It’s the parenting debate that we never knew existed – if you’re a stay-at-home mum, is it reasonable for other mums to expect you ‘keep an eye’ on their kids?
Yep, it’s 2017 and people are still treating stay-at-home mums like glorified, free babysitters.
One stay-at-home mum recently shared her own frustrating, mind-boggling story on the parenting forum, Mumsnet.
Clueless1315 lives in an apartment block and has one daughter and one son. Recently a woman with a daughter and son the same age as Clueless1315’s kids moved into the apartment above her. They arranged a playdate and before she knew it, Clueless1315 was dropping off and picking up the other woman’s kids from school several times a week and looking after them for hours at a time for free.
“She has never offered me a penny or given me any food. I don’t enjoy having my house constantly filled with kids, but she views it as I’m home and she’s at work, therefore I can help out. But it’s tiring and stressful,” she writes.
To make things worse, when Clueless1315 confided in a friend about the neighbour’s actions, the friend said she should have been paying her at least £30 (around $50 AUD) a day for the childcare services she was providing.
Then that same friend asked the stay-at-home mum to look after her three kids for a whole week and only paid her £20 ($33 AUD) for the week of free childcare, food and activities.
“I feel like such a mug. I’m on benefits and watching every penny, but these cheeky f**kers have taken the piss.”
This kind of situation and Clueless1315’s understandable frustration over it is not new or unusual.
As Shauna Anderson wrote for Mamamia in 2014, stay-at-home mums should not be treated like babysitters, but they often are.
“Ask a stay-at-home mum if this has happened to her and – after first mentally checking you aren’t one of the perpetrators – I don’t doubt they will nod and tell you horror stories. And it is not just the one-off favour, not the you-look-after-mine-this-week-then-I’ll-look-after-yours,” she wrote.
Top Comments
My neighbours sister who I had never met before tried this with me when I was on maternity leave. Came over in a rush, introduced herself, handed her daughter over and rushed off again. I thought it might have been an emergency or she was struggling emotionally looking after her so I obliged. After 3 hours I dropped her daughter back. The next day I asked her sister (my neighbour) if something was wrong and her sister replied “No, my kids told her daughter you have a lot of toys and she wanted to come over”. The next week the sister came over and tried the same thing, this time stating her daughter wanted to play at my house. I refused. She was actually pissed off that I said No.
Just say "I just can't cope with 4 kids. That's why we only have 2!"