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?

My DH has a professional career which is perfect for the demands of our children. I work at home so I am the organiser of daily life but he works around the childrens commitments. He is the one who most often takes them to school, collects, takes them to clubs and activities.

He is highly thought of in his working life and they allow him to have a great work/life balance. He stays there because of this despite the fact that he could earn double his salary if he worked in the private sector.

So no, I don't think men can "have it all" any more than women can.

Oh and there is a high proportion of men at our school gates!

OP, I know EXACTLY what you mean, and started an almost identical thread on the same subject last week.

It's not enough to say that men don't have it all if they are working all the time, and not getting enough family time.

It's the fact that the endless conversation /debate in the media is ALWAYS about women being able to/not being able to combine career and family.

The debate is always carried on as though women are the only parents.
I realise some men pitch in 50/50 with domestic life if their partner also works, but that's not the point imo.

The point is, that while a 25 year old woman may well begin asking herself whether she will be able to be a mother and have the career she wants, we all know damn well that a 25 year old man would not even register it as a dilemma.
It is just not in question that a man will be able to have a good job and children. It is assumed that he will.

My sister is very successful, and has 2 young children. She works four days a week ,(but actually does 5 days worth of work to stay ahead in her career.)
Recently she had to go in when it would have been her day off, and her husband took a day of leave to look after the kids.
My mother said something like " Oh, that was kind of him, to use up one of his days of holiday"
Yeah. Kind of him. The fact that when sis has a day off, she also looks after her children...well, that's different, somehow.

Until men start being brought into the whole discussion, there is no point even talking about flexible working/ work life balance blah blah blah.

In Denmark, they have parental leave, which you can share however you like. My Danish friend took the first 6 months after her son was born, her partner the next six.
In a TV debate that I saw on the subject of businesses employing women who might want to have children, someone broached this idea, and a boss who was on the debating panel said something like "Oh, no! We don't want men to start taking time off as well!"

That's why women are still earning so much less than men, not getting promoted, sacrificing having children at all for the sake of their careers, or generally getting so fucking knackered.
What man ever decided that he simply could not be a father, even though he really wanted to, because of his job??

There is an old saying:
What every woman needs is a wife.

And I totally agree with your first statement Panicking, but not your second at all. I know so many men who campaigned for years to have kids, with the wife being way less keen,

Oh, of course there are men who want kids and women who don't. I also know women who only agreed to have the second kid after the husband got his act together and started to pull his weight with the first. But by and large I believe my observation to be true.

numberlock without wanting to be coy I'm a bit wary of putting too much detail on here because I haven't yet decided if I'm going to mount a serious challenge to this or not. I'm not sure I've got any fight left in me. Its the last in a long line of difficulties I've had returning to work after ML. I have a contract that says I had to spend a certain length of time at my particular level and that if performance was satisfactory at the end of that I would be promoted. Initially I was told that my ML wouldn't count towards that time period. When I objected to that they grudgingly said they would consider me along with everyone else. Then they kept changing their minds what they believed my contract actually means (as opposed to what it actually says)and now they're saying I'm satisfactory but not satisfactory enough. All the other people at my level have gone through on a nod (although they will argue that they applied objective criteria and I can't prove they didn't). Basically they will see me in hell before promoting me because I let the side down by having a baby and taking a year off.

As well as being insulting and dispiriting it will have a devastating financial impact on my family which is what upsets me the most because I feel like I've let DP and DC down and ruined the balance that other posters have mentioned that we have tried to plan for and have worked very hard to achieve.

now sorry to be derivative.....

I think your comment that a 25 year old woman is already thinking about the dilemma which wouldn't even occur to a 25 year old man is absolutely bang on. There is always a question in a woman's mind and often questions in employers minds also that simply do not exist for the majority of men.

This also suggests a different form of solution. We should perhaps not be trying to persuade women to look past the dilemma more but encouraging men to consider it at all.

There is no particular reason in a two job family that one would expect the woman's career to take more of a hit than the man's.

The point is, that while a 25 year old woman may well begin asking herself whether she will be able to be a mother and have the career she wants, we all know damn well that a 25 year old man would not even register it as a dilemma.

NowThenWreck - very true, and again I think part of the reason for this is that generally women are more likely to plan their lives around having children from relatively early on, whereas it's much less of a priority for men. Yes, big generalisation, yes, we all know exceptions, but ask any 25-year-old bloke about kids and most will just shrug their shoulders even if they have their careers planned out already.

worried my contract explicitly says that time off on maternity will not count towards my probation time. In some ways I think that is more fair. They either have to not count the time and then they can apply the same criteria to everyone, or they could count the time but mitigate what I am expected to have achieved in view of my time away. The first method is more robust and less subjective I think.

I this an option for you? Could you wait until you have easily met the criteria by excluding maternity leave time and then apply for promotion again?

There is one point that makes thing naturally uneven when it comes to deciding how to split the child related career hit. In the majority of relationships the man is older than the woman and hence is likely to be further advanced in their career.

This may make it seem like a better idea for the woman to take the majority of the hit. In reality there may be more chance of promotion for those at the bottom of the ladder than those further up....I think my main gripe is that the decision seems in many cases to be made automatically.

Data on PhD students in relationships with each other at exactly the same stage, still showed that while the woman had thought about how to manage career and family a significant proportion of the men either had not thought about it or assumed without having spoken to their DPs that the woman would take the time out and they would continue unhindered.

Hmm. I can only really speak for myself Panicking.
What I meant about the 25 year olds, is that I was very
career focused at that age but I knew that , when the time came, it would be a problem for me to have kids.
It wasn't that I was hell bent on children, and that I wanted them at any cost. More that I knew it would be a problem if and when it happened.

Whereas a man with the exact same lifestyle and career would assume he can have children at some point, without having to consider the logistical difficulties.

"now sorry to be derivative..... "

Don't be daft OP! The more people ranting about this the better imo!

worried I would be tempted to post in Employment or Legal to get some advice. The would have to show that they have judged you by the same criteria as everyone else. The messing around over whether or not your ML counts may open up a possible arguement that they have not treated you fairly because you have been on ML. The OP's situation is clearer and more easily defended because they can say they only assess the time you are actually present and doing the job (although arguably they would also have to exclude other extended absences such as long term sickness).

NTW - I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying that another reason why a 25-year-old man wouldn't worry is because he either isn't thinking of children at all, or if he does, he isn't that bothered, and certainly not bothered enough to sacrifice a career for kids. Whereas for most women, not having kids is unthinkable unless they are physically infertile or something.

Not so long ago in another thread I said that I will only have children if my husband insists, and only after we worked out the practicalities of jobs, careers and such, to my satisfaction (or else I will not bother) and people were pissing themselves laughing at the idea that I may turn down a man's offer to father children to me. Biological clocks were mentioned and I was told to come back in five years' time when I'm desperate. I don't think anyone would give similar advice to a man.

I second that you really need to get some legal advice Worried.Good luck. Don't back down.Get all Norma Rae on their ass!

But he never would have to sacrifice a career for kids Panicking. Or he thinks he wouldn't so it amounts to the same thing.

Maybe there is more urgency for women to know that children are in the cards (vis-a-vis your thread) because women do feel they have more of a built in timer in terms of fertility. (So do men in actual fact, but it's not so cut and dried).

I think getting the practicalities in place before you consent to having children is a fantastic idea, and I wish more women would do exactly that. Good on you.

If men had to properly consider just how everything will be managed, and what their role in it will be, maybe they wouldn't take it for granted that they would be able to carry on exactly as they did pre-kids.

FWIW, I do actually know a few women who are ambivalent on the subject of kids, and a couple of women who happily chose not to have them, so, like everyone, my experiences inform my opinion.

laqueen so was it never an option that you would be the driven one and he would take a back seat to facilitate your career? IF not why not? If so then how did you decide who was to take the hit?

You are right OP, in this day and age this is a discussion that we should be having about parents of both sexes, not just mothers. But I suppose we all come at the subject from our own experience. DH and I share everything 50/50 - working, breadwinning, childrearing, running the household - it is natural for me to see it in terms of families, rather than just women. I can understand why women whose partners can't or don't want to take a bigger part in family life are going to see things differently.

For us it wasn't difficult. We both wanted to spend as much time as possible with DS before he started school, we both earn around the same amount, and we can't afford for either of us to give up work anyway. DH was able to negotiate compressed hours so he gets to spend one day a week at home with DS. I was able to negotiate part time hours so I too have a day a week with DS. DS only has to go to the childminder for three full days a week instead of five. For now we feel we have the best work/life balance available that suits us.

If the parents are at odds or have different priorities it's a different story. My friend was a senior manager at a large company until she had her first DC. Her DH wanted to relocate the family abroad with his job so she didn't return to her job after maternity leave. She has since had another DC and they have relocated to another country. It's six years since she has worked, her youngest will be at preschool when they return to this country next year and her DH has started making noises about her taking her turn at breadwinning. Needless to say she is mightily unimpressed at his attitude after the sacrifices she made on his behalf.

But he never would have to sacrifice a career for kids Panicking.

He may, if he had a wife like me! :)

I don't think men have a limitless array of choices either. A high-flying career always has to come at the expense of something else. As do children. A day is only 24 hours for men too. However, most men can be confident that their wives would make most of the sacrifices, and that's because in such discussions the negotiating power is always on the man's side. A 35-year-old woman isn't going to insist her husband gives up work, or else she's not bearing his children.

I think a lot of the changes actually need to come from employers, and companies, in terms of having less of a culture of "presenteeism" and more of a culture of "if the work gets done, who cares how it gets done".
More remote working, more actual flexibility (for men too).
Generally, in business, flexible working actually means "women's hours".

Unfortunately, these changes won't happen unless men start demanding them.
And like you said, a lot of men probably don't really want to be doing more cleaning/ferrying kids/dentist appointments/ pta meetings.
Because it's all, frankly, quite tedious. IMHO

Hi ICBINEG - my contract doesn't have anything like that in it, nor was there any published policy that said that, nor did anyone tell me that. If it did I would at least have been able to plan accordingly and perhaps go back to work a bit earlier. My problem is that they haven't applied the same criteria to everyone. People who have been actually in the office for the designated time have gone through on the nod. I have had my work picked over to the enth degree to the point where I feel I have now lost my confidence in any event.

I've been over and over in my mind whether I am being entitled or whether I am in fact, shit, and I really don't think I am. Before I went on ML I had glowing appraisals (as I always did in previous jobs) there was never any indicaton that I wouldn't come up to scratch.

I'm sure they will review it in due course and I'm equally sure that the decision to promote me will miraculously coincide with the date when I've "made up the time."

Sorry I don't mean to hijack the thread. Thanks for the interest though. :)

Unfortunately, these changes won't happen unless men start demanding them.

Exactly. And they won't start demanding them until women become more selective as to the circumstances in which they're willing to raise a family.

I dont agree at all about dads dont think about leaving their kids for work.

Dh left a job with lots of travel as when he was 19 his friend worked out he had been away for 13 months out of his 3 year old twins lives but couldnt afford to leave his job.

Dh left a couple of years later and then we had our first.Millions are men are i that position but luckily dh realised early what would happen so got out fast.

My DH doesnt worry about spending time away from our DD's but he certainly does try his best to spend as much time as possible with them. He has given up some of his (many) pastimes to do this.
However I always feel guilty at work, he doesnt. He doesnt understand why I do given that I work 3.5 days and my mother looks after our children so by all means a very handy situation. I think women are just 'wired' to feel guilt and worry. Men are not