To think £100k pa is NOT 'the squeezed middle'?

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The article is very confidently attributing the definition to Danny Dorling, but did he really name this figure?!

These women are fools.

ihategeorgeosborne - I could have written your post - my youngest has just started school, my eldest goes to secondary next year, and I am casting around wondering what to do next. I have a professional qualification and had a well paid job (well, not in Greengrow's league, but close to 6 figures) but gave up when I had my fourth child. My DH got promoted and we were both doing huge amounts of European travel and one of us had to stay home. As I had had enough of my job by then I packed it in. I am now casting around for my next move - there are SO many talented, former professional women at home where I live - all of whom would like to be working, but want to be able to pick up their children and be there for them at the end of the day so they are 'wasting' their talents. I do a lot of volunteering etc, but I'd like to start to earn my own money again - but have lost some of my professional confidence and polish. I have found a couple of really interesting courses near me though which are aimed at exactly people in our sort of position, so am going to look at those in the New Year.

I know exactly how you feel Panic. There are many women in this position where I live too. Many of them end up taking relatively low paid or part-time work to fit round their children, and as their husband's earn more and more, it becomes impossible for them to go back to what they did before. I too do a lot of volunteering and would love to get back into paid employment, but I also don't have the confidence to do what I did previously. I have no contacts now either. I can see how easy it is for women to take the back seat career wise in their relationships. This is exacerbated by the fact that the men continue to earn more and work away more and longer hours, etc. You then find it even harder to find the time and motivation to enhance your own career.

housemum you are right ; there isn't an infinite number of well paid jobs.

And there is huge competition for the ones that exist.

But it does no harm to point out that there is no reason why those jobs shouldn't be taken up by people from different backgrounds and of course women.

I never really understand the point that we need low paid workers. We do (although not to the extent we used to due to automation). That does not mean women should decide to take those low paid jobs on as some kind of moral imperative for the good of the nation. I want women to aim to be leading surgeons not Florence Nightingale nursing on lower pay and status.

Either women are inspired when they hear about those of us on the thread who earn quite a bit (which genuinely some are - we all need role models) or they are indifferent or they don't like to hear about it. I would never want any woman to feel wrong because she chooses a different course from me. Some of my best times as well as winning at work and giving birth/breastfeeding have been on the small island I owned in very primitive conditions doing survival stuff - that does not take money - living off the land, sleeping outside and it can make people very happy. You could almost argue the route to happiness might be what others would regard as poverty. Though I am not saying my message today is give up work and live off the land as it's not as fun as it sounds after a time.

I do want younger women having their first babies to know about choices - that if they give in to the sexist husband and stay home or do so because they mistakenly believe it is better for baby or whatever amazingly that might mean they have less experience at work and lose their contacts and find it hard to get back to work. I don't think that's a price worth paying for most of them. Anyway we are all lucky to have enough food. I don't even take that for granted.

Back to the grindstone.

I completely disagree. I would argue that not having a privileged background can make you fight harder.

Having a privileged background can clearly be helpful but the lack of one isn't any "excuse".

Certainly in my own family situation, we grew up with no money what so ever. There were 6 of us siblings (mum was a catholic!). My mum became very ill when I was a child and dad had to give up work to look after us all. I also had a handicapped sister who needed round the clock care. We all grew up on free school meals and none of us did any after school activities, played musical instruments, or indeed any of the things that are meant to give you a better start in life. Three of my brothers left school with a handful of CSEs. We all went to bog standard comprehensives. Now, they are all high earners. One has his own business. When we get together, we talk of our childhood and the little that we had and how we didn't want that for our own children. I'm not saying it's easy, but that's the way it's panned out in our family. We were lucky though, in that we had intelligent parents to start with, which is what I think is probably the key thing here.

I do want younger women having their first babies to know about choices - that if they give in to the sexist husband and stay home or do so because they mistakenly believe it is better for baby or whatever amazingly that might mean they have less experience at work and lose their contacts and find it hard to get back to work

I really resent this comment. Greengrow you said previously that you did not denigrate anyone, however I would suggest that this is a pretty patronising comment.
I am currently a SAHM, having made a conscious decision to give up my career because actually I do believe it is better for my children, at this point in time, that I stay at home.

You talk of power, money and success as if they are all dependent on one another. My definition of success has nothing to do with power and money. Yes money makes life easier but there is no point chasing the money if it is in a job which makes your life miserable.

Why is it patronising. Stepping off the career track to stay at home with children (or go travelling for a year if you want to take children out of the equation) will negatively impact your career opportunities later. It's simply a fact.

And it may be that that is what you want to do and you know and accept the consequences. But some women don't know, they get funnelled into staying at home and then five years later want to step onto the career ladder again to find its a lot harder than they expected.

It would be better if there was more openness about the need for career planning and more resources to help women plan their careers.

and fewer comments about doing the bloody cleaning

It is simply fact that if you stop work to look after DCs for anything longer than a maternity leave period it is likely to impact on your ability to return to your career.

Yes, it is just facts. You could easily have quote my other points that people can make choices, not work, live in jungles or whatever in their route to happiness. Also there have been people on the thread sayig they want to get back into work and have lost confidence (and elsewhere on mumsnet that they stopped work and find it hard to get back at the same level). If they instead think about that in advance (and still of course choose that they or their husband stops work but take a decision based on knowing that if you haven't worked for a while it can be harder to get back at the same level as before then that's just about making informed choices.

As for the career choices - I would have been 14 or 15 picking what were then O levels when I thought about careers. I do remember at ten asking my father what islands cost and writing a chart based on different careers. The library trips would have been when I was an older teenager. The reading of books similarly. I was still on little house on the prairie when I was ten but even that is a book or series of books which have everything in them - poveryt, self sufficiency (although with a bit of denigration of women's rights). Enid Blyton too - her books will show the rich man in his castle and the family cleaner surely? Also in my day yes you did a shakespeare play for O level and then A level English. I would imagine there are books on the GCSE English lit syllabus today which income some kind of themse about sex roles between men and women and money and power? There can hardly be a novel in the land which does not go into that. Any child who reads a lot would know. Even someone reading Mills and Boon learns that money gets you things even if just the prettiest girl.

Actually films show it all surely? Again how cxan you watch standard films and TV series in 2014 without knowing what jobs pay better than others? I realise that means some teenagers think you play football or become a celebrity or snare a rich man to get money but they also see the portrayal of different types of people and jobs in films. It must be quite hard not to know which jobs pay best whether you read or just watch TV.

I am not disputing that staying at home won't jeopardise your career prospects. I am disputing the phrase mistakenly believe that it will be better for baby. I do believe that it is best that I stay at home for my children. I am not mistaken.

jenniferalisonphillipasue It's just someone's opinion. It doesn't matter.

Aware that it could be contentious and as a result I illustrated that by speech marks.

Everyone know what game they are playing. Its an inherent part of our culture. "If you work hard at school and get good exam results than you can get a good job when you grow up." Its a mantra that is passed down from generation to generation.

To imply that those who grow up on council estates don't understand that its possible to get a well paid job or understand that certain jobs pay more than others is frankly quite insulting.

You clearly absorbed something Chunderella since you went to Oxbridge and became a solicitor.

I am struggling to understand what you're getting at so come on I'll bite, please explain.

jennifer
The key thing is that it is an active choice for you to be a SAHM with all the pros and cons not that it was assumed to be your role because you are female.

In our family it made sense for DH to be the SAHP. He felt more strongly about one parent being home. He was a much lower earner than me, with a job rather than a career. Additionally, he is not a mother tongue English speaker so as he was the primary carer pre-school the DC got a very good start in his language.

Greengrow

Of course its better for a child to be with its mother rather than childcare.
That's not to say that people shouldn't have choices about what they want to do.
It might well have been a mistake for you, but don't tar us all with the same brush, to your standards.

Of course its better for a child to be with its mother rather than childcare."
No you're wrong. It isn't. However I suspect as we're on page 39 of the thread if we start talking about that we will run out of space. So let's just agreed to disagree. Luckily we have the freedom of speech in the UK to argue either it is better children stay at home with their mother or that they stay at home with its father or that children do better when both children work or whatever.

i am not really following the book point or what I was asked. I felt that doing an awful lot of reading as a teenager in Newcastle gave me an insight into all kinds of things, not least what jobs are available, what they pay, how life can be better if you have a secure job. Just about every writer of every genre including Shakespeare and Dickens and loads of others even Enid Blyton makes all that pretty clear. However I don't dispute that parents have an influence over children as do genes. I have always had the capacity and desire to work very hard. If you want me to analyse a particular GCSE syllabus in a particular year that's getting a bit hard. I have 2 sons doing English lit iGCSE next year but that's 2014.

greengrow
why do you not go for holidays with your kids on your island?

Of course there are plenty of well-paid jobs that don't feature much in literature. If you can find me a passage in anything from Dickens to Blyton that tells me whether an actuary or a pipe stress engineer earns more cash I'll eat my hat.

I see where Chunderella is coming from in her last post.

Like greengrow I made a very conscious decision to choose a career that would pay me well. I had a crappy childhood and I needed money to escape. So I became a lawyer.

17 years down the line it's not exactly what I do but I get paid a lot (not quite enough to buy an island but more than enough)

Some days I fantasise about doing something I really really love but you know what? The money I earn allows me (and my family) to dabble in those things: I can interior design to my hearts contents and whilst I don't design clothes (and probably wouldn't have been that great anyway) I can buy and wear beautiful things.

As a family we travel and experience amazing things and if I sometimes I'm away then it even outs. I'm also fortunate that like greengrow my diary is my own - very occasionally I cannot make an event but 99% I am there for school plays/ assemblies/ sports day/ music recitals etc etc.

Without being smug it's hard to
Imagine being in a better place.

But you don't have to know at school that you'd like a £100k job. I would never have dreamt at school that I'd earn over £100k but I always thought I'd have a good job. I didn't do Oxbridge either. Neither did I have a city training contract, or even a funded training contract for that matter.

I see to an extent what you are saying. Its certainly easier to follow a path into the professions if you have support but to be honest some of the richest people I know didn't do particularly well at school, didn't go to university, had nothing to lose by going out there and taking risks and are now very successful business owners.