On 11 Feb 2004 11:42:22 -0800, (Michelle Spina) wrote:
This is *clearly* very person dependent, then. I was thinking as I was
reading this "you have no idea what it's like to be a working mother!"
When exactly do you think the house *gets* cleaned? I'd love to have
the picture you painted - clean house in the morning, come home to
same clean house. Hmmm - when would I manage that? Mornings are busy
getting parents ready for work, and kids ready for their day. The day
is filled with work. Come home, play with kids, make dinner, play more
with kids, put kids to bed. Now it's 8:30 - 9:00pm. Some cleaning can
be done, but nothing too noisy, because, well, the kids are sleeping.
And, we've been going since 6:30am - cleaning is NOT at the top of my
list at that point. So, dirty house remains dirty. Repeat 5x. Weekends
are a blur of errands and cleaning that should have been done during
the week. Hardly the nirvana painted above.

But then you said that you have done both, so I'm somewhat baffled, as
I've also done both. When I was home full-time, my house was MUCH
cleaner, shopping was always done (never the panic of "oh crud, what
on EARTH are we going to eat tonight?!?"), laundry was regularly done,
AND I had time to myself (short snips, to be sure, but still time). To
me, there is NO comparison to the stress level, and amount of work
total that is done when you compare SAH vs WOH. Not even *close*. I
don't even understand how you can logically think otherwise, actually.
I mean, in terms of household chores, they are a constant, regardless
of work-status. When you are home full time, you have all day, every
day, to schedule them in, in short bits (so you don't have to do a
massive, multi-hour clean job - lots of 15 minute jobs scattered
through the week). Engaging the children in these tasks is easy, and
fun. This isn't hard to manage (or perhaps I should say it wasn't hard
to manage in my experience). If you work full-time, you have ALL of
those tasks to do, but substantially less time to do them in. How
could that be easier? Cripes, we even have a nanny. I honestly have NO
idea how people do it when they have the get the kids ready for
daycare in the mornings on top of it all.

Most of my friends are SAH's, and they do lots of extra activties -
tennis, sewing, knitting, scrapbooking, book clubs, etc. And in none
of these situations are the kids ignored or are suffering. My son used
to LOVE to help me clean. It was a fun activity that we did together,
and I think it was good for him to learn how to do such things.

When I woh, I only had one child (a baby in fact) and was single. So
maybe it was easier for me than if I were married and had more
children. (I'm sure it was) I look back on that and my apartment was
soooo clean and neat. Then came dh and two more children.
So I will say that in MY experience of woh and sah, woh was easier as
far as housekeeping. I apologize, I wasn't comparing equal family
compositions. I also feel overwhelmed much of the time with my
youngest daughter's personality and needs so I snapped out a little.
I still do the OMG what will I fix for dinner? bit now and then ;o) I
am *not* able to clean somedays, depending on what else is going on at
home. With the three kids here we are always doing something. Normally
cleaning is done when the baby goes to bed at night.
Marie