To be WILD at the news at 10 wording 'mothers who chose not to work'

[NotanOtter]

who are hardest hit by benefit cut

How bloody condescending...

Nip round here any day and 'choose not to WORK' looking after my kids

aware not away

Morloth - it is only breathtaking privilege if you make no or hardly any contribution to your family's life. If you are using your skills in kind in order to contribute to your family life, it is just a choice because you would presumably pay people to replace you at home if you were out at work all day.

Yeah I guess Bonsoir but in comparison to what I do for a living this really is a very easy life (I realise it isn't the same for everyone). I do outsource a lot of the homemaker stuff (i.e. cleaning/gardening) because I just don't want to do it and see no reason why I should if I can get someone else to do it for me.

Having said that, I am intending to choose (once again a bit of a privilege to be able to choose rather than have to) to go back to work in February when the dust has settled on our latest move.

Arses -- great points and very well put.

Ireland has done a huge about turn in terms of women even working outside the home in the first place. I knew only two classmates whose mothers worked outside the home for pay that went directly to them, growing up, (farming families being more of an all hands on deck situation) but now it is the norm, and most of the push to claim work as a right has come from women themselves. I think this was a necessary correction -- Irish society's attitudes to women were historically not very positive or good for women.

A lot of the SAHPs that I know have done a huge amount of volunteer work over the years, and have provided services to groups that would not otherwise have been made available: Guide and Scout leaders, food pantry collections, running soup kitchens and drop in centres for the homeless, running a school auction in the DCs' parish school in the US that usually netted about $80,000 annually, running a good few other fundraising events and initiatives that saved families thousands of dollars in tuition. These people weren't 'ladies who lunch' by any means, just people with business/marketing/nursing/banking/engineering experience who put their talents to use to benefit the community as a whole. It might be hard to put a figure on their contribution, but the quality of life created by volunteers (including SAHPs in their own homes) is a huge intangible in what makes a community a good place to live.

"but the quality of life created by volunteers (including SAHPs in their own homes) is a huge intangible in what makes a community a good place to live."

I absolutely agree with you mathanxiety. But I fear that Western governments see that community as a massive black market that they would like to tax.

Claiming the right to work is one thing, though, mathanxiety. Women should have the right to work, of course. However, what's happening now in Ireland is that a great many women are working the classic second shift: full time paid work to barely cover a mortgage, rest-of-the-time childcare and domestic responsibilities. In terms of a correction to the previous misogynistic status quo, it's an imperfect one to say the least.

I am always torn on issues related to working outside the home and women. On the one hand, I firmly believe women need financial independence to maintain personal self-agency and power (avoiding the old 'hostage to fortune' fate of women defined by their relationships to men). On the other, it galls me that women are socially expected to aspire to "getting ahead" and gaining and accumulating wealth in what has traditionally been a masculine way. If they deviate from this 'work first' pattern, they are slammed against a glass ceiling in all but the most female-dominated of roles (which are, in themselves, often less well paid and with less social cachet etc). The majority of women have to choose this 'work first, work above all else' route to maintain equality financially, or bow out of 'the game' entirely and sacrifice the choices and independence that money brings if that philosophy isn't to their individual liking.

So we are caught between a rock and a hard place. I don't want to reduce or minimise the importance of my role as a mother. It is not a second-best "profession". It should have immense social value but, of course, it doesn't. On this very board, I've seen people comment that if a Masters got them a job in a Children's Centre they would be disgusted. Childcare, whether it's carried out by a mother or a paid worker, is seen as something for the thick (if well-meaning) girls at school, an inferior job that anyone intelligent would run a mile from. Intelligent women shouldn't want to waste their time and lives on mothering - that's the message I hear, and abhorr.

On the other hand, while I might think it's valuable to be a mother but society certainly doesn't. Society values my career (child-related though it may be) more than the fact I am a mother. I don't want to be vulnerable in the event that life doesn't treat me as I hope it might. So it's off to work I will go, if only part-time. I will suck up the resulting loss of societal value because I choose to. However, it has not been an unproblematic decision for me, either practically or theoretically.

Even when you have the financial ability to "choose" to work or not, there are considerations of the long-term. The choices we make are still not without considerable cost to ourselves, whatever we may choose.

That's the conflict in a nutshell, Arses. The essential problem of society devaluing women's work shows no sign of going away any time soon.

I think the 'hostages to fortune' reference is very apt in the Irish context, because up to very recently there was no such thing as legal divorce in Ireland; when a woman got married she was casting in her lot for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer -- forever; generations of girls growing up finally have a chance to determine their own fate by joining the paid workforce, and have the reassurance that they will not be walled into a horrible marriage. The result is, for the moment, the second shift and much unhappiness all round for many, but also the sort of freedom that my mother's generation didn't even know existed. Yes, women are chained to the wheel just as men have been historically, but they have gained much from the right to paid work in Ireland.

Can't believe it! YANBU at all

"However, what's happening now in Ireland is that a great many women are working the classic second shift: full time paid work to barely cover a mortgage, rest-of-the-time childcare and domestic responsibilities. In terms of a correction to the previous misogynistic status quo, it's an imperfect one to say the least."

In France, where married couples are taxed jointly, second earners are taxed at the higher earner's marginal rate; where there are children in the family, all relevant deductions (and there are many) are taken from the whole. As a result, many, many married women I know in high positions have an effective tax rate (social security plus income tax) that is so punitive that working is barely rewarded and certainly doesn't cover more than the cost of replacement childcare and housework. Contributing to the mortgage? Huh.

I suppose my main issue with the Irish situation, mathanxiety, is that it appears to be 'full time or not at all', which to me feels like: "so you think you want to play with the big boys, then? Well let's see how you like it when you have to do it on our terms". It essentially says that if a woman thinks that being a mother is a bigger priority than paid work at any point of her life, she needs to step away from the big boy work and get herself back in her kitchen where she belongs.. there's still very minimal joint responsibility for child rearing. In many cases, ven if she continues work, it's made clear that there will be no concessions to the "woman work".

It shocks me. I hear educated women I know asking practical questions like "how do you do the shop/clean the kitchen/do x and bath and put the baby to bed? when you are working full-time?" and I think. "are you a single parent?". I've seen educated men stand watching the television while their baby screams at their feet, calling for their wife because the baby is crying.

I know that is not exclusive to Ireland. It happens here too. I just think it makes a mockery of the notion that paid work offers equality and "choice".

I understand your point about the freedom to divorce etc but I wonder how that would have panned out if the Catholic Church hadn't lost its stranglehold on the country. My parents separated when I was a young girl and, yes, it was financially viable for my mother because she could work but culturally stigmatising. Watching those restraints dissolve has been great.

I would never want to see a return to the days of the marriage ban. I hear young women of my sister's age (early 20's) who don't have any sense of context say "bloody feminists" when they have to return to work and leave their young baby and think: "once you would have had no choice". However, there has to be a middle way between dictating a role for women in the home or one in the work place. A role that involves fathers. Maybe the current recession creating stay-at-home dads will open a few eyes.. I wonder...

I think that 'full time or not at all' is the reality for most here too.

Everyone I know who manages to work part time winds up working full time hours for part time pay, and little recognition and career progression.

Obviously being a SAHM tends to mean losing your career altogether.

I think that the focus on mothers, as on the ITV news, obscures the reality that the long hours culture leaves little time for family life. Somehow all our modern conveniences and advances have not reduced the hours we work. I don't know anyone who works 9-5, usually the required hours are longer, and the reality involves unpaid overtime and being on-call.

I find my career options badly limited, because, as a parent, I am not willing to commute, and not willing to work long hours, simply because I would never see my child during the week. As a consequence, we are always skint.

And we are the lucky ones, most of our peers have massive mortgages and no alternative but for both parents to work long hours.

Haven't read the whole thread. Just judging by the statement in your OP, YABU. It may not pay for you to go back to work, but if you choose to have a baby, you also choose to stay at home if your job does not pay enough to warrent returning to work. By having the baby, you made that choice.

I was reading a couple of political blogs last night and the comments were all being aimed at 'lazy SAHM' and 'latte sipping yummy mummy' types wingeing about CB cuts.

Apparently 83% of people agree with the CB cut. So do I, for well off people, but people generally do not understand why the uproar has happened over this issue.

Oh God how infuriating.

I would LOVE to get back to a cushy office job dealing with reasonable people who don't have tantrums over which colour of pants to wear, where I can go to the loo without a toddler trying to examine my stream of wee, and occasionally being able to actually drink a whole cup of tea, while it's still hot no less!

Unfortunately I can't afford to go back to work. It is NOT my "choice" to be slogging away unpaid looking after three small DCs.

RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

I think it is a choice though, you choose to have children, you choose how to raise them, be in going to paid work and using childcare or staying home. It is a choice.

"Mothers who choose not to work"

"Women who chose to have children, but have to forego their jobs to do so".

I am the latter :)

I am uncomfortable with this repetition of
"you choose to have children".

Accidental pregnancy does happen, it shouldn't mean the end of life choices, career oppertunities etc.

Besides, the urge to have a baby can be overwhelming - just look at the long-time ttc threads on here. It is irrational, in a similar way to sexual desire - yet we don't dismiss discrimination against gay people by insisting that they have chosen to live that way, though to some extent they have.

Mothers though, it is fine to discriminate against them in the workplace. And anyway, hey have chosen to have their babies, by doing that, they choose to be SAHMs, if their job does not cover the cost of childcare. There are always choices, in everything, but sometimes it is between a rock and a hard place.

indiewitch, so it's just women who choose to have kids? As, by your logic, men should also be faced with being paid for work or putting their children in childcare..

Arses, I think you are dead right about the 'Let's show them' attitude of employers in Ireland, and your observation about a lot of Irish men somehow being able to totally ignore the fact that there's work to be done around the home and that their input into the raising of the children would be most welcome. Hopefully, when the generation raised by Mammies (sorry to use that term), with 'Himself' sitting in the comfiest chair letting it all wash over him gives way to the next, things will change. My mum once remarked that feminism in Ireland was great but it sought to change the lives of the wrong people.

I am baffled that face time in an office is still a requirement of most white collar jobs in the age of skype and mobile phones, blackberrys, laptop computers and other conveniences: the Victorian paradigm prevails even though technology has greatly reduced the need for it. If people can be instantly connected to the office while away on sales trips or even while trying to enjoy a holiday, why not all day every day?

YABU

The choice of wording on the news was not ideal I agree (SAHMs work very hard) but you have chosen not to be in paid employment have you not?

I'm getting a little at the sheer number of people on here bemoaning how they can't afford the childcare so therefore can't go back to work and oh dear no one will give me a part time job that fits preceisely around my childcare needs etc etc. I agree that employers should be more flexible when they can, but why why why is this only a women's issue? No one has ever ever asked my DH how he juggles his very long working hours and his family commitments, whereas I am asked this on an almost weekly basis. DH and I share childcare, chores etc 50/50 and both work fulltime - we manage fine. My income doesn't pay for the childcare - BOTH our incomes together pay for the childcare, just like we both together look after DD and run a house.

Having one parent at home is an active choice and a great luxury to be able to do so if it works for you. But it's a choice and you should be responsible for that choice.

Men do make that choice, work or stay home, just as women do.
Staying home to raise your children is a choice but maybe it's not something the state should be paying for.

But why shouldn't there be some financial remuneration for taking care of your own children? Why is this not categorised as work that should be compensated? Whether society decides that women should receive a subsidy/pay for taking care of their own children while they're small, or decides that it will instead end up paying a non-contributary oap to those women who were not able ('chose not') to have an income during their childbearing years, society is going to pay. You either pay now or you pay later when you deny an individual income to people while working at care of their children and running the home.

It's not a great luxury to be able to stay at home. It's a thankless, unappreciated, unvalued bloody slog. Maybe if you have one or two children and could afford childcare on an average wage you could choose to work ft or pt (the latter if well paid professional, not average job) and still come out ahead. But factor any more than two children in and most wage earners would be sunk if they tried to afford childcare -- it simply wouldn't make financial sense, so not really an active choice as many who have tried it have found. The only way most larger families (3+ children) can afford to exist is by being extremely frugal and having only one breadwinner, as the childcare costs would be prohibitive for all except the highest earners.

Yes, you choose to have a certain number of children, but no, you don't have a crystal ball and you can't predict what the economy will do to the job of the main breadwinner; a mother of 5 that I know I in this position, as are several divorced mothers of 3 or more who were formerly SAHMs. They are between a rock and a hard place. Sad to see a woman here coming out with the likes of this, 'oh dear no one will give me a part time job that fits precisely around my childcare needs etc etc.' How condescending. Do you really think that most women looking for pt work in school hours are incapable of doing simple maths?

Maybe your DH works long hours because the option of job-sharing (maybe with a mother of small children who would jump at the chance of working the school hours) is not available? It's nice for you that you share the second shift 50-50, but surely you are aware that this arrangement is still rare? maybe someone should ask your DH. Maybe men should sit down and get their priorities straight. What is more important to those who insist that the current system is the best that there is -- family and their personal ties or the ego stroking or sense of self that still comes from defining themselves according to their sales figures or the number of cases they win.

But why should I work away from my child so that my taxes pay for another woman to be at home with her child(ren)?

(dashing off to collect said child now).

Your taxes are even today paying the oaps of women who stayed home to take care of their children, plus plenty of other items that taxes pay for whether you think they're worth it or not. And most women who are now SAHMs were once taxpayers themselves, and their DHs are paying taxes even as we speak. With taxes, what goes around comes around.

But I don't agree with arses' train of thought. Plenty women love that and want that. It's not domain of men to succeed and work hard and it's sexist to suggest only men want that. Many people of either sex want to work full time and work hard. Just because I'm female I don't assumptions made about me that I want to work part time and spend the rest of the time wiping bottoms and ironing a husband's shirt. Women don't all want that by any means.

As for second shifts don't marry a sexist man and don't endure for one day any unfairness at home. Why would anyone let a second shift be? Why don't they say - it's your child find the child care. It's your bathroom clean the loo. Why are they so pathetic some of these women in their relationship with men? Why do they endure an unfairness which leads to a second shift? Many many men in England (but perhaps not in Ireland) with full time working wives many of whom earn more than they do are very equitable in how they organise things.