More women have to accept they can't be the default primary carer?

[Babycham1979]

Inspired by another thread, I'd like to ask others what you think about the myth (as I see it) that women can 'have it all'.

I know many educated, professional women who have still insisted on being their children's primary carer as soon as they're born. The fathers' preference has always come second and they invariably end-up acting as the primary earner (often against their wishes).

It seems as if many women are asking for the impossible in expecting to fill very senior positions in business and politics, but simultaneously assuming motherhood to have primacy over fatherhood.

Parental leave is almost equally available now; women out-earn men up until child-bearing age (29); and more girls are graduating (esp in law and medicine) than men. Now is surely the time for the sisterhood to actively encourage men to be the primary carers of their children? At least half the guys and dads that I know would love this option, yet it's not been made available to any of them.

Are we really saying that women can do anything in the public sphere as well as men, but men can't parent as well as women? Either we're equal or we're not.

Only when we have real parity at home can we have parity in the workplace, no?

If you want genuine equality, then there should be no primary carer... 2 equal parents instead.

My fantasy was that me and my parter could both go part time and my children would always have a parent at home.

If more people could go part time, perhaps workplace culture would change and enable people to progress in their careers without having to work an insane amount of hours per week.

But we are competitive, and don't want to allow others to share our jobs. So this is still fantasy.

Btw op, I know very few men who were really put out that their partner takes the role of primary carer.... Your circle of friends is not a scientific survey of cultural norms.

Yabu. What you seem to have misunderstood is that many women want to be primary carer, it isn't some kind of chore. Some women don't want to be, that's also fine.

I would have been really upset if my dd dad had wanted to be primary carer.

At least half the guys and dads that I know would love this option, yet it's not been made available to any of them.

Who did they want to make it available to them? Couldn't they just talk to the mother of their children and explain that they want it, then come to some arrangement between them and their employers? Two (so far) of my friends have taken career breaks to be stay at home fathers. My BIL is about to take 6 months maternity leave after my DSis's 6 months, then he and my DSis will most likely return to their status quo of him working 4 days a week and her working 5 days in 4. He's better at the domestic stuff, too. Equality begins at home...

The law allowing extended maternity leave to be split comes into effect in April, but fortunately my BIL's employer is adopting it earlier.

Clearly it will be paternity leave when BIL is off though

The system still has a lot of changing to do before prospects for caring for children don't fall automatically to the mother.

In my case, DH is a few years older and his wage is 2.5 times mine. We could never have afforded for him to be away from work for a year. My industry is female dominated but even then, male/female pay gaps exist.

Plus, DD was breastfed and flat out refused to take a bottle/spoon/syringe/cup or any other method of feeding. That alone meant that I had to be the primary carer at first.

But in my world, I know a SAHD - because it made more financial sense for him to give up work - and in almost every case where male and female wages are similar, parental leave has been shared.

So from my limited perspective at least, it really is the male/female pay gap which is to blame.

Equality definitely does begin at home Million, if it were not for my partner taking the domestic role I wouldn't have been able to continue in my chosen career.

I do see a lot of unintentional discrimination against men being the SAHP though. Eg just recently saw a baby things sale marketed as 'mum 2 mum nearly new sale'. Mothercare, mother and toddler groups, mother and baby magazine, mother and child parking spaces, bumps and babies gropus. No wonder not many men want to join this world!

purplemurple

I disagree, I suppose sharing bread winner and primary carer roles could make you a stronger unit it could also spell disaster depending on many factors.

We have been married for 22 years and sharing parenting for 23 years.
Dh has been the sole income provider for this time, me the primary carer.
We are much stronger than several couples we know who fell by the wayside due to arguing about their roles and who does what, the stress on their family of them both working and no time for each other.

You have a valid point.

The thing is, many women don't want to give up the advantage they have when society asks that they be the primary carer. Why would they? Society being fully accepting of as many men as women being primary carers is a long way off and if more men want to fight for their right to be primary carer, at least for a while, then they are going to have to get active about it. Women as a whole group aren't about to voluntarily give up the assumption that they will be primary carer, because there are too many ways in which it works in their favour.

Breastfeeding didn't make me a superior parent to dh but it meant I had to be around for the first few months at least.

Obviously untrue: breastfeeding isn't compulsory. I don't believe anyone who says they think the advantages are so great that for this reason alone they are forgoing thousands of pounds of family income.

I think it should be down to each individual family to do what works best for them. there is no one size fits all.

Some really interesting replies, thanks. The hostility of some concerns me, though. It's surely not a case of 'something else women shouldn't do', but a quid-pro-quo exchange of privileges for real equality.

It bothers me that some strains of feminism have focused on 'taking' certain 'rights', when the flip side of the coin is that we will also have to surrender some advantages.

The women I know consider themselves modern and progressive, but still assume it's their 'right' to choose. What about their partner's right? In response to the question about why the men didn't just ask for it, they did! But our current culture assumes that a woman's 'right' to the baby trumps a man. Not only do I think this is sad and unfair, but it limits the advances of the women's movement. Hence my suggestion that we are compliticit in our 'oppression'.

Also, for what it's worth, please do note that the wage gap is now negative (ie women earn more) up until 29. It's lazy to just assume men will be the primary earner; until childbirth, they're statistically not anymore.

Not many women breastfeed after 6 months. And even if they do, there's no reason a woman would have to be the primary carer for a 10-year old, just because she breastfeed the child 9 years ago.

In our household, DH is a SAHD. I earn more than him and I care more about career than he does, so would not have made sense for me to stay at home, just because I'm female. It's not always easy to make such, still socially not fully acceptable choices.

Often I think the organisational structures in place do not facilitate these flexible working practices- my DH is an Architect and it is certainly not very flexible!

After giving birth the first time I felt I deserved my maternity leave although there wasn't the choice to split it then anyway. In all honesty I 'wanted' to be the primary carer and DH didn't want to be. Equally, I breast feed them both. If he had hardly any desire to be a SAHP but I on the other hand did, it should be 'my' choice surely- nothing default about it!

DH is in a very male dominated profession, with precious few opportunities for part time or flexible work at a senior level.

I work in a different profession in which part time and flexible work is possible to a fairly senior level. Bar about 8 months when DC1 was small and DH took a career sabbatical to be a SAHD whilst I worked FT, it has worked better for us to have one parent PT and one FT. Two parents PT (around 30 hrs/week each) would be ideal in terms of income and work/life balance but DH's profession is stuck in the last century.

DH works in a construction-related role, managing multiple projects, so it would be quite simple for him to manage fewer projects and work fewer hours, but he is yet to find an employer who will let him do this. It's very frustrating. He's trying to up skill to the point at which he can strike out on his own, but it won't be for some years.

YANBU OP.

Have you got a link to say that women earn more up to age 29? That is great news

I don't really understand your posts TBH. All of this is swings and roundabouts. Being primary carer, or not, comes with both advantages and disadvantages at different points and stages of relationships. The law, if a couple spilt, says that the primary carer is the one who has carried out the primary care, as I understand it, which makes sense. It makes no assumptions as to who that may be.

If men want the opportunity to get more involved in childcare / go part-time / take the hit in terms of salary & career options that entails then there is nothing stopping them fighting for it, as women fought for various rights. Lots of women and feminists will support this fight as the idea of defined gender roles based on sex stereotyping assists no-one.

Meanwhile you do need to take into account the biological reality that pregnancy, birth and BF (if that is the feeding method) can only be done by women and so you're never going to have "equality" in those areas as you simply can't.

You say that "educated, professional women who have still insisted on being their children's primary carer as soon as they're born" well usually and by law women need at least a little time to recover, similarly if they are BF then that is a pretty full-on thing for a good few months and the law reflects this in that it gives women the first chunk of leave. I don't see what you expect educated professional women to do when they have just given birth really - get back to work immediately and never choose to BF? Your arguments make more sense further down the line TBH when the baby is older.

I think if you want to change things around this attacking women and feminists is not the most positive way to go about it really, your post doesn't read very sympathetically or look at the underlying reasons that families make the choices they do.

Anyway I could whiffle on for hours.

What do you actually want? You seem to have a few complaints but no solutions really.

Hmm. I'm examining my conscience here after half a bottle of wine. I consider myself equal to men in all areas (that I'm interested in, anyway).
DH and I earn equal amounts (pro rata, as I have elected to remain part-time since having ds 18 years ago in order to keep the home fires burning adequately) and have role reversal re: cooking/food shopping/basic tidying & cleaning (dh) and everything else (me).

As regards the dcs, there was never any question that it would be me who cut my working hours/career to part-time. I wanted to, and dh didn't, particularly. However, he pretty much dealt with the dcs when he wasn't at work (loved doing so), whilst I saw to other things that needed doing, preferably without the kids in tow.

What would have happened if we'd split? Could he have cared for them as well as me? Yes, I suppose so. Just about. He's never read a school newsletter in his life, so would have to have stepped up there. As it is, he's always relied on me to tell him what's happening when I remember to. I'd have had to close my eyes to the fact that he would have taken more risks with them than I would have - had to be forced to take a changing bag out with him in the early days, for instance. And had absolutely nothing with him the day ds went over the handlebars of his bike in the park and cut his chin open. Had to rely on a helpful lady who had tissues and wet-wipes and so forth. Frequently took them on adventures in the woods where they got lost and couldn't find their way back to the car. But, looking back (kids hale, hearty and still alive at 16 and 18), they laugh at those memories and "Mum had a fit when she heard."

But then I looked today at a colleague who's expecting, and remembered how I carried both those babies inside my body, as part and parcel of me, for 9 months. Had dh been a bastard and we'd split, would I have been willing to allow someone who had become a stranger to me to take what I might have considered mine and mine alone? Irrational, I know, but I can understand it a bit.

Also re-reading the OP (which still doesn't make any sense in parts) it seems to go:

At the moment women get to choose everything to do with babies and that's not fair
They need to let men choose everything to do with babies (which is obviously also "not fair"

What needs to happen surely is for society and employers and the law and everything to facilitate families setting things up in the way that works best for them.

I don't think many on MN would have a problem with this aim.

Hi Seven, the info is easily found via Google:

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/11240532/The-gender-pay-gap-has-fallen-to-a-record-low.html

Sorry if you think my post is confused, it seems to make perfect sense to others. What I'm asking isn't simple and doesn't necessarily have a simple solution. Really, I just wanted to sound off and get others' views on the issue.

If you asked me what my 'answer' is, it would be that women will have to surrender more of their traditional roles to progress further in the public sphere. And by that, I don't mean ironing and cooking, but motherhood. I wanted to provoke discussion, because I think there's currently an overly-simplistic and disingenuous 'feminist' discourse that suggests women can have it all. They can't. Nobody can.

Me and DH split care 50/50 to the point if we divorced it'd be difficult to figure out who was legally the primary carer. We both work part time and make up a full time wage combined. We both move work schedules around to go to appointments. We both take turns with feeding and maintenance.

We choose this because we both want to be there for DD. As she gets older, this might change. But for now, it works out for us.

My OH was the SAHP for 6 years and two children. I'd love to have been the one to fill that role, but I earned considerably more than him before and after having children, so we made the choice together. I couldn't have justified it logically, given that I'm a feminist and pro-equality.
Both were bf, they just had a mixture of expressed and bf from being 4 months old.

How can women "surrender motherhood" when we are the only ones who can do pregnancy, giving birth and BF? They are the only aspects of "motherhood" which are different to "fatherhood" as far as I can see, anything else is a societal construct.

I don't really understand what you are getting at, still. What do you want to happen? If it is more less strict gender roles and more opportunities for men and women with children to organise their family lives as they see fit then that is a positive move that you won't get too much argument with on MN.

If you look at the responses on this thread for eg you will see loads of them are from women who are not primary carers, and/or are the main earner.

I am also not the primary carer, and I am the main earner.

You are preaching to the converted here I think.

Thanks for the link BTW that is really interesting.