This hub is written in answer to the first of three questions asked by TamCor at the end of her hub http://hubpages.com/hub/Stay-at-home-mom-vs-Working-Mom--How-to-decide-which-to-be

The question is

Whichever you were – Stay at home mom, or working mom – are / were you happy with that decision?

I was a stay at home mum in the seventies, before the birth of my first child I had suffered three miscarriages. Although I don’t think that was a particular factor in my decision to be a stay at home mum it certainly made me even more aware of how precious the life of my child was. My decision to stay at home was one that I made a long time before I was even married, in fact I can’t really remember actually going through a pros and cons process it was just something that I always felt I would do when the time came.

This decision no doubt came out of my own experiences as a child and my own upbringing. When I was a child it was the norm for mums to stay at home once they had children. Staying at home with your children was what you expected to do and what was expected of you. Often the norms and values of our formative years are the ones that we absorb and make our own and are the ones that we become personally most comfortable with. This way we often go through life not realising that the choices, values and decisions that we make are not purely our own but just the ones we that we have just taken on and believe to be our own.

I remember once when my children were upstairs playing in one of their bedrooms and making quite a bit of noise in the process and I reacted in a particular way. I shouted up to them to make less noise, when this got no response I started up the stairs making a noise as I went so that the children could hear me coming. I was about halfway up the stairs when it suddenly hit me that this is exactly what my mum use to do when my brother and I were playing and making a noise and it was identical to the way she used to do it.

This behaviour was appropriate for my mum but as I stood on the stairs I realised that I really didn’t have a problem with this behaviour I didn't care that they were making a noise in fact I enjoyed hearing them playing and laughing. My response was an automatic response which through being exposed to this response often in my childhood I had become conditioned to make without any thought process of my own going into it at all. When I got this revelation half way up the stairs that particular piece of behaviour was deleted from my own personal repertoire of responses.

However, as far back as I can remember my mum always had a job, often she had two, my dad was a coal miner so he was a shift worker. The fact dad worked shifts meant that most of the time there was someone at home. I think that mum stayed at home until my brother and I started school, and from that time on I never knew my mum not to have work of one description or another. My mum could turn her hand to anything from barmaid, silver service waitress, working in a café, temporary post woman at Christmas time, serving in an ice-cream van, and counter assistant in local shop are just a few of the jobs she had that I can remember.

I was born in 1946, and my childhood memories are almost all very happy. It was a time when communities were usually fairly close knit with people who were going through life in a way very similar to everyone else in that neighbourhood. Most of the mums that I remember at that time were stay at home mums, it was usual for working class mums to stay at home and look after the kids and the home while the men folk went to work to support their families.

Quite a lot of the women in the neighbourhood that had successfully brought up their children and now had grandchildren had left home to get married and after the birth of their children never returned to work even after those children left home to have children of their own.

A working class man took great pride in his ability to take care of his wife and family. Often when a working class man asked a woman to marry him in those days it was not uncommon for him to say that if she married him he would take care of her. Men often felt that if their wives went out to work that it reflected badly upon their ability as a breadwinner for the family. A man that could not take care of his wife and family this way it was felt was not a proper man and a man was ashamed to be seen as not being able.

For the most part I never thought much about the fact that mum worked, but I can remember one instance when my childhood friend Irene got her bicycle. I had a new bicycle at Christmas with all the extras like dynamo gears etc and Irene’s was a second hand bike that her dad had lovingly refurbished.

I remember feeling jealous of the time she had spent working with her dad working on this bike which made it a special bike. When ever I used to go in Irene’s home her mum was always just getting bread or cakes out of the oven, the home was always warm and safe feeling and mum was always at home. This experience made me think at that time that I may have had more new things than those with stay at home mums but which I would have gladly gone without to have a mum who was always there.

However, this thinking did not dominate my thinking it was just triggered off by that one instance and left almost as soon as it came. Like most children in the neighbourhood I had a wonderful childhood and I think wonderful parents who did their very best for their children. I think that my brother and I are a testament to how well they both played out their role as parents, mum was proud of us and we were proud of her.

My mum was very much her own woman and she had to some extent gone against the flow by being a working mum and now I was going against the flow by being a stay at home mum. In the early 1970’s it was fine to stay at home until the children started school though many only took maternity leave and returned to work within a few months of having their children. Grandparents looked after many of the children of this generation while the mum went back to work.

The decision to stay at home to bring up my children was one that I made easily and one that I never regretted not even for a moment. What I gained from this experience far outweighed the costs, of which there were many and if I had to do it again I would do it in a heartbeat.

What I gained from this experience can never be taken away from me no matter what happens now, during this time in my life I have very few ‘I wish I had done that another way’ I was and still am very glad that I made this choice. I think that for me it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Is this the right decision for every mum? I don’t think that there is one right decision I think that each new mum has to decide for herself. We are all different and what brought happiness to me and contentment to my children could for another person bring resentment and bitterness resulting in much unhappiness for both mother and child. This then would not be a right decision for them, as it would not benefit anyone. My daughter said in her last email to me that there is a saying in the USA that ‘when mum’s happy, everyone’s happy!’ 

TamCor asked three questions in all and this hub has been the answer to only the first of these questions. I was going to answer all three questions on the one hub but like always it takes me longer to answer than I thought it would and it becomes too long for just one hub so the next two questions will be answered in my next two hubs.

The next hub deals with the question ‘Were the hardships and/or benefits of either worth it in the long run?’ I have sort of answered that in this hub but read the next hub and you will find out what the hardships and benefits were.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Stay-at-Home-Mom-or-Working-Mom-The-choice-of-a-Working-Class-Mum-part-Two

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

If you enjoyed this hub I have put links to some of my other hubs that deal with similar material in the blue box alongside this text.

All these Hubs have the common theme of coming from a Working Class perspective which differs quite a lot from that of the Middle Class and which has virtually nothing in common with the Upper Class perspective.

There is one period in modern times when all three classes had experiences in common and that was during the second world war.

I hope that enjoyed your foray into Working Class England if you did please leave a comment perhaps some feed back or if I didn't cover what you were looking for let me know and perhaps I can do another hub about that,