Domestic zombies, motherhood penalty & childcare

The idea that people doing more flexible, less immediately demanding jobs should get paid the same as those who do have jobs like that seems blatantly unfair if you turn it around - if anyone does a job with demands like that they will tend to expect more pay.
Agreed. But flexible jobs should be the norm and demanding inflexible jobs should be the exception. People should be able to have proper professions like manager, solicitor, executive, and still work flexibly - then a minority of people work inflexibly for extra money. But in reality it’s the other way round - the vast majority of jobs are inflexible and professional jobs especially are very inflexible - and only the shitty jobs are flexible.

But this sort of pt situation is exactly what a lot of mothers want, at least past the infant period.

But it's never going to pay in the same way as a ft job, and I would argue that even a ft time job with a lot of flexibility usually won't pay the same as ft work that is demanding in terms of time and availability.

The idea that people doing more flexible, less immediately demanding jobs should get paid the same as those who do have jobs like that seems blatantly unfair if you turn it around - if anyone does a job with demands like that they will tend to expect more pay. And similarly the idea that somehow most men's jobs can all or largely become more flexible and less demanding is pretty unrealistic.

Ultimately, it will be common in families with kids to have at least one parent in a more flexible, and probably lower paying position. While the other may well end up in a more demanding, higher paying job, because they want that extra pay - to offset the lower pay of the other parent, or to pay for the costs associated with children. Demanding both parents have the same level of work doesn't make a lot of sense and it's not realistic.

And there will be many people, especially those with more than one child, where the reproductive role of each parents plays a part in who chooses the more flexible work.

This is one of the underlying flaws in feminist thinkers emphasizing getting women into work. It really tends to take for granted that the model men adopted was good and healthy, and in a lot of ways is wasn't and isn't.

Yes, they do, and the extent to which that is appropriate needs to be a careful decision. Mainly what they need to do is respond to the needs and wants of the population, rather than trying to direct them.

But the state has zero capacity to try and tell women and families how they should make their parenting arrangements. They have no special insight or knowledge, and no mandate to interfere in that way.

Trying to get between mothers and their small children is anti-female and anti-woman.

I never thought about it like that before. Interesting connection. Thank you.

Why is it that every time women as a class start to gain important legal freedoms and rights, prevailing theories of child development and education become ever more demanding and prescriptive? In the 18th century, as Mary Wollstonecraft was rewriting the rulebook on women’s potential, Rousseau was advancing a theory on childhood purity that turned the mother into the Angel in the House and the family into a cage. In the 20th century, when women gained the vote and started to enter education and gain real professional influence, along came Freud, Truby King, Bowlby, Spock and a host of others, with often contradictory but zealously dogmatic ideas about the mother’s influence on her children. Now of course, we’re stuck between the rock of a ridiculous safety-focused helicopter parenting model of family life and the hard place of employers who are barely better than slave drivers.

I think my ultimate point is that family needs and women’s need for achievement elsewhere are not inherently working against each other; I think the needs of the family have been actively weaponised against us, and this is what we’re really fighting. No amount of tinkering with the system or compensation for disadvantage will change things, unless we face the fact that influential people will do anything to keep us in our box and we need to keep fighting them to find our way out.

Sorry, just realised that you said that the money could be used to outsource care. I think there is an argument for state nurseries or government contributions to child care costs.

And with that would come pressure on low paid women to have a child, or have a second one, from some men.

Why would any woman need to take three years off work? The first year I can understand, but why three?

The ‘nuclear family’ ideal is a 20th c. middle class myth.

I read somewhere that poorer parents still tend to work shifts round each other to maximise earnings and minimise childcare costs and so working class men do more childcare than middle class men who often have either a wife working PT or completely SAH while they do their very important job.

I don't actually think that in human societies it is the case that absolutely all care is done by mum. Yes, lots of early care is done by mum and lots of breastfeeding. But also I always understood that the benefits of early communities was socialisation of childcare and domestic tasks to a degree. The "couple" unit is only part of a wider picture, which also allows women some time away from their kids to contribute to the community with the help of other mums and community elders. The modern tendency to "helicopter" kids has been shown to be damaging; kids do need time to themselves and time in the company of other children. It is important to have security of care. but OP, I think your view is also playing into the unnatural martyrdom that comes with modern parenting.

(I work part time around two young kids - I like working, not least because it provides me with a lot of security. I also like that I spend more time with my kids than they spend away from me. I find it a relief that they can be happy in the care of other people than me. I don't need to be told I am odd for this.).

Marking place to read later. I am acutely aware of the impact marriage has had on my health and earnings, mainly because I'm considering divorce.

You seem to be taking it for granted that it's better for children if their mothers don't work, but that's very much not established fact. It's a contentious issue - my own view (but not what I've done for my own children) is that it is probably a bit better if they have a single carer until around 2/3 if all other things are equal. But all other things aren't equal nearly all of the time, and it seems likely to make a very small difference to child outcomes either way and is probably pretty low down the list of parenting decisions that have a clear lasting impact. At this point if there were big negative or positive cross-cohort effects that came directly from being in childcare I think we'd know. But the truth is that no one does and the evidence is inconclusive and conflicting.

You also seem to be very much conflating women not wanting to be away from their children and it being better for those children to not be away from their mothers, but they're not the same things. Your argument seems to be that SAHMs should be paid from public money because they provide a public good, but I don't think that's a case you've proven.

I think marriage used to be a way of making sure the economics were redistributed towards families and children
That’s the whole idea of alimony isn’t it? To compensate the wife who was at home doing unpaid work and give her some of the future benefits of the job that her support has enabled her husband to get.

Pre industrial revolution pretty much everyone, including the children, worked, too, of course, and work was more often done in and around the home. I expect the opening of factories, and the concurrent establishing of schools to enable women to leave the home and enter more regimented forms of work was a hinge moment that we've really not yet come to terms with.

I think marriage used to be a way of making sure the economics were redistributed towards families and children. The idea was that the man earned the money because he had the wherewithal, and it was household money, not just his personal allowance.

Now obviously, in practice this has been flawed and widely abused, especially in the context of a patriarchal society. Plus, if you look back in history, working class women have always worked while looking after their families, generally with the support of extended family. The ‘nuclear family’ ideal is a 20th c. middle class myth.

I don’t think the problem is men. It’s employers. Once you get to a certain level they won’t accept you being flexible around kids. They expect more hours and more dedication than a parent can offer. When I was waiting to go into labour my husbands employer was yelling that he needed a fucking date and demanding that I should book a c section so he could know exactly what date my husband would be absent.

Not all employers, we have PT employees at all levels and our SLT is half female despite being what was traditionally a very male dominated industry. But generally, I agree many employers are a big problem and having worked for my employer for a long time I have plenty of horror stories from the past where we were less good than we are now.

The state trying to engineer family decisions like this for some abstract goal of their own is over-stepping, I think.

The state already does this in various areas. The cap on child benefit, giving tax relief on pension payments and childcare costs, fixing the boundaries at which you pay different taxes or lose benefits all impact people's decisions about how much they work and how big a family they have.

And we need to start asking men who become fathers what flexible working arrangements they are going to take. There needs to be a societal shift so men no longer think it's OK to carry on as if nothing has happened when they have children.
I don’t think the problem is men. It’s employers. Once you get to a certain level they won’t accept you being flexible around kids. They expect more hours and more dedication than a parent can offer. When I was waiting to go into labour my husbands employer was yelling that he needed a fucking date and demanding that I should book a c section so he could know exactly what date my husband would be absent.

The fact is women are primed to bond closely in order to prompt good infant care, and breastfeeding tends to increase that with the hormonal effects it produces
My SIL is the highest earner, her husband wanted to drop to part time while she worked full time. She said no - she wanted to look after her own baby, she wanted to breastfeed and she wanted the life experience of going to baby groups with the other mums and pushing prams around the park etc. She felt he would be taking a nice experience away from her. So she had her year of being a yummy mummy and then went back to work (because she got paid enough to cover childcare).

I think changing men's behaviour is essential. And I have no time for pop evolutionary psychology, it's basically guesswork used to shore up the oppression of women 'because this is how it has always been'. We have large flexible brains, and we live in a world where men usually have two or three children with just one woman, they need to start investing their time in raising those children. To encourage that we need to reduce the financial hit by having paid paternity leave, just like we reduce the financial hit for women by having paid maternity leave. And we need to start asking men who become fathers what flexible working arrangements they are going to take. There needs to be a societal shift so men no longer think it's OK to carry on as if nothing has happened when they have children.

There are good reasons for paid paternity leave, especially where we have made extended families a non-viable support in many cases for young mums, New mothers do need support and if there is no grandmother or sisters around to help, because they live far away or are working,the dad is really the only option.

But the idea that the answer is somehow convincing women that want to stay with their babies and young kids to let dads do it instead, or even forcing it through the public benefits structure, seems not only backwards, but anti-woman to me. Nor should women be forced to hand over their young kids to paid carers and go to work to pay said careers when they would rather care for them themselves.

Some men will be happy to care in that way too, or families may choose that because it suits their circumstances in some way, but I think it will always be fewer than women. The fact is women are primed to bond closely in order to prompt good infant care, and breastfeeding tends to increase that with the hormonal effects it produces.

The state trying to engineer family decisions like this for some abstract goal of their own is over-stepping, I think.