can i ask how much your dp/ dh does at home?

[hugeleyoutnumbered]

i mean in terms of getting up with the children, housework, and sharing the responsibilities of parenthood?

Xenia, one of the reason's it is the woman giving up work or taking part-time work is because of our maternity laws in comparison to our paternity laws. Once this pattern has been established (i.e. woman takes a career break to have a baby) it is very hard indeed to turn it around and have the man take a part-time job or stay at home to look after DC.

And for lower earners, they don't have the luxury of choice about who earns. If the man earns more it makes economic sense for him to carry on working while the woman stops working or switches to part-time. Any other solution leaves them struggling to afford a roof over their heads or food to eat. Even if they do exactly the same job, this still applies because of the gender pay gap.

Then there are people who want to work who find it impossible to make their careers work because of the amount of time they need off for their DC. One year I couldn't manage to go more than 3 weeks without needing a day off for a sick child. Unless you are well off enough to afford a nanny, you are stuck because any other OFSTED-regulated provider will not take them. And sometimes DC are so ill they just need their parent. Usually the mum because our working culture is a lot more towards men who ask for a day off for this reason than it is for women.

And this doesn't even begin to include women who want to stay at home because someone HAS to look after the DC and who is a more obvious than the mother? Yes, it would be great to get more dads doing it but then we come back to paternity laws again.

If every woman in this country dumped or refused to marry/live with a sexist man, I'm afraid the country would come to a standstill and the population would die out. A man does not have to be abusive or obviously sexist to put a woman at a disadvantage purely because of her gender. Our whole society is geared up to giving both the man and the woman very little choice about it, which is why even in good marriages where the man is decent and the woman is far from being a doormat, 'traditional' roles (which firmly favour the man over the woman) are still the norm.

There's luck in it too. My 5 chilren have virtually never been illl. Part of that will be good genes. Part of it will be having parents who will always work unless virtually dead. However a huge part of it is that they are well. We were very lucky.

I don't agree that women need to tolerate sexist men. On the very first time you're with him he assumes you will wash up you can easily say - are you cooking or drying the dishes (unless of course you're desperate and no man will have you or impoverished or living in a country where women are uneducated and not allowed to work etc).

I do think how our parents are affects us which is why it is so very very dangerous to bring up your children in a sexist set up as they will the perpetuate that.

What is interesting about the maternity rights and damage they have done is that because I had no maternity rights really I have done so very very well and my children benefit so much (it's the USA argument). When I had baby 1 you had to work for 2 years before you got 6 weeks on 90% pay so I took 2 weeks of my holiday and went back full time. Then baby 2 I had changed jobs so again I didn have 2 years' continuous service so took 2 .5 weeks. Then baby 3 - i was recruited when 5 months pregnant with baby 2 and had children of 1 and 3 at home, again I had not been there long enough although they paid me for 5 weeks - that was school holdiay the chidlren's father and their daily nanny were there. I was 26. So we never had sexist patterns established. I awlawys breastfed and expressed and adored it though. Anyway roll on to babies 4 and 5 the twins and I was working for myself so didn't have iota of maternity rights (other than maternity allowance which for a week is what I earn in 30 minutes). IN other words because I didn't have maternity rights 20 years ago I have a lovely life in my 40s 20 years on and also because I didn't marry a sexist man (and yes we were divorced after nearly, 20 yearrs of marriage although I dont' particularly regard that as failure, it's a fairly long stretch) and we both worked very hard.

Xenia, I don't think women should tolerate sexist men either. It's why I'm single. My point is that for a lot of women it's not a real choice. Sometimes they don't even see it because it is so normal in our society. Obviously if a man says "I refuse to do the washing up because your're a woman and therefore it's your job" then it's obvious to mark him down as a sexist. But the reality is not that obvious, is it. And as a nation, if we really had moved on to the idea that housework and childcare should be shared equally, why do adverts still always aim these things at women?

He works 7-7 4 days but those hours are changing to 40 hours over 5 days. I do childcare at my work when he isnt here but when he is here he cooks more than me, cleans and takes dd out a lot so I can rest, go clubbing, meet friends. I also go away sometimes at the weekends with my friends for hen nights, concerts etc.

He did 100% of cooking before kids but because I now have a child I have learnt to do simple things like cook spag bol, chilli etc. Also I control all the money and give him money when he asks for it, if we can afford it. Everything goes in to a joint account but he doesnt take money out before checking with me for anything, including food, petrol etc. It means its really easy to keep to a budget.We earn the same an hour but I do 25 hours and he does 40.

Oh and when dd was born he got up for all night feeds. I did as well and we did them all both together for the company, but we are young so lack of sleep didnt really effect us and we liked spending the time together.

Well I have to admit we have a live in maid so we don't have that much to do. However, he empties and reloads the dishwasher every night, picks up the dog shit from the yard every morning (3 dogs) and most importantly to me, shares my thoughts and worries of the day. If I needed him to he would do far more and enjoys being part of an equal team. He also earns about 10 times more than me (otherwise would have liked to be stay at home dad) and never, ever questions what goes out of our account. I think emotional and financial sharing is just as important as housework.

and he also watches Geordie Shore with me so I have someone to talk about it with even though it makes him want to pull his testicles off, true devotion indeed.

my OH is a dream, i cook see to DD in the morning and do the washing and ironing i also clean the bathroom. he does dishes DDs homework most nights cleans the kitchen and hoovers. when i was in my first 3 months of this pregnancy i slept and vomited in alterating circles and he would make sure i had a glass of water after barfing up or would see to the house and DD whilst i crept off to bed :) admittedly DDs bedtime altered greatly between us

I'm not with my husband now, when I was he did no house work at all. I did it all, also all the decorating, gardening etc. I also did 95% of the childcare, he never got up to do night feeds which thankfully didn't last long. He did change the odd nappy, give the odd bottle and play with them sometimes.
xenia I think the reason why women tolerate sexist men [and I am older so this was more common] is because they don't want to live in a shit hole or allow their children to go hungry. If the other person won't clean the house or get the dinner ready then you're not just going to go on strike. It's nice to know that most families don't run this way though.

We have found a happy balance, but we are very lucky. DH is self employed, successful and works from home 3 days a week, so does the school run and takes on equal responsibility for cooking, housework, shopping and washing etc. I am about to drop down from full time to part-time, am less well paid (and will be even less so when my hours are reduced) but I like what I do and I am deliriously happy about being able to take over some of the childcare and just to have a bit of a breather from the relentlessness of working life for a couple of days a week. I like that balance and feel extremely privileged that both DH and I are able to have it.

Thing is Xenia - and I do agree with some of your core beliefs about women needing to aim higher, to take challenges, educate themselves, have careers and not put up with sexist twats for husbands - we are lucky. Not everyone has the choices that you or I have (different choices though they are). And it simply isn't as simple as saying that women only have themselves to blame if they aren't high flying career women who can afford wraparound nannies, absolutely adore their jobs and are happy to go back to work 2 weeks after giving birth. Life is a little more complex than that.

I also think it is pretty ridiculous to suggest that life would be great if we didn't have maternity leave. What is needed - and I believe it has started to happen already - is better parental leave, so that men and women can 'cox and box' according to their own family's needs.

I usually agree with Xenia about women not being restricted by their gender and going into 'pink collar' jobs just because they're female. But the thing is that as Mumbrane says not everyone has the opportunities or skills to be well-paid, high-flying lawyers etc. And even if they did there are not enough such jobs for every woman to have one (or indeed every man) - and anyway society just does not work that way. Someone has to do the cleaning jobs and factory work etc, someone has to stack the shelves, otherwise it doesn't get done. And some of the most essential jobs to society - e.g. childcare, nursing, teaching, providing care for people who need it due to age or disability - are relatively badly paid. It's a good thing, surely, that people are willing to do those jobs, and that they don't all have 'higher' aspirations!

It doesn't sit well with me to tell those women that it's their own fault if they're treated like unpaid servants at home, because they didn't make the right choices.

I often think that as well as encouraging smart young women onto more lucrative career paths, we need to look at why exactly men disproportionately feel that making as much money as possible is more important than doing good for society or caring for family, how exactly we're bringing up boys to be lacking in that empathy and altruism that women seem to have more of. Then maybe things could be shared around more equally, at least in terms of jobs and careers.

There is a gender-split in how women and men approach career choices, definitely. But we shouldn't assume that the stereotypical male way of doing it is all right, and the female way all wrong, or that the solution is just to encourage women to behave more like the way men currently do.

I don't disagree with that. Boys should be allowed to see women working - those with a full time working happy mother and whose father vacuums the house are much much more likely to be like that within a marriage. The example we show is as important as the words we use to our children.

There is not such a gender split within all classes in the UK though. Plenty of clever middle class girls see no reason they can't be very financially successful in the City etc. I obviously know legions of them and my daughters are 20 something and I kn ow what their friends do and earn but there may still be cultural and class backrounds in the UK (at all income levels) where women tolerate sexism.

Yes I know some men (and indeed women) would tolerate a very messy house if their partners left it to them. If you're in that situation then you give your other half a job they can't avoid - like buying the food or doing the washing or even looking after the baby for 8 bhours solid on a Saturday.

And we can all do our bit. If someone is going to have a baby at work ask the man or the woman - which of you is going to look afet rthe baby, how did you reach that choice, why did you end up with a sexist choice etc Challenge people. Challenge the men you live with every single time they make a sexist comment. We all know the good samaritan story and the ilke - if you allow things to happen or do not speak out you become responsible at least in small part for that wrong thing that you tolerate.

So you can start tomorrow just as those brave 29 Saudia women who drove cars in Saudi this week did, with taking a stand at home. It doesn't even have to be done in a nasty way. We both work 40 hours a week you can say and need to ensure we spend about the same amoutn of time on housewrok and child care. Which of the following jobs would you like to be responsible for 100%?