To be infuriated by this (school related!)

[ChippaChoc]

I am just about to send an email out to my DCs class to invite them to an event (the parents) via 'classlist'. This is an event for all parents (and DCs). Classlist is the way that parents and the PTA are supposed to communicate about any events, parties, social stuff outside of the normal school day but is also used most days to remind parents about things happening In the classroom too (e.g. Forest school days, sports day) which kids need kit etc for.

There's 30 parents on the list, not one is a father / male. I can't believe that still in 2017 when most of the parents at my DCs school work, plenty of them full time, it's only Mums that are on the school comms list. It has massively annoyed me. I know it won't change anything, but it just feels we are so far away from an equal load in terms of parental responsibility I can't see it will ever change. The class list sign up went out to all parents earlier this year (there's approximately 54 emails on that list, mums and dads) and low and behold only the Mums have signed up to receive communications regarding event / parties / anything outside of the formal school comms. I wasn't involved in that sign up admin process.

Off to hassle my DH about why he isn't on it now (I thought he was!)

Can I just point out, that in our house, despite me being the SAHM in the early years and still doing most of the school runs, both dh and I actually work.

Occasionally we both travel for work.

So in May I was away for a week at a conference in Germany and my stupid phone would not connect to the Germany network.

So, if I was the primary contact, dh would have been buggered for that week.

Simlarly, he was away in Thailand for 3 weeks, with no or little mobile reception. I would have been buggered while he was away.

For ds football, we are both down as contacts, after Dh was having to text ds's availability for a team from South Korea!

To me it is less about who is the primary contact, and more about the fact that you can only have ONE contact.
How hard is it to say
Mrs Steppe [email protected]
Mr Steppe different email@google .com

Most families today share care, at leats up to a point. Schools need to get with the 21st centuary

?! What schools in the country only allow one contact?! That's dangerous and I do not believe it is the case anywhere in the UK. What about separated paretns, step parents, grandparents caring for children, etc? I have never known a school not ask for both parents' contact details plus one other person. Why the hell would a school want to be stuck with a puking child all day, because they only yave contact details for one person?

The defensive posts on here are exactly what makes feminism so difficult. People on here are interpreting an observation about the state of the world as a personal rebuke - they're taking individual responsibility for what is a systemic bias, as if feminism was saying that the relative inequality of men and women was all women's fault, and that the success of feminism relies on individual women simply trying harder.

Whether we're doing a high-powered 60 hours a week, earning a 6 figure salary and contracting out all the childcare or if we're SAHMs making fucking jam for the nursery bake sale (and I have been both) we're still all operating in the same system, where women have fewer and more difficult choices on average than men do.

It's not a problem if individual families have a set-up like this. It's the fact that 100% of the OP's list is female that indicates that there has been much less of an equality shift in this kind of area than one might have hoped for by 2017

This

The defensive posts on here are exactly what makes feminism so difficult.

People are only defensive when you attack them. Some of us are perfectly happy with their private situation and some outraged posts attacking them are just ridiculous. We do know it's 2017, thanks, and some mums are still happy to be the primary point of contact. So what. Nothing to do with you.

It seems the ones who are struggling with the balance between male/women are the ones who are struggling in their own home! Fine, we get it, your DH doesn't pull his weight, it doesn't mean that you have to picture the whole world through your experience.

But that's exactly what you are doing, coddi. The picture that is being painted, not just on this thread but many others, is that this kind of admin is woman's work, regardless of the working hours of both partners, which therefore smacks of systematic inequality. But we cannot progress if people cannot step out of their own individual experience (which in your case is that it's working out fine). My own situation is also working out fine but I can see beyond it to see that there is clearly an issue here.

Weird posts saying your DHs don't know what dentist you belong to, when children's birthdays are, they know 'nothing' about the children's school lives?

How sad.

My DH wanted to be a contact precisely so he would be involved. He does the reading diaries, homework, project organisation and stuff. Yes, he works long hours blah blah but it's his job as a father to be involved.

Stop letting them be ignorant manbabies who 'don't know the kids' friends names.'

Well i think that is quite shocking maybe women like to be default parent though perhaps that is how they have set their families up we had no men on PTA when my kids were in School however the men ,liked to be on school board instead that was a much more "important" job leave school discos and such to the women used to do my nut in Dh was on PTA for half a term because other women didn't make him welcome it was their thing apparently

But we cannot progress if people cannot step out of their own individual experience

my point, why do you think we need to "progress". You don't know my own situation, I can't see why women being more in charge of something is a "problem" in the first place. It's not. How we share everything with my Dh is frankly nobody's business.

It's an issue for a minority of posters who are so unhappy with their own situation that they think the whole world is wrong. It really is not. They should work on their own issues, and not try to put their nose in other people's life where it doesn't belong and where there are no problems!

'Well i think that is quite shocking maybe women like to be default parent though '

Desry me, you think it's 'Shocking'?

When I worked f/t some distance from home dh was contact, when I was a sahp then I was. All very easily chopped and changed. It's what you do, it's no one's 'job'.

roundabout - the school has lots of official contact details, eg mine, dh, my parents, my friend who has permission to collect from school etc.

BUT they have a text messaging alert system, where we get messgaes eg Football club cancelled tomorrow, don't forget to come to school dressed in red tomorrow, cake sale at playtime etc etc.
For the text messaging alert system you could only have one text number. After much complaint, they agreed to 2.

YANBU its the grassroots of inequality. Women take more than their fair share of the family organisational and emotional work. The stuff that isn't always tangible.

It infuriates me that the only male who attends the pta is the chair.

30 female names on a contact list is quite shocking though Myrtle makes them the default parent regardless of working or any other circumstances. My children are adults andit looks like nothing has changed the dads not knowing kids friends Drs appointments blahdeblah looks like dads shouldn't worry about such trivialities because they are far to busy and important to worry let mum get on with it

However i have come across many mums who take pride in their kids dads being useless so I don't know what the answer is how mindsets can be changed.

MrsJayy it's not 30 names on the contact list, the school contact list had 54 names on it, and we don't know anything about that list, all we know is that the people who were willing to share their address with other parents for arranging playdates and social between adults were all women. That's quite a different thing to school contact details.

Indeed, from the 30 and 54 numbers it might be reasonable to assume that 24 of the kids have two adults as a school contact and it's only 6 where there's only one parent interested in keeping up with the school information, but then we also don't know how many have arranged emails so there is only one.

We only have one email address for all kid related stuff (named as the child) which we organise forwarding for.

I'm also surprised in that it has 30 mothers, every kid in the class has a mother representing them? Not true of the schools round here.

30 female names on a contact list is quite shocking

WHY?

Let's fight to give people the choice by all means, I would be the first to put DH name if was told to put mine only. However, deciding that women (or the majority of women) should not be the default parent is just as bad as demanding that they are.

Why do you think things should change to be the way you want them to be, ignoring other couple preferences? This is why the so-called feminists drive me nuts, it's their way full stop. No respect for other people's wishes.

I do agree that 2 emails/or phones would work better to be fair, for all the practical reasons stated above.

I find it depressing the people who expect so little of their DH

Mine is about to do shared parental, the number of people who have expressed shock or expect me to lay out clothes / food / detailed lists of activities is unreal

I travel abroad for work and so DH in theory is contact #1 for school, no calls yet but will see how that plays out

Again, you are focussing on your own individual experience. I'm also happy with my experience, but reading MN, looking around me, I can see that it certainly is problematic for many women that women are the default responsible person with regard to much 'admin' to do with their household and children.

Should we (plural) only focus on those issues than concern us directly? Or should we seek to make our society better for all? Would you agree that a society where these tasks were not defaulted to one sex, wherein couples make their decisions in a sphere of equality, would be a better place all round?

What I mean by expect so little is the "oh he couldn't figure that out" not that he must be forced to be the main contact

I just think it is part of a bigger picture that is all I know parenting can't be 50/50 all the time that would be logistically a pain but why are women seen as main parent and why are men let off with being hopeless is all I was trying to say saying I don't know who my childs friends are seems ok for a man to say

Again, you are focussing on your own individual experience

No, I am not! I am just not seeing a problem because a majority on that list made a choice that doesn't sit well with posters on here. Why would a society be better or worst because people have preferences?

As long as people are happy, I don't see a problem if there are 30 mums names, or 2 mums name or 15. Deciding it's wrong because the numbers are not split 50/50 is ridiculous.

Regarding the posters on here who have problems with their DH not involved in childcare, the fact that my DH is involved or not won't change anything!

Coddi - nobody is saying that women shouldn't be the contact person. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being the contact person. It's fine and nobody is judging you for it.

The problem is that no man at all is the contact person in this list of 30 people. So out of that entire class, not a single man has opted to be the person to organise their children's lives - why? Because they're 'not organised enough'? Because they're 'too busy'? Because they don't give a shit?

It reflects a situation in which men don't take on the burden of dealing with their children's lives which means that women end up doing all of it. As a result fewer women get to have the careers they want. I, for one, don't want my daughter growing up to believe she can do anything only to find when she's an adult that in fact her husband can do anything while she has to do all the home admin.

Do you get that?

The fact is also Coddi that many women don't enjoy doing school admin - but their husbands won't do it (or will do it so badly that it's not worth the hassle) so they have to do it. They're expected to do it in a way that men aren't. How many mothers would be ok with saying that they know nothing about the details of their children's lives? How many mothers, even the mothers who work full time in stressful jobs, take no interest at all in their children's school life?

Too few fathers take on the burden of the day to day admin involved with having children. As a result, too few mothers have the opportunity to have a family and a career. I know too many intelligent, capable women who have had to give up jobs they loved because they simply couldn't manage working and dealing with everything to do with the children. And when it comes down to it, their husbands simply will not step up.

'as long as people are happy'

And you know that all the women on this list are happy with the situation how, exactly? Do you actually read threads on MN? Again, I'm happy with my situation but that doesn't mean that I'm blind to what many other women are going through, and that I don't think things could be made better.

Feminism isn't about women's individual experiences or choices, it's about women's role in society as a class. It's about equality and liberation from the patriarchy. If every woman's choice to be the contact person for the children at school has been made in a sphere of equality, great. But it's pretty clear that that isn't the case, that in many cases where both the man and woman work equally out of the home, the woman is still the default for this kind of thing.

t reflects a situation in which men don't take on the burden of dealing with their children's lives which means that women end up doing all of it. As a result fewer women get to have the careers they want

NO NO NO

Stop portraying women as victims, who are pushed to be with men with different values and have to give up on everything because "men" are the enemy of their private and professional success!

Is that how your raise your daughter? You will have to marry a lazy man, who will refuse to do admin and you will have to fight for your so-called rights? You are born a victim?

I hate this attitude so much, it's painful and it doesn't help anyone. If I had started my career with such a snowflake attitude, I would not have gone anywhere. When you think we are in a country where the monarch is a QUEEN and her husband has to follow, the Prime Minister is FEMALE, why do we still need to put women down!