Domestic zombies, motherhood penalty & childcare

May I ask, do you think the government should subsidise childcare costs - often around £9/£10 per hour.

Assuming two parents are working full time, do you feel this is astronomical?

Single parents get help with their childcare costs, what would you like the government to do about married couples that work full time?

Spanish grandparents - am curious, what happened? Just acknowledgement or did they get something out of it policy wise?

I mean the coalface of children's social care, making me sound a bit blasé about poverty, abuse, addiction etc since it is just part of everyday life

Hmm, could a solution be, maternity leave up to the point you are ready to put them in state funded childcare - currently 30 hours free from 3 - maybe reduce that to from 2. So 2 years of mat leave? Then it is a woman's choice to do what she feels is right and you don't have that middle period which I have found to be most damaging to my career and finances - working full time but with a toddler so lots of emergency unpaid time off for illness and still having to pay for nursery when she can't go!

Businesses would get used to it if it was law - they would just need cover for longer. Which helps with stability anyway.

Women returning would perhaps need more support to return to certain job types.

So er yeah in summary I probably have a biased view being at the coalface, we tend to talk straight about this kind of thing.

We're all 'at the coalface', frankly. Any woman living as a mother faces these decisions.

Yes, without families/mothers making new citizens there will be massive knock-on effects throughout society.

I think the idea of 'personal choice' is used to browbeat mothers/women into caring for free, thinking that they shouldn't dare to even ask for recompense for what is grinding hard work. Imagine if women took that on face value and decided not to bother caring at all!

I think of the Spanish grandparents strike - the country ground to a halt, which forced people to acknowledge the massive unpaid contribution of grandparents/elderly people to the economy.

You are right, my comments do sound like classism. I don't have much of a defence for it, 'class' or at least poverty and deprivation have a serious and real impact.

I work for a local authority in children's services. When you see these kids coming through the system and understand the family lives they have, it is heartbreaking. If we could get them into a childcare provision much earlier, their outcomes are much brighter.

It's hard, because we have mums who want to be sahms, who clearly aren't bringing up kids in a harmful environment. And we have other kids who unfortunately are not given the same life chances - whether because these mums live with domestic abuse, addiction, poverty, or just a family unit that is very toxic. Is it classist to know this is true? I don't think so - I make no judgement on their lives. I do make judgement on what it means for the kids in their care, and the cycle it begins.

So I would hope that universal childcare would give those kids a better start in life. Especially mixing with kids from untroubled families. It should do a world of good. I'd love to see it in my lifetime.

What it means for that instinctual desire in some women to care for their own kids I don't know - I don't have it with my kid so I am definitely blinkered in that area which makes my solution easy for me personally. Is it something we shrug at and say - well don't send them then - but we aren't paying you? To me the consequences of giving money to some of these families for having kids at home could be dire - men will take it and gamble it, maybe even force their wives to have more kids for the money? Consequences to every policy that need to be throught through.

So er yeah in summary I probably have a biased view being at the coalface, we tend to talk straight about this kind of thing.

Thanks for the tag @JessSi . Will be back later.

It is genuinely very hard to talk about this issue and it is in many ways easier not to, but very destructive in the longer-term.
I agree and I think this thread illustrates why, even on this board, there's a reluctance to go there. Parts of it have made my hackles rise and I realise that parts of my posts will have done the same thing. But unless we find a way to get past that then I don't think there's much hope.

Everyone makes decisions based on what is best for their family, but I really don't see personal family decisions as something tax payers should have to pay for.
I disagree with the idea that having children is merely a personal family decision. It is not. For many people it is an intrinsic part of human life. Even if you choose not to have children, you rely on other people having them for society to function. It should not be up to mothers to bear the whole burden of child rearing.

Yes, many of these issues will be emotive. Same goes for many parenting issues, I find - I suppose because they really are some of the most deeply felt decisions we ever make.

Plus any statement we make is unavoidably coloured by our own experiences and feelings, which aren't always easy or settled.

I think one of the reasons feminism doesn't talk enough about this is that it's incredibly hard to do so in a way that speaks to all mothers. I'm really interested in this issue but have to admit that, as someone who did shared parental leave, went back to work full-time when my first baby was 6 months and now works nearly full-time and in a very full-on job with a four year old and an 18 month old, I really have to steel myself to engage in a thread where people talk about 'raising their own children', women having a 'primal need' not to do what I do and where the implication is that it's not in my children's best interests to do so. I certainly don't feel I live in a world that lauds and celebrates working mothers. But I know plenty of other women feel equally alienated from the other direction and I have seen awful things said about SAHMs. It is genuinely very hard to talk about this issue and it is in many ways easier not to, but very destructive in the longer-term.

often lean in to a wage for housework position but this is problematic in lots of ways.

But who would you propose pays for this?

Everyone makes decisions based on what is best for their family, but I really don't see personal family decisions as something tax payers should have to pay for.

I should probably have started by saying I wouldn't ever presume to tell another woman how to work out this difficult dilemma. Those are my own personal conclusions I've arrived at. I do have various privileges and various drawbacks, as most probably do, the situation/context will be of course different for every woman (and child).

Thanks for making the thread, OP.

I agree that care is one of the great unresolved issues of feminism.

I think current narratives encouraging women to relentlessly prize ambition and career progression above all else are often just feeding women into the neoliberal capitalist myth of growth and progress, and also fit nicely with our protestant work ethic, the idea we should sacrifice all to win the game.

Having been lucky enough to have both had children and raised them, and also achieved since a modest amount of success in my career, I know which is of more lasting importance to me. Not to dismiss the desire to realise one's skills and ambitions, and have fulfilling work, but I think it's worth questioning the idea that we must always, always be striving for more and better.

A healthier balance might allow women to enoy the years of child raising, while also enjoying work without feeling that one is doomed to fail at one or both, caught in an impossible dilemma.

The fact that one can get govt assistance to pay/employ others to raise one's children, creating effectively a monetary penalty for raising your own children, I find bitterly unfair and absurd.

If it's accepted that women outsourcing childcare, as soon as possible after birth is not the win that feminists thought, or even what most women want, then mainstream feminism does appear to have a motherhood problem. What would your solution to motherhood penalty be?
Like I said, I don't have a solution because I can't picture what a modern society where this is accepted would even look like. Sorry if that sounds unhelpful - I would like to be more positive.

Make men do their fair share of childrearing including taking time off from paid labour like women do (in partnered heterosexual relationships).

Agree! This is the absolute crux of the whole thing!

I had three under two and even on £££ it would have been extortionate to put them in nursery. With one having SEN and needing taking to appointments etc well into secondary school it’s meant 16 years out of full time work (I was doing lots of volunteering and freelance work when time allowed) now I’m back in a job I’m on the same wage I was in 2006! Pretty soul destroying. Plus, can’t do full time anyway as I’m sandwich generation and have an elderly DM who needs attention too. It will break me one day.

I agree

DH staying at home with 'my' babies would have felt all shades of wrong to me. I don't think I could have tolerated it