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?

Generally speaking, I think it's because they want to. If they don't want to then they shouldn't. As an older poster I can't think of any of my peers who felt obliged to give up work after giving birth. It was absolutely their choice. Maybe if they had been the massively higher earner then they would have probably have felt obliged to go back to work and have Dad be the sahp even if that's not the way they wanted things to be.

I gave up work when I had my first child because I wanted to look after her myself. I didn't have to. I chose to, and I think many women do.

Because historically women didn't work; and then they didn't work past marriage; and then they didn't work past having children. And because change takes time, things don't happen instantly. Now we are at "many women don't work full time after having children". As tootsie and others says, things don't change instantly. When my DD is a mother I expect it will be much more even.
As others have said, I am noticing more and more couples both going back part time (eg 4/5 days, or compressed hours). Those where the father or both parents are still full time, it's just as likely for dad to leave work to pick up a sick child from nursery as mum, or to do the childcare pick ups and drop offs.
In our situation I am now 3/5 days and I do everything childcare related, because I work a 15 minute drive from home and nursery, and DH commute is 1 hour 20 by train and cycle/foot. DH earns a lot more than me, he enjoys his job, and I do not (but it is very family friendly). It makes sense for us. I would hate for someone to look at us and sneer, thinking we are so stereotypical and didn't it even cross our minds that DH should be the primary parent during the working week.

I think that a big part of this is gender bias- it is assumed that the mother will want to be the main carer and that her career will be less important to her/less well paid. This means that even where the mother is the higher earner society expects her to want to be the main carer.

Of course, in many cases the father will be the higher earner since jobs traditionally by women are generally lower paid. Therefore it's usually expected that the family finances will be better off if it's the mother that cuts her hours.

The position becomes even more entrenched when a woman has more than one child as there is evidence that they are not promoted as quickly etc as men with children. Therefore even if a couple had similar earning potential before children, after the first child (with a woman taking up to a year of maternity leave) the man is likely to be earning more.

In my own experience (as higher wage earner going back to work full time after maternity leave whilst DH was a SAHP) I felt judged by family and even people I did not know for doing this in a way that I doubt working men feel. For example, my MIL continually told me she could never have left DH for a full day when he was a baby (message to me= you are a bad mother and clearly do not love your child as I did mine). When I went to DDs first pre-school Christmas concert several members of staff said things along the lines of 'Oh, we didn't thing Littlechunky really had a mum ha ha'. At the same time, at work I found out that my boss had declined several interesting and career enhancing opportunities on my behalf because he felt I would not want to travel since I had young children. This may have been true but that should have been my decision to make and could have been equally true of the man (also with small children at home) that he put forward as an alternative.

My mum went back to work full time 6 weeks after having me! Both my parents worked full time and loved their jobs (now retired). But it hasn't influenced my decision about working, I plan to go back part time after maternity leave even though I earn slightly more than my partner (and where are all these stats to back up the claims women have kids with older men who earn more?? Not something I've come across in my acquaintances at least). I love my job, I just hate working full time when I've got so many other interests and want to enjoy those early years with my child. My partners self employed so can be flexible to a degree with his hours. It's just not practical for him to be regularly part time because of the nature of his work whereas mine we'll definitely know what days I'll be working so can arrange child care. I'd quite happily spilt working and child care 50/50 if we could but just not practical for us for now at least.

I'm a little bored if this disingenuous kind of question from people desperate to ignore basic biology and getting confused about equality. Because biology of course. Because women give birth. Breastfeed. Are natural primary carers to their young, like other mammals. Men and women are different. Being a woman and fulfilling your role as a mother doesn't make you 'less'. If you're not maternal and desperate are to keep plugging away working then maybe don't have children?

Both dh and I went back on 80% contracts when ds1 was born. This meant that he only needed 4 half days and 1 full day in nursery, which seemed to be the best of both worlds. When ds2 was born, I took a year maternity leave, then dh took an unpaid career break leave for 1 year, then I applied for and got a 1 year career break leave. Therefore, ds2 wasn't left at nursery until he was 3 yo (but had various health issues so we felt this was necessary).

I was told at numerous times, I was so "lucky" to have an "understanding" dh who allowed me to carry on my career since he did some of the "babysitting". Annoyed me no end every time.

I think there is a societal sexism which I have seen in the work place a lot.

There does seem to be an assumption which is seldom spoken that the woman of childbearing age will be having children at some point. I see those women given fewer opportunities to shine at work. Their careers dont progress quite as well as their male counterparts. Then their earnings dont progress as much as their male partner. It makes sense then for the female partner's career to be put on hold during the child rearing years.

Once a woman has child/children and returns to the work place even if after a short maternity leave she is perceived as taking her career less seriously than before. Career opportunities may be subtly or blatantly less. Her salary continues not to progress as well as her male counterpart or her partner. The gulf widens.

When a man starts a family he is perceived as taking his career more seriously. Career opportunities may in fact increase as he is seen as more settled, more invested in his career.

All of this means that it makes sense for the woman to be the SAHP as that is the way she is being pushed.

These are generalisations and there will be exceptions but this has been my experience especially in male dominated companies.

Mistress hit the nail on the head.

Me and my DH did shared parental leave last year but we are the only people I have ever met who have done it. We will also do it again when (all being well) DC#2 comes along. We got a LOT of quite negative comments from friends and family ranging from 'I would never have shared MY leave' from female friends to 'why would you want to be at home all day with a baby?' from males ones (even those with children!). We took the leave together, which a lot of people think you can't do, because I have no family and we wanted to share things 50/50 but also got a lot of comments along the lines of 'oh I would have killed DP if we had spent that much time together' etc etc etc.

It's just not the norm to share parenting in this country but I think that, for us, the shared parental leave set the scene for how we parent as a team. DH even now we are both working (both full time) does more 'child' related tasks at home than I do and does all the night wakings, although I do more cooking and cleaning. It works for us.

After DC#2 we will both go part time and share care between us and nursery, but we are definitely not the norm.

Until more men do more of the 'childcare' and more people share parental leave, I don't think things will change. Funnily enough after we had gone back to work, loads of people told us they were quite envious of the leave we had as a family. The negativity we experienced at the start seemed to have shifted so maybe over time, attitudes will as well.

I was fortunate that a decent part time opportunity arose with my current employer so I went part time.

If I was full time we would both be earning very similar but DH gets overtime opportunities that I do not.

My commute is costly & tiresome so part time works well to address those issues too. I'm
Also I'm much better at running & taking care of the house than DH. That's not being sexist, I am a very Homely person & enjoy it.

However DH shifts mean he can still cover 1 day a week while my work means I can cover 2 or 3 so grandparents only do one or 2 days each week - mostly my father.

Everyone thinks it's amazing my dad does this but he was very hands on with me & my brother so I know no different. DS adores him, it's lovely.

Again I get so many comments 'it's lovely your DH takes DS xyz' I'm always aghast - 'why the hell wouldn't he?!' But that stems from the role model I had with my dad. My FIL is useless in that respect & wouldn't dream of changing a nappy. No way would I be putting up with that.

Card carrying feminist here but I couldn't wait to leave work and look after my dc's. DH would have gone mad (as of course would lots of women I know).

Some of us do the old-fashioned thing because it works for us and our families and I guess enough of us still do it that it is still normal. The majority of professional women I know from my dc's school either don't work or only work part time when their dc's were very young. There are a few SAHDs as well, but not nearly so many.

As someone else also said, it's not fashionable but I think maternal feelings can often be stronger than paternal feelings (hence why so many more fathers than mothers are able to walk away from their children).

Thank you Nathan

I've said it before and I'll say it again. DH and I are both freelancers and are able to fit our working hours around the children and each other. So I do all the morning stuff, school drop offs, bedtimes. DH does the after school stuff and tea.

From the reaction of others, mostly women, you would think the DH was the ultimate father. An absolute god send. Whilst I am a lucky so and so for having such an amazing husband.

Yes, DH is amazing. That's why I married him. But I'm pretty damn amazing too. I'm a great mum, with a well run household as well as bringing in the cash. No one ever tells DH how lucky he is to have me as a wife. Never. Boils my piss.

As an older poster I can't think of any of my peers who felt obliged to give up work after giving birth. It was absolutely their choice.

Yes, my mother would say this.

She just chose to. And after all my dad couldn't breastfeed, so it was entirely obvious.

Of course, the way she then got appalling postnatal depression, found she couldn't get back into the workplace, found that almost the entire burden of childcare and housekeeping fell to her, and discovered that, once she did get back to work, she continued to be working two shifts as my dad didn't lift a finger ... that wasn't quite what she intended to 'choose'. Yet somehow it happened. And it seems to happen for an awful lot of women, whether they want it or not. And, depressingly, whether they are aware of it being a possibility, or not.

I think it is pretty easy for people to 'choose' to stay home with a lovely squishy baby. God knows, it sounds pretty attractive to me right now.

What I (selfishly) do not want to choose, is the spiral of things that happen after that. And, statistically, we know they do happen, don't we? Married women are unhappier than any other group. Mothers make less money than fathers. Nice middle-class wage earning men do a tiny amount of housework. Etc.

I think its too complex to say any one reason. Unless its anecdata.
Breastfeeding is part of it in some cases I'm sure but I doubt thats the majority as few women breastfeed. Even fewer past DCs first birthday.
Most high paying careers eg doctors, engineers, CEOs are male dominated.
and I can't say I've ever met a male receptionist though I'm sure they exist.
If your DH earns 6 figures as an engineer, ceo or consultant, you earn 10-30k a year pre tax as say, a receptionist, it makes no sense for him to give up work when childcare is so expensive hence why women take the career hit of being part time or SAHM.
It is also a cultural norm, and in house men seem to do very little still and I think thats a problem. On the 'what does your partner do around the house'' thread I was shocked that many couples that have a fairly equal job of similar hours often have the female picking up the slack at home.
I'm sure some women who are expected to do all the pick ups, drop offs, house work, admin, shopping etc etc for the household burn out and something has to give. If your DH is a lazy sod and you can't/won't leave, then you may find it easier to give up work altogether.

It's quite straight forward for us - DH earns way more than I did (he's self employed).

I went back full time after my DC1 as we had family & nursery to help out.

I went back part time after my DC2 as family were unable to continue and we weren't able to get much help for childcare costs.

A few years after DC2 we didn't have family or nursery any more, so I have been home with them since.

They have some needs so I'm not in a position, at the moment, to look for work.

mistress - women don't have any more innate drive to nurture than men, I don't think.

Scientists got very excited when they discovered that a mother's brain actually changes as she bonds with her baby. A father's brain does not. Amazing, right? Proof of our natural difference.

Except ... they then looked at fathers who actually did childcare and, lo and behold, their brains changed too, just like the mothers' brains.

I think giving women time to cope with pregnancy and breastfeeding and recovery from birth is an obvious necessity our society doesn't respect enough. But that's it.

The norm is that man earns more than woman (age old reason) woman has stronger material instincts therefore it kinda happens

MistressPage!! I was reading the whole thread wondering how to articulate the angry thoughts swirling round my head and you managed to do it perfectly. Why do we assume that being mothers means that we are less than men? Why do we as women feel we need to work to be equal? Being a mother makes me MORE important than any man, in any job, regardless of his wage. I am not ashamed that I want to stay at home with the two babies that I have grown and nurtured. I am not ashamed that I don't want to pack them off to full time childcare to end up with a few measly quid at the end of the month. Why do we equate working our arses off in jobs we hate with success? So we can buy our kids plastic shit they don't need, in the hopes it will make go for the hours we missed? My partner and I would both give up work to care for our children if we were in a position to do so. He happens to work in an industry where he can earn more, so he does. I really don't understand why women feel pressured into having children and then returning to work. It's so uncool to actually want to stay at home with your own children- all in the name of fake equality.

chunkymum1 I cross posted with you and it looks like we have had very similar experiences.

I am now in my late 40s and this sexism still exists. There are far fewer female directors except in the traditionally female directorship of HR.

Of course this sexism also exists for women who havent had children. All too often that not taking the career seriously label is applied to them as if they dont have children all they are interested in are spa days and holidays as theirs is of course the 'second' career (even when it isnt and there is no partner at home!).

Just because women do the giving birth and the breastfeeding doesn't mean that shared parental leave isn't an option by the way - as I said in my post we took the leave at the same time so while I was recoving and feeding, DH was doing other household stuff.

Ingrained societal sexism. It's needs to be challenged or it'll never change. Tiring but necessary.

This. Having said this, I had never encountered this expectation in real life until I moved to a village in the midlands of England where I have for the first time encountered a lot of 20 and 30 something SAHMs.

All of my female friends with children (I've moved around a lot, so friends are in London, Ireland, France, the US, Switzerland, Germany, South Africa, the ME, Brazil, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium) work full-time, I suspect because, like me, it never occurred to them that having a child was a reason to halt their careers. Three close friends have had male partners staying at home for considerable periods, though all have now gone back to work as the children get older.

And yes, some cultures simply assume women don't suddenly opt out of the workplace the moment they give birth, and some of them have consciously tried to make working parents' lives easier by providing excellent, cheap childcare by the state. A French friend is a teacher, and her school is obliged by law to allow her to be part-time for the first three years of her child's life, after which she gets her old FT job back - I think it may be the same for all civil servants. Unemployment benefit includes some free childcare so you can dedicate yourself to getting a job. The result is that there's only a small gap between the total numbers of men who work in France and the total numbers of women.

There's nothing innate about suddenly losing all interest in your job the second you give birth - it comes down in large part to cultural assumptions about working mothers and the state's economic and social policies. Good for you if it's your completely free choice to stay at home with your child - but I don't think it's a free choice in a country which makes gendered assumptions about work, where there's a big pay gap still, and where childcare is expensive.

From my childhood experience I had a career mum who I barely saw (it wasn't a 'making ends meet' situation) and who was always in work-mode so took very little interest in getting down to a child's level/perspective. It's an extreme example but I didn't want that for my family. It's not very fashionable (to the extent that I got a look of pity from the HV) but I love being able to be more family oriented and I know my DP would love to be the SAHP.

I agree that the assumption childcare is somehow unimportant and not valuable is a big part of the problem. It strikes me as absolutely ridiculous that so many people will talk about women who 'don't work' or 'don't earn the money' when they are doing a job without which the whole family would be sunk.

Interesting question. Like a few OPs have said, my DH is 4 years older than me. I gave up work recently to retrain (current pregnant and at uni). Before I quit work, he earned about 4.5 times what I did (even higher with bonus), and I didn't think I earned badly, he just works in a high paid industry and has done so for 15 years whereas I changed careers a few times.

Financially it will never have made sense for him to give up work or reduce hours to stay at home, even though he would like to. We couldn't pay our mortgage on my salary alone, let alone bills or food. If we earned more equal amounts we would have shared the year- me doing the first six months so I could BF and he would do the second six. A few friends have done this and love it.

Biology is a good point though, my friend in the USA went back after 12 weeks as she got not mat pay, and her DH wasn't even given paternity leave unpaid. She said it felt unnatural for her to have to go to work and leave her 12 week old son.