To feel depressed for the future for 'treadmill families'?

[user1478265589]

A report on the BBC website today says more and more people are having to run, just to stay still, and that's the experience of many people I know. I don't even know what can be done about it, it's just really depressing...

• Millions of workers - particularly women - are trapped in low pay

• Only one in eight children from low-income backgrounds is likely to become a high-income earner as an adult

• From the early years through to universities and the workplace, there is an entrenched and unbroken correlation between social class and success

• Despite some efforts to change the social make-up of the professions, only 4% of doctors, 6% of barristers and 11% of journalists are from working-class backgrounds.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37987166

I really want to disagree with you about "There is no fixing this" adi.

The collaborative, communal, more social outlook that brought social housing, nhs, education, etc was developed once before. All those things were built and developed once before, at a time when people had much fewer resources than we have now. Like I said, the Industrial Revolution was initially an absolute dog-eat-dog affair, concern over the state of the new working class took a long while to develop. They didn't even have the benefit of a prior model to look back on. If they did it once, even to the extent of creating the concept of one law applying to all, it can be done again.

There is an increasing awareness that things can't go on like this, I think. I hope. It will require the educated articulate middle classes - the same who are currently under attack on both sides, with this unholy alliance of the very rich and very poor - to accept greater taxes and more moderate standards of living, and hold the richer classes to account for their wastage. First and foremost it takes communication and awareness, and thanks to that bloody referendum that is slowly creeping up.

I hope there is hope!

I think feminism is very much a central part of creating a better society changing. And no, none of us individually can do everything right now.

When I was a kid in Glasgow in the 80s things seemed dire but essentially all I had to do was pass my Highers and then a nice life was within reach - rents and house prices were more reasonable than they are now and it was a lot easier to get into a decent graduate job. I also got a grant and didn't have to pay fees which was an immense help, not just materially but in encouraging me to take the step of going to university. Everything I did to escape poverty is harder now than it was 20 years ago.

Can you explain that further bungo?

I wouldn't doubt feminism is am integral part but it's not without it's flaws and ofcourse people see it to mean different things. I also can't see how it could be an only part iykwim.

While it's off topic, but links to what I said above post, I would agree with Millers view that while feminism did an amazing job of exposing child abuse, it firmly placed the blame on the patrarchy and created the image of female child victim. While there are plenty of stats to show men are more commonly abusers, and females more commonly victims, it's not the only truth and women sexually abuse children also (see making daughters safe again) and male children and adults are victims also. We need more than just feminism imo. Sorry for off topic.

I think a lot of people seem to misunderstand degrees. Many don't lead to any specific career path- and that's ok. They are used by employers (particularly big corporates) to identify bright young people - basically those who are smart enough to learn.

I started my career in big 4 accountancy and you'll find their graduates will have degrees in all sorts- geography, bio chemistry, English, art. They don't want people with accountancy degrees! They join up and are put through accountancy exams on the basis that if they're intelligent enough to get a good degree from a good uni in the above subjects they're more likely to be intelligent enough to do the accountancy exams required.

When you start to think about how employers are using degrees to hire graduates it puts them in a different light really.

Also- I hate to say it but obviously lots of people on this site are parents and you are going to be at a disadvantage in many career paths if you want to have children shortly after leaving uni.
That will affect things. Its common for graduates to need to spend the rest of their 20s building their careers until they're in a position where they're skilled, desirable and earning well, and look at starting a family in their 30s. I think graduates on MN who are doing non graduate jobs probably have to accept the children, not their backgrounds, have had a strong influence on that.

Changing well these are only my thoughts, I expect the women on the feminist boards could talk about it better and have some actual evidence on hand: and it certainly isn't the only thing that matters.

Yes feminism has come to mean many things to many people, many of them insults. I was thinking of the basic concept that women are of equal value to men. For a start that assumption directly makes things better for more than half of the population: it usually also includes added concern for children. As you said none of us have to put up with violence in marriages any more and have more options in general. We haven't won the fight by a long shot and seem to be in the middle of a backlash, but women now can go to work - if they can find it and make it work around kids - have their own money, are not usually subjected to 'honour killings' (stupid phrase) and are not legally dependent on male approval.

The other element is that I think it makes society less tolerant of violence in general and more inclined to value mental resources over physical. We don't officially tolerate bullying any more for instance, whereas it pretty much used to be accepted. Men benefit from that too.

I'm sure there was some work done showing that the more equal, peaceful, happier societies are usually more feminist as well but I would need academic resources to go and look for that!

I certainly don't accept that the modern broken economy and house prices particularly are all women's fault, as a pp upthread said. For a start as she said herself, feminism was active in the 60's and 80's: the current house price problem started in the late '90s. Financial deregulation in the 90s is possibly the single biggest direct cause.

also increased population and BTL in the case of house prices.

Ah, yes, the good ol 'extended family', all living together and taking care of each other. What it really meant was the women doing the vast majority of the work. 'We didn't have daycare back in my day, it was called Grandma's house'. Because Grandma wasn't allowed out to work. Married women were regularly sacked when they became pregnant. Divorce was frowned upon. And we really hold that up as an example of how it should be? Or Africa, where millions of people are trying to get the hell out due to war, religious persecution, persecution for being homosexual, FGM, famine, etc.? For real?

This has always been the case, a friend of mine had an interview at Guys and whilst he was waiting for his interview and he asked another candidate if he was nervous, no said the student Daddy was at Eton with Mr X , the admissions selector, and he said I've already got the place. During the interview he was asked if he thought he would fit in as he attended a comprehensive whilst the majority of the students were privately educated.

He did extremely well in his exams including S levels an Guys rang him up offering him a place, he told them to eff off

In any situation where there is inequality it should be up to the people who are benefitting to rectify it. But that's just not how humans work. We do keep hold of whatever we've got, even if we know someone else is suffering as a result.

Those who are on the wrong end of inequality don't have the time/energy/resources/education to put it right. Those of us (and I include myself, although I'm no billionaire, or even millionaire) who have some education, resources etc should be trying to work on this stuff.

I actually believe that education has the potential to be truly subversive. It's what I remind myself when I'm having a tough time at work.

I literally think a revolution is required and yet that's been absolutely quashed by showing what happens when the looting in 2010 was it occurred. Ok that was totally wrong but it was a backlash against the status quo and those who were involved were dealt with severely ... Who's going to put their head above the parapet next time ?

MatchingBlueSocks, you make a valid point that early parenthood is a huge obstacle to economic success. I had advantages, being of the generation that went to an RG university on a full grant in the 1970s, but I didn't have my family until I was over 40 and I worked all the hours in between, freelance and employed, on two continents. I reached a certain standing in a high-pressure field of work (not regarded as a profession) but it was incompatible with being a parent. That we are not hard up is thanks to the savings built gradually over many years when I earned much more than now.

I guess I'm not convinced that feminism allways means better care of children. Ofcourse sometimes, but not allways, not inherently so.

I think often the focus is wrong. That actually if we valued children needs more, if we recognised the huge importance of early years, that it would become more socially acceptable for men to be sahp's as well, and if that was the case companies would become mire flexible, more adaptable, more family orientated. And more men doing the childcare would inevitabley mean more women taking the lead in workplaces. And valuing 'women's' role would mean caring jobs become better paid, more men in caring roles.

At one point a significant part of feminism was that the 'wife' work was of equal value to mens work outside of the home, yet it seems to have changed so that sahp is the lowest of the low, and that if a women is not out working she is wasting her education, has no identity, etc. And it's often women who sling these insults. I understand worrying about being dependant apon a spouse, but this isn't a concern of the sahd's I know, who are somehow revered by women despite doing a roll they look down on other women for doing. In the middle of this mess I think children's needs get lost, so this aspect of feminism isn't good for anyone imo. We need 'childism', we need to ensure the needs of the most vulnerable as a priority.

Not disputing that there's many ways in which feminism is good for kids also, or that two parent working family's are bad- before anyone twists this- but I don't buy the often trotted out line that feminism fixes everything and allways helps children either, I think there's a lot more to it than that iykwim.

changing - caring for a child is just too personal to be able to get good evidence of ideologies and how they affect parenting. The vast majority of people parent in a way that they were parented (hence why abuse goes from one generation to the next). Romantic relationships follow the same pattern.

That's why it's so difficult to come up with things like feminist theory of parenting, or marxist theory of relationships. The personal is political, but politics rarely override personal feelings.

Totally agree sock. I spent my 20s and early 30s working on my career and had my children after 35. I was earning enough for their childcare and senior enough to demand a small level of flexibility. Had I had them at 24 these things would be very unlikely to have happened

The cycle of abuse can be broken by social attitudes, social awareness and acceptance it isn't ok. I parent very different to how I was parented, but if I grew up in a time where family conneutrons were valued above all others then I wouldn't have had the chance to escape.

I know plenty of couples where he would be much better suited to part time flexible working and taking charge of the child & house organisation & care, yet the male dominated jobs are less likely to be that flexible. What is socially acceptable or advantageous does effect people. Which is why smacking is much less acceptable now than it was, and while some people's parents weaned them at 2 mths they wait until 4/5/6. It's a slow shift but it does happen and the greater emphasis on self awareness, self development, emotional intelligence, accessing therapy for interpersonal difficulties, or parenting books/sites/classes means people do evaluate how they were parented and make concious choices to do so differently.

I'd say most of the work-life and economic problems of having children is because they are still viewed as women's problem, and usually our fault too. Imo the continuing divide into 'male' and 'female' professions, with the female invariably carrying lower economic reward and status, is a reflection of the lower status women are given - and that the status of professions goes down when they become predominantly female and up when they become male. But certainly the pretence that children don't exist and can be easily farmed out should stop: work needs to be more flexible, it needs to be accepted that most of us will need time out, both men and women, and no one benefits from increasing workload and fewer jobs in the professions. I think eventually, with other issues around availability of work i.e. technology creep, what we currently call 'part time' will have to become the norm.

I'd agree with that bungo

But the idea that children are women's 'fault' effective suggests they are a negative, and I guess that's what u feel needs to change. If society viewed children and child rearing (in whatever combo of childcare/wor king around each other or sahp works for individual families) it wouldn't need to be any body's 'fault'.

And that's likely a both ways thing, where is needs addressed from both perspectives (why we devalue children because they are 'womens' problem, and why we don't hold greater regard for children themselves and who does the primary childcare -mostly women)

I do think this government has constantly passed down negative messages about women who are sahp's (as well as those who have disabilities/benefit claiments/immigrants etc) and that also carries the message that children are worthless and irelevant. As does the proposed 30 hrs free childcare which coincidences with benefits being cut at 3 years to come. It's great for anyone who wants to woh, but that's not right for every child or every family. My children's disabilities weren't diagnosed until after they were at school, yet I knew what was going on, and I knew they needs me there from birth. I'm lucky that my partner supports us, and I have/do work part time around him. But it feels very dangerous that from anyone without a partner in my position would have been forced to compromise their children's wellbeing, because sahp just isn't good enough. And those messages, whilst targeted at single sahm's negatively effect all children as well. And the problem needs tackled from both angles.

My work could have been considered 'creative'; it was then extremely well paid (not so much now because of techno changes) but it depended on contacts and being ready to work all hours and travel at a moment's notice. Women held most of the senior jobs but none (or none I knew) could combine the work with parenthood, so each generation quit between 35-45 to be replaced by slightly younger versions of themselves. I hung on until I was 50, by which time there was a generation gap of 20 years in age and at which stage I was too old to be part of the gang. After retraining for a profession, my FT earning power was only 25% of what I earned in eight months of the year before. My present financial security depends on DH (who earned/earns a fraction of what I once did) and what we saved back then into a pension.

We work hard just managed to buy a home at 34&35 but had to move out of London to do it l

We can't move dh works full time I pt time
Dh has two degrees

We can't go abroad we can't have a new car we can just about Bob above water

While corbyn groans on about fringe issues I would like some real help please

It's not easy to buy a house when you work part time though. Is that hard working?

If there are children then working PT seems valid.

There is, in general, a complete under-value of just how much time/money children take up. Instead of valuing that input and making it a priority in society, it is touted as a 'personal choice' which the individuals should be solely responsible for. That's true - but it is also necessary for society to have children who are raised to be contributing members of society. It's a long-term investment in our entire future which shouldn't be skimped on.

However, we all know that people will continue to have children and care for them, no matter what, which means that governments have less incentive to support families with young children.

Yes but then- it's not surprising that it's hard to buy a house is it? This is what we were saying earlier about having children younger massively impacting your finances

Once upon a time, people went out to work at 12 and married and had their children young too. It was the norm to have several, and sadly to lose some in infancy before antibiotics. Assisted conception was unknown. Life expectancy was much shorter.

If we adjusted our thinking to reflect social changes, having children before one was 35 would be seen as being nearly as calamitous as teen pregnancy or illegitimacy used to be. Times are tough for most young people in every generation and on every continent, but the factors causing the stresses change, as do expectations. Resources have always been finite and spread thinly, usually unevenly, and young people inevitably envy the material assets accumulated by their elders who have had longer to become established. In an era when the media celebrate rampant consumerism, it is much harder to stomach not having what is shown.