How do we navigate the tensions between work and family, community and the individual? Mary Harrington is a MNer, journalist and advises the New Social Covenant Unit:
"In the course of being not very good at numerous jobs, and spending a lot of time online in the office when I should have been working, I discovered Mumsnet long before I actually had a child. (No, I’m not going to post my old MN handle - there’s wayyy too much oversharing there).
I spent many happy afternoons skiving off jobs I didn’t especially enjoy, reading (now classic) threads like the Pom Bear dinner party or the DH who ate a fat ball. Then when I did have a baby, MN was a lifeline via all the collected wisdom on the boards, and the 2016 pregnancy bus that morphed into a real-life friendship group which is still going strong five years and many meetups later.
After DD came along, I spent some time as a SAHM. It wasn’t really planned that way - my contract ended and it didn’t feel right to get a new job while pregnant but not showing yet. And as it turned out, not only did I not have a job to go back to, and a DH working long hours in London, but I also found I really didn’t want to leave DD. She was so tiny and I didn’t even really like my then-career (I was also rubbish at it). I was lucky that we could get by on DH’s wage, so I just sort of carried on not looking for a job.
One by one, the women I’d spent maternity leave with, or chatted to in my MN bus group, went back to work. Not many wanted to return full-time and not all had the choice either way. Lots found being away from their babies difficult to begin with.
There were conversations about how you can’t win as a mother. If you’re not being judged for staying with your baby, you’re being judged for not leaning in. But one size really doesn’t fit all. The sociologist Catherine Hakim studied women’s work preferences and argued that, where women do have a choice, roughly 20% of women prefer to work full-time, another 20% prefer to be SAHMs and the remaining 60% prefer a balance. Anecdotally, looking around at my peer group and MN discussions on this subject, that sounds about right.
Some 38% of working-age women work part-time, which equates to around 6.18 million. Of these, 4.85 million are voluntarily part-time (nearly 80%) – that is, they didn’t want full-time hours. This compares to the 1.2 million voluntarily part-time men out of a total of 2.22 million: 54% of all part-time working men. Considerably more women than men prefer to work part-time. This is widely associated with having dependent, and especially young, children.
But preferences also vary by job type. It makes sense: you’d expect someone with a fun and lucrative career to be more enthusiastic about returning to work than someone who mainly works to pay the bills. Perhaps unsurprisingly, UK government data show full-time female workers cluster at the top of the pay scale. And the strongest public support for mothers working part-time or staying home (60%) comes from those in unskilled or routine occupations.
But government policy skews toward these full-timers and only grudgingly sees the rest. At the 2019 General Election, all the major parties vied for who could offer to spend the most on providing childcare so women can work more.
Since I had DD, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to have fallen by accident into a pretty ideal work setup: writing from home, which I can do flexibly around preschool hours, and I have a supportive DH who now also works from home. I count my blessings every day. I’m also aware that not all work can be done from home and some people are working not because they want to but because they have to.
I don’t think anyone should be guilted for doing the best they can for their family. But my sense is also that some mothers might, if they had the choice, spend less time at work and more time with their children, especially when they’re very young.
Politics is mainly done by the kind of professional women who are more likely to want to work full-time (or men who are married to, and socialise with, such women). It’s understandable that many will assume the same is true everywhere, and thus the best way to address the interests of mothers is always more and cheaper childcare. But I think government could do more to reflect the full range of mothers’ priorities.
This is such a sensitive subject, and it’s nearly impossible to raise without someone feeling criticised when we’re all just doing our best. The pandemic has been rough on everyone but perhaps especially mothers, many of whom have shouldered the lion’s share of home schooling and childcare while keeping work ticking over as well. I’ve no desire to go back to a world where mothers are tutted at for working, and I don’t think there’s a one size fits all solution.
But I was grateful for the chance to be home with DD for nearly three years, and I’m also grateful for being able to work flexibly now. I don’t think the answer is trying to make anyone get back in the kitchen (unless that’s where they want to be). But I’d like to see more politicians break the mould like Miriam Cates recently, when she called not just for policies aimed at giving families the option to work, but also the option to be with our children more.
Whether that’s a lump sum to help ease the financial hit of being very part-time or taking a career break, loosening rules for childcare co-ops or subsidising grandparent care, or campaigning for a fully transferable tax allowance, I don’t know. I would love to know what MNers think. I’m now standing by for a flaming, for leaping head-first into this radioactive territory. But I want to say it: I suspect that more childcare is not always the answer. And I think we should talk about it."
Mary Harrington is a journalist and advises the New Social Covenant Unit which exists to promote ideas that create a more local, more connected, more sustainable life for all by strengthening the associations that make individuals happy, safe and free - such as the family. The Unit will launch a campaign on family finance in the autumn. She's on twitter here.
Mary will be coming onto the thread to answer your questions at 2pm on 15th July.
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Guest post: "you can’t win as a mother. If you’re not being judged for staying with your baby, you’re being judged for not leaning in."
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JuliaMumsnet · 08/07/2021 11:23
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