to think there is a massive disconnect between being a parent and working and this needs to be taught emphatically at school

[theremustbeanotherway]

So that my people like me, as so many of you are, don't spend decades getting those top GCSEs, A-levels, the Oxbridge degree, the high-flying legal career, only to feel like I need to massively downgrade/quit work in order to have anything approaching a balanced life with my growing family? Tis truly miserable. I know part-time is a possibility but certainly not at my firm and they are like gold dust elsewhere. DH very supportive and does more than his fair share but it's not working at present and I can only see it getting worse in future.

Are there parts of the world where society is set-up so as to allow both parents to work without the family suffering? Is it because our society lacks the support of a strong extended family and community network or because our jobs are more demanding and don't acknowledge the competing demands of a young family?

Just to clarify: the 100-hour weeks were pre-kids and led to a job change. And you don't really have the option to say no when you are junior, so I wouldn't say I had chosen to do them. They were a by-product of being junior in that department at thT time. The only way out was to change firms.

Lots of interesting issues on the thread. Minipi - I am not so sure. My children say I never believed in illness so they'd go to school unless they were virtually dead and how lucky they feel that that was the case as it has helped their personalities and careers so very much. My parents were the same. How to instil grit into a child - step 1 pay school fees, step 2 make them do the Dof E awards, step 3 take them on survivor trips to your own desert island in Panama (yes I did that too....), most important be at work so that in their teens when their friends at school are utterly molly coddled yours are independent and resourceful.

I have not said people don't get serious illnesses. The thread is about those who want to be on hundreds of thousands as a lawyer etc. Obviously iome people have depression, MS and all the rest never mind addictions and we are all sorry for them.

As I said above it's lovely most people aren't like this because those of us who want to triumph and do well find it easier to achieve. Most men and women aren't like that and that's fine too - we're all different but don't expect to earn a lot if you work at lot less in some of these higher paid careers. That does not always follow but even if you're Kath Kitson or the Harry Potter author or any female pop star you probably have put in the hours.

Winner takes all culture - well that is not quite how it is . Most of us who pay people to help us with our work try to be good to the secretaries and others as that helps make everything work well. I have never said be nasty to others but the part and short timers will be likely to earn less so when you take a massively long maternity leave or go part time don't do that by conning yourself that it will not always have an impact. On the other hand if you're the best in the firm at what you do and people UK wide flock to be with you you will probably find even if you always leave on time you do pretty well too.

(My daughters because of their career choices can afford currently to have lots of holidays without the family. That's fine. One has been to Jordan this Autumn and earlier in the year was in Vietnam (she also came with us for a few days when we were abroad in the summer). The other was in Mauritius with her husband whilst the first was in Jordan and they are going away skiing in early January. The family week in Barbados is just an extra and it is nice as the family grows more and more of us come - including her husband. It will be lovely to be bringing sweet little grandchildren in due course if everyone is still keen to come. I don't think there is any problem with people who love each other wanting to spend time together.

I like to try to get everyone together - all 5 children etc when I can. So far for skiing Christmas 2015 we seem to have secured the royal mail leave...... will he still be there then?

Also remember we have children younger than their siblings. The younger ones adore having the older 3 around - it's like having fun younger people around, not boring all parents. The older 3 are more likely to take you on black ski runs or in the case of Barbados kite surfing apparently which I'm not sure I'm going to be likely to try.

Miners...... my great grandfather was. My grandmother took herself off to India to be a children's nanny in the 1920s. her grandmother moved countries to find enough food. Women have always worked and had to move for food and work).

Greengrow, why are you wondering if your son will still be a postman in Jan 2015? Are you hoping he gives up postal work and becomes a lawyer? Is he less qualified or less ambitious than the others? How do you feel about that?

I extol the benefits of post office work on a regular basis - outside all day, moving, in the sunshine etc. Those are the things which tend to make people happy along with good food. Home by 3pm. You could argue it's the ideal job. I've never said all the children have to be lawyers at all. If they want to be monks on remote islands or run bars or anything that is entirely up to them.

I am not sure of the average time graduate postmen tend to stay in the job. I'm genuinely happy with whatever the children choose.

So there we have it - go forth and be postwomen. You'll be moving all day, carrying heavy loads, all those things that make people feel happy and be strong and mentally healthy. Join Royal Mail and the route to happiness could be yours. (I am not on commission). You'll also be home in time to collect your children from school.

Yes, and a private education and university are an absolutely necessary expense for becoming a postman - all that reading of addresses and working out where to go.

I suppose you could say the same about being a housewife though, Bonsoir, but I take a less utilitarian view of the value of education.

You do drive me nuts sometimes Greengrow but I seem to smile and nod along to your posts in equal measures!

Thank you.

I have never paid school fees to buy the children particularly careers - just to give them a good education and because I work full time as a lawyer I could afford to pay 5 sets of university and school fees - another bonus arising from avoiding housework and domestic stuff.

Obviously he would have an easier life if he earned more than a postman does but if you believe as I do that people's worth is in how they are internally and how they treat others then there is no moral wrong in doing a lower paid job. I think it can be foolish as it's then harder to buy a house, keep a family and all the rest so I do hope ultimately he finds something else he enjoys which is better paid but to have a child who is healthy and happy and stable and content and not ill and all the rest - that is a huge bonus compared with what many parents have who have depressed addicted children with many problems.

Anyway I just completed a deal and everyone is happy and he asked for his bill so all is right with the world and I was sitting here in my lovely 5000 sq home/office with 3 of the children around and the poor lawyer on the other side is in the office. Mind you 6.30pm is not really too late for her I expect.

I had wondered where you'd found this new sense of tolerance and appreciation for those with lower paid or unskilled professions Greengrow. And now I know. And funnily enough, I was trawling the Royal Mail website earlier looking for jobs. (because I need fresh air and am sick of offices! )

Greengrow

Your posts really interest me and I agree with much of what you say about standard of life and education of your dc, their chosen profession and of course the benefits you have gained over the years.
I totally agree and yet see these for my family as a sahm.
Maybe it's more to do with outlook rather than what we choose to do in terms of profession and work.

Ah greengrow, not all of us can achieve a stellar career, 5 well adjusted children, a huge house, luxury holidays and a successful marriage like you.

For me, it'll be a small house with a leaky roof, maybe one emo child and a grumpy husband who falls asleep open mouthed in front of corrie ie I'll probably do everything a just a little more poorly and bumble through.

Hats off to you anyway!

I don't think I've changed at all. My fundamental belief has always been that the priorities are good health and mental well being which you get from eating well and being outside and moving which is one reason 10 years ago I bought the island and why I do bikram yoga and eat paleo. None of my 3 older children read law at university. They all read different subjects and what they did after was always up to them. Anyone looking at my posts over the years will see I've always said there is no one right path and if the children ended up buying a bar in Costa Rica say that would be fine. However it is important children know the implications of their choices particularly financially.

I have always written on paleo and healthy eating and mental health threads about these things. It's the difficult for anyone with small children. You cannot even easily still go cycling - mine stopped once I had children to take with me on the way to work. You cannot go for walks because toddlers are so slow. If you take them swimming and have a lot of them you never leave the shallow end etc.

Getting back to the thread theme I think it would be awful if schools started teaching children that aiming for high paid work is stupid because you won't get to lounge around for hours staring into the eyes of youe baby and will change 2 nappies a day not 20 and particularly if they made that comment to women more than men. I am content with what one leading head recently said which is prioritise babies and careers at the same time (as female fertility dies off earlier than male) and also marry men who support women working full time even if that man is not the next Bill Gates. That is sensible advice but to suggest you cannot have a good career and work is not helpful. A school should say if you want to earn a lot you have to work hard and then people can make choices.

Hi bonsoir. Not sure I agree with your point that there is nothing inherent about GP that allows flexibility. There are other roles within medicine that allow similar flexibility - radiology, anaesthetics, microbiology, public health to name a few. I think the key to it is work that is sessional, has routine elements, an on-call rota that can be shared equally between a large number of people and no necessity for 24 hour continuity of care.

To compare, a surgeon would find it more difficult to work flexibly because they have inpatients, emergency rotas shared between relatively few people with an increasing requirement to attend in the night or at weekends to assist juniors and a necessity to maintain a certain number of hours to keep their skills in. Add to that the longer training, the need to work in hospitals which ties you geographically and adds commuting times and overall it becomes more difficult.

I'm not saying by any means that all women in medicine should be GPs. I massively admire women in other fields of medicine but the reality is that there are some fields that are less compatible with work life balance - the balance being in favour of more time at home.

A supportive partner is essential I think no matter what you end up doing. My sister is an A+E doctor. Her husband gave up work to look after their kids so she could continue to work FT and complete her training. At the end of the day I think she would rather have continued part time but financially it made no sense.

Part time working is possible for many hospital specialties but the training period often coincides with the time when many women have really young children which is the hard bit. Previously most women would wait until they'd become a consultant before starting a family. Flexible training is a lot more common now but still difficult as there is usually still some commitment to doing emergency antisocial hours work - according to a rota and not at a time of your choosing.

Anyway I think I have bored everyone enough about medicine but that's my insight into it anyway.

I think its fine to tell women to aim high in a career if that's what she wants, but I think realism is important as well.
It is fine to be the high flyer if your oh isn't also a high flyer, all the duel high flyers I knew all ended up divorced. You can have the nanny, cleaner, gardener and all manner of domestic routine outsourced but the relationship boards are full of stories where one partner outsourced the physical side of their relationship.
Saying this, I don't suggest that it should be the default for women to have the lesser career or job, of course everyone should aim for the most beneficial situation for them for their physical and mental health.
I think it is wrong to tell children they can grow up to have it all, because at present it isn't the case, something has to give.

plummyjam - GPs in France do 24/7 / home visits / hospital admissions for emergencies. It's the NHS, not the intrinsic GP role, that makes being a GP in the UK a flexible and/or PT role. In France GPs can't pay the bills unless they work more than FT.

OP I work in the City for a large accountancy firm. I am client facing and part time. It has worked because I want it to work. Many of the things Dougal said above rang very true for me. I'm not cut out to be a SAHM but didn't want to work full time.

I do believe that my career will be impacted by this because people who work full time will almost inevitably progress faster than me but that's ok with me. I've made my choices and they are working for my family and for me. My firm values my contribution, allowing me to work flexibly and they pay me well too.

You may want to have the courage of your value to your firm and try to ask for flexible working there. It's easier to move to flexible working at an existing employer than find a part time job.

FWIW my husband is a City lawyer. He sees our daughter every morning and three out of five nights a week. If he has to bring home work to pick up after dinner, he does. (As do I if need be). Its not impossible by any means.

You can have the nanny, cleaner, gardener and all manner of domestic routine outsourced but the relationship boards are full of stories where one partner outsourced the physical side of their relationship.

Morethan

Please let me know if you figure it out! Only people I know who balance high salaries and kids are GPs / consultant doctors with flexible hours and 'protected time'... I recently turned down 'serious' job with v good salary & prospects 'cos when you get down to it, the hourly rate (if you worked it out that way given the necessary and v much expected long hours) isn't that great at all, esp when you take out childcare costs and personal cost of doing those hours on kids & husband and me. Haven't got my head round what next though... Do you do another / any / no job and forget ever having that career / salary again, or try and keep your hand in at a lower level and get back later, or try and juggle it all now? Didn't realise how much my self esteem was caught up with my job till it all changed either. Would love to have the answers too. Hang in there and good luck!

Bonsoir I saw much too much of my mother to be honest, and our relationship suffered. Of course his easy home life was because my mother did everything, when I said I aspired to his lifestyle, that included the supportive partner! As others have said too high flyers in a family makes for a stressful life and many compromises. As it happens our lives took another path and at the moment both dh and me have a great work/life balance, but he'd still like for me to get to the top of my field (and earn shed loads of money) while he runs the home and does voluntary things that matter to him. Both choices are equally valid, it's just we tend to assign one to women and one to men.

She was from a generation and class that didn't work after they married (I got the impression that she felt she hadn't much choice about it)
Many jobs had marriage bars - i.e. if a woman got married, she had to give up work. The Civil Service only ended theirs in the 1970s. I suspect some mindsets took longer to adjust than the official rules, and it was often expected, even if your particular job didn't have an official marriage bar.

It did mean that women really did have to choose between having a career and children, and a lot of careers effectively were closed to mothers. If women wanted or needed to carry on working, then lower-skilled, lower-paid work would have been their only option.

My mum worked full time and still managed to take us on outings. Its possible.

My mother is in her late 70s and I think was pretty much hit by the marriage bar. She really enjoyed being a SAHM, but I had a conversation with her fairly recently and told me that she also loved her job, and I think she was probably very good at it. I have a boy and a girl and I'd hate for either of them to be curtailed in doing what they really want to do, especially if they are also very good at it. But then I was brought up with a very strong service ethos, so I tend to think about careers as bringing benefit to the world.

Of course there are parts of the world where hard-working women with an excellent education can work with more flexibility and raise families at the same time. Those parts of the world tend to have socialist governments and flatter pay structures (so that, for example, lawyers earn about the same as construction workers). If you don't mind earning about the same as people with much less education, you could move to Norway and work in a culture that is rather easier for women in employment.

I don't think 2 high-flying careers are possible without family life suffering - and just on a practical level, me being at home with the dcs meant that my partner didn't need to do washing/shopping/ironing etc. after a 60 hour week. I've just gone back to work (in a low-flying career) now the kids are 11 & 14 and can help with housework and shopping. Also my partner hasn't forgotten how to iron and just gets on with it again now.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that the good education is not wasted on women who spend a large chunk of their adult lives being SAHMs! We seem to be talking about how a university education benefits your career, and of course it does, but it's also of benefit to your own children and to society in general. I wouldn't have missed my uni years for anything, especially as I'm still in the same city I studied in.

Whilst a family with both parents in demanding jobs will always be challenging, I don't think one can( or should) state it is impossible to make it work.

It depends on so many factors; the jobs themselves, the employer, being self employed, the ages of the children, the personalities of the children, the support available from extended families and friends, the types of schools they attend, the attitude of both partners to domestic and administrative commitments...