to think that this article is just another way to sneer at sahms? Motherism?

[usuallyright]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/18/sorry-but-being-a-mother-is-not-the-most-important-job-in-the-world

Whilst I agree with some of it, I don't like the sneery tone. There are many similar articles around at the moment about Mothers who choose to stay at home.
Imagine if someone wrote a similar article about working Mothers.
It's just another excuse to pour scorn on Mothers and their choices, which are often complex decisions, not a knee jerk decision to be a martyr..

Does anyone seriously expect to stop working in a career for say, 5 or 10 years and walk back in on the same salary as someone who has kept working all that time and kept pace with any new developments?

This. This is the bit people aren't talking about enough imo. I also completely agree with you janey that I don't regret my choices for one moment, but I think that is the key to practically everything. Because until things change significantly wrt men doing an equal share of the childcare etc, it's women who will step off the ladder and it's women who will then bear the economic brunt of that decision.

And to circle back to Thinks point, one of the reasons it tends to be the women who step off the ladder is they tend to earn less in the first place because - guess what? - they were drawn to nursing instead of brain surgery, or communications instead of commodity broking. Cos of all them nurturing hormones that don't actually exist

None of this stuff - NONE of it - happens in isolation.

Work that has become 'women's fields' is undervalued compared to 'men's fields' and that contributes to the dynamic WilsonFrickett describes.

In an American city I once lived in the starting nursing salary (in first five years after qualification) was slightly lower than the average garbage collector salary. There is something really wrong with that picture.

but there's nothing wrong with nurturing hormones!
(and as a feminist I'd disagree totally that men and women are exactly the same with different genitals)
The problem is not that women have 'nurturing hormones' or are drawn to the caring professions. The problem is that caring professions, roles traditionally seen as 'feminine' pay so poorly in the first place. That's the real crux of the matter, not trying to tempt women into banking and computer programming.

Mathanxiety, we posted similar thing at same time!

Usuallyright: it's not simply a case of 'nurturing hormones'. Women's work choices have been shaped by all sorts of things, not least the fact that educating women to the same level as men, and allowing them access to the range of professions open to men is a very recent phenomenon. My grandmother had to give up her profession on getting married. My mum didn't have a career as such but was pretty much forced into being a SAHM because childminders and day nurseries weren't around in any significant number in the 60s and 70s. Basically there wasnt much of a choice. Men were expected to be full time providers, while women's education was viewed as far less important because after all she was simply waiting to get married and be a housewife. That was the reality in the first two thirds of the 20 th century. Prior to that, more women probably worked but in menial jobs, using neighbours or relatives as unregulated childminders. And there were many many good interesting careers which women weren't even allowed to do!

I agree that there is a greater different a between men and women than their genitals. However I do not believe for a minute there is a fundamental difference in that men just want to be sole financial providers and women want to do all the caring, plus the daily tasks running a household. That simply isn't the aspiration of many women and men nowadays. My husband enjoys our children's company as much as I do. He is Equally good at cooking, organising stuff around the home, taxiing the kids about etc. And I am just as capable as he is of working in an interesting job and earning for the family. Is that really so weird? Seems totally normal to me. And as a mother to a teenage dd and ds, I can assure you that my dd doesn't see her future mapped out as being the one who has to put her career on the back burner, and my ds doesn't see himself as preparing for an adulthood of having to support a family singlehandedly, even at the expense of spending time with his children. And very glad that they don't pigeonhole themselves like this. What they may decide to do is up to them, but there is no innate expectation or social expectation which they feel they 'ought' to conform to. So: maybe the next generation will be able to avoid this endless debate better than we are. It would be wonderful to think parents might just think of themselves as parents first and foremost, and be valued for their relationship with the children they are raising, and the quality of their parenting, not whether they work or not

Women are more sociable than men (generalising). The painter was doing some work for me but would chat non stop when I came within talking distance. I realised that a lot of 'mens'' jobs are solitary, plumber, painter, builder, hence he would chat my ears off given the chance as the rest of his time was spent in his own company.
Women are attracted to jobs which involve dealing with people rather than working on their own. These seem to have lower pay.

But what about nursing schools? Half of medical grads vs even 60% of nurses still means the vast majority of women are not in medical school but in nursing (or other lower status and lower paying medical careers.)

Women are as you point out more likely to become GPs than surgeons because for them flexibility is sadly something to figure into their plans and an element to temper their ambition the way it mightn't put a damper on a young man's. Just because it still pays well doesn't mean a woman should feel she needs to accept the scaling down of her ambition, or to see her talent wasted if she has what it takes otherwise to be a good neurosurgeon.

A friend of mine qualified as an emergency room doctor recently. She is in her mid 30s. Along the way to qualification she got married and had two babies because it was a case of do it before it's too late. She and her husband are both recently qualified specialists - he is a psychiatrist. They didn't have the money to keep a nanny living in full time while they worked and studied, paid rent, ran two cars, and paid off previous education loans. 24 hour childcare with strange rotas wasn't available. Her mother had to take up the slack.

My DCs have even in this day and age managed to pigeonhole themselves -- or I would prefer to call it accept reality. Reality being that if you want to do more than GP, then you may have to forget about children. DD1 could have done anything she wanted, and is very happy with her career and salary, but she ruled out medicine on the grounds that she might want children some day and would not be happy as a GP. DS otoh is hoping to do medicine and has given no thought whatsoever to how he might combine a career as a cardiologist with parenthood. I asked him and his face went completely blank. He has his grandfather as an example of a man giving 110% to his career and still enjoying a family life that ran on oiled wheels, despite having 7 children. DD2 is in the same boat as DD1 but hasn't ruled out medicine and won't have to make a decision for another two years.

It's also important to factor in that there are no guarantees when it comes to children... Women and men may have fertility issues, or may not meet someone they want to have children with. They may want or need to spend most of their adult life supporting themself- so for our sons and daughters it makes sense to encourage them to aspire to something they will find fulfilling

Fulfilling is a loaded word. Everything in media and culture screams at girls that fulfillment is to be found in relationships and home life. Boys simply do not get this message.

I agree, and there one lies the inherent problem. Women and men are portrayed as being more different than they really are, and that way stereotypes are reinforced

If you were to ask my husband what, in life, he finds fulfilling, he would answer that it's a mix of being a dad, and all that that entails, being in a happy marriage, friendships, work life, hobbies- and probably more. Pretty much the same answer as mine. I'm sure many couples feel the same. We really aren't that different... Not in the things that really matter, anyway

therein lies the problem

Chunderella I was calling them small businesses but they should be more like tiny money making ventures. They pay for the extras eg one woman earns just enough to pay for a weekly maths tutor for her child. We don't spend hours per week on it.
The problem I have always found is when you are out I find it easier to say I am a SAHM. Working people cannot get their head around not putting in 40 hours per week work. How do you manage? Aren't you bored? What do you do with yourself all day? Then you get that pitying look if you try to point out there is a life outside of the work place. Newsflash The world doesn't cease to exist between the hours of 9-5.
As for saying that they would be climbing the walls with boredom and the lack of adult company I think that this is because they have in the back of their minds they are returning to work and so either look down their noses at us who do choose to stay out of the job market or actively resist going out meeting new people so perpetuating the philosophy that being a SAHM bores them to tears.
Saw a programme once about a woman who sat in her house waiting for the day she returned to work after the birth of her first child. She was bemoaning the fact that she had not seen another adult apart from her husband since the supermarket delivery guy had delivered her shopping 3 days earlier. She had never left the house. She poured scorn on mother and baby groups as full of people who she had nothing in common with. Without realising they had something in common, they were mothers with young babies too.

MMM - I didn't follow the entire small-business-from-home discussion but I doubt someone making £40 a week to pay a Maths tutor would also be able to contribute further to her family's expenses by putting heating, electricity and I don't know what as reclaimable taxes. You'd need to seriously cook the books IMO.

millymolly I found my maternity leave very boring. I'm currently on redundancy garden leave and I found it very very boring too. I'm not a social person. I don't know how to talk to strangers and I found it a real struggle to go to mums and babies group. Everyone seems to already in a group. I really did try. It reminds me of my school years being unpopular. I never looked down on SAHM. Some of us just really struggles with friends.

Spending 40 hours a week at work is easier for my sanity.

chunderella I didn't find getting a part time job easy at all. I'm job hunting at the moment and everything is full time. A friend of mine who is working part time is also looking at the moment because she's at risk. She's concluded she'll have to look for full time work. There are too many men in suits running businesses and they have a very hard time to understand the value of flexible hours, working from home (1-2 days a week), let alone part time.

Saw a programme once about a woman who sat in her house waiting for the day she returned to work after the birth of her first child. She was bemoaning the fact that she had not seen another adult apart from her husband since the supermarket delivery guy had delivered her shopping 3 days earlier. She had never left the house. She poured scorn on mother and baby groups as full of people who she had nothing in common with. Without realising they had something in common, they were mothers with young babies too

I knew someone exactly like this. She had her first baby and pretty much stayed in the house for an entire year moaning about how bored she was.
She didn't drive, so I offered to pick her up and bring her back to my house so she could escape and have some company. She was clearly determined to hate her maternity leave. She spoke about 'other mothers' 'stay at home mothers' and baby groups as if they were the creation of satan. Her house wasn't isolated, it was within a 10 minute walk of numerous baby groups and activities, but she didn't go to a single one.
Every time I met her, she spoke about how boring her life was, but when I suggested going out and trying a few groups out, she point blank refused. I even offered to go with her! She was very dismissive of me being a sahm, until I got a job, when she came over super enthusiastic:
"oh, that's fantastic, wow, how brilliant, I bet it's such a relief to escape from the kids" etc....
I've nothing against working Mums, I am one, but when Mums and Dads work 24/7, and constantly complain that baby/toddler/kid stuff bores them shitless and they'd much rather be doing anything else, I do idly wonder why the hell they decided to become parents because it's an optional life experience. (and obviously I'm talking about parents who make an active choice, not those who fall pregnant accidentally)

I didn't find maternity leave boring or depressing. I enjoyed it.
Bit I think that was because I knew it was going to come to an end IYSWIM. I was always going to go back to my job.

If you are determined to hate something then you will, no matter what.

If you are determined to hate something then you will, no matter what

I agree.

Usually I totally agree.

If you don't enjoy spending time with kids and don't want your life altered what so ever um why on earth have kids?

[confusd]

Only a few pages before 'why have kids', well done.

I believe mums don't set out to have kids knowing they'll feel lonely and bored. Rather, they probably look forward to time with them and feel guilty as hell for being tired, being bored and being lonely. They'd probably love to be able to make easy chit chat about the hubby and his important job and long hours. Maybe they're however true to themselves as well and grown up enough to admit they're not enjoying it as much as they'd hoped.

I hope that clears up some of your confusion. Or perhaps read a bit more on MN and look around you.