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.

Want2bSupermum - I'm sure you would like childcare and nannies to be more affordable. Do you propose to achieve this by employing poorly skilled, uneducated servants who can't find better paid work, and abolishing any concept of a minimum wage? Or by packing the children of the masses into under resourced sausage factories?

just a comment on part time jobs.
I couldn't convice work to employ 2 part time people (how were both perfect for 2 roles), as the orders from the top were "you can employ 1 person" so we are having to train 1 full time person to do the second perfect part time job.

With this corporate mindset will we ever get new part time jobs.

From a capitalist viewpoint, the ideal is one full time person working at maximum efficiency and never calling in sick - ie preferably a robot. It is not two people with occasionally poorly children, elderly parents, two lots of employment rights and not always the best handover process from one to the other. A world where money (status and power) is King is not a world interested in making life easier for anyone unless it involves guaranteed profit, rather than the likelihood of inconvenience, uncertainty and expense.

Stopping I think parents should be able to decide on what they want to do and working is just as valid as not working or working PT. Every child is different and the needs of each of my DC are very different let alone the needs of every different child in their respective classes.

Head The tax breaks are lip service and don't cover much of the cost. It costs about GBP35k a year to hire a nanny. If I were to do the early years again I would stay FT but hire 2 nannies so they weren't working 60 hours a week. One for 40hrs a week and the other for 20hrs a week. Cost would be about GBP45k a year but well worth the extra money.

round I don't think paying nannies low wages helps anyone. Being realistic, daycare doesn't offer the hours for most families where both parents work FT or have odd hours.

No the tax breaks don't cover all, but are vital to enable some women to remain in work.

Everyone only has the same amount of hours in a day. Therefore it is impossible to be always at that important meeting and doing other stuff whatever that might be.

Therefore you could work more but then you would be at home less. It's a simple equation!

wantobesuper I agree that parents should be able to choose what they want to do. If however they make that choice on the basis of what they want to do, rather than what's best for their children, they are a poor kind of parent (presuming they have the luxury of a true choice). Yes the needs of different children in the same family can be different and it's the parents' responsibility to meet each of these needs to the best of their ability. This is what people sign up for when they have children - there is no rule that adult needs (male or female) trump children's needs.

My last post is a bit too sweeping. I'm not saying somen should martyr themselves to provide perfection for the children. I'm talking about seeing children trapped in fairly small rooms being minded for most of their waking hours, receiving very little home life (during their waking hours) and this being somehow justified by 'adult needs'. Nothing gets a parent off the hook in their responsibility to look unflinchingly at exactly what's going on for their child when they're not there, how happy they are, and if not, if this is a hit they would be prepared to take for themselves. If an adult is asking a child to spend large amounts of time in a setting where they feel unhappy or unfulfilled, while they themselves could not possibly provide a home for that child to return to after school because it would not be optimum for them, I find it pretty poor.

So, being realistic, unless you just so happen to choose a career that is phenomenally well paid, a dh who is equally well paid, and don't have a problem with your nanny seeing the "best" of your children, you ought to think very carefully about your choice of career and whether your career choice is compatible with the family life you desire... And if not, you ought to consider whether you want children at all... as the headteacher said in her speech... And nobody on this thread has come up with a workable solution to this, even those upset by what the headteacher said.

I think a workable solution is changing the culture to assume child are is an issue for women only.

To encourage part time working, home working and flexible working as real options.

To change the culture of employers thinking women are useless at work post children

To improve child care and wrap around care in this country.

And this woman should be inspiring the girls in her care to push for these changes not to give up and accept the status quo.

To be the best mother I can be involves me working. That is what is best for me but we are all different and I fully understand how this isn't best for others. I think we need an approach that allows families to pick what works best for them and trust that they will put their DC first. That involves offering affordable childcare and options to stay home.

You can juggle and work and juggle and have a career. But if you want to get to the top you have to prioritise the job. Both parents can only prioritise the job if they delegate nearly all the child care. The parent relationship will suffer if they don't see you.
Margaret Thatcher found that one of many such articles
You can't get around the fact that children need time. They are closest to the person who gives them that time.

She didn't regret being in politics but she did realise that she couldn't have it all.

Some times I think it might be a case of beware what you wish for!

I work with a woman who does the same job as me but full time. She has two small children and her partner is the SAHD. She has been forced into this because she is the higher earner...it's not what she wants but she earns more so it seems the more logical thing to do. Her DH is quite happy as he wanted to be the SAHD....on the face of it it all seems very modern and liberated but actually the picture is not as it seems. She is as trapped as a stay at home woman who can't work for childcare reasons!

I know of another couple who are both fighting to be the stay at home parent....

It is all about choices.
I can't see anything wrong in the Headmistresses speech. A couple need to think about the issues before they have children. Those choices need to be made to suit them both. Stepping into blindly assuming that you can have it all is a recipe for disaster - one (generally the woman) then gets trapped.
No one can have it all- there are not enough hours in a day.

The main issue here is high flying careers nearly always require you to put in the kind of hours where you are unlikely to see your children during their waking hours Monday to Friday. Even with more affordable childcare this would not change. How many people really want that?

I think the holy grail is being able to have a high flying career but working fewer hours - is that ever going to be possible in a capitalist society with careers such as law and finance? The headteacher is right in that people (both girls & boys) should consider if their chosen career will allow them to have a decent work life balance, and how it will fit around having a family.

They also need to be aware that their feeling may change. Many women who think it will be easy to get back to work are taken aback by the emotional wrench of leaving their baby with someone else.
It helps to talk about the issues- not brush it under the carpet and give the impression you can have it all.

What do you consider high flying? I think DH has a pretty high flying career and he works less hours than I do. What I have found is that the more senior you are, there are so many more options for flexibility that are not there at the junior levels. I am suffering with this now while DH has broken through that level and now can go for golf twice a week with customers (who he is friends with) so doesn't golf at the weekend. He can pick his flights, set his travel schedule and decide which days of the week he will be in the office or work from home.

DH also has his own assistant. I am left booking my own travel, meetings and sorting the client out with billings that the Partner follows up on if they don't pay on time. It takes me 5 hours to get the bill created and sent to the client but the Partner spends less than half an hour following up on that bill that isn't paid.

A lot of high flying careers don't require more than 60 hours a week to get to the top. Over 6 days a week, if you live close to where you work, that is doable with good support and split shifts. In our case, DH goes in early and I come home late. Not sure if my career will be high flying. It feels like a lead balloon these days.

That's what I am saying want - pick something that doesn't need a sixty hour week!

And it doesn't matter really about whether it's high flying or not - we should be enabling women to be able to work for their self fulfilment whether they work in a low paid sector or not.

Gosh want2be. You must really, really want it. I can't imagine finding the job you're describing worth it.

Well there is an expectation that you will put in 'the hours' in many careers. It is something that has increased in more recent times where people are expected to get in early, stay late, and travel in order for their careers to progress. It's just not possible for two parents to work those sorts of hours without someone picking up the slack at home.

stopping I have 2 daughters, your post points to me that I should be teaching them now to prepare for a life where in the future they have to just think of their children and not themselves. While your view seems all altruistic from my now young children's point of view, it does not exactly serve their adult version well where they need to ensure all their focus is on whatever children they have in the future. I personally think modelling a future with real choices will serve them much better to be honest and in the meantime push for a much more family centric society.

Agree with you mehitabel round and bird

HAHAHA - 60 hour week is good. I am on an 80% schedule and working about 40-45 hours a week. Lots of coordination with specialist groups and sending out requests for others to do the work. I review the work. If I worked FT I would be working way way more. During Jan and Feb it is 16 hour days 6 days a week with 5-8 hours on Sunday.

DH is taking flights at 5am but gets to sleep on the plane. No it isn't perfect but his 16 hour days are a whole lot easier than my 16 hour days were. I never got a chance to sleep for 6 of them for a start!

I would say that once you get into the realms of very senior management you don't always need to work 60 hour weeks. Don't get me wrong, I worked ridiculous hours to get there but certainly don't do them now. While I do travel (downside) I still do most school drop offs, am mostly home for bedtime and work from home once a week (upside). When I was pregnant with dc1 years ago, i read in a newspaper article that Fiona Shackleton (Prince Charles and Paul McCartney divorce lawyer) always insisted that she left the office at 5.30pm sharp to be with her kids and this inspired me to do the same.

Ooh, I don't know. DH is a high flyer. Mid 50s. He still works 60 hour weeks. He does it for love although he has scaled down the weekend working and is taking on slightly fewer cases. Spent the children years working 80 hours. I wouldn't have wanted to swap once the dc came along. He is driven and loves it. If I'd wanted to carry on and wanted him to leave at 5 2/3 evenings a week our marriage probably wouldn't have survived. It has been very happy and we have nurtured each others strengths.