To think if I had paid £6k a year to have my daughters educated by this woman

[catgirl1976]

I'd want my money back

www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/head-teacher-tells-girls-you-cant-have-a-career-and-be-a-mum#.xfVk8JvGg

Glad she's stepping down.

I get telling girls there is a glass ceiling, but she's pretty much telling them to roll over and accept that.

I get telling girls that it's a valid choice to choose not to have children, but her message over all is appalling.

Have any of you looked that "themanwhohasitall" on twitter (can't do a hashtag for some reason...) That is brilliant.

Oh, no! I don't agree at all, timely.

There are men who feel just as strongly as women do that they want children and want to sacrifice their careers to have them, I'm sure of it. I think my big brother is one of them.

The thing is, for women all the pressure is pushing towards saying that if you really want children, and if you really love them, you may have to compromise.

Whereas if you are a man who really wants children and feels that strong biological drive, you rarely have the social pressure to combine that feeling with wanting to give up work, or to feel guilty for working. Surely the opposite pressure applies? You have men who would much rather be at home with their babies, but who feel they can't do that.

And you also have the situation - I believe - where men feel just as strong a biological drive to have, and care for, children, but where they also feel they're doing a perfectly good job of it by putting those children in nursery or by working longer hours or whatever. And yet if women do those things, it's stigmatized.

Surely before we assume these are biological/innate differences, we'd have to level out the powerful social conditioning?

fwiw you only have to look at the Big 4 Firm I work at and see how many partners are m/F, how many have kids and how many have one or more divorces to see the impact of trying to have it all.

IT just is not possible for 2 adults to both have huge careers, a successful marriage and a good relationship with happy kids WITHOUT significant help at home. Sadly most of us do not live near retired family members who can help out nor do we have the money at the crucial stage of mid career to pay for the full time nanny and cleaners in order to reach the upper echelons of our careers with relationships all still intact.

The alternative is that one or both of us agree to cut back our hours and our ambitions in order that the family come first. Unfortunately this can mean 2 careers suffer and niether partner reach their full career potential. Therefore many couples I know review their personal circumstances and make an early decision around who will cut back and who will try to forge ahead in their career. Sometimes it is the man who becomes the SAHP and sometimes the woman.

Ok Leavingsosoon, I've had a little Google and can't see any definitions of 'a feminist' that contradict my post.

Can you enlighten me?

Anna, I'm not sure there is one singular definition of a feminist; I can't count the number of times I have read on here that certain views are incompatible with feminism and therefore if you hold them you are not a feminist.

I think everybody has a different idea of what constitutes a feminist and it is entirely possible she is a feminist according to your definition but not to hers.

It doesn't have to be that way. I used to work with a man from a Nordic company and we were pretty good mates. He said his American wife was struggling with ex-pat life in his country. I said "The answer's obvious! Come to London! You'll triple your salary, and your wife will be much happier". He said he couldn't do that, because he wanted to be there for his kids, and needed the automatic assumption in his home country that his family came first, even though he had a high status job, and even though he was a male parent rather than a female parent

leaving, is there any definition of feminist that holds that it's un-feminist to tell women about the glass ceiling?!

I accept there are many definitions, but honestly, for her to claim she's not a feminist for that reason just makes her look absurd.

That sounds uncomfortably to me as if he was making decisions he wanted over his wife's wishes and using the children as a reason or even excuse, but perhaps you had to be there.

Jeanne, I interpreted that comment in this way:

'I am not going to tell girls they can be equal to men, because I don't believe they can. Unlike men who can outsource childcare to their female partners, women don't usually have that luxury which means that ultimately they have to choose between children or a career.'

Increasingly I am feeling that in most western societies feminism only rears its head explicitly when a woman becomes a parent.

YY, with you there: in most western societies feminism only rears its head explicitly when a woman becomes a parent.

If she had said that, I would understand.

One marriage one career. Up to the couple to decide who has it.

But there are couples who have two 'careers'. And far more couples who have none.

"I'm not a feminist because there is a glass ceiling".

I'm a feminist because there's a glass ceiling and I don't think it should be there!

Whatever the ins and outs of the rest of her interview, just that statement alone suggests she's a sandwich short of a picnic; what an idiotic thing to say!

Interesting how she says "Women have to prepare for the biological fact of motherhood". No, if they choose to have children, they have to prepare for the biological fact of pregnancy. What happens afterwards is purely a social choice; they can either go straight back to work, take maternity leave, take a shortened maternity leave, quit work, get a more flexible job (few and far between these days, I know). The father can do everything the mother can (other than breastfeed, obviously, but not all women can or do breastfeed), so why shouldn't men have to prepare for fatherhood? Why do they not have to factor it into their careers?

This assumption that women should be the primary caregiver and should be happy about it puts unnecessary pressure on women and makes fathers feel devalued. It's harmful and leads to postnatal depression when women feel shamed for struggling with early motherhood.

I think that is a bit of a blanket statement
Yes, it was! Apologies to my sil who is a great dad!

Plenty of men manage because they're usually not the ones doing most of the childcare and running the house. People have to be realistic. Somebody has to do it. I agree full time motherhood isn't a choice for a lot of people. And some men aren't ambitious either. And don't want to work all hours and lose out of family life. One answer doesn't fit all.

Interesting. I went to a very high flying school that wouldn't dream of letting the fact that we were girls clip our wings. The school actively trying to push us into law, medicine and engineering: my entire careers advice when I expressed an interest in dentistry was "no you can do better than that. Why not medicine?"

Actually I wish we had been "allowed" to consider how family-friendly careers were, rather than just aiming for the stars. Up to a certain point, flex IS more important than salary, not just for me but DH too, especially with primary school age DC.

I am actually glad someone is saying this. I felt so cheated, after having DS1, having bought into the myth, the biggest myth of all, that I could "have it all". I can't. 2 dc and a Dh who is the breadwinner, no family support, means the tatters of my career always come third place. Irony is I am much better at my job than I am at being a mother, but fact remains somebody has to give DC breakfast, someone has to pick them up from pre-school, someone has to make them dinner, talk to them, bath them and put them to bed. That someone has to be me because although I earned good money, DH's earning capacity far outstrips mine (his is traditionally male job v. my very female dominated role). Some women, whose circumstances are different to mine, might be able to manage it, but for me it is impossible. This came as the biggest shock of my life, as previously I had assumed I was on a level playing field with men and had consistently outperformed them in terms of education achievements and career progress. We need to face this fact and then re-design society, but perpetuating the myth is just setting the next generation up for a fall.

Jorah the notion that women should immediately return to work after carrying a child for 9 months does not even feature of a solution to this on my personal radar. The American version of ML is completely anti woman IMHO. I would rather see split parental leave whereby both parents are expected to take half of the leave.

I realise this is purely anecdotal so I apologise.

As a little girl my mum was a secretary and a very good one by all accounts, while my dad was a deputy head teacher, and my dad did everything. Mum was NOT a morning person and all my memories are of my dad getting me up, dressed, giving me breakfast, entertaining me. He obviously had me for holidays, and he really was the definition of doting dad - honestly, anyone can describe their husbands or partners and I can raise you ten. Pretty much everything I know, I learned from him: he taught me how to read, how to play the piano, how to speak French, a whole host of random historical facts and tried to teach me maths unsuccessfully. I really have yet to come across a more devoted parent and I've come across a few! He used to take me on country walks with him and carry me back as I'd get tired - anyway, rambling.

My mum retrained as a teacher because I think she felt a little jealous but to be honest I was still a bit closer to my dad.

Then when I was a teenager my mom was diagnosed with cancer: 3 months later she was dead. I was shocked and upset but if I'm honest with myself I wasn't devastated.

My dad completely lost interest after that. Wouldn't talk to me much, didn't spend any time with me, didn't show any interest in me. I was bemused and bewildered. He moved out to live with another woman and our relationship then was patchy at best (not on my part!)

I couldn't make any sense of it until years later when I read that men connect to the children via their mother, and that once the connection with the child's mother goes, so does any connection with the children.

If I'd known that I wouldn't have had children myself, as I do worry a lot about what might happen if I die as I don't expect my now ex to have them and we have no family. But they are here now and hopefully I won't die.

But it's why I agree with timely

Oh, leaving, that's awful.

But there is some counter-evidence to give you hope.

Scientists did studies on women's brains when they had children, and found that having children actually changes women's brains - they are literally, physically affected by it.

So, it was thought that this must be a gendered thing, that women had this capacity to be profoundly physically changed by motherhood.

Men's brains didn't seem to be changed in the same way at all.

But, recently, there was a new study that looked at men who were primary carers of their children - that is, men who took on the roles women traditionally take on. And it was found that their brains changed in the same way women's did.

I found that hopeful, because it suggests that it's not that men are less good at parenting (which is pretty awful as an idea), nor that women are innately more geared to being parents - it's that exposure to babies who need you, makes you start shaping priorities around them.

IT just is not possible for 2 adults to both have huge careers, a successful marriage and a good relationship with happy kids WITHOUT significant help at home.

Touch wood, dh and I both have huge careers, a happy marriage and happy children. We do have significant help at home. I am not embarrassed about it because the concept of having it all is a pile of crap spouted usually (but not always) by women to make other woman feel bad about themselves. So to be clear, I don't have it all. I don't want to have it all.

The reality about life with a high flying career is that affords us the ability to outsource all the mundane or time consuming things so that time with the kids is quality time. That doesn't mean life isn't stressful, just a different stress to most others. I am not going to pile on more stress though...If I was going to beat myself up for not cleaning, cooking, ironing etc then I might as well beat myself up for not having yet invented a cloning machine!

leaving that sounds awful but it also sounds like possible awful, gut wrenching grief.

That's very reassuring jeanne

another - maybe in the first instance but my mum died in 1998 and over a decade later my dad was still the same! I think he just disconnected.

another but some women want to return to work immediately afterwards. Shouldn't they be allowed to?

jorah it should be discouraged, yes because the culture set up by women returning immediately to work puts pressure on the next woman to do the same in the same office environment.