Working mums get all the shit and end up with no career

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Hi. I really don't know if I've just a bee in my bonnet or whether workplaces in general really are unfair and women get such a raw deal. It's all very emotional at the moment as our department has just announced that 2 out of 10 of us will be made redundant in the next month. I'm applying for an admin/assistant role in my DS's school and I really hope I get it. I'm actually really excited but I can't help pondering over the fact I will become the cliché of a career woman who has to give it all up.

Anyway, at work, there are 3 designers who are part time, and 2 part time writers. We are all mums who had careers... we were managers, department heads etc. Then we had babies and came back part time and weren't allowed to be managers any more. And how about the men we used to manage whose wives had babies? They are now managers, department heads etc. It drives me NUTS. In DS's school, there are so many mums who had careers, and are now dinner ladies, TAs, admin assistants etc, it's just not funny. Not that there is anything wrong with any of those jobs whatsoever. But it just seems so unfair to me. I know having children is a choice, and I chose to do it. And I chose to go back part time. Yes... all my choices because I actually wanted to see my DS a bit every day and have a relationship with him. But basically I waved good bye to my career and now it looks like I'll have to wave good bye to the job as well.

There are 2 young women in the office who will probably get to keep their jobs when the redundancies come because they are young and full time and 'fresh'. WIBU to say to them, 'When your time comes, and you choose to have babies, come back full time. Put your DCs in nursery all day every day and keep your management roles. Otherwise you can kiss good bye to your high-flying careers and do what all the other overlooked mums end up doing'. Bitter? Me? Just a wee bit. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and maybe a bit of perspective! And I'm giving myself a . Is that allowed?

Ffs these threads always become like this.

You want to be a sahp and it suits your family do it.

If if you partner wants to be the sahp and it suits, do it.

If you need/ want work pt and it suits, do it.

If you want/ need to work ft and it suits, do it.

Every situation has a downside, has its stresses and it's benefits. Non is easier or better.

What pisses me off is women that piss and moan about what other people do. Stop judging everyone else and get on with your choices. Accept the good bits and the shit bits of your decision.

I still have a career post child but it was a choice to carry on with long hours and a commute. I'm lucky that DH does the nursery run, is the person they call if DD is sick and gives her dinner / gets her ready for bed / sticks a load of washing on before I get home. He works full time too but in a less demanding and closer to home.

I think often it is the women who make the decision to go part time or stay at home but they don't have to.

I work full time, drop DC off at breakfast club at 7:30, squeak into work by the skin or my teeth at 8:30, work through until 5 (technically should be 4:30 but rarely works out like that) get DC from after school club at 5:59 and get them sorted, bathed and in bed, eat dinner and then log back in for a couple of hours. And I still miss things, like impromptu meetings at 5PM where I would get a chance to have an input (and show off) with the top level management but I'm not important enough to postpone the meeting for. My work phone is on 24/7, I always reply to email and I usually log in on Sunday to get ready for the week.

Except today when I have a very rare day off and am sitting in my sofa doing not much. :)

I do love my job and don't mind the hard work. But I put a huge amount of effort in and I would fully expect to get promoted before the other people in our team who go home on the dot and refuse to log back in as its family time. Even if they are as competent as me in all other regards. Because I am prepared to put the extra graft in.

I worked part time when DCs were little and was basically in a holding pattern of career maintenance for a few years as there wasn't much prospect of anything changing and I was happy with that. I throw myself into it now to make up for that but there are women my age with no kids who are better paid than me as they didn't have three years doing a lot less. And I don't begrudge that to them, any more than I do the men in the same boat.

Men "in the same boat" very often have a women at home covering a lot of stuff for them though.

I guess it's understandable that employers reward people willing to work longer hours, travel, do meetings in the evening, log in at home a lot and so on, but it is definitely part of the reason for inequality at work.

The bottom line is that it is difficult to give your all to bringing up your children and have a successful career at the same time. Something has to give.

In my organisation, the women go on maternity leave and generally return full-time. However they (and I) struggle to do everything at work eg the late night meetings, the weekend duties, then they need time off to look after sick children, attend appointments with them etc.

Last year I had 37 appointments with my dc. I was entitled to leave from work to attend them but it doesn't go down well with your team when you are physically not in work that amount of time.

I have just worked out that out of 15 women in my workplace, 8 of us are single parents. We can't physically do everything. The career suffers because you put your dc first.

I have given up and decided there is a time and a place for everything and I refuse to kill myself trying to jump through corporate hoops.
I intend to make myself so qualified and knowledgeable whilst having my little holiday ie raising 4 kids alone that when I get back to it they will pay me so much money it all even out in the end - yeah right !

Lots of sexism on this thread. Lots of women running around doing everything. Why tolerate men who push you into that or are you conditioned in childhood to believe wrongly that only women can make school appointments or wash floors?

its not unequal due to gender though - rather due to women being the ones who want to work part-time/be with their children more. this is exacerbated because of the (more common) finances - it makes better sense for the lower paid person to be the one to go part-time etc and this is often the woman.
Of the top 12 women in the organisation I work for- 10 of them have/had stay at home partners

All this talk of choice is misleading. Other countries allow women to manage careers and families better because they offer REAL choices, i.e. Affordable, highly regulated childcare till 6-7pm, flexible work schemes etc etc why do you think the fertility rate is so high in France? Yet I don't see French women agonising over work V stay at home. They take it as granted that both work and children can go hand in hand. Sure, their system is not perfect either but at least having children don't mean a complete surrendering of career options. None of my French female friends are stay at home and strange enough their kids seem well adjusted.

Interesting programme on Radio 4 at the moment on the shortage of women in engineering - I wonder if they will cover these issues

here

Interesting programme on Radio 4 at the moment on the shortage of women in engineering - I wonder if they will cover these issues

here

Interesting programme on Radio 4 at the moment on the shortage of women in engineering - I wonder if they will cover these issues

here

.. in fact part time and child care have already been mentioned before I finished typing!

Definitely! If I had a stay at home parent at home I'd be able to go even further :) Nothing to do with being male or female, just I would be able to take advantage of ad hoc opportunities and stay late to help a team project and just be present and seen to be contributing even more.

I agree with a lot of the world's on here I don't think the gender imbalance is in the work place in this case it's further back than that when it's ingrained in both women and men that it's the women who takes time off and does the child care and pick ups.

Interesting programme on Radio 4 at the moment on the shortage of women in engineering - I wonder if they will cover these issues

here

.. in fact part time and child care have already been mentioned before I finished typing!

I think the problem is cultural perceptions that roles 'have' to be full time. My department has seven people, only one of whom is full time at the moment - the manager is part time too. But we are very effective, win and deliver six-figure contracts and have also won awards for our work. We get it done because we work as a team, are good at our roles and don't waste much time on internal organisational bullshit.

sorry for multiple posts! teach me to go on MN at work!

Agree newtwenty - there is no fundamental rule that says every role must take 40-50 hours a week, and many people working at a high level have several different roles.

Equally, the culture of working from 9-6 and then socialising in the pub till about 7 has evolved because that suits people with no other responsibilities. On the other hand that also predates the era of being contactable all day long, exchanging documents and logging onto systems from anywhere in the world at any time.

Well Cameron seems to want everyone to have a job/career. Is he part of the "nanny faction" ?

Fwiw, I think our generation drew the short straw. My mums generation were mostly sahm- all of my aunts, theirs social network etc. we are the guinea pigs for career with family. I worked ft until last April with 4 kids under 9. I paid the price for 'having it all' when I plummeted into depression. Work life balance was completely wrong for me. I was off sick for 6 months and am only back, thankfully recovered. I never want to go back to that place again. Ever. I'm staying in my career but with pt hours. I'm lucky in that respect. But mental health is so important. I will never forget The day I crashed. I was so far removed from the person I used to be, and from the mum I was. I'm back now My advice to my dds is to establish a pt career, so that they never get used to a ft wage. And marry rich lol

Ld29 what is the advice for your ds if you have any?

You can't have it all.
But neither can any other woman.
YANBU ... however management positions tend to be FT due to the nature of the work.

LD 29, you're right - we're the generation who is trying to fins the right balance - and define the "pattern" of a woman's life. I used to be an ambitious graduate with 2 good degrees. I das 3 children, took a year of maternity leave after each birth and worked full-time, then 4 days a week, then 3 days a week. At some point I got very bored of my "career maintenance" job and created my own business where I work "flexibly" and "part-time" (a typical working day pattern is: 9 am - 3 pm and then 8pm-10 pm or later than needed). I do spend all of my afternoons with my children and 2 mornings per week with my yongest one), so I'm happy to be there for my children and to earn some money. But once my children are older, I won't be able to return on a "normal" carreer track - I will either carry on with what I do now or completely reinvent myself (my dream occupation would be: lady of leisure - go to the gym, hairdersser's, coffee shops etc and never work for money again - just joking :-))

I'm not so sure that our generation has it worse off than the one before.

My DM was training to be a doctor and was allowed the grand total of 10 weeks maternity leave before she had to return to her course or fail to qualify. It was meant to be 6 weeks, but she fractured her femur giving birth so got an extra few weeks !

My DM managed to get a p/t job after she qualified when I was at school, with the grand total of two half days off per week, apparently they decided to stop her National Insurance contributions because she was p/t. Oh and DF thought he was a bit of a modern hero at the time as his massive contribution to household management and child rearing was to occasionally push me round outside in the pram when I was a baby, apparently the other men told him to stop it as I was giving them a bad name .

On the other hand I have a p/t job that fits nicely around DS's school hours and can also buy additional parental leave during the summer holidays (before anyone asks where DH is in all this, he is a contractor so it costs a lot more for him to take time off. This was a joint family decision for him to be contractor and me permie). Yes I have sacrificed career progression for a period of time, but I continue to earn a pretty decent salary with pension contributions and have generally a very happy life.

I think sometimes having so much choice around what you can do makes it hard to choose and then accept if you have made the right decision or not. The stark reality is that p/t working only gets you so far, in my job there's no way I could have maintained my professional reputation and done the senior job I used to do whilst dashing out the door to do school pick up.

Some people are good at multi tasking, some people have grandparents who help out, others have DH's who do a larger share of the childcare. We all have different circumstances and just have to make the best of what we choose to do.

I don't think the current generation having babies drew the short straw. There are pros and cons in every generation.

My mum's generation were mostly SAHM. Might seem rosy in some ways, but a lot of women were bored shitless and frustrated at never having the opportunities given to men, despite being as intelligent.

I am in my 50s and of the generation that had 12 week maternity leave. Downside was that it was physically tougher, particularly for those of us who carried on bf longer term, and also if you had a baby waking for night feeds and then an early childcare drop off and a day's work. Upside was that there was none of the separation anxiety and settling in issues which can be a big problem if you've had a year of being at home and then have to adjust to the world of childcare and work again.

I recommend being positive and looking at the upsides of whatever generation you're born into. After all, there's nothing you can do about when you happen to be born! And on balance I genuinely thing society has moved on so much that it really is easier to balance things between men and women nowadays. If you don't want to put your career on the back burner then don't. At least you have a choice- unlike generations of women beforehand who had no option but to give up there career on having kids- or even in some cases, when they got married

Some of you must have had rich ancestors! Women in our family have always worked. Even my grand mother (she was widowed with a baby). My mother supported my father for about 12 years whilst he qualified as a doctor. I took 2 weeks off to have each baby and went back full time. So this past golden time when women married millionaires who kept them for life just never existed. Parents male or female will always find the phase of having babies is very hard work but it does pass and those who have kept up their work and earn a lot and have a good career move into the best most fruitful times of their professional lives between 45 and 65+. The bst is yet to come unless you've been in a sexist marriage, given up work and are left with no money, no job, no children and a husband who has disappeared abroad with all the money and his mistress.

Give up work and rely on male earnings at your peril. You will usually end up regretting part time work and low hours.