To be confused by the two working parent set up

Excellent points 👍

How old are you OP? I am retired and this sounds the same as I experienced as a single parent. I did it all, worked, paid all the bills, cooked, shopped, cleaned, decorated, did all the life admin. My mum (who lived 60 miles away) helped by having my child to stay at half term but this was only for a few of years as she became terninally ill by the time they were about 6/7 . My mum also worked once my sister started infant school . All my friends' mums worked too.

How old is your mother? My children were born in the 1980s and it was common for both parents to work. I worked part time, then full time as a single parent. Most of my colleagues at work were married women with children. Many of us ended up looking after our elderly parents too. I never had a cleaner or any home help, but the kids were good about doing chores as they got older.

Ah, I see you’ve answered about your mother’s age already - she’s younger than me. Basically, you just have to get on and do it to the best of your ability.

I'm in my 60s and worked outside the home all the time my children were growing up (I was an SP from when the youngest was 2 onwards). It was brutal sometimes.

Neither of my now-adult daughters are showing any signs of children on the way, and I've reached the age when I'd love to have children in my life again - loads of my friends and colleagues have grandchildren and spend lots of time helping out with childcare. I'm reducing my hours at work next year in the wind-down to retirement. I wish there was an adopt-a-granny scheme for those of us fit and healthy enough to be useful kinds of grannies - my local area does have a scheme, but it's for older people who aren't in the best of health, and it's more about families opening their doors to give an older person a meal. I'd love to be the kind of adoptive granny who might be some help to the OP and so many like her. I've got time and energy for childcare, housework and so on a couple of times a week, or at weekends. This thread makes me seriously think I should set up such a scheme once I have more time. There must be loads of people at both end of the age spectrum who'd value it, now that we mostly don't live in idyllic villages collectively shouldering the domestic burden.

and how many who didn't "work" were financially abused? financially trapped? physically abused? mentally abused? couldn't leave because financially trapped?

forced out of the workplace due to marriage or having children? unfulfilled and depressed? alcoholic? taking drugs? and then, in their old age, they are faced with ungrateful adult children expecting them to provide free childcare, while they have a tiny pension because they didn't "work"?

As pp said, there has never been a golden age for women and it is unlikely to arrive.

In the meantime we need to make sure men step up. That provision for women is improved. But mostly to make men step up.

Same here. My ‘children’ are now late 30’s and I worked FT. Me and DH had very demanding jobs plus looking after our kids, paying massive nursery and childminders fees (no free hours then!) and just juggling life as best we can. No work-life balance or flexible working then. No help from grandparents to speak of.

The upside of this is that we still remember how difficult life was for us at that time and now we’re retired we make a conscious effort to help out with our grandchildren now to ensure their parents (all working full time in demanding, busy jobs) get the balance and time out and time together they deserve. it’s very rewarding and we have such special relationships with our grandkids.

No help to you right now but hopefully you’ll feel the same as we did and ensure that your kids get a better deal in the future.

It’s an unpopular view but women entering the workforce has driven up house prices and now few can afford a family home on a single income so we’re trapped whether we like it or not.

That's still 50% that didn't work outside the home in the mid 1970s, and the ones that did, some of those were only part time. So the people saying that not many women worked full time when they were young are not wrong.

Please don’t glorify the ‘olden times’. Just because you didn’t see single parents coping doesn’t mean they weren’t there, just that you haven’t seen them.

My mum, born pre-WWII, brought us all up as a single mum. However in the 70s and 80s it wasn’t acceptable for a woman to leave her marriage for whatever reason. So there was no village or family support as she was shunned. There weren’t after school clubs or wrap around care either.

My mum was AMAZING. But yes Mum’s stellar career suffered due to society’s misogyny, the abuse in her marriage and having to be there to be a brilliant Mum for us.

It’s not feminism that shot us in the foot. It’s capitalism that caused this issue. Housing now being seen as an investment. Women encouraged to work to contribute to the economy etc. Our energy and railways, and council houses sold off/privatised was not a good move but driven by capitalism. Thank you Tories!

25% of mothers don’t work at all.

depending on where you are in the country, there are still reasonably priced houses. Ok, not so much London but London has always been expensive relative to the rest of the country.

parts of Lancashire, parts of Manchester and large swathes of the north east have houses that are extremely affordable.

ok, there’s a jobs issue - London jobs have always paid more. But everywhere has hospitals, GPs, healthcare, schools, accountants.

I am 53. When I was growing up, my mum, my aunties and my friends parents all worked with the exception of one or two who had a lot of kids. Most worked part time.

My mum went back to work part time when I was 3 because we were skint. They had over stretched with the mortgage thinking they weren't having any kids and then I came along when my mum was 39!

I went part time when I had my son (now 19). I went full time when he was 9 and split up with his Dad soon after. All my sons friend's parents worked to varying degrees but most worked part time. My family and friends also all worked after having kids. A few full time, most part time.

I know of very few stay at home mums either of my mums generation (she was born in 1933) or mine.

I did similar to you for the first few years my son was at school. I worked half time hours over 4 days so I could take him to school and pick him up.

I hated working full time while DS was in school as there never seemed enough time to get everything done. In my case it is usually the cleaning that suffered although I like to cook and the house was generally tidy. My ideal now would be to work 4 days but at present I can't afford it. I am thinking of downsizing.

At the end of the day, we just do what we have to. I think much of your difficulties are due to your illness. I don't have any answers but maybe (as you have mentioned up thread) see if there is anything you can do to manage that better. You may be doing all you can but it can't hurt to look.

A family used to be able to live on one wage, and now they can't. That's the big problem. Maes it hard for families, and single people can't afford to live properly. The money mostly gets swallowed up by the ridiculous housing market and private landlords. Something has gone terribly wrong.

i’m a teacher and I have recently realised that after 15 years of teacher culture I am struggling as a parent because of how my job makes me think. I take personal responsibility for everything, every meltdown, every snappy word said, plus every organisational thing in the house, because that’s what I do as a teacher. The constant message from education systems to teachers is ‘what could you do better?’, ‘reflect on how you could have handled that situation differently’ and ‘evaluate your performance’, if you have drunk in this message for years it’s really hard not to apply it to your home life too. It might help to reframe it to look at what your kids have that is good and praise yourself for what you do rather than constantly looking to improve.

There's a theory that feminism shot us in the foot. We wanted it all, women wanted careers and independence and boy we got it. Problem is, we didn't lose the domestic roles, we just got a lot added to that so the burden doubled.
There seems to be a narrative that women work because they have to financially, and we'd all be SAHMs if we could afford to. I worked because I wanted to. I wouldn't like to be a SAHM, it would have driven me crazy and hats off to the women who can do it. I worked hard for my career and have given both my teens a great work ethic. No regrets but it hasn't been anywhere near easy

But I doubt the village would have been taking our kids to the myriad activities they now do, all with associated uniforms and paraphernalia which need washing/sorting, or helping make models of a motte and bailey castle out of shoe boxes and loo rolls. I think the fundamental shift is how actively we all "parent" now, compared to previous generations. We are all much more involved with (and, dare I say it, controlling of) the minutiae of ours kids lives than ever before.

My parents were ace and very available to me, but there was way less expectation that they would do homework with me, arrange trips and play dates all the time (and if I did have a friend round we'd just crack on, not have activities organised), elaborate parties which parents stay for, loads of activities, themed dress up days at school etc. All of which takes huge amounts of time and emotional energy.

@Angels1111 I can't help but think that in my mother's generation they had to do the same stuff as us, but with no work. And, there was more of a community to fall back on too - she could get the neighbours to watch us if needed, relatives had more time to visit and play with us, etc. But she had time, to keep herself healthy and to keep us healthy.

Yes, it probably makes more sense for one parent to stay at home with the children. But this is no longer possible because of mismanagement of the economy by the wealthy.

Clowns in the car manufacturing industry decided to make expensive cars the standard. So now driving is a lot more expensive.

Clowns in government decided to reappropriate housing as an investment. So now your house is probably 5 times more expensive than what it's supposed to be. Contrary to popular belief, home owners do not benefit when the price of housing goes up; only the bankers do.

So now your car and your house is extremely expensive. Which is why everyone needs to go to work and there is no option for anyone to be a stay at home parent.

It's the sad truth.

Agreed.

Not everybody’s mother who didn’t work, had relatives anywhere near, or neighbours who’d willingly help on a regular basis. Mine certainly didn’t. Plus we had no car when I was small, no central heating until I was 14, and my Dm had no automatic washing machine until I was late teens.

So there was a lot more to do in the house - washing nappies (no disposables then) and drying them with certainly no tumble dryer, laying fires and disposing of messy ashes, not to mention no fast or convenience foods to speak of - except perhaps for baked beans.

And even for women who wanted to work, in the 50s and 60s at least, there were precious few nurseries or daycare facilities, so unless you had family or friends willing to step in, you had no choice but to be a SAHM.

My DM didn’t return to work until I was 14, and considered old enough to mind siblings 4 and 6 years younger, after school.

This is one of the less discussed reasons for the collapsing birth rate IMO.

Agreed. I’m in my late 40s and my mum always worked. No grandparents to help, although I had a couple of aunts who filled that role a bit. Most of my peers at school (working class area) had mothers who worked too.

My mum is 90 and worked. I was born in the 1960s. The majority of kids in my primary school had working mothers. There was ‘play centre’ in the holidays (bunked off because I hated it) but left to our own devices after school.

I still can't figure out why women joining the work force and realising themselves and their ambitions has led to such a terrible situation. Surely, when women started looking for careers outside of the home, there should have been some sort of agreement made with their husbands to get involved in the home. Society worked best when one income could sustain the home and children had a parent at home. We should have forced men to stay home when we decided to go out and work.

I think expectations have changed. There is an, assumption you will provide each child with their own bedroom, set of hobbies/sports, academic attention at home and/or tutoring to fill in gaps from school, supervised playdates, cultural enrichment, fun activities (theme parks, winter wonderland etc.). Plus two working parents brings further costs (more childcare, two cars, work wardrobes, cleaners, prepared food etc.). And the default of two FT working adults has pushed house prices up. We were not all all well off, but I was SAHM for 8-9 years and went back to work in a self-employed, casual basis. DH was not a big earner and had a max salary of £32 and we lived in the southeast. But we prioritised me being home which cut a lot of costs, and did shocking things like living in the cheap part of town, having no car or tv, no abroad holidays, home haircuts and limited paid-for activities for the kids. Not saying everyone can do that, but most people make choices. Be honest about your priorities.

But my grandparents were quite poor and my grandma never worked. She was born in 1911. They had their own modest house. He worked in a cotton mill I think as a supervisor and had a big allotment so grew a lot of their food. They had a very simple life, no alcohol or going out, basic food but they seemed to manage very well. Of course, part of the reason it worked was because my Grandad was the kindest man you could wish to meet.