the street, and her husband needs to leave by 8:30 anyway it would seem reasonable for her to get up at 7:50 so he can go. But what if minyan is at 6:30 and shul is a bit farther, so she'd have to get up at 6 so he can be there at 6:30, whereas if he davens at home he can let her sleep in until 8:20.... I'm not saying the husband should daven at home in that case, but it's a lot more tempting. A few minutes of extra sleep is one thing but sometimes it's a matter of one hour, two hours or more either way.
HR, you live in a house or an apartment? In older apartments like ours, with slat and not rolling trisim, and with pocket windows it is impossible to put in screens.
My father tacked screens to the outside of the trissim because we were being eaten alive. In later years, my parents.... changed the windows/trissim/tracks and had screens put in. Oh, you bring back (bad) memories FS. Those huge flying things flitting about the house. Being scabby and oozy from the bites...
