Should we more honest about the impact of children in careers ?

[mids2019]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13184193/Lily-Allen-insists-choosing-motherhood-pop-stardom-love-children-ruined-career.html

Is Lily Allen being honest here and saying something that a lot of women (and possibly men) realise but don't openly admit to?

I think in a fundamental sense she has a point in that for women celebs and athletes having children if not logistically 'managed' can destroy a career. For women athletes the reality is for many having children is normally done at the still end of a career with the understanding at an elite level pregnancy and early years child reading can be difficult while meeting the extreme demands of competitive sport. You could argue Taylor Swift may or may not have had the career she had if she had given birth to a couple of children (possibly losing a little career momentum because of being out of the limelight for 2 or 3 years).

On the more mortal level having children can push you back on a career path as part time working may put you back relative to your peers and as children get older it becomes more difficult to move due to schooling and children friendship ties. Having children means there may be less opportunity to 'put in the extra mile to further you career by gaining a 'hard working' reputation.

Should we be more honest about this in society and admit even in 2024 there are sacrificed to be made having childen? Are these sacrifices something we can put down to a lifestyle choice of do we need to continue to press to remove any career disadvantage having children may bring?

If you do one really demanding thing to the best of your ability you do not have time to do another demanding thing to the best of your ability. What a shocker.

The timescales are set up to fuck women over. We should have kids in our 20s and careers 35-70. The world is arranged for men by men. It is obvious.

well i saw my kids plenty thanks, as did their dad. They are well rounded individuals and they often comment how cool their friends thought it was that sometimes when they came over for the day, the dad cooked and the mum was doing the garden.

And there is the option of both dropping a few hours if finances allow. Or being a SAHP if that is what you want and works for you. But women shouldn't be the default in that.

And we shouldn't - as women - have to "work as though we don't have children and parent as though we don't have a job"

That must've been very hard, I hope your son is ok now.

Our family experience of male taking a caring role was completely the opposite, but I'd agree with you on the 'we can't win' bit. DH went part time for a while for childcare, and we agreed I'd try and forge ahead after mat leave. What happened next is he got the treatment that mothers more typically get, not taken seriously etc and given the shit work. His card was marked. Then I got pregnant again and, well, let's just say my employers response to this news made me instruct a lawyer.

Basically we both got fucked over for trying to have a more equal balance. We'd have been financially better off if we'd stuck to the traditional model. Neither of us would change anything, but then living in a cheap area we could take the financial hit. I can't blame couples who have much higher housing costs for deciding to try and keep at least one career pristine, since you can't do anything about the risk of maternity discrimination if you decide to do something as offensively and unreasonably female as get pregnant.

The whole thing is a fucking mess.

For years I thought that I had it sorted: part-time working in a sector with supportive bosses combined with some paid childcare and a very helpful grandparent living nearby. My career was ticking along nicely.

But things happen! Employment arrangements can change. A worldwide pandemic comes along. What is right for your child in terms of schooling may involve huge logistical challenges that are incompatible with a commute. Additional needs can emerge as a child gets older.

I think what people sometimes forget is that the stakes get higher as children get older. Missing a KS1 assembly is upsetting, but a GCSE or A-Level Options evening might be the only opportunity to ask crucial questions.

Of course the typical MN ‘bright’ child is utterly independent from age eleven, never needs any help with homework, takes themself to all extracurricular activities, arranges all their own work experience and makes perfect educational and social decisions without any parental input - but what if they’re not like that?

I am freelancing and pitching myself all over the place, but would love to be back in the workplace. I never anticipated being mostly a SAHM at this stage, but it’s where I am right now…

What has astonished me is quite how unbothered my DH was about my career as soon as it was more convenient for me to stay at home than to go out to work.

The only thing I would say is that I would be utterly stuffed right now (and my pension even more so!) if I hadn’t carried on working part-time, so I do think that is a good idea even if it feels like a challenge at times.

We should accept that part time doesn't mean you do a lesser job. If everyone apparently project manages and is agile etc then it should be perfectly possible to manage part time staff. This would then make it more appealing to men as well plus women could continue their career and also see their children.

It's a culture thing in the UK. I work with a Norwegian office and over summer it's very normal to have your kids in the office (granted the older ones) who are watching films, wandering around together etc. plus they have affordable childcare, more much social equity on education and shared parental leave.

My job could easily be 4 days a week and they wouldn't suffer from my lack of strategic input on the 5th day. I just need to get the pension at the moment having been lower paid and worked part time with young kids.

i get the point about "taking a financial hit" but that should surely be part of your family planning?

so if you are of the "DH earns double my salary so i will suck up the SAHP role and go part time" that is fine - you are not willing to sacrifice lifestyle but you are prepared to sacrifice your career. And if you are fully participating in that choice, that is fine.

But you both could be "well, he earns more, but in 10 years we could both be back to full time earning the same if we both take a hit now" and share parental leave, both cut hours etc. as an investment in your joint future. And take the lifestyle hit (and children impact your lifestyle whether you like it or not) in the short term, well that is also fine.

But it shouldn't be the default postition that the current lower earner always takes the complete hit to career/earnings/pension/lifestyle - especially since we know that is so often the woman.

I do wonder how this works in same sex couples, or adoptions etc. How do you decide when neither of you was pregnant? I am going to assume - and please correct me if I'm wrong - that the discussions are a bit (or a lot?) different.

I agree completely.

I also hate the narrative that women must want the same as men and therefore all issues are fundamentally an equal burden and problem for both sexes. It could be totally possible that women are impacted more by the children/work balance due to biological factors. Women have a set time window to have children that conflicts with the time when most people are expected to be building their careers. Men can wait until they're more established before children come along. Women are also obviously the ones that have to be pregnant, give birth and breastfeed. Even if all that goes smoothly, it's a hell of a different experience to a man taking a bit of paternity leave so that appears 'even'.

There is also the more controversial point that I observe amongst my friends and family which is that women often want time at home with their young children more than their partners. To them it seems more important and a priority. Personally I believe there is nothing wrong with this and I find it odd that of all the random wants and needs we all have, this is one that garners some of the most criticism. Perhaps it's because the women that don't have this compulsion think that it's regressive to associate caring responsibilities with women, but I actually think it's regressive to automatically assume these roles are inferior and of less worth than paid employment.

My point is that there are lots of reasons why this is a bigger issue for women than men and why it would be foolish for women to wait for men to speak out about this.

I think what people sometimes forget is that the stakes get higher as children get older. Missing a KS1 assembly is upsetting, but a GCSE or A-Level Options evening might be the only opportunity to ask crucial questions.

such a good point. Often the discussion centres on the (very) early years. But my experience (now my DCs are grown and have left home) is that the teenage years were desperately crucial in terms of parental input and support. I focussed on them a lot more at that time.

What has astonished me is quite how unbothered my DH was about my career as soon as it was more convenient for me to stay at home than to go out to work.

More convenient for him.
It’s amazing how many equality-minded men who’ve always seemed supportive of women’s rights, suddenly revert to the patriarchy when they would otherwise have to make sacrifices. They simply will not reduce their hours or switch to a less demanding job in order to do their share of childcare and allow the mother of their kids to also work. She can work but only if it doesn’t take anything away from him.

IME its mostly relatively privileged women like Allen who insist we have equality right up until the point where they finally take a hit and the penny drops that all the silly old women saying this may just have had a point.

Most of us know full well that even being pregnant leads to a life long hit in earnings and even redundancy for women in normal jobs. At the same time men who become fathers see their status and salaries rise.

But it shouldn't be the default postition that the current lower earner always takes the complete hit to career/earnings/pension/lifestyle - especially since we know that is so often the woman.

This goes back to what I said about jobs not being set up to suit parents. It’s simply not possible for both parents to cut their hours and share childcare, because professional jobs don’t work like that. The options are either do a proper full time job or leave your career entirely and do a shitty unskilled part time job. And it’s not possible to manage on two shitty unskilled part time jobs. Literally the only option is for one person to keep their job while the other takes the full hit.

@Bumpitybumper I 100% agree with you.

Perhaps we actually need to recognise that caring for children is actually a full time role and value it accordingly.

So no it is not possible to do two full time roles concurrently. The reality is if you are doing one someone else (or a collection of other people stitched together) are doing the other.

Male or female

The biggest lie we have told Women is that you can have it all. Men never had it all, they had women doing it for them.

We must value those who care appropriately

How though? If women left the workforce due to having young children and were financially compensated for this, the economy would collapse.

Oh totally!

In fairness he does the kind of senior job where pt working doesn’t really exist at his level. But the irony was that he’d been the worst for pressuring me to go back to work in the first place, earn more, be more senior, question why I wasn’t working full time with a young child…Then as soon as the circumstances changed, he underwent a complete volte face. 🙄

Make it possible for parents to work part time and flexible hours in career jobs. Normalise it. Make it something that virtually all employers offer, not just a select few. Allow people to adjust their hours as their kids get older. The main issue here is that employers aren’t being accommodating.

We could accept that parents are likely to step out of the work force for a while and have good quality returner programmes to get then back up to speed and confident on their return - construction companies do this a lot.

We could be honest that returning from a year maternity is a big deal and put support in place - I was left to hang on returning from mine, straight into a pandemic with an entirely new team who were all struggling.

We could look honestly at what jobs need to deliver and offer genuinely flexible working and part time roles.

These measures would also support people who experience ill health, mental health and disabled staff.

How? You can’t legally force employers to offer PT hours. A lot of jobs just can’t work this way. There’s a ton of reasons why it can only work on a minority basis, unfortunately.

In fairness he does the kind of senior job where pt working doesn’t really exist at his level.
This is the problem. It needs to exist at all levels.

but that's not my expeience, and not the experience of many of my (mc) friends. We don't have stellar careers in fantastic industries, or are professors - but we have well paid jobs as do our partners. We don't do shitty part time jobs, and while some of us have jobs that ebb and flow in terms of pressure (for me: month, quarterly and year ending reporting was always a big thing) we have partners who have stepped up. And sometimes we have made decisions when our work was prioritised because our partners had our backs, and vice versa.

And pp said that we assume women want the same as men. to that i can only say #NotAllWomen and #NotAllMen. Because we are all individuals with wants, needs, desires etc.

But tbh we are all in dangerous territory when we talk about the nice mc office based jobs that we can do from home, etc, because AI is coming for those.

So maybe we need to focus a lot more on making ourselves indespensible, and that workplace culture needs to adapt to the fact that parenthood is a thing, and to make compromises. Instead of all the compromise being on the side of the parents (and often the mother). And as we know another set of people who haven't been listened to in the past, but are increasingly being heard, are carers. Not only of children but of elderly parents and other relatives. And it would be entirely plausible and possible for us all to rethink that too. (in terms of employers and employees each coming together to meed the needs of everyone)

Not everyone is always going to get what they want all the time. But we can increase that if we are sensible.

I think there are very few jobs where this wouldn’t work. Perhaps some very senior jobs where you’re managing and supervising so someone needs to be available all the time. In most cases there’s no reason why people couldn’t work part time, or even full time with 30 hours in the office and 10 hours wfh. This attitude that it wouldn’t work is the problem. It needs to be made to work.

This is all happening against a wider backdrop of the working population moving away from traditional full time in a physical workplace models too. Sometimes that looks like more flexibility, sometimes that looks like people simply not being in the workforce.

and we are veering away again from woman as defalut hit-taking-parent (in the discussion)

If we look at Korea and see the birthrate dropping as women are concentrating more on carreers and life satisfaction we should be thinking hard about that happening here, and what we could/should do about it.

I wish I had more honest/aware people around me at 22 when I became pregnant on the pill in my last year of university. I had people saying get the kids out early then you'll be free to concentrate on your career.

As the mother I'm the default. As the lower earner I'm the default parent. The one that's assumed to be flexible. With the cost of living crisis we now have no wiggle room what so ever for that to balance out, even slowly over time. My oh wage just covers essentials. There is nothing left over for paid childcare. Having child with sen means one of us always has to be flexible and on call. It makes childcare not really a option. My oh has only been able to progress with his career because I have facilitated. Men (generally speaking) are the ones that can have it all career and family. I either have just a school time hours job or re train but I can't afford to re train on its own or plus the childcare.

I remember being told lots the nurseries years are the hardest but in reality it's a lot longer than that our school doesn't have any wraparound care making the childminders full capacity. We have no family support. The only way I can work is working for myself which doesn't make enough.That doesn't easily transfer into any industry experience. I won't walk into a decent paying job that won't expect me to put all the hours under the sun into. I won't walk into a wfh job with flexibility easily. The people I see do this start full time and work their way to flexibility and wfh. Mostly having started their career before children. The level of expectation to raise children are so different now. Having children has changed my priorities because it's impossible to do it all and do it well. You can't add on what feels like 3 more full time jobs on and expect things not to be altered. I'm either doing one aspect to the full of my capabilities and letting other things slide, for me that's a career. Or im running myself into the ground trying to excel at everything then what's the point. The amount that's on everyone's plates and expectations of excelling at everything has changed. It's not achievable for most without money and support.

My oh essentially got let go from a job because he dared to ask for flexibility. His boss questioned his work ethic because he saw no value in being around for the children or trying to accommodate me having a career. Actual words were oh is your wife not a mumsy mum? What the hell. The assumption at every job my oh has ever had is that I will always be about to cater to the children. If they need him to be on call, overtime at a moments notice. He has never been asked at any interviews do you have children planning children. He has a wife. He is free to have a career.

Unless things are going to change at a society level of suddenly valuing childcare/care work and parenting. I'd like to see more careers/lifestyle advice for younger people. More awareness for younger people on maternity/paternity setting up those relationships dynamics early. Hopefully it's all changed now but I had no advice at university. Apart from a tutor saying I could still have a career. Because he manages it and had children. I was just missing the wife he also had.

Apologies for the wall of text my phone hates this app with a passion. It often glitches.

It’s pie in the sky to say that all jobs can be part time, they just can’t. I was a city trader and had to be on the trading floor while markets were open. There are endless highly paid high pressure jobs which can never be part time.