to think dual person 'full time' worker family households should never have become the norm?

[workingdilemma]

Was thinking about the other thread talking about tax credits etc.

Around 40 years ago, as a society we'd reached a point where one person working in a household was enough to support a young family.

Now we've ended up where it's pretty much required to have both working full time to be able to afford the same lifestyle - mainly due to the insane 'cost' of housing.

It would have been far better to have had both people in a couple working perhaps part time to allow engagement with the world of work, and also a healthier work/life balance.

Why did we end up like this? Was it all an orchestrated plan to keep the debt cycle going - after all, you can lend on two incomes now for a mortgage. Lovely jubbly for the debt pushers. Is that why the banks and governments encourage this?

I dunno, but I do yearn for a better way to deal with the problems we're having now then everyone demonising each other.

"Otoh I am judgy (blush) about households where both adults work at full time very well-paid jobs and have a load of disposable income. It seems like they're hogging the best jobs. "

What if you both had good jobs (or good earning potential) before you met? Is one of you supposed to just go "oh well, I must sacrifice my career dreams, not for the good of my family but so that Barry up the road can have my job"? This also reminds me far too much of when a girl in my class told me that my working mother was "taking a job from a man who needs it". :( The reason why both DP and I have well-paid professional jobs is that we are both highly qualified and really good at what we do, should we have tried harder to find a partner who didn't want a career?

"Are you caring for a senile parent and a sick child, and doing voluntary work at the same time as working full time, leedy? Is it possible or desirable for all adults to do full time, paid work? Does "full time" even mean anything? For some people the hours are far longer than for others, even in "full time" work. We can't all live in cycling distance of work."

Well, of course I'm not claiming that I'm representative of all working parents, or that all people should organize their lives exactly like me, or that everyone is in my (quite fortunate) circumstances, I'm just giving one example of how it is entirely possible for some people to have a two-parent-working household without it being stressful/environmentally unsound/workaholic hell. And the cycling distance of work thing was extremely deliberate, we waited for a long time until we could afford to buy a house that was fairly central in our city with good transport links. Ditto the non-ridiculous hours, I knew my current workplace was the one for me when my first manager told me she'd think less of me if I was always in the office, and I was one of those terrible feckless women who had children "late" because by then I was pretty senior and had some flexibility in my work arrangements. Again, not saying that everyone should do this or can do this, but that's how I prioritized things in a way that works for my family.

Lotus...so what? Their daughters had "better" jobs, which is nice for them, but seems to be glossing over not everyone WANTS a high powered job. If others do, great.

"The effect was particularly marked when women worked before their daughters turned 14, perhaps because girls accepted from an early age that a job was a normal part of life."

That's interesting - my mother (and grandmothers) worked, so I suppose it simply never occurred to me that I wouldn't, it just seemed normal.

In the article, did the study control for household income?

And, er, did this study control for genetics? (I'm not sure how...)

How did the Harvard study decide what makes one career "better" than another? Or one life better than another, given that one's life is not just one's paid work? Did it go beyond work and ask women whether they were happy with their lives?

Lotus does the study correlate the difference between the US 23% and the other countries 6% with the difference in the gender pay gap in different countries? This is interesting because it comes back to an earlier thread discussion we had about whether PT working and generous maternity leaves were in fact part of the problem with regards to the UK. Also did the study control for the mother's working life prior to childrearing?

xiaozhu your insight is interesting as one of the reasons I no longer work is that for our circumstances, even with a good professional salary it made more sense for us to relocate from London and live on one income than for me to maintain my career.

Sitting with my head in my hands in despair at those who still think women should stay at home to give a man a job. I would have more sympathy if you were suggesting early retirement for some to give the younger workforce opportunities to progress. This may also help to readjust the housing wealth imbalance.

How did the Harvard study decide what makes one career "better" than another?

Ding! And the prize for critical thinking ability goes to rabbit.

I'm sure the harvard study is true. But success is highly subjective.

"How did the Harvard study decide what makes one career "better" than another?"

Higher pay and a more senior role, it says so in the article. I think the "better" bit is from the headline, not the study.

So not better in everyone's perception, then. The headline could also have said, "women whose mothers went to work are more likely to be interested in money, power and status than those whose mothers stayed at home," then?

If Valium prescribing was to help discontended housewives in the 1970s, then what is the cause of Prozac prescriptions going through the roof, higher rates of alcoholism amongst women, and a "crisis in mental health"? Is that because of bored housewives, too? Or just a media frenzy?

The harvard study is just confirming the obvious. People tend to follow what the past.

If your mum was successful at work, you probably use that as a model to aspire to.

If your mum favoured work life balance, maybe you might too?

If your mum was a frustrated stay at home mother - then that too might rub off on you and you go down the corporate route.

None of these things are bad or good.

Its just that the study leaves out the nuance that the definition of success in life isnt necessarily seniority, power and money at work.

"women whose mothers went to work are more likely to be interested in money, power and status than those whose mothers stayed at home,"

Jasus. My mother was a teacher. I work in IT. I'm in it for the money in the sense that it pays the bills and for some nice things, but you make it sound like anyone who aspires to work for a wage is like Donald Trump.

Also my mother working normalized work in the sense that I just assumed it was something you did. I also saw her get great satisfaction from her job as it was something she really enjoyed. At no point did I see her going to work and thought "wow, the incredible power and status you get as a teacher looks AMAZING, I'm going to have some of that". :)

I absolutely don't think one person should feel the need to give up an enjoyable, well-paid job in order to 'share' their enjoyable well-paid job. I'm suggesting that both partners work part-time. They'd still be doing enjoyable well-paid jobs, with enough income to live on and other people would get a share of the (enjoyable, well-paid) cake too. It's not outrageous to say that part of the reason for both parents in a household doing full-time well-paid work is purely materialistic where they have a load of disposable income.

(There will obviously be other reasons too: status, wish to not do a lot of childcare, fear of loss of promotion opportunities....)

I particularly wish more men who have well-paid, enjoyable jobs would be willing to work part-time. I assume it would have the effect of 'normalising' (for want of a better word) men taking equal responsibility for child care.

I wonder (not a passive aggressive way of suggesting that this is definitely the case, genuinely just exploring this thought) if part-time workers might be more productive , (assuming it allows more time for a healthy lifestyle than full-time work + children does).

I think there is a hidden cost of very-high levels of two full-time working parents. If everyone (admittedly in a utopian state I've yet to see) had a healthy work-life balance (resulting in a healthier life (in general) and more time to do unpaid caring) they would cost the NHS, their employers and possibly the 'environment' less. Then there would be more in the exchequer's 'pot' available to spend on things for the 'public good' or on increasing wages for the public sector.

Well yes, if people (housewives etc) on the thread are quite keen their daughters become housewives or that they don't go for the "better" jobs - that's great for my children. Less competition.

Unfortunately I found in my grandfather's 1920s or 30s press cuttings album from when he was a local town councillor reports of his speeches to the council saying as it was so hard for male doctors to obtain jobs that all women doctors in that area of NE England should no longer be hired so that men who had families to support got the jobs instead! (My mother had a very low opinion of him and rightly so on that score).

If housework and no pay or status is such a lot of fun let men to it. I am more than happy with the throne rather than some awful power behind it business just used to keep women down.

howabout So instead of women staying at home to leave jobs free for men you would have sympathy with older people being expected to stay at home to leave jobs free for younger people.

Well, as only half the species is female but we all want to be older and most of us will be . . . I will leave it to others to work out whether it is better to discriminate against even more people, finish my coffee, and get back to the higher-than-average pay job which I am hogging in my sixties.

leedy - I don't think all women go out to paid work because they are obsessed with money, power and status. I agree with you that someone's career can bring them great happiness and a sense of purpose and achievement as well as money. However, I was querying the conclusion of a headline which summarises a study by saying that women whose mothers went out to work are more likely to have "better" careers.

There are a lot of jobs (enjoyable and well-paid or otherwise) that you just can't do part-time, though. Not sure I could do mine. And I don't particularly want to work part-time. I really like my job. I am very good at it. I am not being made unhealthily stressed by it. I have a healthy lifestyle that I don't think would be any healthier if I wasn't working full time. I am happy right now. Also I'm not sure what's so wrong with earning money, I'm not spending it on gold bathtaps or anything but I like the fact that I'm not worried/stressed about money, I have savings, we could continue to pay our mortgage if one of us was made redundant, we could help other family members out if necessary, etc.

You seem to be coming at this from a perspective that it's not possible to have "work-life balance" with a full-time job and that part-time is the ideal scenario. That may be the case for some, but for a lot of people that's just not the case.

(sorry, that last reply was for rogueantimatter...)

Yes, what is wrong with men staying at home to care for the children? I don't see anything wrong with that, if it works in their particular partnership. It's all rather tiresome to focus on the individual, as though they are doing everything entirely for themselves and just happen to have a partner and a few children hanging around in the background.

Rouge my view is very similar to yours, I think society would be better off with people working less hours and having more time.

That's great leedy. I completely accept that some people can cope/thrive with being one half of a couple who both have full-time, enjoyable-well-paid jobs and children. But it causes a lot of people stress. And it goes without saying that when both partners work full time, they have to either call on someone else to help if the children are sick, or there's a crisis with a loved one or take time-off work. If everyone worked full time there would be no slack in the system. More elderly people would be living (unwillingly) in care etc

There's nothing wrong with "earning money" . Obviously. My problem is with people who have more than enough disposable income, depriving other people of enough income by not working part-time.

I don't see how most jobs couldn't be part-time anyway.

Why is there this idea that women working is new and never happened before in history?

Look back down the years and how many women have worked - having a wife at home supervising servants was a status symbol for the men.
Even when women were "only" doing housework 300 years ago they worked longer hours then men did in employment in many cases.

Women worked in the mines and in factories and mills and so did children.
Only a very few households in any era could afford a stay at home wife and mother, and even fewer could afford servants.
Laundry as a job has always been done by women, as well as many domestic servant duties - if women stopped working the entire economy would collapse - or we would need massive immigration to fill all the vacant posts.

If women stopped working there would be a shortfall of people who could do the jobs.
Even now we have massive immigration to fill jobs that would remain open as we don't have enough workers, ,ale or female to do them.

The thing that is wrong is the dominant idea that women should be at home as somehow only mothering is important and fathering is some sort of add-on. This limit's women's options and insults men (as it basically assumes they can't master parenting skills or emotional closeness to their children).

Absolutely, Migg. I also agree that plenty of us have full time well paid jobs we like and we do not want to work shorter hours. There is no rule book which says the route to happiness is low paid and short hours.

The premise of this thread that it is desirable if most households contained a housewife is wrong on so many levels.

there was a stage in the 60s I think it was when Wilson the PM talked about the forthcoming white heat of technology - that we would not need to work more than an hour or two a day as labour saving devices and computers would work for us whilst we sat around looking at the flowers. That never quite happened.

And yes plenty of jobs cannot be done part time. A surgeon cannot leave an operation mid way. I cannot just leave a court hearing. I can't leave an over night deal. I cannot clock off a conference call because it's gone on beyond 3 hours and nor do I want to.

A surgeon can't leave an operation half way but he can work 2 days a week for example. Part time doesn't mean as soon as your hours are up you leave, it means working less days.