to be saddened by a three week old baby in full time childcare?

[lilystyles]

At a local toddler group last week there was a childminder who I'm friendly with, she had with her a new child, a baby of 3 weeks who's mother had gone back to work full-time in teh pub she and her husband own. I am not judging this woman, it's her choice but I couldn't help but feel sad at the situation.

Men have dreadful issues "when things go wrong"

The ones I know who have split with their wives after having children have had to find somewhere to live and pay for it whilst awaiting divorce and settlement, whilst also trying to meet certain obligations in keeping a 2nd household (the family home) running in order to keep a roof over their children's heads. They have to pay maintenance to the children, and the more they earn the more they pay etc which is as it should be of course but its no picnic for them.

They also generally dont get to have their children living with them (I know sometimes they get joint custody etc but the ones I know and indeed I suspect the majority) and have to deal with being apart from their children.

I wont bore you further with pointing out all the obvious pitfals of a split as I'm sure you are aware but whilst the man's career may not have suffered, just about everything else is fucked for a fair while after.

Maybe the problem is actually just having children. Male or female, working or not working, if you have children, you leave yourself wide open to having to sacrifice something somewhere along the way.

Is that such a bad thing? I guess it depends on your perspective and general attitude towards it...

"childcare (nursery nurses, childminders, nanny's etc) dont particularly want to be there and are only there due to lack of opportunity or intelligence, YET, despite that belief, is the only option she would consider for her own children as she wasn't willing (nor was her partner) to do it"

Whilst I don't agree with all of what Xenia says, she does strike at the heart of what has always bothered me, and bothered me to the point of commenting on this thread: the fact that, if a woman is unwilling to sacrifice everything else in her life to fulfil the childcare need, that woman is pilloried, yet men are not. If a woman isn't willing to make that sacrifice, other women round on her as unnatural, and it being a sad thing, blah blah - but the man IN THE EXACT SAME POSITION AND JOB, is let alone. Let's condemn the situation that stopped one half of this couple being able to raise their child for the first period of its life.... but let's condemn that situation on behalf of the MAN and the WOMAN involved.

It's this absolute double standard that has really had me frustrated at the level of this thread - and apart from one or two posters happy to say they treat men and women differently - absolutely no one is willing to admit here that, aside from a medical reason, it makes sense to them to condemn women but NOT MEN in this way.

It's sad - and it's the reason why despite not ever identifying myself as a feminist, threads like these have made me start to visit the feminist section of MN more and more this week.

YANBU 3 weeks for fucks sake! I am really trying to imagine why you would want or HAVE to work at 3 weeks? I have my own business and it went to pot whilst i was off on mat leave. I needed to be there but i wasnt because i had just had my baby and nothing else mattered. It was a nightmare trying to get it back on track, it caused a lot of stress and was extremely hard work but bonding with, cuddling and breastfeeding my baby was more important to me and so i made a sacrifice.

People work, people stay at home, some work from home, lots of different situations. People do what works for them but 3 weeks jesus!

RE stay at home mums 24 7 if that works for you why the hell not! I think thats a fabulous full time job to have. SAHM doesnt mean no career forever!

RE working mums, go for it whether it be for money, career, both, other

Me personally, I work form home part time and work out of home part time, i worked it out to be best for us.

3 weeks though!

"if a woman is unwilling to sacrifice everything else in her life to fulfil the childcare need, that woman is pilloried, yet men are not"

Yes, this annoys me too. That's my quote in your post frgr and if I were to be consistent I would have said you or your partner but it may be that her partner doesn't feel this way about child care professionals.

If a couple agree that child care professionals are only there because they have to be, yet choose that very care for their children - feminist issues aside of who should or shouldn't give up their job/go part time etc - that strikes me as odd. Such a low opinion of that kind of care, yet the kind you then go and choose. Odd. Worryingly inconsistent and odd.

And I'm so sick of it being assumed in society that there are certain things only a woman should do.

I went to a popular chain of restaurants recently with the parents in law. Daughter filled her nappy for the 2nd time since we had arrived. I had changed her nappy the first time while DH sorted out table/drinks etc but 2nd time round he jumped in to do it.

No baby changing table in the mens or the accesible toilet - only the female toilet.

He did her on the floor but I was incenced. Father in law seemed to think it was fine though

Have complained to the head office of this restaurant chain and wont be going there again.

frgr - yes, that's at essence my point and by the way on the TarryD point, I have always lobbied against unfairness to men too on divorce. I think there should be a rule that unless the court says otherwise children are 50% with both parents after etc etc and we shoudl have paternity rights which are not transferred to women which if men don't use they lose.

frgr and I and others are just saying that women are always the whipping boy. Tou can take this right back to the bible stories in the Old testatment which is the judaeo-Christian tradition. Adam only strayed and touched that forbidden apple because Even gave it to him, woman the temptress route of all evil, unclean when she menstruates and feared by men who want to control her and particularly her sexuality to ensure they know their babies are his. (By the way I like men and most of my best friends have always been male so I am not anti man and I'm very lucky never to have had a sexist husband - we agreed before we married that if the day nanny didn't work out he would give up work not I and this was in the early 80s - sexism hasn't existed in many marriages for a long time).

Anyway I just want women to have food for thought. If you're worried about money and getting pushed into some kind of service role at home and corralled into child care and would rather share that more fairly with a man note that plenty of women go b ack so quickly after having a baby and are fit and happy to do so that you can avoid all those issues. you still wil have a 50% childcare bill to share with the child's father but you wont' have had a big drop in income in the mean time.

I am looking back here and most people wtih a tiny baby they love to be near can't see how their chidlren will be in 20 years' time. My oldest 3 are in their early 20s. All I can see from my having worked is (a) they seem pretty happy and how set their personalities are at birth anyway however similarly you bring them up (b) that if the parents are content they will be (c) the huge material benefits they have had because I worked - they have for example graduated without student debt and (d) perhaps the nicest of all they can see me in my 40s enjoying work, we can meet up for lunch, they can talk to me about my work - the oldest 2 do something similar, we can be adult professionals together and talk about business issues and they have been presented with a model of very happy mother.

" Add message | Report | Message poster Xenia Sat 16-Oct-10 19:11:26
Yes but a girl who loves children who is clever will want to do most good for them and will become a doctor and specialise in paediatrics. A girl who cannot muster many GCSEs will do nanny stuff."

Really?

I suggest you have long, hard look at the type of person who is nannying nowadays. Degree level and postgraduate qualifucations are not uncommon. These are people who have chosen to go into nannying presumably because they wanted to rather than having no quifucations. Career changes towards nannying aren't unheard of either. There are several ex-teachers as well who just dislike the way things are done in schools or nurseries but still want to continue working in that field.

Two main things though...

Firstly you needed your 5 GCSEs to get onto the DCE in the first place. So if you can't muster any GCSEs you've got to work doubly hard to make it to the level where you're appropriately qualified to be a nanny.

Secondly I went to the same school as at least 1 of your daughters on a scholarship and a Russell Group Uni and.....used to be a nanny earning a higher salary in my first job out of uni than any of my contemporaries. Never wanted to be a doctor as it quite simply didn't appeal to me.

Not all nannies are stupid and doing childcare because they had no other option.

Oh and a question for you. Do you select your nanny the basis of academic achievement or something else? And if the former, were you the woman who had me take an English and a Maths test at interview?

"Anyway I just want women to have food for thought. If you're worried about money and getting pushed into some kind of service role at home and corralled into child care and would rather share that more fairly with a man note that plenty of women go b ack so quickly after having a baby and are fit and happy to do so that you can avoid all those issues. you still wil have a 50% childcare bill to share with the child's father but you wont' have had a big drop in income in the mean time".

In essence I agree with this. I see too many threads on this board where women are annoyed with their partners who are not pulling their weight, who use the fact they are working as an excuse for dossing around on the Xbox and doing sod all round the home, etc etc. This should not be stood for regardless of your own role in the family unit.

You haven't really addressed any of the quite specific questions various posters have asked you, though, Xenia.

I certaily wan't denigrating nannies and we haven't needed one for a good few yeqrs anyway. One was qualified and one wasn't not that that made any difference at all. Babies need someone responsible who will look after them in a caring and consistent way and they were. We were lucky. The first nanny (daily nanny) stayed 10 years, that's longer than some husbands stick around. Children like consistently and things happening at the same time every day,. If you get them into routines early that benefits them not upsets them. So going back to work sooner can work very well.

Even nannies presumably accept that most nannies didn't have the option of being brain surgeons or QCs which is fine. My point is supportive of nannies, not against them. But I still find it hard to understand how women who have interesting careers can accept a change in life to cleaning up and minding chidlren 24/7. And indeed plenty try it and hate it. I'm just warning them they might well hate it and that going to back to work very soon works very well for many people, male or female.

Having a baby is always very very hard work and tiring but it can be a lot easier if you're out at work each day as men and women do find to be the case and don't stay home with a baby because you think you are m aking some grand sacrifice. Babies do very indeed with any loving care and have always been shared around and had relatives, siblings, slaves in Roman times and others care for them. They benefit from that as long as they have security and love and happy parents.

I think many women and indeed men are happy enough (so not ecstatic with, but happy enough with) a few years at home knowing that those years essentially fly by and aren't forever.

I outsource the bits I hate - I'm nobody's slave and a lucrative career, which I was ready to give up regardless of any children that came along has afforded me the ability to do that. I dont depend on my husband for income or financial security, though he happens to also provide that. If he trades me in for two 20 year olds when I turn 40, I will easily stand on my own two feet financially. Perhaps if I didn't know that I would feel all nervous and desperate, but I doubt it, as I dont think he will bugger off regardless of our situation.

Despite outsourcing some of the less fun stuff I still have to pick food out the highchair and deal with various amounts of snot and shit.

But I'd be thorougly burying my head in the sand if I thought I wouldn't be dealing with 10 tonnes of metaphorical shit at work if I returned.

I'm happy with the real stuff for now. If I get bored of it, I might start up another business.

Anyway I'm not trying to sound like I'm justifying my choices to you - I dont feel the need. I just think there are a lot of generalisations being made.

I'm not at home because I have no choice. I'm not at home because I can't afford to work. I wouldn't have more fun working, or I'd be there. I dont rely on my husband for money. I dont spend all day cleaning. It is not expected of me that I deal with all kid stuff when my husband IS there. The daycare I do use occasionally is not run by stupid women. They are bright and interesting, qualified teachers who genuinely love children. Hell, some of them are men!

It just seems to me that Xenia really hates men.

Of course, I agree that women should have the same opportunties as men, but I also think that all her views are those of a single mum bringing up her children on her own and therefore that is why she is so independent.

The difficult issue about marriage or partnerships is that no real need for both parents to work full time and spend all their money on nannies etc if one of them earns a decent wage and the other would rather spend their time bringing up the children themselves rather than pay someone else do do to it. This could be the mother or father!

Obviously if you are on your own or divorced then this all falls flat and the woman needs to be able to earn a decent wage herself. I guess Xenia is infuriated because she thinks that all women should assume that they will end up on their own, bringing up the children themselves. Maybe I will regret my decision to take a back seat on my career if in the future I get divorced and have very little income from my job.

You can't live your life like that. Nobody walks down the aisle expecting to get divorced BUT you have to live in the moment to a certain extent.

I think all women, AND men, should ask themselves how they would cope if things were to change at any time - not necessarily divorce but the death of their partner (SO many people dont have wills in place, and for those non-married couples with children dont even realise there are parental responsibility implcations of that)

But you can't live your life soley thinking about what MIGHT happen.

I'm sure that's not what Xenia did or is doing - she sounds as if she genuinely loves to work and that's great. Not everyone feels the same - a lot of women who have children towards their mid 30's are well and truly ready for a career change, and taking a few years out to think and breathe and experience something completely different, and perhaps study part time while their children are young or early school aged, to relaunch their careers in the 40's, with a good 20 years of work ahead of them, works brilliantly. Sure, you take a pay cut when you start again but you do anyway - if you want to return the career you had, the paycut or 10 years standing still might be a problem, but if you are not bothered about that career anyway, its a damn good time for a change.

There is no one size fits all approach. I'm sure Xenia knows that.

Xenia, I absolutely agree with you about the men-women thing. My dh took unpaid leave to share the childcare with me, which led to a certain amount of belt tightening; but he was adamant that he wanted to do this, to support my career.

But I still don't get this idea that because I am educated beyond GCSE level, I have to find childcare boring. I found child development interesting and not least because they were my own children. Probably about as interesting as my professional work. The one did in no way exclude the other. Otoh it is quite possible that I would find your work horrendously boring. But I do not assume you are devoid of brains just because this is not how I would choose to employ my brains.

There is more than one way of using brains: the fact that someone chooses to use them in a different way to what you would, does not prove either that they haven't got them or that they do not value them.

'I still find it hard to understand how women who have interesting careers can accept a change in life to cleaning up and minding chidlren 24/7' ...

why? because you don't want to?..they are their children?!!

I personally dont understand people who focus more on work at the detriment(imo)of their family life ...

work to live not live to work...in the grand scheme of things most of us are a number no matter your career or position..if you died tomorrow hopefully everyone/someone would be sad.. but a body would be at your desk pronto but thats my opinion!!

A woman needs education and confidence and that can be gained in various ways work being just one of them..

Well as far as I'm concerned, mumcentre, my own hope is that if I die tomorrow, my work will continue to be of use to others for centuries to come (actually, better if I don't die until this book is finished then). But I don't see it as an either-or situation; just that more than one thing can be valuable in life.

Xenia enjoys her work. That is clear from her posts. She also works for herself, so there is no one to impress or worry about being dispensable.

If you enjoy your work, you don't ever think 'work to live or live to work' or platitudes like 'at my deathbed, you would never regret spending more time at the office'.

..that's why I said most..I completely agree cory..more than one thing can be valuble in life..

Well, I enjoy my work. In fact, I enjoy it so much that I went on doing it for years when I couldn't even get paid for it. I just do not see why this automatically turns me into a person who has to find nappy-changing boring. It's the hierarchy thing that irritates me. And the assumption that everybody has the same hierarchy.

My Sixth Form teacher couldn't understand why I didn't apply to medical school, seeing that my grades were good enough to get in. I pointed out that I did not want to be a doctor, and that though I could get decent marks I actually found science and maths comparatively uninteresting- so why would I want to spend my years at uni on something I wasn't interested in, for the prospect of then spending my life working at something I wasn't interested in either, just because I could? And as I wasn't interested, was I likely to make a very good doctor? He didn't get this: to him "hard-to-get-in" and "well-paid" signalled "desirable", and he couldn't get his head round the fact that people have different desires. I could have been a very unhappy doctor- and no doubt a very bad one.

I enjoy my work too..but when I spend more time with my co-workers than my children it certainly makes me have a different perspective..and thats the thing..its about whats important to you and your family...

I actually disagree with most. It is doing women a disservice to suggest that most prefer to be doing something other than work. It is perpetuating the stereotype.

If anything, that would make me join the ranks of Xenia.

The truth is, we haven't got any statistics on this, and even if we did, it wouldn't make much difference to the individual woman: we are all different and should decide as individuals. Dh and I would appear to be complete loonies statistically speaking, but we are reasonably happy as individuals.

the us included most people I was not writing in the capacity just as a woman but as a human blueshoes so please don't make assumptions...

you are making assumptions about people then ... based on your own perception.