Why is it usually the woman who gives up work?

[Firedoll]

I'm on mat leave and have been asked 30+ times if I'll be going back to work and, when I say yes, if I'll be part time.

My DH has never once been asked about his working hours since our DS was born.

And if I say yes I am going back to work I get "oh, will your DS go to nursery/will you get a nanny?" The idea that my DH could look after DS for some of the time while I'm at work just doesn't even enters people's heads.

I don't blame people for asking because they're just making conversation. And it seems they are making a reasonable assumption as if one of the couple is going to give up work/reduce their hours, most of the time it will be the woman. In my experience at least.

But why is this? I see so often on here people saying that their OH couldn't go part time or is the higher earner. But all the latest reports suggest women in their twenties are now out earning men so that can't be true for the majority.

Is it just a cultural thing?

However, as some women take up to a year off with each child and often go back part time - they then cannot complain if men/ women who took shorter ML/women who went back FT/ childless women then get more chances at promotion, pay rises and more interesting projects

But having children is such a small part of your working life! So you take 2x 9 months out in 4 years. Out of a 45 year working career. Do you really think women should accept that their careers will be forever limited because of ML?

Besides which, maternity leave in the US is minimal, but the gender pay gap is extremely large.

Peachbellini123 it's good to know that others are in the same boat as me. I must say I've been interested in this thread as there are many reasons for me going back to work. Like you I feel that husband is better equipped for the job as ds's primary carer but as the woman I feel that people judge me on this so only ever cite the financial aspect when explaining why.

Yes. Because maternity leave is so crap and dat are so costly many women leave work.

Dat are = daycare

Interesting. I am actually coming round to these arguments now.

So do you think that, without ingrained society bias, men and women would have an equal desire to be the main carer? i.e. Women are no more 'maternal' than men?

Same question with jobs, are more men engineers and more women nurses because that's what's expected rather than just what men/women tend to be good at/want to do?

Yes.

Sex is biology. Gender is a social construct.

There is nothing inherent about a vagina or breasts that predispose a woman to be more likely to want to become a teacher with a man more likely to want to become an astronaut.

The idea that biology determines careers is a dangerous and unfortunately very common one.

It's why boys are told from the beginning that they will be providers, that they will probably not want to write and read loads, that girls will sit quietly and write reams because they are girls.

Gender is socially shaped and constructed.

Sex is the biological attribute and yes of course biology shapes certain things. A mother lactates after birth a father does not. But it does not extend to that mother therefore being pre disposed to be a nurse handing out wads of tissue and neither does it predispose the father to be the doctor conducting groundbreaking research into Alzheimer's cells.

But yet this still is three case. Not because of vaginas and penises but because of social shaping.

So do you think that, without ingrained society bias, men and women would have an equal desire to be the main carer? i.e. Women are no more 'maternal' than men?

There's really no way to know this, socialisation is too powerful a force (and as you point out even the language we use for feeling nurturing towards children is feminised, while 'paternal' has very different connotations).

Same question with jobs, are more men engineers and more women nurses because that's what's expected rather than just what men/women tend to be good at/want to do?

But when you look at that you need to look at cultural gender bias as well. There is zero evidence to suggest that British women (9% of engineers) tend to be less good at / less interested in engineering by nature than Latvian or Cypriot women (around 30%) - it's a culture issue of how different countries socialise girls and women around 'traditional' roles.

Hmm. I think it's like the whole genes versus environment argument - far more complex than we really comprehend.

The number of times even on this site that we hear women coming and saying "it made more sense for me to give up work because DH earns ten times what I do/DH is much more motivated" - yes - if you stop right there and take those points at face value yes of course it makes sense.

But why?! WHy do so many men earn ten times more? Why do so many men get into careers/get qualifications that enable them to hold those kinds of jobs?

If you track these men and women back through university years, A levels, GCSEs, right down to early childhood years, you will liekly come up with a historiography of their lives which lead right into the man being in a position vastly different from the woman. Aspirations are shaped differently, A level and university choices are chosen differently based on that shaping.

Men and women dont suddenly, as islands end up in vastly different positions where it suddenly "makes sense that he earns 10 times what i do and is far more motiavted"

there is nothing complex about the swathes of difference between sex and gender and the ways the conflation of this difference has shaped modern , patriarchal society.

Socialisation definitely has a lot to do with it, however, which wouldn't be quite so awful if the two allocated roles were given equal value, but to add insult to injury, the allocated female role is then given less economic, social and cultural value. I.e. Women are expected to work toward an unattainable ideal for no pay...

Right from early childhood, girls tend on average to be more dutiful - work harder at school, more likely to sit still when told, jump through the hoops set up for them... Why?

Roundaboutthetown - let me reverse the question. Are you really claiming that there is something biologically inherent to female bodies which predispose them to sit quietly and go into carer roles? If that is the case, then I fear I haven't a clue where to begin with this.

Buckyou- don't know about totally equal desires as there may be some degree of biological factors, but absolutely YES that ingrained assumptions and attitudes make things far more unequal.

I believe men and women have far more in common than they have differences when it comes to capacity, capability and desire to function effectively both in the workplace and in the home. Like many others, I met my dh at university. We left university with equal degrees, equal capabilities and equal ability to do our jobs. When we became parents, we had equal knowledge and skills in caring for a baby (not many in our case!) and we are both equally capable of carrying out the domestic work involved in running a home.

It's by and large societal expectations which call the above into question. When we had dc1 I was asked frequently if I was returning to work - dh wasn't. I was asked how I was coping back at work- dh wasn't. And so on and so on...

The only thing the father cannot do is feed his child breast milk directly from the breast (he can of course do it from a bottle or cup)
That is the only thing.
Since most women seem to take at least 6 months off for ML by this stage almost all babies can drink from a cup (even if they can't manage a bottle too) so this factor doesn't have to be a huge one
As I mentioned earlier, breastfeeding rates are higher among professional women anyway, who are in turn more likely to return to work... i know when I had my dc1 and returned to work after 3 months (the norm then) I and almost every professional woman I knew returning to work continued bf medium or long term.

I'm absolutely convinced that whatever the biological differences between men and women, it's the decades of conditioning by society to conform to certain roles which is the main factor leading to many more women than men giving up work, or putting their career on the backburner

But women and men do tend to have different interests, younger children girls and boys do? I find it difficult to believe that there is absolutely no difference at all in men and women and any differences are down to ingrained sexism in society?

No, I'm asking a question. Why do girls on average work harder at school and behave better in the classroom? And why are you obsessed with female bodies, anyway? We are what goes on inside us, not what we look like on the outside.

In my case my boobs will be the reason I don't go back to work.

Also, I'm the lower earner.

If circumstances were different, I know DH would love to be off with the baby. He had 2 months off after DC was born though (saved up lots of annual leave).

The answer is a term called gender socialization. Many studies exist on gender socialisation in early childhood, the impact of gender socialisation on middle childhood, the role of parental talk and subtle gender socialisation in EYFS years.

I am not obsessed with female bodies. You are asking/raising the fanastically dangerous claim that the wiring of sex and biology determines behavioural, sociological and professional attributes - in the face of pretty much all of the evidence from sociology, social psychology, communication studies, history and psychology - to the contrary.

I am not able right now to prepare a bibliography of this above for you, as I need to begin a very long drive to University for my first lecture. But others might. I have said what I had to on this thread. What i have learnt is that the empirical evidence I, as an academic, take for granted, must never be taken for granted.

Have a good day.

Why on earth do you think my questions indicate a pre-formed opinion, Konyaa? You seem to take offence incredibly easily.

I am not claiming anything, fwiw, just pointing out that female behaviour is very different from male behaviour from early on and that female behaviour is in general more dutiful from early on. So, are we manipulating our girls to work hard at school, telling them this is good and feminist, but actually just perpetuating the expectation that girls should be more dutiful than boys, regardless?

Isn't our entire school system aimed at creating dutiful citizens who jump through exam hoops and become neat little statistics?

I am not sure what words convey offence here. But I have, indeed, said all of what I had to. I encounter all sorts of views in my profession and all sorts of cultures and gender attitudes in the university classroom, indeed academia in the West continues to be very male heavy at the middle to top, so- offending me on an internet portal, with words from an unknown stranger isn't so easy :) Right. off NOW.

It was your comment that I was raising a "fantastically dangerous claim." I was not claiming anything. I do think it is fantastically dangerous not to want people to ask questions about why things are the way they are because this is apparently "fantastically dangerous."

I actually have stem qualifications but was met with gender roles and subtle discrimination when I entered the workplace in the public sector and academia. The lack of women in that field still suggests something is happening. I was also brought up by a sahd. Personally the discrimination I have experienced has been external not internal. I outearned dh when I went on mat leave, he now earns double what I could if I were full time and in my current profession (which I picked as a female dominated one because I was sick of getting nowhere in a male one) I'd have to be the boss to earn the same.

I don't think I'm particularly unique, I think lots of women experience the same or similar and I don't think you need to be part of a research group to comment on what you see happening before your own eyes.

If shared leave was paid better then that would be a proper commitment by society to show that we're willing to pay men and women to look after babies. Although I would say the same for maternity pay as mine drops off a cliff after the first couple of months.