To consider retraining as a barrister?

[princessglitter]

I am a teacher in middle management with a fairly secure, reasonably satisfying career. I have always dreamed of a career in the law. Originally I considered becoming a solicitor, doing a conversion course and going down the LPC route.

However, at the last minute, I lost my nerve and pulled out of my college course. The idea of that amount of debt was horrifying to me.

I trained as a teacher, but has always felt unfulfilled if I'm honest. As I've got older, the idea of retraining as a barrister has become more appealing, but I am acutely aware that so many fall by the wayside. I have secured a mini-pupillage this summer, which I am extremely excited about. I am also going to apply for vacation schemes at solicitors' firms to enable me to make an informed decision.

I do have a strong academic background and an Oxbridge 2.1 - but I know that that alone will not be enough.

Am I unreasonable to take a risk (with my husband's support) and consider a career in the law? Possibly as a barrister, but I intend to research this thoroughly with some real experience in both areas and different specialisms.

My eldest (21, 19, 18, 17) say that they have had no issue with my being at home and they appear to be in as least a good position in relation to the most competitive end of the job market as yours, Xenia.

They will graduate with student debt, but apart from that, what's the material difference?

Oops. They're in as least as good a position is what I meant.

married, at the time of our wedding my DH was unemployed and I was over 100K. He stays at home and supports my career, the same way you did for your husband. Why does marring him make me dim?

As long as most women don't want it that way round it will be harder to get women into more posts. Apparently once there are 3 women on a board - the rule of 3s, things are erasier because they are normal, not unusual. That makes a lot of sense to me and my own limited experience on board type things.

Well I would say graduating with student debt might be a material difference but the crunch point will come if your girls if you have any expect a man to keep them as a man kept their mother and whether the boys will assume in sexist fashiong if anyone is going to serve at home in his own marriage it will be his wife. If they are able however to rise abouve the gender stereotype at home then all well and good but it is our conduct not what we say from which children take most of their experience so it's a very hard thing to over come. The children of housewives tend to expect that set up and all girsl of sense look at whether their future husband comes froma home where women don't work o r put careers second place and women do all things domestic and avoid such men like the plague.

"I think the bigger problem is (a) lots of women (and actualyl men if they had a chance but their wives tend not to let them) would rather be at home not working - and yes with babies it's harder than work but once the chidlren are 3 - 10 etc it is of course much easier and when they are at full time school you get our pay back time of no work and time to do not much (b) women as shown above want men who earn more."

Yes, I agree this is true for many women. And (b) is linked to (a) - many women don't want the pressure of being the higher earner, since that would make it harder for them to be the one who spends more time at home once DCs arrive.

What I don't see though Xenia is why this is a problem.

It's only a problem in so far as it means that the women who do want to be high fliers, and do want to be the main breadwinner, find it difficult to do so. But I don't think the solution is to force the women who don't want this to go out and be high flyers against their wishes - just to make sure that those who do find it easier because they are no longer in a minority. The solution is to ensure that women are accepted at high levels even if they are in the minority.

I think what is different between you and I Xenia is that between the ages of 24 and 35 I pulled down a significant salary and my appetite was whetted. I think I knew my limitations and that within the American Investment banking world of the 80's and 90's I would progress no further where I was but had the option of moving sideways to a smaller pond if that was what I had wanted. I do think it's an important factor that I had my first child at 35. DH is also younger than me and was certainly not drawing down a huge amount from chambers at that stage and I recall with a mortgage of twice his earnings after expenses when the DS1 was born we were pretty close to the bone for a couple of years when I gave up work - which actually I might not have if DS1 had been healthy during the first two years.

Yes, I had twins at I think 35 but my oldest at 22 and I worked full time since I was 21. I'll probably get my gap year/maternity leave at 80 at this rate. We were lucky that all the 5 children were healthy.

What I have always found hardest to understand is how any woman or man for that matter can prefer not to work given that for most people that means 24/7 lokoing after the baby the toddler and the 4 year old whilst also trying to fit in the cleaning, cooking and washing. Why is that more pleasant than 8 - 10 hours of work and then playing with the baby? Why isn't the variety so desirable that they want to work and have a family which is what 99.9% of men prefer?

I'm a mum of two young children and currently retraining as a solicitor and would advise against it if you want a well-balanced family life. It's especially tough for me because I am single, but I think even partnered mothers find it tough. The women in my firm who have young children have already established their careers as lawyers. Depending on your age, and your children's age you might find it hard to do the same.

Xenia I take your 15.59 post to be directed at me.

I think it must be clear by now that I do have girls, I have four. I also have four boys. There is no stereotyping in our house whatsoever and none which permeates through their secondary school either. The oldest seven are all at or have attended at a top mixed state grammar where two very strong women indeed hold two of the most influential positions and where the idea that girls cannot achieve very highly in any field on equal terms with boys and pursue whatever career their ability allows them to and for as long as they want would be derided - strongly.

I find it very hard to believe that you can possibly be the best at what you do in the UK when you argue so weakly, fail to answer questions and essentially repeat platitudes and predjudice over and over again. You also make assumptions without any justification or information. You know nothing whatever about our set up as a family nor our finances so perhaps hold back before alleging that I have been 'kept'. Absurd. In fact I have provided far more for my children financially than their dad, but that's nothing to do with you.

Women who choose to and are able to stay at home to care for their children themselves do not became any more stupid or interesting than they were before they made that choice. There is nothing to say that choice makes them a bad role model for their children. The expectations of a child are formulated on a far more complex basis than whether or not their mother worked outside the home.

If my girls were on their way to the kitchen sink as you claim then it's been churlish of the eldest three to hog places at Oxford and an outrage of the biggest to take up a TC at a MC firm. They should have stepped aside prettily for boys.

Y, I think it's a very simple point. If your mother is a housewife you are more likely to perpetuate that model and think women stay at home and men work no matter what society, your school and the like tell you.

I certainly think that it is nothing like the most important point though about bringing up children. All studies show they want contented parents so if you have a total whinger mother martyred at home talking about her sacrifice for the family and ditto one (or a father) going on about their awful work and how they hate it the child won't like that |(and nor is it good for the parent).

I don't know anything about your life and don't even read mumsnet posts carefully enough to remember who said what.

In the round most women at home could not hack it at work and had a secondary career or no career compared with their husband. You don't sound as if you were that but most of them are. That's why if you took a group of housewives and a group of City lawyers (female) you'd find on average the more interesting ones were the workers because the ones who give up work usually were not too good at it and never were much concerned abotu career. That is on average. That does not mean they are all like that. It is also common sense that that would be so.

stella, good luck. Having young children is hard whether you are at home or not though. I think you will probably find it pays off in many senses in due course even if it's hard now.

But Xenia, you cannot generalise that women who chose to stay at home are less interesting on average than a group of female City lawyers. That's rude and daft. A significant factor to me giving up work was because my mother worked (she was a ballerina) and I hated the fact that she was never there when I was a child; that her marriage to my father ended when I was 12; that hearth and home were never her priority; and coming home to an empty house when I was a teenager. I vowed in my 20's that if I had children one day they would be my priority. You simply cannot generalise, people make decisions for all sorts of reasons and different decisions are the right decisions for different people.

I think most City lawyers are pretty boring - and I was one for years!

Also, Xenia, the truth is that some women really, really do like cleaning and cooking (leaving aside the childcare) and definitely prefer it to be stuck in an office all day. And besides, most of the women on this thread seem to be married to bankers or lawyers - and presumably have (at least) a cleaner - if not au pairs, housekeepers etc so they are not spending all day cleaning the oven!

It's also not helpful to say that women drop out of the work because they are second rate. Aside from being insulting to those women I also think its untrue. Certainly in law the women I know who have left practice (some of whom have children and others don't) were if anything better at their jobs then their male counterparts - but got fed up with the culture and/or ridiculous hours.

Minipie - I agree with a lot of what you say about the status quo working for men. Sadly, I've also come across quite a lot of outright sexism during the course of my career (and I haven't even touched on harrassment - although that was many years ago now). And what is depressing is that the above comments, all from different people, are from men at the top of equity and Board/Managing Partner level - ie the people who could make a real difference to women's career's prospects/mode of working if they wanted to. But as they have no real interest in doing so, as I think you say, nothing is going to change in the near future.

Xenia if you're going to rehearse over and over again your thin arguments about other women then you should do them the courtesy of reading and remembering their posts. It's astonishing that you can't absorb the main point of a post made minutes before which is also the main point of several previous posts. None of which elicited a response from you. I'd assumed that you fail to answer questions solely because you have no answer. Memory is very closely related to intelligence, even the recall of trivia.

Most women here actually appear to have been City bankers or lawyers or both, quite apart from being married to one so why, Xenia would they become dull as ditchwater and ineffably thick simply by dint of giving up the work they've proved their education and intellectual ability equipped them for. I think you're doing a stirling job on this forum of proving how immensely tedious, small-minded and self-righteous some working women can be.

What girls do with their lives is shaped by a myriad of influences. Providing girls with the education and thinking skills and environment to think for themselves is going to influence them way more than anything else. The idea that bright girls 'copycat' their mothers without thought is insulting to girls, an argument which is full of holes and as ridiculous as your other argument that it's a mother's duty to work outside the home to pay school fees.

I'm glad to offer up three girls who contradict your silly line of argument but can say that I only have to look around at their friends, both at university and at school and can say that they are very, very far from alone. In my eldest daughter's year at college there are three girls in a mixed cohort of nine students that I can think of off the top of my head who are all going to Magic Circle firms, none of whom have a mother who works outside the home.

I agree wholly with married; many kids really, really like someone at home a lot more than they'd like someone who isn't. But that's incidental: I'm not an advocate of mothers staying at home, I just welcome the advent of choice.

It's good to have one female poster repeatedly saying that working can be enjoyable, interesting and financially rewarding. And being very good at something can be good fun.

Others shouldn't take it so personally.

"What I have always found hardest to understand is how any woman or man for that matter can prefer not to work given that for most people that means 24/7 lokoing after the baby the toddler and the 4 year old whilst also trying to fit in the cleaning, cooking and washing. Why is that more pleasant than 8 - 10 hours of work and then playing with the baby? Why isn't the variety so desirable that they want to work and have a family which is what 99.9% of men prefer?"

Uh, because some women don't enjoy work, and do enjoy 24/7 looking after children. Or at least more than they enjoy work. Just because you would clearly hate to be at home all day does not mean everyone is the same as you!

Oh and I also don't think that a daughter is necessarily more likely to be a SAHM if she had a SAHM, or a WOHM if she had a WOHM. Indeed I know many women who are determined to be WOHMs because they saw their mothers being bored and overlooked as SAHMs - equally, I know many women who are determined to be SAHMs because they never saw their own WOHM and/or saw how tired and stressed their WOHM was.

marsha I agree, it is good to have that. Which is why I wish Xenia wouldn't undermine her very good points by making such daft generalisations.

I don't mind that, because it's just a bit of fluff around the main point. When I first read it I felt ah no. Now I think ah doesn't apply to me or it's ok to be slightly provocative to draw attention to main point. Steadfastly reiterating that being at the top at work, aiming to be the best can be enjoyable.

Yep I read it that way too, but I think a lot of readers don't see it as a bit of fluff around the main point - they dismiss everything she's got to say because of it. (In fact probably the ones who need to hear the "main point" most are the most likely to dismiss it because of the surrounding "fluff").

Marsha and mini, it's not fluff. It's perfectly obvious that working in a sharp-minded career brings rewards of it's own. I certainly don't require a Xenia to tell me that. I object to the ridiculous figure that Xenia cuts with her one track views and her dictats and I strongly object to the stupidity of her argument that in itself, staying at home makes you thick. The reference to whoring is out of order too and I'd have thought that that particular argument would have been put to bed decades ago when the financial consequences of divorce recognised explicitly that SAHM's are not 'kept'.

I find Xenia deeply unimpressive as a role model, her endless posts are incoherent and weak.

Quite possibly minipie. I suppose the defensive rage keeps the debate alive. But then there's the downside as you mention...

oh I forgot the other one, that it is usually the female that stops work and it isn't always the best decision.

Marsha if you look at what I say it has to do with defending reasonable argument against incoherent babble, nothing more. Read the posts.

The thick bit is a bit off, yes. (same goes for talking about thick children)

I just read your post afterwards. I am trying to keep two children happy at the same time. School holidays.

And I'm trying to earn a crust and look after children....
I certainly think we have far too much in the press suggesting all women want to stay at home and do whatever they do there when lots of us love having big families and working full time and that work brings huge pleasures and rewards and to be able to combine that with a nice family too is a great balance and the balance most men achieve. Plenty of women are denied that opportunity because they marry sexist men or tolerate an assumption in their marriage that because they are female they will downgrade their career.

I genuinely though cannot understand the attraction of looking after babies all day. Obviously I have done m assees of it probably more than most housewives because I've been doing it for 27 years with a big family, but although I quite like it for a few hours and adored breastfeeding being pregnant etc isn't it just boring? OBviously those who have married someone rich and have a nanny and housekeeper I am not talking about here as they like the working parents are getting someone else to do a lot of it but most people can't afford that as their husbands don't earn enough.

So take a typical day with your 3 under 5s once the sole wage earner has left. It just seems to me that far too much of that day is taken up with tasks you repeat again and again. You mop up and then they've been sick again so you clear it up. You don't get a second to read, h ardly time to get to the loo actually. You wash the clothes and then you have to do it again. We might enjoy peek a b oo with the baby if the toddler lets us but not 100 times.

Sure, Xenia, but lots of my WOH job is boring too!