I suppose this proves that women just can't stand the heat.........

The big step forward seems to me to be that many men think that a work/life balance is far more important than power and influence. Unfortunately, tradition makes it far more difficult for them to say they would like a job share or they need to finish right on time everyday to collect from nursery. Anyone who does those things isn't going to get to the top of the ladder. We have this mad system where lots of people can't get a job and those with one work silly, punishing hours. Someone said that the men at the top can do all sorts of things in addition BUT that is only when they get there- on the way up they are frightened to take time off or go home early in case the bosses think they can manage without them! They can also put their heart and soul into it only to be called in and told to clear their desk - they are redundant.

Perhaps the reason no-one is "piling in" is that you have set up a straw man argument that no-one cares about. No-one has said they expect everyone to like the same. Where did Seeker say she thinks we should all have high flying careers?

Life like that sucks to me too Dazzler. I can't see who you want it when it stops you having a life. Much better to go off out of the rat race , both earn less money for less hours and have time to skim stones in the sea, fly kites , go for long bike rides etc. Childhood is so short- the very time that people are climbing ladders and they miss it. As a DC I would want my parents at my school play, not sending Granny because they had no time.
There are people who seek power and money first. - are workaholics - but not all.
This thread is very slow moving- I expected everyone to pile in and tell me I was wrong. The article was from the Times- it got one comment!
Seeker started it- as far as I can see she is at home, enjoying life with her DCs, whatever she is doing she doesn't appear to have the high flying career she thinks we should all want- even though her youngest is now at secondary school and she could get back on the ladder.

In the US children age 12 equally want to run for president. Within 3 years of that the boys outnumber the girls. Similar things happen to girls in sport. It seems that the early teenage years are when girls start opting out but numbers for boys continue.

What is happening in those years that makes girls stop wanting to be president or do sport? What else do they drop out of?

Since I don't know what your job is I have 't said it is deadly boring- unless it came under ones that I wouldn't like such as lawyer or surgeon. You can't expect everyone to like the same. One persons dream job is another person's nightmare job.
Like Kim - if some one asks me how I see my career going I just want to be a better teacher- however it won't go down well to say that you don't want a post of responsibility and you want a 4day week.
If you want to get to the top, man or woman, you can't say that seeing your DCs school play will always come first. The PM must miss a lot - he has to.
The most important thing to me is time- far more important than money or power. Lots of women are the same. The vet I mentioned earlier doesn't want to go back at all yet but she will because she is being offered reduced hours that suit her. If she gives up the job and wants to go back in a couple of years she won't get such favourable days. She doesn't want full time.

exoticfruits Tue 26-Feb-13 18:09:38

Long time lurker but thought I'd finally sign up to say that I thought your post was (for me anyway) one of the most coherent that I've read in a long time. It echoes how I feel as a man (as well as many successful women that I know who have had children).

My wife worked her way up the finance ladder until we decided to have children and then pursued her ultimate career goal (to be a SAHM) and devote her time to our children. If money were no object then I'd have joined her too as looking after children is the greatest job anyone can choose. My employers can take their management and power as I have no interest in it and as such I got off the lift a long time ago.

For most of my career I've seen what is necessary to get to the top and it sucks. I have no interest in selling my soul when the things that really matter i.e. my wife and kids, are at home looking forward to spending quality time with me. I've often been earmarked for management roles but have shunned them every time as I don't want it. I also wanted to see my kids at sports day, plays, musicals and in the orchestra. When I look back on my life I will always remember seeing my kids and spending time with my wife. I very much doubt I will give two hoots about not driving some faceless company in some wonderful direction.

I have friends that are directors for multinationals and they are a great example of how I don't want to live my life. It takes a special breed of human to turn their backs on their families (via work) and my guess is that there are more men prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice than women.

exotic you have said you would find my job "deadly boring" (not sure how you'd know that) but your main point is that you don't want to be judged for your decision to stay home. I must say, I'm not really getting the FWR angle. It feels a bit like you're trying to pick a fight.

It is quite probable that if I had had children when young I would feel differently-not having time to find out that I didn't want to climb upwards.

I always think as well that the women who want to advance or are rather ambitious probably aren't spending as much time on discussion forums like mumsnet as those of us who are happy where we are, so we're a self selecting sample rather than a truly representative sample.

Very true. I have been surprised that very few have added comments-I nearly didn't post-I expected far more of a backlash. Even Xenia hasn't appeared-she must be too busy!

I don't know why men want to stay in the lift either-much better to get off and have time.

but it is not helped if so many women just want to be the supportive act at home rather than an equal if not more powerful force in the workplace.

But this is why I am posting in the first place-many women absolutely love being the support at home. I am one. I find it much more exciting, absorbing and interesting than being 'a powerful force in the workforce'. When I am in the workforce I just want an interesting career I have no desire whatsoever to be a power-it doesn't interest me. There is nothing wrong with this-it isn't inferior -there is room for all.
There is no way that I will get to the top because my family comes before work. If work suddenly announced that I had to see an important client and it happened to be the evening I was seeing my DS in his school play then I am going to the play-I am not telling DS that anything is more important to me. I am not pretending it is OK to send just Dad or put Granny in my place-I am not going to miss it. Since this isn't on in the work place I made sure that I was never in a position where it would happen.
I agree with the comment on it in the paper today. It points out that many successful women step off the career ladder in their 30s and 40s.

I think of the many successful women I?ve known ? in newspapers, the City, teaching, local government ? who have stepped off the career ladder in their thirties or forties. It wasn?t because they hit a glass ceiling. It wasn?t because the men in suits got together over brandy and cigars at the club and decided this feminism nonsense had gone far enough. And it wasn?t as though these women would not have been promoted if they?d hung on. Why did they choose to eschew power? A variety of reasons: because they wanted children; because they wanted to spend time with the children they already had; because, while they were prepared to work 50 hours a week, they weren?t up for working 60, or 70, or 80; because they weren?t greedy; because they didn?t want a life of networking and schmoozing and creeping and politicking; because they didn?t fancy the drudgery and hassle of being an MP or a councillor; because they wanted to work from home sometimes; because, when it came to it, they were ambitious but not at any cost.
They got out of the lift before it reached the very top, in other words, because they were sane, rational, normal people, and wanted to stay that way. It all depends on your definition of power, doesn?t it? When they thought it through, these women ? like most women, and indeed most men ? valued control over their own lives more highly than control over other peoples?.

This is me. I was older when I had me DCs-40yrs when the youngest was born. I knew what I wanted and it wasn't to climb a career ladder.

Meant to say, yes all the evidence we hear regularly is anecdotal. I'm quite a geek in terms of wanting to see large studies with statistical significance, looking at individuals or small groups is always tricky. I always think as well that the women who want to advance or are rather ambitious probably aren't spending as much time on discussion forums like mumsnet as those of us who are happy where we are, so we're a self selecting sample rather than a truly representative sample.

I googled and found a couple of studies Upto. I haven't read them fully because I am at work so I have no idea how credible they are but they look like they might be quite interesting.

Institute of leadership and management study

This is a newspaper article rather than a study but it looks like it should have some studies linked in it

an American study that looks at work and family life of both men and women

And hello blueshoes - I think we used to meet at the bilingual board but I might have had a different name before ...

Does anyone know of any studies on ambition- whatever that means - whether men are really more "ambitious" than women? It seems to me we either get anecdotal evidence ("all the women I met" or "I don't want it and I'm a woman" etc) or just the conclusion ("more men than women in parliament"). And the fact that fewer women ended up in "higher positions" does not mean than women are less ambitious. I would like to know if there are credible studies on this ...

That makes a lot of sense to me kickass. I'd love to have had it as sick leave then have the option to share parental leave with dp. Personally I'd still have taken it as maternity leave but that's only because my employer has a better deal than dp's employer so we'd have had more money. I only took 4 months anyway though (then had the 6 weeks summer holidays a couple of weeks after I went back).

We are still discussing this from the point of view of the individuals. You have to look at the structures in society to understand how the individual makes their decisions.

E.g. If parental leave didn't come heavily loaded to be expected that the woman take the time off work. When women give birth, they often need time to recover, possibly several months. That time gets tied up with the baby's needs and labelled as mat leave when in fact there are 2 different people with needs. For practical reasons it is often the mother who has to care for the baby, but if you look at the bf figures, actually it's less than 50% of babies that need the mother to be at home. The majority of women are fit to return to work within a couple of weeks.

Why not give the mother sick/recuperation leave (as people have when recovering from other medical situations) and then have parental leave as a separate issue?

Separating out looking after the baby from the time the mother needs to recover could have some practical and psychological benefits, one of them being that that people would stop the automatic assumption that mothers need to stay home for long periods.

Who said the world owes anyone a living? I find that a little ironic talking about women wanting to work full time, don't you exotic?

We can actually make rules about these things and, in fact, the EU Working Time Directive does that to some extent. The UK government lobbied for us to permit an opt out so we can work longer hours than any other country. It would be a pretty easy start to actually enforce it.

If we are to have more women at the top of politics or business, we have to have, as a starting point, fewer of these women who want to go pt indefinitely and spend time 'jogging at the bottom'.

Sure, not everyone wants to shoot for the moon, but those that do are overwhelmingly male. Until women show that burning hunger to get to the top, why should organisations turn themselves inside out to accomodate half hearted ambivalent candidates.

Then on top of that, there are the changes that the organisation must make to remove the hard and soft barriers that stand in women's way, like stop writing employees off who want to go pt or downscale for a short period of their lives, more mentoring for women and grooming them for top posts, and being aware of attitudes how they are reacting to women (e.g. women seen as aggressive but men seen as assertive, women having less presence, no or small network for entertaining).

These attitudes take a long time to change, but it is not helped if so many women just want to be the supportive act at home rather than an equal if not more powerful force in the workplace.

Once you have a child you are a family unit. The world doesn't owe you a living and isn't much interested.
There are 4 possibilities
The father is the one who takes most of the childcare e.g if the child is ill he is the one who stays at home.
The mother is the one who does most of it.
They do it equally and it is whoever is free- never assuming it is someone's role.
They are both too busy and they farm it all out with nannies etc.

Society doesn't favour any parent who is putting childcare first- you only have to hear the childless on the subject!
Many women want to be the one with the childcare- I certainly do.
I can't see the answer unless businesses are more child friendly in attitudes and hours. The dedicated career person, man or woman, without dependants is going to get the job first. If you want someone to go to New York tomorrow, you want one who can say 'I will go and pack my bag' and not one who says 'I will just have to ring round, see what DH/DW is doing, see if my parents can come over, see if the Nanny can change hours' etc.

I am not a "unit" with my DH for work purposes. His work is his work and mine is mine. You are describing the problem as if it were immutable. I don't agree that most women want to work part time nor that men cannot do other activities on the way up. Your experience of senior work positions is much different from mine.

It's not up to the individual to choose because the deck is stacked. Our society and business practice favour men for senior roles.

We are a very long way from women being made to feel they need to aim for the top. When that's even remotely on the horizon I'll start worrying about it.

I agree with FloraFox. Ironically the more senior you are, the more flexibility that comes with the role if it becomes more management, client entertaining and strategic rather than day-to-day firefighting. You have to be there for crucial meetings and events but in between that, there is room for long lunches, disappearing in the middle of the day or leaving early, whilst being available at the end of a blackberry.

The partners at my firm can openly talk about attending child-related events like sports day or during the Olympics taking the family for some blow out event. It makes them look like great dads.

Senior roles are not necessarily the all consuming roles they are made out to be. But to get to those roles, there will be a period where the employee has to put in the hours that god gave to prove themselves more worthy than their peers. That is what is hard for women because these years coincide with their childbearing and engine room years. Going pt and the expectation is that women will ask to go pt after dcs is the often kiss of death.

In other countries, like Singapore where I am from, there are proportionally more women in senior management roles than in the UK. I reckon that is because it is socially acceptable and even expected that professional women would go back to work ft after children. Maternity leave is also much shorter. Pt work, if it exists, is ghetto-ised and most professional woman would not see that as a realistic option. The wanting to go back to work pt after dcs is partly cultural and a result of social conditioning, as is the belief that is prevalent in the UK that children can only fully thrive in the ft care of one parent during their early years.

I am not a "unit" with my DH for work purposes. His work is his work and mine is mine. You are describing the problem as if it were immutable. I don't agree that most women want to work part time nor that men cannot do other activities on the way up. Your experience of senior work positions is much different from mine.

It's not up to the individual to choose because the deck is stacked. Our society and business practice favour men for senior roles.

We are a very long way from women being made to feel they need to aim for the top. When that's even remotely on the horizon I'll start worrying about it.

It isn't like Sweden here- you can't talk openly about child care and expect to go to an activity. You couldn't have a senior post and say I need to leave work at 5 on the dot on Mondays because I am a Cub leader.
You are a unit with your DH. It is a fact that a man is quite likely to have a wife quite happy to be the one in the lesser career - most career women want an equal , they are not really happy with a man who has no ambitions.
They do need to agree before they have children.
Not every woman wants to half the child care- I loved being home with babies- to have had to go out to work and left DH at home would have made me very miserable. There was no real need for him to have paternity leave.
The reason that people ask the dentist which hours they work after the baby is that most women want part time. If I was a dentist there is no way at all I would go full time unless I was forced to- I would want to do a bit to keep up to date.I know a vet at the moment- she only wants to go back part time. Most teachers want a job share.
Men can only write books, go climbing etc once they get to the top- they can't manage it in the way up. If a woman is working part time she has time to write a book, be on boards of charities (they are always wanting unpaid people) or go climbing- you don't have to go abroad.
My only point is that women shouldn't be made to feel that they need to aim for the top- many have a much more interesting, enjoyable time jogging along at the bottom. It is up to the individual to choose what they want.