To feel sad some women are forced to go back to work

If you choose to have kids with a man who cannot provide enough for a family then that’s the choice you’ve made. No one forces anyone to go to work. Their decisions do!!

Isn’t the answer obvious? If you’re working, you’re paying tax and NIs, and the woman who’s looking after your child is paying tax and NIs. You’re also going to be more employable going forward and less likely to become a burden on the state. In other words, the taxpayer benefits.

Because in returning to work you are contributing to the economy and paying tax. You're not doing either of these things by staying at home.

Women have pretty much always worked, apart from a relatively short period of time (in comparison to human history) where a certain social class of woman stayed at home to raise children - and actually taken as a group suffered horrendous rates of depression and mental illness.

Women do get to have their wages paid into bank accounts they own and opened by themselves now though, which is great.

I always find these posts lamenting a past that never truly existed a bit odd - there have been a lot of them lately.

I was the poster who said that. I'm happy for my taxes to fund childcare so that women can work and contribute to the economy. I'm not happy to contribute to tax breaks for them to stay at home. If women / families want to enable SAH parenting that's something they have every right to choose to do but I think they should finance it themselves.

Interesting that a PP said they’re happy to fund childcare as a taxpayer when it’s done by professionals but not by the parent!

I thought the same thing when I had to go back to work after my first. Why will the state help pay for another woman to look after my child but not me, their mother? 🤔

It’s all very well if you like your work and you’re treated with respect and they pay you enough to live on. Lots of people don’t have the brains or means to get those jobs.

Yes, but the answer is not being under custody of a man.

I totally agree mothers should be able to be full-time parents. We can though really, just depends how you look at it.

I wouldn't have had kids unless I could WFH and not use childcare in the first few years. Wouldn't be worth it for me.

There's flexi work, benefits, part-time work etc.

Not everyone is maternal and wants to spend time with their kids. Some women just have kids for show. Some woman are maternal and have bad anxiety leaving their kids. It is sad for them.

@TalulaHalulah

I started writing this, and then I wondered what you feeling ‘sad’ for women who are not able to stay at home achieves? How does this help anyone? What do you think the solutions are?
I mean, I have worked since my DD was four months old and she is now 22. I spent most of that time as a single, working parent as her dad met someone else when she was a baby. Please don’t feel ‘sad’ for me. I don’t need it.

Absolutely. I don't want anyone feeling "sad" for me either, I don't need anyone's pity and I don't think there's any reason for regret and I find this current trend for romanticising the 1950s model of marriage really backward-looking.

I've raised my DD completely on my own, worked incredibly hard at a career which I (usually) enjoy and pays well. I've provided a good life for her, without any reliance on anyone else whatsoever. She's well adjusted and happy and she has had opportunities which she would have missed out if I'd chosen to work less purely in order to remain at home.

When people say they are "sad" on behalf of women who "have to work" I wonder what exactly they think they are "sad" for?

An age where few women advanced in successful careers? Where senior female business people/politicians/public servants/entrepreneurs were anomalies?
An age where many women were forced to leave work after they got married? (In Ireland it was illegal to employ married women until, I believe, the mid 1970s)
An age where a woman rarely had own money and had to follow orders from her husband? Where she couldn't open her own bank account and when her husband could hit her without fear of reprisal from the law? Where she was usually stuck with her husband if she hated him because she couldn't afford to leave?

The cost of living crisis is indeed a pressure on many families and the job market is awful. A lot of people (men and women) are working harder than they would want or in jobs that aren't ideal.

But becoming entirely dependent on another person for your financial wellbeing is like playing Russian Roulette. And, while remaining at home in the very early years after you give birth is understandable, would anyone want to spend the best years of their lives at home focused entirely on domestic labour?

Be careful what you wish for...

No for the purposes of this post I meant women, as that is what the OP is talking about

Isn't that just life, though? Lots of people would like more time to do lots of things. Life isn't perfect, is it? You do the best you can with what you've got.

A women has the right to a career, a woman has a choice of whether she has children. Some women choose one or the other, some choose to have both......thank god we live in a time where women are regarded as intelligent enough to make the life choices that suit them.
I choose to have a career, my sister choose to have children over her career, my mum had both children and a career. Please don't feel sorry for any of us OP our lives our choices.🍪

I will be encouraging my daughters to be financially independent and not to leave themselves vulnerable, however they will likely be influenced by the fact that I have been a SAHM for the entirety of their childhood. And they were home educated.

We really do buck the modern trend and I feel incredibly fortunate that we have been able to do that for our family.

ETA and I wasn't an unwilling participant btw!

Absolutely this from @IcedPurple 200%!!

I can’t currently work, due to cancer and treatment. Myself and DP are managing. but are constantly assessing finances each month. It’s absolutely stressful.

illness, relationship breakdown and job loss are very common these days. You have to be responsible for yourself financially.

It's a tricky one, I think the fear of going back is sometimes worse, I actually enjoyed being able to go for a coffee etc with a colleague plus earning money but I think it must be harder if you're in other professions (I had relatively cozy office job). Post COVID with WFH also lot easier.
Hardest thing is when you don't have a choice either way and it's easy to simplify times gone by, both my grandmother and mother worked but very much out of choice. (In science/medicine).

We've moved overseas (from UK) and for first time in almost 20 years not working which is really strange but also feel my kids need me a bit more at this age (more emotionally). However I probably will go back to work at some point however again choice is a massive privilege.

Agree with many PPs about the romanticisation of the “olden days” and how shit many things were for women.

However I don’t like my job and never have done (I’m a lawyer and the higher earner in my relationship). I feel like a rubbish feminist for wishing I could be a SAHM! I’ve just never found work rewarding or a good use of my time.

Interesting that a PP said they’re happy to fund childcare as a taxpayer when it’s done by professionals but not by the parent!

And women weren't allowed their own bank accounts?
Where women are forced to stay with abusive husbands because they are financially tied?
Also know that on 1 wage you are cooking from basics (no gusto or takeaway)
Mending rather than buying clothes (goodbye boden and seasalt)
No complaining because your autistic child MUST have their own bedroom.
It's not all like the tradwife on tiktok has you believe

There's a big push from the right at the moment to urge women back into 'traditional' roles. It's all over social media, it's in all the US Republican messaging and while I would love to say that's America and we are different - there is always a creep. We're seeing here a rise in anti-abortion rhetoric as misogynists are emboldened across the board. Women's rights are under huge attack. The current popularity of Reform and of far-right groups more generally, as evidenced by this weekend, is a threat to women's rights - have a look at what Farage and his supporters think about maternity leave and abortion. The Overton window hasn't been opened quite so far here yet, but it's being pushed and pushed. And here on Mumsnet there is a creeping rise in posts lamenting this long-lost past we never actually had. It's important we push back against it. Progress can be so swiftly undone.

This x100. There’s no such thing as genders being wired a certain way in my opinion. My DH would make a far better SAHP than I would! He works to pay for things and while he enjoys elements of his work he doesn’t feel it’s a vocation the way I feel about my profession. He also enjoyed the baby/toddler years more than me and is better at domestic chores. I need the break in the day to talk to other adults, genuinely love my work and I am better at building things and DIY. Interestingly, my Mum was similar but in the 90s my Dad was the higher earner so her going part time made more sense. Thirty years later, I’m the higher earner and so had more choices.

The olden days?

In the olden days kids and women worked, including in jobs down the pits etc.

If you believe that throughout history a man's wage has covered a household's needs, you are very much mistaken.

The reason many women were stay at home parents in the ‘olden’ days was that in many professions and even regular jobs, there was a marriage bar, so married women were expected to leave the workplace. Even my own mother could not open a bank account without my dad co-signing it. It is only relatively recently in historical terms that women have been able to be educated to the same extent as men. Etc.

I started writing this, and then I wondered what you feeling ‘sad’ for women who are not able to stay at home achieves? How does this help anyone? What do you think the solutions are?
I mean, I have worked since my DD was four months old and she is now 22. I spent most of that time as a single, working parent as her dad met someone else when she was a baby. Please don’t feel ‘sad’ for me. I don’t need it.

Unpaid domestic work and childcare should absolutely 100% be valued more than it is. But most people just get on with their lives and do what they have to do. I didn’t feel heartbroken that I was leaving DD in nursery, I felt glad that I was able to keep a roof over our heads, that I worked at a point in time where women could have professional careers and that I was leaving DD with a woman who had looked after many small babies and was both loving and competent. And I am glad that, all these years later, I have paid her university costs and everything else and will support her postgraduate as she needs it. Go me. Go her.

@JTT95 If your husband left you tomorrow , could you afford to get a mortgage on your own as a SAP? Could you pay your gas and electric and buy food ?

So why don't they stay at home if that's what they want, if the only reason they're working is to pay for childcare?

If you want to have women hospital consultants, judges, senior police officers, ceos etc, you have to accept that they will need to spend some of their childbearing years building up their careers. I quite like have women in positions of responsibility, making decisions that affect women. And that’s just one of the reasons why I support women working even when they have kids.

I guess if that’s not your thing and you enjoy the big decisions being made just by Men in their Very Important Jobs, carry on being heartbroken for working mums I guess and stay home.