To feel it’s a motherhood penalty… AIBU?

I had a childminder pick up my kid from school and drop them off... Done.

I guess this is the point, I've gone massively off topic but the main point is that no one could seriously argue her new employers aren't being fair by offering her £75k for part time hours!

Sending you the world's smallest violin lol

When my kids were too old for school childcare club but not old enough to get themselves home from school and be completely independent, I paid for childcare to do pick up and supervise at home. I just set out that it wasn’t full on watching the kids all the time, I explained I was quite happy for them to go up to their bedrooms, chill, watch a bit of tv, make themselves a sandwich etc but that they needed an adult for using the kettle, answering the door and dealing with any emergencies

I agree that for children over 12, they shouldn't need childcare however I agree with the other points posters have posted.

I do think you're getting off topic. The point that is being made is if you are being paid to work from home then that's what precisely you should be doing. Bar an emergency, you wouldn't (or shouldn't) be doing elder care or child care during these work hours and expecting to be paid for the times you aren't available.

If you do need to child care or elder care then this is where flexible working comes in. Compressed hours, 9 day fortnight, starting or finishing earlier/later but these need to be negotiated with an employer. Employees can't just dictate that they'll be unavailable for parts of the working day or worse, lie about it and still think they are entitled to get paid for those hours and there be no consequences.

I'm a working full time mum and work in older adult social work so know the reality and how difficult it is, however it's something that needs to be worked with with your employer.

I have no idea; I’m not in charge of the policies, which have been in place since about a year into Covid and which I assume have been legally vetted.

Too many workers were trying to save on childcare costs & not getting their jobs done. Kids running around in the background of teams meetings, etc. People really taking the piss with “school runs.” And guess who was picking up their slack? Mature & childfree as usual.

Although I get your point I don’t think it’s fair to expect x y and z from your employer and then get mad if they say no. I think it’s also unfair to claim it as motherhood penalty. It is just one of them things in general - if a dad was to ask of the same, they’d also get turned down.

Surely the problem there is the father?

Instead of defaulting to you to be primary career, your dh might have taken his share of parental leave and taken a more proactive approach to enabling you to minimise impact on your career.

That you (presumably, hopefully) agreed to him not doing so isn't the employer's fault.

Obviously social norms etc impose a "motherhood penalty" by making this so common - but if men are the ones who want children more these days, they ought to be taking more of the hit, which would make parenthood more attractive to women.

If someone has faked letters to their employer claiming they have childcare in place when they don’t, it’s not agist or sexist for them to be sacked.
As for high school kids who don’t need childcare, again, it’s not that hard for a company to suss out whether the employee is genuinely wfh as productively as they would in-person. Do they answer their work phone straight away? Are they visible on screen for meetings when needed? Do they come into the office when requested? An older kid independent enough to get themselves home from school and look after themselves for the next few hours should not impact on any of those things. It’s really not that difficult for a company as long as their WFH policy is robust and fair. Trackers on work phones and laptops in my company, an expectation that you’re as available and productive as you would be in the office. Those who haven’t been have understandably been required back in the office.

It’s in no way a motherhood penalty. Whether you are a man, or a woman, it would be the same. It’s not even a parenthood penalty really. Surely, for an extra 20K, common sense says use after school club, or get an afternoon babysitter to pick up and mind/do homework/organise their bag for next day for 2hrs leaving you free to work. Then use vacation clubs along with your annual leave. It’s not like there is no solution to this.

Can you confirm what childcare you think is happening for secondary school aged children?

If the average age to become a first time mother is around 30, then plenty of women are having their first child after that age and will of course be older when having second, third and fourth children. Half of my NCT class was 38. None were younger than 32.

You also assume that women in their 50s don’t have elder care on the cards.

Exactly; same here.

Most women over 50 don’t have young children. I’m pretty sure you don’t know “plenty”. I personally benefited from the attractiveness of older women to recruiters in the latter stages of my career - past childbearing age, no childcare needs, decades of experience and totally reliable, what’s not to like?

It just sounds like a borderline unlawful way to get rid of women of a certain age. Agree that DD had no “childcare” once she started secondary, which doesn’t mean I wasn’t working when she shambled in from school or finally left her bedroom at midday in the holidays.

(However otherwise super supportive of this - I have had to have a conversation way too many times with my staff about what working from home 'actually' means and the blur between parenting and working is a huge issue)

I am still confused as to what childcare arrangements one could possibly make for a child in high school. There's literally nothing. She comes home and does whatever for a couple of hours while we work - sometimes we aren't even here.

Do you assume that women in their 50s won’t have younger children? DD was 11 when I turned 50. I know plenty of women in their 50s with children under 13.

Your organizations sounds both ageist and sexist in its approach to hiring.

In my organization, if childcare is unpaid, a signed statement from the employee AND the grandparent (or whoever) is required to help furnished monthly. If they are found to be falsified the employee could be sacked. This applies for all children under 13.

One person faked the letters and their wfh privileges were permanently revoked; they were forced to come in 5 days a week. They stropped and ultimately quit. Was replaced by a woman in her 50s and we no longer have that problem.

It seems to be the case in general. I have had to work with several mums who requested exemptions or special work arrangements of various sorts due to childcare reasons. The ones which I had difficulty with are the women who want to arrive at the office late, go home early, and yet receive full salary, full benefits and career advancement when they are only available 70 to 80% of the time. One of them offered to work from 10pm to midnight to make up the hours, but couldn't accept that because she was working in a team, she needed to be around when the rest of the team was working. She thought that because she took care of emails that came in after office hours, her work was more important. She failed to realize that we were not providing a 24/7 service and those emails would be handled by the morning crew. If there was an emergency at night, we would be notified by phone, not email.

I've only had one husband asking for exemptions due to childcare, but he turned out to be a skiver, so his exemptions were iffy, to say the least. For example, his child had to be at school before 8am, but he couldn't make it to work by 9am even though he drove and the travel time by car was less than 30 mins. Turned out he "needed" a leisurely breakfast to start the day. Then he needed a leisurely lunch (2 hours) and also had to leave early to pick up the child. He was very angry when we said the skiving had to stop.

@TheNightingalesStarlingcross posts there with yours!

I agree that things like shared parental leave only came about recently, but my point is that over 30 years ago many of us still aimed to keep things as equal as possible. I had only 3 months mat leave, paternity leave didn’t even exist. DS was born on a Tuesday; dh was back in work on the Thursday. So arguably, back in those days in the early 1990s it would have been far easier in many ways to fall into the SAHM Role. There were also no free childcare hours either. But many of us worked. Most of the mums from my ante natal classes went back to work. I think the period of time when SAHM was really common was actually earlier in the 20th century when maternity rights and regulated childcare were non existent. My mum who had me and my sisters in the 60s and early 70s was a SAHM. Neither me nor my sisters were when we came to have our babies.

If your child is old enough to look after themselves at home while you continue working, YANBU. Plenty of people at my corporate firm nip out to do pick up and then come back online later, I don’t see what the issue is unless your work is time sensitive. Flexibility results in happier employees which should have a positive impact on the quality of work produced.

@Surferosahear hear.
I’m also surprised that some women don’t seem to discuss these things with their partner before embarking on a family. I knew that I wanted to share things as equally as possible (obviously as the mum I got maternity leave and breast fed) but I was back at work within a few months and dh and I always shared childcare drops and pick ups. Pre- children we shared all the household stuff like dinner and housework equally anyway which helped. I think some couples allow things to slide into one partner’s career being more important, or one partner doing more of the cooking/ housework - and then it just continues from there.

Shared Parental Leave only started in 2015. So everyone with older children won't have had that.
Childcare support was a lot more limited as well, so more families had to chose the SAHP (usually mother!) As well as childcare cost more than their wage.

So its understandable why mothers careers in the past have suffered more.

Well the OP is a single parent so no conversation to be had for her.

For me personally, childcare has always been 50/50 since I went back after maternity leave - we both work full time, we both picked up / dropped off equally, we both did flexible working to work full time in 4 days and save on nursery fees - and our money is totally shared so it was never a conversation about 'my' salary paying for childcare.

However... my husband started out ahead of me and did get a promotion while I was on maternity leave. So the 2 years out of working + the 1 year with a pretty rough pregnancy + two miscarriages with one requiring quite a lengthy recovery period was all on me. So I am 2 grades behind him (we work at the same place) and I think without all this time off I'd likely be one step ahead of where I am now. But I wanted kids just as much as he did so I will just need to focus on my career again now that our children are older - can't really fix biology!