Working Parents

Indeed, I should imagine for the earliest humans, life must basically have been short and brutal - mind, still is for a lot of people.

I meant to say the obsession with 'natural' foods annoys me in a similar way. Early humans didn't have bread = I must stop eating gluten. The whole idea that everything that happened in the past was better is very frustrating.

Gender roles and food seem to be the bits of early human life that make me the most angry.

Sounds interesting, any more ? The availability of food in the Great Apes (at least) seems to be a very important factor in determining their mating behaviours.

Gender roles and food seem to be the bits of early human life that make me the most angry.

Of course we can't help but look at early societies through the prism of a patriarchal society. So the small sculptures of the female form that are such a feature of early culture were mainly thought to have been made by men, because men make things. They're now suggested to have been made for women, by women. Particularly when women were in the late stages of pregnancy. Some if them are centred around pregnancy and birth and are surprisingly accurate.

When we had our first DC my husband earned five times what I earned.

"agree though that 'natural' is too often seen as 'good' as if early humans had it sorted with their 20 year lifespans."

Yup. Another exasperating thing about evo psych MRAs. Never seen them suggesting they will eschew modern medicine, pubs and the internet to go with their "a woman's place is in the cave" schtick.

I just made it sound like there is a consensus on earlh human life. I meant to say that they theory I was reading about suggested that, not that this is undisputed.

The last time I was reading about early nomadic humans the thinking was that women did the majority of the gathering and communal living meant that sexual partners were not exclusive. Only when humans became civilised (I just mean started to live in towns by this) did paternal identity become an issue because of the ownership of land and inheritance etc.

I agree though that 'natural' is too often seen as 'good' as if early humans had it sorted with their 20 year lifespans.

With Chimp communities the identity of a baby's fathers isn't known, fertile female chimps mating with any number of males - unlike say with gorillas & humans (generally speaking)

"So why do you think that in an age where natural instinct is not often brought into discussions about fairness (tax avoidance schemes are rich people's natural instinct, so they should be entirely above scrutiny; it's children's natural instinct to eat vast quantities of sugar, so we should just let them) it seems so often brought into conversations about how much freedom women have?"

Yy to this.

"We are selective about what aspects of animal behaviour humans are supposed to emulate, and wouldn't you know it those elements are the ones that reinforce the status quo."

And this.

As with my point above, nearly all animal mothers are "working mothers" as they are typically back into their usual daily activities with a chimp clinging to them or out collecting food and bringing it back to base. But the narrative is usually "caring instincts" not "work to provide food and shelter to self and family"

What would be more natural, closer to what animals do, is for groups of women and a few men to live together, eat together, do the finding of berries and hunting domestic work together, and so on

Sorry Buffy, this isn't meant to be picking on you but I am not sure that comparison is helpful. Only certain animals behave in a pack fashion - many don't. Female animals separated too early from their young are usually greatly distressed.

The reason married women probably get paid less is many of them will reduce their hours. You then go round in a huge circle of whether this is societal pressure or individual women making an individual choice of working less because the joint income permits this

I'm quoting myself but I haven't seen an answer to this question.

On the issue of married men getting paid more because of being relieved of chores which single people and married women aren't whilst anecdote is not of course data this is what I have seen of this.

There is a group of high earning , married men with non working wives who work horrifically long hours. The feminist take on this is they are enabled to do so because of unpaid wife work. Or looking at it another way - their wives are escaping the pressures of the working place, enjoying the benefit of the income and once the children are at school there must be a limit on just how much housework you can do.

I'm surprised at the different attitudes on here as to what the pressure is. I was quite clear I wanted to go back to work and felt a little mild pressure to sah. (Not from dh).
But it's clear other people have had more extreme pressure at both ends of the sah/woh scale.

From the article:

"Nevertheless, a relatively small but statistically significant marriage premium remains even when allowing for a wide range of individual, household, job and employer-related characteristics and time invariant individual specific unobservable effects. Our preferred panel estimates indicate the size of this premium increases with the number of domestic chores for which the spouse is mostly responsible, and falls with the wife’s working hours. The relative sizes of the coefficients suggest that a married man whose wife does not work but whose wife is mostly responsible for four domestic chores enjoys a wage premium of about 4% relative to a single never married man. However this premium almost disappears if the wife also works 40 hours per week in the labour market. We show that the effects of the hours worked and domestic chores carried out by the wife are genuine, and not due to the potential endogeneity of the wife’s decision to work."

The abstract of this paper sets out one set of arguments

www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/iser_working_papers/2005-01.pdf

Married men being paid more, if that happens, is a bit more complex than they get paid more just for being married

AFAIK, it's an economic statistic, not anecdata. Google "marriage premium" and I think yo'll see it's pretty widely recognised that married men generally out-earn similar single men, for example.

Female chimps stuck in a cage with their offspring tend not to be very happy

All animals stuck in a cage tend not to be very happy. What point is this supposed to prove?

"and an actual physical pain being parted from them for any length of time"

I never felt this and never heard any mothers of my acquaintance say it.

Anecdote isn't data

I didn't feel that way. I have heard working mothers say that.

Married men being paid more, if that happens, is a bit more complex than they get paid more just for being married. The reason I say "if that happens " is because in all the years I've worked I've never been asked to participate in a survey about my pay or marital status and I'm sure my husband would not have participated if he had (qualifier of course anecdote isn't data).

The reason married women probably get paid less is many of them will reduce their hours. You then go round in a huge circle of whether this is societal pressure or individual women making an individual choice of working less because the joint income permits this.

If a man chooses to have children he can do this with little effect on his perceived commitment to his career- he can still work late etc as long as there is someone else to look after the children.

And economic statistics show that men get paid what's called a "marriage bonus" - just by virtue of being married, they get paid more. And that this is increased when they have children.

For women it is generally the reverse. No surprise there.

I think there's a bigger issue that the value attached to (historically at least) 'male' jobs is higher than jobs seen as typically 'female' roles. Added to this, in my experience, prioritising anything over and above a career is seen as a weakness and will get in the way of promotion etc. If a man chooses to have children he can do this with little effect on his perceived commitment to his career- he can still work late etc as long as there is someone else to look after the children. For a woman, even if the intention is to return to full time work, if she chooses to have children she will need to have some time off during pregnancy (for medical appointments etc), may need to be less flexible than usual about travel etc and is unlikely to want/be able to work incredibly long hours during pregnancy. Then once the baby is born she will need to have some time off for recovery etc. If the parents choose to breast feed the baby, again mum will need to be in charge of this which will make it harder to go straight back to full time work/long hours/travel. The decision to have a breast fed baby will have not such impact on Dad. As a PP has mentioned, in lots of professions there is also a need to 'network' in the evenings/weekends in order to really succeed- again not something that a pregnant/breastfeeding mum will find easy.

Unfortunately, I think that all of the above means that (even if it is incorrect) having a child will impact a woman's perceived commitment to work (and so chances of promotion etc) much more than just the impact of the maternity leave. As other posters have said, this often all happens just at the stage in her career when men/women without children are getting the big promotions so a woman with children can easily find herself lagging behind her peers in terms of promotions etc. This is all demoralising as well as meaning that in a couple which started with equal earning power the woman will often end up being the one to have a career break/change of career etc when the children come along.

I have seen working fathers try to take a more even part in the child care (eg asking for reduced hours/being the one to leave on time to collect the DC) and be viewed with suspicion.

I think that addressing this will need a huge change in the way society and business operates- with 'female' work being more evenly valued, some way of recognising that women who have children do have some (short term) biological needs (pregnancy/bf etc) that should be addressed without impacting career paths, better access to good childcare, and I think most importantly a step change in the way that an involved parent (male or female) is viewed at work. I think that to do all of this will need us to get away from the 'long hours, beers with the boys' culture that I see. It saddens me that I actually think that, although women are proving themselves to be perfectly capable of competing with men at getting in to well paid professions, we are still a million miles away from equality for working parents.

Yes I have no doubt that in a society thay expects men to be primary carers dh would have equal 'paternal insrinct' as I felt, and wouldn't want to be parted from them as much as me. It is socialisation.