Why is it always the woman who goes part time?

I know only one SAHD, and a few Dads who work PT. It's easy to go PT at work but men find all kinds of excuses to not do it from 'I earn more' to 'she earns more'. Lots do shifted hours but the 'book time off in the middle of my full time work' is something DH does without getting into trouble (he does work flexitime). Interestingly going PT has more of an impact on a woman than a man, e.g. people assume I work 3 days rather than asking (I work 4 days). The worst example was a colleague who when she went for a promotion was told the job couldn't be done PT (several men do it PT) despite her working FT, not having children and being in her 40s. That's the specific recruiting manager that's the issue there, there's other departments with senior women who work PT so obviously those managers are more enlightened.

I got chatting to a woman the other day whose son works PT and looks after DC whilst his wife works FT...

She said that actually getting a job with PT hours when they made the decision that he would be the one to cut hours was really difficult. Employers seemed to be suspicious of his reasons and apparently he struggled for ages to find something that worked.
Companies are a massive part of the problem.

I bf the dc until 3 years. Until mem can do that, women will stay at home and look after the dc.

And maybe women naturally feel more maternal and as though they want to look after the dc, not be away from them? I felt v protective of my dc when they were little. Now they are older, dh does half the caring.

I have nothing in place but then again we don't have any savings

I chose to go part time. I don't feel 'doomed'. I enjoy the balance.

Lynette women on MN are told to do that all the time though, to carry on working even if it is for very little or no gain so that they don't lose their place on the career ladder.

Presenteeism needs to become less of a thing before you can have two successful fulltime careers in a household. Some industries are doing better at this then others, DH works in IT and it has become the norm to work from home unless there are specific meetings. At the moment he is at home somewhere between 1 and 4 days a week, he will be logged onto a conference call while he does the school run, organise a meeting to start at 10am so he can drop the boys off on the way.
I don't work at the moment, but it is the flexibility that DH has which will allow me to start a new career, knowing that I haven't got to try and juggle the kids and work by myself.

Yep, serious independent savings/pensions here and p/t earnings still enough to cover the essentials.

'I prefer it with me being the one to be pt but a lot of that is to do with wife work, overall responsibility for dcs etc, which I still picked up even when he was the one pt.'

And therein lies one of the major problems.

I also really, really hope all the posters on here who have gone PT and have a 'partner' either have some serious independent means behind them or serious legal cover because your position is incredibly vulunerable.

There seem to be as many opinions on this thread as there are posters.

When I had DC1 I was acutely aware that I was expected to stay at home, and DH was expected to continue earning money.

I was so, so happy that childcare and travel was so expensive it meant working wasn't going to be worth it financially in the short term. There is no way I would have wanted to leave DC1 and go back to work, where as DH was quite happy to.

Having said that, I think both parents should have the option to go back to work, and child care and travel shouldn't cost so much they make working pointless.

I only know a handful of fathers who have given up work totally to care for their DC (and in each case the mother was a much higher earner) but I also know several families where the lower earning father has refused to give up work, and would rather pay out almost as much as they earn in child care.

a lot of men do informal flexible working, late starts, 5 days in 4 etc, but it's mainly women who have formally dropped their hours and gone through the more visible FW process.

At lot of my friends do this!

Just checked, my company only offers statutory pay anyway. How rubbish.

I was questioning this the other day. My partner never even thinks about childcare or whether his hours are a problem where it's always been expected that I was the one who has to fit round such things. I'd never really thought about it until I mentioned wanting to change from nights to days and dp asked "but who will sort the kids out? " I know it's my fault for giving into expectation but does seem kind of unfair.

Deffo - yes, that's true about the DH job ease of going p/t thing, mine is self employed so it was very easy for him, whereas I worked for a multinational corporation with a generous ML scheme so this way round worked for us but I can see why it wouldn't for everyone.

My company does offer men and women equal terms for the shared parental leave; though in practice, expect dads would tend to be taking the end part which is unpaid anyway.

Maybe if one day some of the paternity part was use it or lose it, like in Sweden is it?

Does your company offer equal terms to men and women? I'm not sure if mine does, I will have to check.

Yes - I suppose it depends on maternity packages and how easily your partner can go back to f/t after reducing to p/t hours etc. My maternity package is just SMP so doesn't really make a difference and if DH had negotiated p/t hours in his current job he would probably have to be looking for another one when DC2 arrives

I think for me the problem is this discussion tends to see equality as being like men.

I'd much rather see a huge shift in how we value care work, be it our own children or for other people.

It's also that we don't have a way of valuing non monetary contributions to society. So for example I'd be seen as a more productive member of society if my children were in childcare so I could work as a childcare worker. I think we need to find someway to value those contributions. If we did I think we would end up with many more men wanting to stay at home and a situation where there was no disadvantage in staying at home

So maybe if more men take chunks of the shared parental leave it may start to make a difference?

I think - little people are rather lovely. If you've spent 6 months/a year at home on maternity leave with little people it's quite natural to not want to go straight into only seeing them at bedtime if you're lucky 5 days a week. You've probably found some friends who're around in the daytime, some groups your baby or older children like going to.

Also from the work side of the equation, returning from mat leave is a natural point to talk about whether/how much you want to come back to work for. Going to your boss out of the blue and saying you want to work 3 days a week is harder to pull off.

I also find my littler one is very tight bonded to me in particular. She has time home with dad, but when I'm home will often just want to sit snuggling on the sofa with me to recharge. Dad doesn't seem to work for her. Maybe it's to do with bf and mat leave and bonding, I don't know. I'd feel I was letting her down if I was only there at weekends.

We were lucky that both of us could go part time - and later juggle hours so we could manage the school drop offs/pick ups between us. All gone to pot now though as DH was made redundant and part time jobs in his area are hard to find. So it may well be back to him FT and me PT, or if we can't get that to work one FT and one at home.

I think the opposite WRT to having subsequent children, I went back f/t knowing we were planning to have another child ASAP and I wanted to make sure my second maternity leave was paid on a full time basis. DH worked 4 days a week in that spell and went back f/t when I went on maternity leave, I then went p/t after my second (and final) mat. leave.

And I'm another one whose career has benefitted by going part time, the job I have now earns approx 1.5x the hourly rate of my last full time job and wouldn't have been available on a full time basis, which has enabled me to take on another similar job alongside it and still be p/t overall.

woodheaven I get your point about looking at the fees over 5 years as a short term evil over the course of your working life as we will all be working till we're 65-75.

Then I say well if I have to work for another 30-35 years then I'm going to enjoy those 5 years with my kids/family as it's not that long in the grand scheme of things and they're only little for a while then work full time as opposed to PT. Financially, for many women it's not possible for their DPs to go PT. That needs to be combated by society.

Surely a lot of it is about wanting a subsequent child/subsequent children though? I went p/t after having our first child as we knew we'd like to try for another in the near-ish future. As I want to breastfeed it makes sense for me to take maternity leave when the next baby is born and we couldn't afford to live on my DH'so salary if he was p/t with my measly maternity pay. Once we've had our final child then we can reassess the situation. Trouble is, by then he'll have had however many more years in f/t work than me and probably be earning a fair bit more! So frustrating!

I work pt, I have one child at school and a 2 year old. I intend to do more hours when my youngest starts school. When discussing this with my partner recently (he is father to both children ) he said he looked forward to not having to work so hard while I worked more. I said, well yes, you'll need to be around more to do the school drop offs and pick ups. He nearly fell off his chair! Obviously I'm expected to up my hours and continue my role as full time mum.