to wonder if men can 'have it all'?

[ICBINEG]

Is it possible for a man to combine a professional career with the demands of having a family?

How can men go about balancing late meetings or foreign business trips with having to pick children up from school or nursery?

What challenges do men face when going back to work after having a family? Are employers reasonable when men apply to go back part time, or need to take leave to look after sick children?

AIBU to think that there is something wrong with a society for which all of these questions are essentially meaningless in their current form but are apparently very much still a source of topical debate when you switch the gender?

OP - out of interest, if your husband was the one called to collect a sick child from nursey/school would he do it? Would you put his name on the list of contacts first and ask for him to be contacted before you?

Unfortunately a lot of women facilitate this kind of lifestyle for their husband and don't do other women any favours.

I've always thought this was at the core of the debate about working parents. Men don't have it all, they often sacrifice relationships with their children to climb the career ladder.

What's important though if you have two working parents that the sacrifices are equally dished out. Dh and I have both accepted that our careers won't be stratospheric because we value our time with the children and each other far too much.

Dueling - Dh has often picked our sick child up from nursery when sick.Its hard for me to get out some days as they need me and there often isnt anyone to cover me. In tgise situations its more important that I cant leave.This isnt unusual where I am.

Also in most couples now the parent will say he/she is a bit sick to me if they have to go home call me or call my gf/bf/dw/dh. It changes day to day

I'm the main contact for DD's nursery, but I'm not necessarily the person who'd pick her up in an emergency. If I know I'm definitely going to be uncontactable I leave other instructions. My OH is contact 2 but he's a total pain in the butt and will not check his phone for messages. MIL is contact 3 and she'd drop everything to pick DD up if she were called, without thinking about whether we're around to do it (not a complaint - its lovely to have a MIL like this but when she's picked up DD, and voicemailed OH who hasn't checked his messages its very embarrassing when you later go to pick you child up at normal time!!!).

So I have it set up that I get the call so I can facilitate. They only go down the list if they really can't raise me (very rare).

It has finally hit me today after being denied a promotion at work that was awarded to all others at my grade except me (who is equally qualified but recently returned from ml) that I can't have it all. I really thought I could. Planned career carefully. Opted for public sector family friendliness and lower pay. But I was still effectively forced to go back full time to "prove my commitment" and fit in enough work to get the promotion I haven't now got. I don't want ds in full time child care so dp and I have used leave days to care for him one day a week each. I've still been called inflexible because I need to leave at 4.30 two days a week to collect ds from nursery even though I never do less than my hours.

I feel beaten down to the point of wondering why I bother to work at all but I've spent years studying for my job.

Luckily dps employer is v understanding. He only works his hours and does 50/50 child care and housework but the sacrifice is that he is unlikely to climb any higher and that is fair enough and we both agreed family time is more important. But he has already reached a point in his career he is happy to stick at. I haven't and after today I won't for a long time.

Sorry to rant. Bad day.

I think the one problem is older men they dont like accepting that most young men would love shared paternity leave.They didnt do it and dont see the point, whereas young men often just see work as a means to an end and rather be with their kids.Suppose its a big culture shift for them.

OP, I think you are trying to be provocative about the unfairness but you've also highlighted the double standard for men, who are typically going to find it harder to get flexible hours, take parental leave, or otherwise work in the style of many women.

worriedmum100

I think people (men and women) can have a demanding career and a happy family life, depending on their support networks but mostly dependent upon their ability not to worry.

Men IME are less inclined to worry and beat themselves up about their work life balance. Women are all about guilt and worry.

It helps of course that other men don't try to guilt trip fellow dads, whereas women...not so much.

Worried What reason was given for turning down your promotion?

I think it depends on the sector and the organisational culture tbh. My boss (older man) is very big on work-life balance, for himself and for his staff. He believes that people are more efficient that way.

There are plenty of men in my workplace who have flexible working arrangements, whether that's part-time hours, fitting in work around the school run or whatever. We all work on flexitime in any case, so flexibility is built in even for those who don't have kids but might have other responsibilities. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if any of the guys in my team needed to leave early to pick up sick children - it's normal here.

I know I'm lucky, but really, I think all organisations have to be more like this moving forward. All employees should have a life outside of work, and it's about time employers realised that presenteeism and ridiculous working hours don't necessarily lead to better performance. In my experience, people are much more motivated and creative when they come to work happy and refreshed.

I think men have less choice than women. Many women I know work (I mean paid work) part-time, or not all all. I know precisely 2 men who work but not full-time (one has a partner, don't know about kids, the other is single and just wants to enjoy his life).

I also know some men who work full-time while their wives are at home (some with and some without kids) and are either resentful or worried about finances. It's not been their choice to be in this situation - it's their wives' choices.

My DH is a SAHP so the who to contact first issue doesn't really apply (although I tend to go with for Dr's appointments etc.)

I am sad to hear so many tales of men getting the sort of troubles at work more commonly associated with returning mums etc. I guess they may even get it worse as there is less general understanding for men that need to 'only' work the contracted hours.

We need a shake up to make the work place more family friendly in general I think.

I like the dutch system where you are essentially booted out of the office after 37 hours work. They seem somehow to have made work environment where the kind of ambition/drive at the expense of everything approach is seriously frowned upon. I applaud this but have no idea how it was done...

I think the 'having it all' concept is a total myth. Nobody 'has it all'. What I believe it is possible ro achieve is a good balance in life, combining children, work and domestic life in a way which means your life isn't dominated by any single one of those things. However, I think such situations rarely fall into ones lap: it requires planning and real partnership with your husband/ wife.

I agree with the poster above who says often women facilitate a situation whereby their husband has a high flying all consuming career but it's at the expense of family time. It suits them for a while, often enabling the family to live on one income , then when the wife wants to return to work once the kids are school age, she realises all the childcare and home stuff will continue to fall to her because her husbands career has dominated so long

I'm a great believer in sharing the workload of running a family. I'd rather the two of us work (in good but not totally all consuming careers) and share nursery drop offs, cooking dinner etc. I
Personally I think it's great for the kids to have this set up. But not everyone wants it- many women post on MN quite happy to let their career take a significant step down.

I think something has to give.

No-one 'has it all'. I think we have achieved something pretty close to perfect (for our family) but even so there are times when we a pushed/pulled one way or the other.

We have always both made sacrifices, changed hours, and agree this is great for the dc, who see both parents equally. We both also have slightly stunted careers, although that is choice partly. However because we both stayed in work, hopefully we can both progress again in a few years. We haven't had one of us sacrifice everything.

Not unless they have someone at home to take the slack.

Dh did nursery drop offs and pickups etc while I was studying and working because it was easier for him. Now the tables have turned and I'm self-employed, do the school run and fit work in around school and dh.

Dh is applying for better and higher jobs, once he gets one my career will have to take a back step and I will take on most of the house and childcare fitting in as little work as I can.

I don't know of two parents with executive/board level jobs. There always seems to be one that takes on the role of house/childcare.

Borntobemild- that's a really good way of putting it- "we haven't had one of us sacrifice everything"
I totally agree. I do think (some) mums obsess about their 'right' to stop working and devote themself 100% to the home and kids, Because they feel they will miss out somehow if they don't, but it doesn't seem to cross their mind that if their husband is working ridiculous hours to facilitate that, then he and more importantly the children are missing out.

I know some families would say they are happy with the traditional model of dads career taking precedence and mum stepping down, but it's a model which increasingly doesn't fit with how society and education systems run now. I have a dd and a ds and I don't think either of them has an expectation that they will be pigeonholed into a particular role of they one day become parents. I'm glad about that .

Mr. Grumpy looks back fondly upon the time, about 30 years ago, when he lost his job, and became a "house-husband" for six months. He got the kids off to school, did the housework, greeted them when they got home, did a terrible job of cooking.

For the first time he got to know their teachers' names, and how each kid was doing in school, and was much closer to their daily lives. Unfortunately it only lasted six months, then he had to go back to the salt mines, out of the house at 7.00 am, and too tired in the evenings to do much in the way of parenting...

I really enjoyed having a house-husband, but our finances really suffered, as my job paid poorly.

The Dutch have a very different culture, in school they are streamed but are not encouraged to 'be the best' they are encouraged to all achieve an average level. Don't understand exactly how that works was explained to me by Dutch friend.

My DH works in the Netherlands. He is definately not kicked out after 37h, (by contract he has 40h/week), and he also works from home, on call on some weekends, sometimes has to go in on weekends, usually short notice on top. There is a higher level of social awareness in the Netherlands, but at the same time when a job has to be done, by a certain date, then the pressure is on.

I think it comes down to two things:

1. The wast majority of men don't feel they're missing out on anything by not doing more of the childcare and what somebody above called the "wife work". I think they are more than happy to leave the bulk of the day-to-day drudgery to someone else. As would be most women, imho, except that the buck has to stop somewhere and wives often have nobody to delegate to.

1. I also think that the wast majority of pregnancies don't happen at the man's initiative. I often wonder why women aren't more demanding when they negotiate the split of housework and childcare with their partners, and my conclusion is that they're often the ones desperate for a baby so they put up with whatever help they can get instead of spelling out their expectations and insisting on a fair balance.