Domestic zombies, motherhood penalty & childcare

It's funny how people are different. I became a lot less involved because Zoom makes me nauseous. I think it has to do with an eye problem I have.

I guess, in microcosm, it goes to show that there is no one size fits all solution to the motherhood problem.

One of the biggest advantages I have had of recent years wasn’t change from feminism, it was from the pandemic. Suddenly, as a SAHM to a child of disabilities, I could rejoin conferences online, join specialist scientific groups online, sit in an online room full of other professionals and I found that I still retained so much experience and knowledge. It has been fantastic.
I have found the same. I was able to become a parish councillor because they were meeting online (and had to resign when they went back to face to face meetings). I have been able to attend conferences and talks online. I have done a few short courses held over Zoom which have been fantastic for upskilling. This was only possible because the pandemic encouraged remote meetings. Now I’m being excluded again because stuff is going back offline.

Arguably that is part of the reason those jobs are so highly paid.

I have a friend who is a hotshot lawyer, he has a wife and children, she largely is a SAHM though sometimes does PT work.

He said it's the model in most of the big firms, if you have kids you need a spouse at home, or you need a nanny, in which case the spouse's salary may largely go towards paying that if not also a high earner.

Part of the reason people accept the demands of these jobs is because they pay enough to have a good quality of life with a non-working spouse.

There are all kinds of careers like that though. Part of what makes them higher paying is often that flexibility, or the idea that a person in that position will be expected to do what is required.

I recently changed from a job that is hourly pay to a salary. A lot of the work is the same, but one difference is that I sometimes have to work outside my regular hours, including in a pinch when someone else is sick or there is a special event.

Similarly certain kinds of shiftwork, the military, things like firefighting. Even farming and fishing. The very nature of the work means availability and flexibility and sometimes long hours.

If a couple in a position like that want kids, and the person who is the fisherman or whatever is going to be as available for childcare, it will probably just mean leaving that job. And jobs with fewer expectations will pay less, in general.

My honest answer to this is better men and solid marriages.

I even hate myself for saying it, but a good life for mothers is absolutely related to the quality of man they are paired with.

The motherhood penalty is much worse when you have a shit man / no man

One of the biggest advantages I have had of recent years wasn’t change from feminism, it was from the pandemic. Suddenly, as a SAHM to a child of disabilities, I could rejoin conferences online, join specialist scientific groups online, sit in an online room full of other professionals and I found that I still retained so much experience and knowledge. It has been fantastic. Lots of people with disabilities say the same.

It really made me realise how women, motherhood, marginalised groups really do not have access to work, places and forums of power, unless they can physically get up and attend at any time and any place. This is usually only available to men once you have a family, my Ex has to work late every single night, go off at the last minute, in order to earn good money. He doesn’t even get how that is only possible because his child has a ‘always be there for appointments or back up’ - our value is very low as we are invisible most of the time.

which is completely STUPID

having spent a fair bit of time over the last couple of years recruiting for professional roles (thanks The Great Resignation), attitude and aptitude are the most important things when looking for staff. to overlook those in favour how much time a person has available is so daft

We stopped looking for qualified candidates and started looking for the right kind of people. hired some women returning from career breaks or making a mid life career change and they were in general great. plus they're less likely to job hop in my experience.

This is so true. Most of the SAHMs I know are professionally trained people, who can't manage full time roles, as their OH's travel for work, lack of childcare etc. But decent or just flexible part time roles are hard to find. I had a psychologist and an accountant cleaning for me when I supervised for a contract cleaning company, the hours meant they could work before school drop off and late evenings after the kids were in bed.

My qualifications are in a very much male dominated industry, 8am to 5-30 5/6 days a week was expected, overtime was also expected and time off for sick kids etc would be treated with contempt. I don't work much now, but it's easy to see how difficult, employers (and other employees) can make it for men to share the childcare load.
Although having said that, I know three women who did return to their careers, whilst their male partners stayed at home, two of these women ended up quitting, as they were doing most of the home tasks as well as working and the children weren't thriving.

Just wanted to say that this is a great thread. Thanks for starting it, and it is really informative reading everyone's perspectives, ideas and experiences.

Thanks.

I think you can on amazon

Oh! That sounds like a great book. Can you pre-order it?

Victoria Smith has a book coming out in March which I am keenly anticipating called Hags: the Demonisation of middle aged women. not all mothers are middle aged of course, but I think she has some interesting stuff to say about the general disrespect and even hatred of mothers that is relevant to the way society completely depends on mothers yet throws us under the bus. I don't know what the solutions are because negotiating peaceably and trying hard to find a cooperative way forward in good faith just absolutely shreds us; the hard line alternative, withdrawal of labour, is not open to us because we care about our children.

So in the case of Raddix - when she was picking up the parenting when her husband was working, it was supposed to be an effortless thing she could just fit in. The second she asks her husband to do it, it's impossible, because of course you can't do two things at the same time. Its some weird inconsistency in the laws of physics

The difficulty is that women are not respected. none of these things that women do just happen to be poorly recognised and if women could just do b instead of a, then they would gain respect and be properly facilitated and rewarded. The issue is that women can do a, b, c, right down to z and as soon as a woman is doing it, she's expected to do it for free at the same time as 27 other things.

I imagine the employer would say the employee is paid enough to afford a PA (or a SAHM). The problem is that in many cases the SAHM didn’t choose that role - she was forced into it because the father was selfish and inconsiderate.

I have had huge arguments with my DH because he keeps working late and I keep saying that’s not ok because I’m not willing to pick up the additional parenting. He says he has to - I say he can’t so he’ll have to find a different job. But at the end of the day, what can I do when he simply doesn’t show up and I’m left holding the baby?

When he got offered a promotion we nearly got divorced when I said he couldn’t accept it because I wasn’t willing to pick up the slack. He said “you can’t tell me what to do!” and I said “fine accept the promotion but you’ll still have to handle your 50% of parenting because I’m not doing it”. Of course then I was being selfish!

Perhaps highly paid men should formally employ their spouses like MPs do.

Is that a serious suggestion?

The fact is, high level jobs demand too much flexibility. You can’t leave just because it’s the end of your shift. Which means there needs to be another person (usually mum) who can pick up the slack. Which means she can’t have a professional job. It stinks.

Essentially in cases like this, the employers is demanding the services of both their employee and of a facilitator or PA who does all the things he (it’s usually a he) can’t do because he’s so busy. So why shouldn’t the employer pay for that?

Perhaps highly paid men should formally employ their spouses like MPs do.

It’s the value of motherhood that has been eroded, it’s should be respected and supported by employers, partners and society if we as mother’s want to see our children’s plays, take them to medical appointments, be at the school gates. Why did we let society under value this? Why is only working of value?

But when you actually go out there and try and do it, the structures all around expect you not to
Yep. Get a job… but be available at 3pm after school for parents evening or a session about literacy or a meeting about behaviour, and also during the day to chaperone school trips and do the fun run. Get a job… but we need parent governors and PTA and you also need to help with homework. Get a job… but if your child is sick you have to pick them up and keep them at home till they recover, and don’t forget they can’t attend for 48hrs after diarrhoea. Get a job… but it’s not ok to leave if a meeting runs late and you need to pick the kids up.

The fact is you cannot work unless you earn enough to pay someone to do the stuff you can’t do, or have grandparents who do it for free. And an average salary doesn’t cover it.

@trytopullyoursocksup I absolutely agree with everything you have said. I also WANT to be able to chat with the teacher’s as small issues with DS can very quickly become bigger ones if someone else (including his father who never talks to the teachers) picks up. DS has several medical appointments and a short day, plus holidays. No way could I work most ‘high level’ and yet I am ‘higher level’ career wise - but totally passed over because I can only offer 20 hours. I feel completely wasted with all my experience and qualifications, and I also feel very demoted in even my female peer’s eyes who are all now very high level in their jobs.

I’m so glad that this issue has a thread, for me the impact of motherhood is a crucial feminist issue.

I have both worked full-time in a ‘good’ career based job, and now mostly a stay at home single mum (with some self employed work). I have decided to only work part-time because my child has severe disabilities and ‘outsourcing’ means a whole heap of problems, and frankly I want to give my child the best start and I am the best person to do it. There are some excellent fathers, but on the whole, mothers do the most organising and upbringing of the kids, and this should be supported in a feminist way - with better recognition and respect for that role.

I have a whole heap of qualifications, and am a really good worker and yet trying to find work that can fit around my caring duties as a mother (which will probably go on for my DSs lifetime) is almost impossible. I have very little pension, very little financial support, my Ex keeps trying to insist that we can share the childcare more ‘to let me work’ (as he resents maintenance) but his version of parenting is letting his sister ‘mind’ DS which honestly is a health and safety risk, and DS has no quality of care there.

And yet my feminist friends have been quite slow to acknowledge that this is a real feminist issue for me, and also push me to ‘get financially independent’ and they don’t see the cost for DS if I just outsource his care. I’ve seen others do it and the lack of really good continuous carers often results in regression for those with disabilities. Why can’t I be recognised as providing a service for society in the same way that someone in work is? Why am I penalised by society for being a good mother? I am sometimes called ‘a saint’ and that DS is ‘so lucky’ and benefits so much, but in real, monetary, career or security terms I am screwed.

Motherhood, whether for children with very high needs or not, has been downgraded into running around taking your kid to museums at the weekends while you juggle a million things, this is not what us as feminists fought for, we fought for equal rights, for the ability not to be penalised in our careers when we become carers for our children, to have financial power as much as the ‘earner’ if we are the main carers for kids, and to be recognised that quality parenting is very valuable for kids mental security - often from a main carer which 9/10 is the mother.

It’s not just full time hours that are the problem. It’s also that in most high-paying jobs, full-time, to quote that novel I Don’t Know How She Does It, is seen as skiving. Weekends off? Annual leave you can actually take off instead of having to be compensated for it? 5pm finish? Dream on.

I used to be friends with a woman who now has an incredibly high profile high powered career overseas. She has a genius IQ, academics off the scale, the ability to thrive on 5 hours sleep (some people are genuinely wired like this) and a husband who is no slouch intellectually himself but who worked a routine 9-5 job so he could do consistent pick-ups and drop-offs for their sons. She regularly did 70-80 hour weeks which I don’t think is realistic or healthy for the majority to aspire to or for employers to expect.

what is really galling about all of this is that everyone seems to think that mothers should work - I mean not everyone but it is basically I think the majority mainstream view that even married mothers "can't expect to stay at home" while their children are minors. But when you actually go out there and try and do it, the structures all around expect you not to: schools ringing you up at the drop of the hat, tradespeople saying they will "drop in", everyone asking you to do things as if you are around all day, and expecting you to be, and behaving put out when you have to arrange things at specific times and / or take leave and / or not do it at all. I am absolutely sick of it. My children are 13 and 11 now and I started out being really conciliatory and apologetic about all the people I had to explain to that I really couldn't be in two places at once. now I am just burning with rage because the years of trying, sincerely trying, in good faith, to produce a result that is exactly equivalent to being in two places at the same time, has worn me to shreds. I am sick to death of it. I work for a company now that expects you to bill hours to individual clients and I absolutely love it because in my old job I was responsible to everyone at the same time. Even though it's purely symbolic as it doesn't lessen my workload - nor does it stop other people bothering me in work hours - I absolutely love the clarity of making a note that I am now doing x job for y client and it will take 2 hours, and feeling that I am absolutely justified in ignoring everyone else for that time. that stress of being alive to all demands at all times is just unbearable.