A mother is finding herself in the throes of some difficult parenting waters, taking to platform Mumsnet to share her concern for her daughter’s steadfast desire to become a stay-at-home mum.
The woman wrote her 24-year-old daughter had only recently qualified as a midwife and had been working in London for just a few months.
“Recently, she informed me she is planning to leave her career behind, as they are trying for a baby, and her ultimate ambition is to become a housewife/stay at home mum. Admittedly, her and her new husband are financially well-off, and so she doesn’t have the financial incentive to work.
“It’s all so clear to her, but so, so muggy for me. I can’t get my head around it and feel so disappointed. After three years of gruelling training at university, landing a London hospital job and beginning to move up the ranks, I just can’t understand how she can give it all up so easily,” the mum wrote.
The concerned woman added midwifery isn’t a job her daughter will be able to walk back into, and if she does decide to re-enter the workforce, she will have to “go back and re-train”.
“This doesn’t come as a complete shock – she has always dreamt [sic] of being a housewife, ever since being a teenager – but I’m astounded she’s really going ahead with it now.
Top Comments
Be grateful that your daughter has the opportunities to make these choices for herself.
Firstly, I think at some point you have to trust that the parenting you have done over the years has had some effect and let her make her own choices about her life, safe in the belief that you taught her the right things. Mum should probably keep her own counsel on this one.
Secondly, however, I do think it would be a mistake these days to totally extract herself from the paid workforce while having and raising her/their children. Rapid advances in technology and technique, alongside the financial disadvantage in not accruing superannuation etc, would severely restrict her options later in life. It is incredibly hard to re-establish a career after any break, let alone a lengthy one.
Being a SAHM is incredibly rewarding, but also very restrictive and socially isolating.
My advise (which I would only give if asked, and even then very carefully) would be for her to try to maintain some, perhaps part time, links with her profession and not cut all ties.
Unless, of course, she has actually discovered she hates being a midwife and really just wants out LOL