Why don't feminists expect expect male parents to pay for childcare?

Dianaslasso you just be imagining it, probably too much for a delicate female brain

There is no gender pay gap, Its been proven to be a complete myth and fallacy. Theres a Utube video of Cathy Newman interviewing someone where she gets humiliated even suggesting that it exists. I suggest you look it up.

That's the favourite of our old pal 'the midnight misogynist', funnily enough.

I think its because even in an equal partnership, and the money in a family pot, if a woman has had a career break for children, going to work impacts the family pot as the family unit has less money coming in than before after her wage is inputted and childcare costs are deducted.

Therefore it looks short term, as a loss.( not taking into account earning power once back on the career ladder, if in fact its work which has progression. Many jobs odnt)

There is no gender pay gap, Its been proven to be a complete myth and fallacy

Yeah, right, that's why I and tens of my female colleagues had to take our then employer to court to get equal pay. Or was I imagining the court case and the resulting 3K increase in my salary?

I call bullshit.

I think it's a Jordan Peterson interview with Cathy Newman. I quite like Peterson on other matters, but he misses the point spectacularly. There is a pay gap, but it's often mothers versus fathers and non parents, rather than a straight forward like for like with childless men and women.

Sounds like his job is very different from mine. As I say, no one makes this decision in a vacuum.

Quality of life means all sorts of things - mostly what you wish to focus on to back up your own choices

He continued to have pension contributions made
Was promoted and stayed relevant in his field. He would have struggled to have gained employment at a similar level to when he left had he taken a career break to raise the children. Put simply he would have been viewed as irrelevant in the sector.
Instead he had been twice promoted by the time they went to school and was earning almost £35k more than when we were making the decisions.
So our and his quality of life would have been substantially impacted and for much longer had he left work to raise our children to school age.

Large breaks in employment rarely work positively unless you are retraining and studying during them.
My friend retrained and moved field entirely whilst staying at home and it worked better than had she attempted to rejoin her old employment. I was amazed by her hard work but it paid off.
My husband had no notion of doing so.

No gender pay gap? Bollocky Mcbollocks.

There is no gender pay gap, Its been proven to be a complete myth and fallacy. Theres a Utube video of Cathy Newman interviewing someone where she gets humiliated even suggesting that it exists. I suggest you look it up.

No, you look it up and link to it.

The childcare was split proportionally from our wages.
It was substantially more than my husband earned at the time
We never considered his not working and I have never understood the ‘it just isn’t worth our while’ argument made
He would have been substantially affected had he not worked for 5-8 yrs.

The excuse for the gender pay gap according to all feminist organizations is that women can't afford to work.

No, feminist organisations put the gender pay gap down to a raft of issues that include women still being paid less for work of equal value to male counterparts, unconscious sex bias when selecting for promotion, young women still being channelled by careers services etc into lower-paid areas of work (care work, child care, hairdressing, retail etc) and the fact that women still for various reasons take on the majority of the burden of childcare. Basically, because of their sex and the expectations imposed on their sex, women's work has always been undervalued and under rewarded.

[quote muststopeatingfroyo]@Lamahaha I just looked back at your previous post and saw that your husband sadly died. I'm sorry if my post and description of you as "lucky" came across as flippant [/quote]
Not at all I also just said that I was lucky, and did so in my earlier post! He died in 2017 after a very long illness. I had looked after him at home for many years until it got so difficult that he had to go into a care home. In the end his passing was a relief he had no quality of life and no longer even recognised me. He passed in his sleep.

I don't see why what you describe is incompatible with feminism. Its not a problem for women to enjoy staying at home and men to enjoy working or to divide labour that way. Its only a problem when that dynamic is forced by circumstances rooted in patriarchal ideas against people's desires.

Exactly, and I'm glad to hear that my decision is compatible with modern feminism -- I've always hated the fact that there seemed to be a set narrative, a set of rules you had to adhere to. My mother was like that, which is why I had an anti-feminist phase. Brilliant, that it's all a bit more flexible these days. Thank you!

I know that I was extremely lucky in my circumstances, which enabled me to do both -- be with my kids when they were young, and, now, have the career that is entirely suited to my skills and temperament.

@Lamahaha I just looked back at your previous post and saw that your husband sadly died. I'm sorry if my post and description of you as "lucky" came across as flippant

@Lamahaha
I don't see why what you describe is incompatible with feminism. Its not a problem for women to enjoy staying at home and men to enjoy working or to divide labour that way. Its only a problem when that dynamic is forced by circumstances rooted in patriarchal ideas against people's desires.
My DH and I have set up things to be 50:50 work and childcare and chores. We have a very equitable household. My feminist principles informed this and I wanted our children to grow up seeing that we could each do both.
However I would really like to be at home with the kids full time while my husband works. The kicker is though that would trap my DH into a situation he doesn't want - he would rather be at home with the kids full time too. We are both really family orientated and tolerate the fact we have to work.
I'm not more of a feminist than you because I work more and provide less childcare. Its feminist to value child rearing. There is so much value in raising your children and I believe anyone who tells you otherwise is not speaking from a feminist viewpoint.

@Lamahaha from the article, the vast majority of parental leave in Sweden can be split as the parents choose:

like all parents in Sweden, Anna and Teddie are entitled to a combined total of 480 days of statutory parental leave per child. Each has 60 days' leave set aside for their sole use, but the rest can be shared between them as they wish, and the first 390 are paid at 80% of their salary

I honestly don't think your situation is in any way incompatible with feminism, you're just lucky in that you and your partner have found a division of responsibilities that work for you - happy days!

Obviously you are free to define yourself how you like though

In regards pension and career progression... I was already on UPS1 (Upper Pay Scale point 1 of 3, which does not have automatic progression), at a time where school funding was being cut to the bone. I could be the best teacher ever and never get promoted to UPS2, extra responsibility roles were being phased out with the roles split and put upon staff for no extra money or time, and the public sector pay freeze meant my salary was real terms reducing every year. So career progression and pay rises weren't a consideration.

Pension... Well, I'm only 34. I have a pension from my years teaching, and I'll be able to get back to work from January next year should I wish to. I've probably got another 30+ years to work, with little expectation of a state pension at all. Meanwhile we've arranged our finances so any money I make is a bonus which can go straight in to savings for paying off mortgages and topping up pensions.

So, I think it's silly to assume a woman is always screwing herself long term to be a SAHP. It's a little insulting too, the assumption that these weren't all factors taken in to account. By saying the end decision is wrong no matter what, you are alienating women and their choices.

Certainly it's wrong that women are priced out of work by childcare, but that isn't the woman who is wrong, it's society and government. Berating her for the choice she's made in the society in which she lives, rather than a fantasy utopia, is foolish.

ld article on Swedish vs British Model. Sweden heavily state subsidises childcare, shared parental leave and has a flexible work culture for men and women. So possible to argue for both.

I didn't read this article but it's my understanding that they HAVE to share childcare, maternity/paternity leave. That they can't delegate one person to take the entire leave, and that childcare is subsidized.

This would not have worked for my family, and I'm glad I wasn't living in Sweden when my children were small.

I did not want to return to my paid job under any circumstances. I wanted to be with my daughter. I wanted a traditional (ie old-fashioned) set-up and didn't feel diminished or penalised in any way because of it. Quite the opposite! Being at home while my daughter was at nursery school enabled me to put time into doing what I really wanted to do. I do hate one-size-fits-all solutions.

No feminist I have ever come across says on an individual level that it's only the women's income that childcare costs should be calculated against. Every single one has made the point that looking after children is a joint responsibility, with the costs and career costs to be looked at as part of the bigger picture involving both parents.

That's why, again, I can't be counted as a feminist. I don't fit the narrative. I did absolutely consider childcare to be predominantly my domain, and this is how we organised our family life. Childcare was what I did best, and enjoyed more; earning money was what he did best and enjoyed more. It was never 50-50 everything. I didn't really like the job we both did: he did. He wasn't very good at baby stuff -- I was. When our daughter started at nursery school and school, I made all the arrangements, kept up to date with what was going on, and I was happy with that. He did things I hated, such as taxes and all bill paying and accounting. He also did all the gardening (which ihe was very good at and loved) and yard work. I did most of the domestic stuff. I didn't mind.
I like a clear division of duties -- and it worked for us. It was good fortune that there was no financial penalty for this. Yes, I lost out on career opportunities, but frankly, I didn't care as my main interest and ambitions lay in the creative field, which I started when she was ten and which turned out very well.

Which doesn't mean that I didn't sometimes leave her to him while I went off to do something else, or even on holiday once with a friend, and he stayed with the kids.

He was a good father in spite of not having as much time with dc as I did. We all miss him...

It depends who earns more. My friends do this the other way round, and it isn't viable for her DH to work as his mimimum wage job paid less than 2 x nursery costs.

We've always had a joint account, and even though he has always been the higher and more consistent earner, what 'his' is mine; although I get it that not all couples operate in the same way, and that some men like to keep to rigidly separate and specifically demarcated accounts.

www.theguardian.com/money/2014/may/31/costs-childcare-britain-sweden-compare

Old article on Swedish vs British Model. Sweden heavily state subsidises childcare, shared parental leave and has a flexible work culture for men and women. So possible to argue for both.

Most modern capitalist economies need kids to be born, both parents to work and women to return to work.

Most studies show women want to work at least part-time (probably a lot of men would like to work part time as well).

Women historically have always worked, only for a very small period in post war history in the west (when economy and wages were in the ascendent) did a large pool of women not work, including upper working class women and middle class women.

It was a very distinctive period, that can be over romanticised. Many women enjoyed being wives and mothers, other women felt hugely frustrated. Friedan's the Feminine Mystique - though based on the US context - was the great expose of educated, middle class women in a society with school systems and white goods to make housekeeping easier - just absolutely crumbling at the drudgery and boredom of modern motherhood.

Also what we would see as parenting today, very intense involvement in the lives of a small number of children, that is combinable with housekeeping, is light years away from even 50s parenting. My grandmother made 3 cooked meals a day, shopped daily, still had to hand sweep floors and carpets. She didn't play with my mum and her siblings at all - they went out to play in the back yards and on the streets. Noticeably the women in the late 60s and early 70s, staying at home with their kids, started to set up the playgroup structures to get them and their kids out of the house.

If being at work means having less money because childcare needs to be paid for, saying that I'll get a pay rise in a few years doesn't feed my children right now.

I think the discussion on this (in general) focuses on women with 'careers' rather than 'jobs' and doesn't always take into account that minimum wage jobs don't pay as much as childcare costs.

Meh, maybe I'm being oversensitive.