feeling that tax credits are totally biased towards working mums?

[Dragonhart]

I am a SAHM and I get the min working tax credit as my DH earns just over the min for getting more help.

I was talking to my friend yesterday who works 4 days a week as a teacher (their combined salaries are just below the top of the band of getting any money) and I was saying what I got now we have two children. I get just over £40 plus about £40 baby element. When dd is 1 and I have two under 3 I will get £40.

She told me that she gets about £160 a months towards childcare in vouchers on her and her husbands paypacket (not sure if this is classed as tax credit?) and £75 permonth for her only ds in tax credits.

I am not making a coment about whether or not people choose to work as I stongly believe that everyone should have a choice to do what is right for them.

I just think that I should be supported in the same way as working mums. Surely I am my childrens 'childcare'?

SM - well, I don't have a vote here in France, since I'm British.

But thank goodness the French saw sense and didn't vote Ségolène in. She looked so palpably relieved at the result of the election - she wasn't up to the job and she knew it.

Aww! I like Ségolène. She would have been good symbol for women not ending up in dross jobs, anyway.

i like her clothes

Agree with Anna on this one. Segolene would have been bad for women.

The second is better until we have more equality. Women are gradually doing better in better jobs but legions of women copping out in their 30s in the UK who otherwise might have risen up are really doing the rest of women and their own daughters down and hugely impairing progres of women. Companies are desperate to have more women to promote but the rich clever women, some not all, marry rich clever men and become stay at home wives because they prefer idleness and living off male earnings to earning their own money. Yet those women could do so much more good in work than they do in their own families. Such a waste. If there's a default position for the moment it ought to be men at home.

but Xenia
you are self employed

have you tried working for a large multinational? this is the typical scenario: doing well, hit 30's and get married. suddenly you get passed over for promotion as boss is half expecting you to go on maternity leave in the near future.
then you do decide the time is right to have a baby, come back and they are just waiting for you to go on maternity leave again for baby no.2. so you do...

then you want part time so you actually get to see your children and bingo. career over.

it is totally different when you are self employed (as i am) as you manage your work around your childcare and not vice versa. but luckily we are in a position that allowed me to take the risk and go self employed. very few people can do that.

and i don't actually have any friends who have 2 children or more who have gone back to their old job. some have become SAHM, many went back in between pregnancies but then went freelance/self employed after baby no.2

unless you have the means, set up and want a nanny, it really is very hard.

I know a good few women earning nearly £1m a year with families of 5 + children in the City but obviously not everyone male and female wants to do that.
I had my babies in my early 20s so I was going to jobs saying here I am, lovely stable nanny, not disappearing, proven record of having babies and working - so in other words I wasn't the ticking timebomb which all these 30 something professional women who are copping off to stay home are causing. They have ruined the reputation of professional women and cause employed rightly to think women with chidlren won't work properly and yet those of us who did carry on working get tarred with their brush. It's very very unfair and I hope these stay at homers inthose types of jobs know what damage they have done because in a sense they are damaging the career prospects of my daughters. The progress women made legally is only very recent and yet its being destroyed by all these women choosing to give up. What is the point in training them? What is the point in them even getting A levels if they'll spend 10 years changing nappies and cleaning floors and then go back 2 days a week to some very unchallenging job?

I think that it depends how far you have to commute to your workplace as well. When I worked in London, nearly all the women who'd had children left after their maternity leave as they didn't want to do an hour+ commute either end of the working day on top of a full day's work. The other reason was that this particular employer refused to employ anyone on a part-time basis or job-share, even roles that are easily shared such as receptionists or even secretarial roles. So they lost experienced, reliable staff who would have probably returned full-time in due course, due to this inflexibility and recruited wet-behind-the-ears college leavers who cost a lot less to employ but who invariably left within months themselves to go to a more 'happening' firm.

so Xenia, what do you suggest we do?
rush to find a man and get married before we are ready in our early 20's so we can get back in the workplace quickly?

or pick one in our 30's, when we have matured and are ready. and yes, then we probably will have babies quickly, and yes we probably won't be back for long in between maternity leaves, and yes when we do come back then we will want part time and we will find it hard to travel/work long hours at a drop of a hat.
but then employers need to be creative and change the roles on offer if they want to keep this pool of talent.

and even though p/t work is getting easier to come by (if you work in very big companies) it is effectively an end to your career imo. So, why bother, esp if you are only just covering your childcare costs anyway? I am not talking about the £1m+ earners in the city, but the marketing managers, the researchers, the product developers earning a "normal professional" salary of 35-50k full time.

That's why people on those sorts of salaries often don't bother, true. May be there is more than enough male talent which won't disappear to make it worth ignoring requests for complex part time working and concentrate on people who might stay.

If I'd hired male nannies I would never have had to cope with all that complexity of two lots of maternity leave as employer of one person and the hours and hours of time that involved. Dreadful, all because I hired a woman.

well that's what happens.
the men keep getting promoted because they are there while the women are off for 6-12 months at a time.

then you come back to find your peers are way ahead of you and reporting to a twat who doesn't know his arse from his elbow..

and you don't earn enough to justify a full time nanny/housekeeper and everything else you need to make your life easy/pleasant. it just becomes one big struggle. And you affect dh's career as he also has to share the childcare when you have to travel/can't get home etc....

what's the point?

Damn those women and their silly uteruses and ovaries!

I have 5 children,( soon to be 6..),and worked hard/long hours climbing the greasy pole of a medical career...I put off having children until I had made consultant,then I made sure I worked right up to the birth and took no more than 12 weeks,( and that only with my prem twins last time ), and more often 8...I rarely take my a/l in the years I go on mat leave because I do not think it is fair on my colleagues and patients to be without me for so long in one year.I never go sick, ever.This time I plan to go back within 2 weeks,( luckilyI am on an academic sabbatical in France at the mo..and no one seems to think this odd or unusual,) as i do not think it would be fair on the university as I am only there a short time. I have plenty of time with my children in the evenings, mornings , weekends.
I think tax breaks/credit a good idea, ditto childcare vouchers....but the op is sadly deluded if she thinks hard working women ,( and men...) want to subsidise her lifestyle choice. Normally all adults should work it is good for them their communities and society as a whole....no one I've met in France seems to think this is an odd idea.

mozhe - what do you think of the quality of childcare provision in France? I'm not asking about your personal setup, but of childcare provision for natives.

ami, it's only an issue if you take a lot of time off. If you're good at what you do employers will do anything to keep you on the whole whatever your sex. I've seen people employers have allowed to work from home who are nursing a dying wife or parent, giing them special email connnections etc whatever it takes to keep them just as many of us do things we don't need to to keep good nannies. Market forces but I can't see the point in all these girls busting a gut to get AAA at A level, do a very hard degree, work 60 hour weeks in their 20s, have no fun and then give it all up as soon as the land and milk and honey and big wages and power and ability to delegate to minions is about to occur. Why bother to do that if that's your career plan? Why not have fun, do fun A levels, if you do them at all, travel, by all means take up the hobbies which mean you mix with the likvely suitable nice but rich husband, concentrate on tyour pilates and fake tan or whatever floats his boat (or boats) and relax?

Why have the bad hard bits of a career and then give up when the good parts are coming?

well that's why successful women end up going freelance/self employed. because they are good enough to bring the money in without relying on the automatic pay check.

and yes, big companies can do what it takes to keep you. they offered me 2 days/week and based at home as much as i could manage to do the job after i resigned... but that often isn't very fulfilling either.

and i do think the 60 hour weeks in your 20's then the delegate to minions etc. is unique to law etc.. other careers don't get less stressful/much easier the higher you go though obviously the money improves so you can afford the back up at home. But then the travel increases, your children become strangers to you, with 2 parents in demanding jobs, having to travel - what about the kids?

Xenia - there's another very good other reason for educating women - the greatest postive impact on a child's development is the level of education of its mother/primary carer.

and most successful intelligent men do actually prefer intelligent women, so concentrating on your fake tan probably won't bag you a successful intelligent man anyway!

amidaiwish - I quite agree, work tends to get more demanding, not less, the more money you make.

amidaiwish - again, I quite agree.

I'm a rather a lot better educated (and more intelligent...) than my partner's first wife (with her full time job).

Interesting thread.
It is interesting because I like to see how benefits like tax credits affect different people!
I claim child tax credit, but can't get working tax credit as our income is 'too high' (ha bloody ha) so of course we can't get help with dentist or glasses etc.
I work 16 hours a week and dh works 35 a week. I have to start my job at 5 in the morning just to be able to meet dh with ds outside my work place, so that dh can then go the office for 9.15.
I couldn't work if I couldn't do these hours as I have no childcare and couldn't afford to pay for it.
I looked into going back to work full time, but figured out I would be worse off (money wise) than if I worked 16 hours!
We don't have a mortgage and we couuldn't afford one - as we have no deposit and the house prices are too high in our area, so we have no choice but to rent (which we recieve no help to pay).

I looked into giving up my job just to see if I would be better off finicially. The answer is no. I would infact be even worse off.

I don't agree that working mums are in anyway better supported.

anna, and more modest with it i don't doubt.

but how's your fake tan and pilates anna?