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?

Mamalyon hallelujah you put it beautifully!!

I was made redundant during my first month of mat leave

And dh has waaaaaay more earning potential than me

So I'm at home And he isn't

(DS is 11 months and dc2 is due end of December)

frustratingly, most people still seem to see mothers as the primary parent
Why is it frustrating?

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.

But not everyone has a job they hate, or is doing it for the money, or to buy their children 'plastic shit'. Lots of women, as well as men, work in jobs that do socially crucial things, that they like, regardless of whether they pay particularly well or not.

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.

Who says they feel 'pressured', though? The OP of this thread has said precisely the opposite - that in the set of cultural assumptions that have come up in conversation since she had a child, it's been assumed she won't be returning to work, or will go part-time. I don't see any sign that there is cultural pressure on women to work if they don't want to. Needing two incomes, especially if neither are high, is a different matter.

I didn't go back to work because I wanted to stay with my baby, and because I was the lower earner anyway.

In our family I went down to four days because I run my own business.
It drives me mad when I hear women saying "dh can't do any child duties because he runs his own business" - I know lots of women through business owners / entrepreneur networks and all those women who have children work flexibly to do at least 50% of child duties if not more.
But once a man owns his own business it seems he bovines so indispensable he can't do a single school drop off!!!

Becomes. Not bovines - though if the shoe fits....

I earn a fair bit more than DH with a guaranteed salary increase every year so if we ever had a child, we agree that it makes sense for him to stay at home if childcare was an issue.

I also agree with MistressPage

I wouldn't mind betting that's why the OP name changed to start the thread.

Otherwise I'm completely baffled as to why she'd go to the trouble.

I think it will take time for changes to filter through into society. DH and I both went part-time after our first child (partly because neither of us felt wonderfully equipped to stay at home, and partly for the very boring reason that we both had quite good company pension schemes at the time that we would have had to leave if we gave up work). He's a civil servant - I think whilst everyone has the right to ask for flexible working, some employers are better at dealing with it than others.

I've always earned more than DH, and we are now in a situation where I work longer hours. What I hope for is for it to be totally normal that families sort out what works best for them, and for women whose partners go part-time not to be endlessly subjected to 'oh you're so lucky your husband does that'. Totally not DH's fault, but it p'd me off so much that it was such a big deal for some people, and yet nobody ever told him he was so lucky his wife was willing to spend time with the children.

I took 10 months off with each child, and DH and I both did compressed hours after that, so we shared care equally, until very recently - DH has started a new job where compressed hours are not available, so my mum is covering the day DH used to do. We earn similar amounts (I earned more until this new job, he now earns slightly more but not much).

However, I did not want to share parental leave (although DH was very keen on it) because I knew I wanted to breastfeed for at least a year, which I did.

Furthermore, DH also suggested that he go part-time to provide childcare. We had to abandon that plan because we knew we wanted more than one child - we could survive on 100% of DH's salary plus SMP, but we couldn't have survived on a part-time wage plus SMP. My work offered full pay for 14 weeks, which would have meant me going back to work 3 months post-partum - too soon!

Frankly, I don't see much changing unless SMP goes up. It is a ridiculously pitiful amount - it should be at least minimum wage, or better yet, a decent percentage of your normal pay. People will have outgoings in proportion to their incomes, so it is ludicrous to suggest that because some people can get by on £500 a month then everyone will be able to. SMP was a third of my normal net pay, and I'm not particularly well-paid. I'm going to have to pay the same amount of rent, council tax, etc etc, whether I'm on SMP or not, and my utility bills will actually be higher because I'm using more heating etc.

I am the lower earner, because I took a (huge) step back to get pregnant in the first place. Less hours, less stress, more time to go through the whole getting pregnant. You can't swap that with a man.

After giving birth, wouldn't have been able to go back to work for weeks anyway. We wouldn't have survived if DH had not been full time then. Whilst it would be lovely to get a full salary when you are home, it is not realistic.

Then start again with next baby. Women don't HAVE TO give work, or take long maternity leave, but most do, for physical reasons if nothing else. I wouldn't like to leave my new born baby anyway. Whilst it's a choice, it makes more sense for women to take a break for many couples.

I didn't go back to work for fake equality, and I don't work to buy plastic shit, I work to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads.

The man usually earns more, has inflexible working hours and doesn't get maternity leave.

But biology is a poor reason for the UK surely? We have 12 months maternity leave. I breast fed two till over a year. By 12mo both are happy with one feed before work and one before bed.

Also the OP is pointing out the fact that it is assumed the mother will either quit work or go part time. Nothing about pressure to work after children, quite the contrary. All my children's friends mums work part time or SAH. That is definitely the norm.

But why do men have inflexible working hours? Why are employers able to be flexible with women but not with men? Why do men usually earn more? I don't necessarily have answers to these, but we should be asking them. We've had the equal pay act for decades now - fair enough not all couples will have jobs at the same level (although a lot of people do meet partners at work, so the anecdotal level of disparity is interesting).

I think as more men take shared paternity leave, and more men work flexibly, things will change. I agree that I 'needed' the initial period of maternity leave to recover from birth, establish feeding etc (I took just over 6 months both times, at a point where SMP stopped at 6 months and sharing wasn't an option) but was lucky enough to be able to get into an expressing routine and carry on breastfeeding.

It's cultural and it drives me up the wall.

I earned close to three times what my husband did when I got pregnant with the first. We had hoped for me to work 4 days and him to work 2 or three but his employer didn't grant his request to go part time. So he's been the stay at home parent for the last 7 years. There was no option for me not to work as all his salary would have done was pay the mortgage and as people have said, we need heat, light and food too.

I work in a job that involves 3 nights a week away from home. What annoys me is that I get asked 'Don't you miss your children?' or 'Who is looking after them?' but my male colleagues, who have exactly the same schedule as me, never get asked that. There was also an assumption when I returned from work that I would no longer want a promotion or have any ambition to improve myself. I actually had to put my foot down with my boss to be considered for a promotion that I was eminently qualified for because there was an assumption that I wouldn't want it.

And to the earlier posters, I think it is a sad indictment of our society that we seem to think it's normal for a man to earn more or to have less flexible working hours. It's statements like these that lead me to the Women's Equality Party.

I think there needs to be a shake-up of working hours as well. DH and I could do compressed hours because we work in local government and our standard working week is 36 hours. Many industries do much much more - the Working Time Directive is for over 48 hours. I think childcare will continue to be a total pain in the arse for many parents until there is a proper crack down on the number of hours people are expected to work in a week.

If one parent is in an industry that expects 48+ hours a week, that is automatically going to present problems with getting childcare to cover it. If it is very well paid, that may allow the other parent to give up work. If it isn't, then it becomes logical for that partner to give up work.

I think the key question is why many women earn less than their partner before they have a baby. I think (looking at people I know) that many perfectly intelligent and capable women are still not that ambitious, and are looking for a partner who earns more and can support them. An unpalatable idea, but still, I think, unfortunately true.

I went back to full time work after 3 months with both children. My DH was semi-retired at that time (now fully retired and a SAHD), so it made more sense because he was at the end of his career and mine was flourishing.

I travel a lot and can spend up to 3 months at a time away from home, whilst he is there everyday. Quite often, if I'm brutally honest, I find myself missing my dogs more than the children.

I don't get this biology nonsense. Not all women have this maternal instinct bollocks - even if they choose to have children - that makes them want to spend their days knee high in shitty nappies with a baby hanging off a breast. I certainly didn't. I hated being pregnant, hated giving birth and the mere idea of breastfeeding made me nauseous.

It doesn't make me a bad parent though.

Mostly men get paid more and tbh even if my husband wanted to be at home I would end up re doing all the jobs as he's shit at house work and dose errands half arsed

When I had a op and had to be in hospital for 3 weeks it took me nearly 2 months after to get the house back to wear it was before

Also I like a mans man it's bit for eveyone but I find Somone who is demasulated that attractive tbh I a, not that much a go getter work wise I happy just doing a job rather than having a career I wouldn't find that very very in acttractive in a man

LRDtheFeministDragon

Each point you make is a worst case scenario, which is understandable since it's been your family's experience. I think it's unfair to suggest that this state of affairs is commonplace. Surely PND can hit even if you go back to work?

I don't see the situation you describe amongst my similarly aged friends.
(not aged as in extremely old I hasten to add) but most of them have some family-related problems (children with SN, depression, job losses,
marriage break ups, the list is endless). Few of us get off scot free.
I don't think stress and unhappiness can all be blamed on men generally being arseholes.

Just look at how desperate the government was to make working as a doctor even less family friendly with the new contract. Maternity leave, paternity leave and part-time working (thus requiring more employees, NI contributions and pension contributions) are all expensive. Men at least can pretend at work their family never happened. A woman will never be able to do that - morning sickness, a swelling stomach, SPD, high blood pressure, not being allowed to continue with heavy physical duties towards the end, breastfeeding, PND, lowered immune system, etc, can all get in the way of pretending your family life does not exist. Women will always, for fairly obvious reasons, carry the majority of the physical and mental health risks involved in starting a family. A few months may be a short time in a woman's life, but from a business perspective, it's a few months more than a man is obliged to be inconvenient for and in all honesty, it is inconvenient and irritatingly unpredictable from an immediate business perspective. We are not heading in a direction where life and work are likely in the immediate future to become more fair for male and female workers - that would be a high tax, high job security, maximum weekly working hours sort of a society, not a society where both men and women are scared of being seen as an inconvenience. Besides which, even without societal pressure, I think more women than men do have a problem with the idea of being separated for long hours from their baby. We have different hormones for a reason. That doesn't mean it is an issue for all women, or is not an issue for all men.

Yep, I'm another one, pregnant with our first, who gets asked whether I'm taking off the full year of mat leave, whether I'm going back to work etc.

DH and I plan to take shared parental leave, with some overlap in the middle. I'd say out of the two of us, DH was the most keen to have a DC, and he really wants to spend a period of time looking after our baby on his own.

I must admit, I do have moments where I wonder how I'm going to feel handing him/her over to DH and going back to work earlier than other mums. But I'm very mindful of exactly the points made by feminist dragon - I don't want to cast myself in the role of main care giver and later find myself picking up most of the associated tasks, which is what basically happened to my mum. Also, I think DH will be an amazing parent, so aside from money considerations why wouldn't I want him to look after our baby?

Money is less of a factor - I earn more than DH, but we're very fortunate that we could live on either one of our salaries if we had to. We both plan to go back full time initially, with a view to considering each dropping down to four days a week depending on how things pan out.

Because in about 99% of partnerships with a baby, the woman earns less than than the man