Or is life a bit shit for women?

[cosytidy]

90% of childcare falls to me
80% oh housework/family admin falls to me
90% of Christmas stuff falls to me
I earn less now than I did when I graduated so I can have a part time job
100% of bill paying falls to me
100% of financial planning falls to me

Am I right to feel like a mug & pissed off? Or do men struggle too?

To put into context my DH works 60hrs a week & earns double my salary. However he's also caused us to be in significant debt.

I know I'm lucky to have lovely healthy children & I adore them but fuck me life feels tough.

Easy echt I was just backing up your point

milky but it's about thinking long term. Not just in terms of career progression but also your pension. Unfortunately this usually impacts on women more than men leaving women in a financially vulnerable position.

If you are not happy about your situation what can you do to improve it?

I'm approaching retirement but with grown up dc and what is now a full on 2nd career.

Had a good career in my 20s/early 30s which meant I owned a house in London when I met DH.

Had first mid 30s and gave up work to be a mummy which I did for 7 years. During that time I did all feeds, baths, 90% of bedtimes, organised all domestic stuff with 4-6 hours paid help per week. Organised all school stuff. Organised all house maintenance and entertaining. DH left the house at 7am, rarely returning before 9 and often later.

It was bloody wonderful. I had never before had so much free time and it was fun. Toddler and baby group, Monkey Music, Library storytime, coffees and playtimes, park, softplay, leaf kicking, standing in the pouring rain, naming flowers, reading books.

I have had two careers, returning p/time when youngest was settled in reception but at the v bottom again, am a wife and a mother. I can even work until I'm 67 or longer if I want.

Nowadays I work 50/55 hours a week, still organise most of the domestic stuff although dh does more stuff now. DH still is out of the house longer than me.

I have had an absolutely amazing life as a woman and wouldn't swap it for the world.

Life can be rubbish for men too, and life can be amazing for women; bit too much of a generalisation.

Regardless of who pays it, childcare still costs more than my income and we as a couple are better off if I don’t work. It’s irrelevant if I pay it all or if we pay half each - the outcome is the same!
I think two things need to be thought out here. The bigger picture about giving a job up and the long term impact it will have ( pensions, getting back into the work place arc, after you don't need childcare for ever) The second thing s how the money is divided up. I've seen on posts that the woman has spent all her wage on childcare and has no disposable income for her self while the guy has plenty of money to spend on nights out, clothes and gadgets.

@roundaboutthetown Oh I don’t doubt that I’m depressed. I’m very intellectual and highly qualified but I’m stuck at home all day doing mindless domestic tasks. I used to research and teach but it was very poorly paid, which didn’t matter until I needed to cover childcare. I’ve been stuck at home for best part of two years now, ever since my employer sacked me because being pregnant was too much of a liability.

Money isn’t tight but there isn’t loads left over either. And I don’t feel that it’s my money to go out and treat myself with. DH has never said anything but I wouldn’t feel comfortable spending more than a tenner on myself because it’s not really my money. We’ve stopped buying each other gifts because I felt stupid like I was spending DH’s own money on him.

I have a nice home, car, money to take DC out, etc. But I’m trapped as a housewife by my low earning potential. I think it’s a fairly common experience among women who have brains and education but aren’t high earners.

Oh and can I add, I can buy nice shoes, perfume, wear make-up and try to look pretty despite my age. I love all that too. And having a daughter to share some of that stuff with.

Nevertheless, MilkyCuppa, the argument goes that if you carry on working, even if paying £2k a year for the privilege, you retain your employability and with increasing experience get an increasing salary

I can see how that would be the case for many women. In my case I was unlikely to ever earn more because of a lack of opportunities for progression, so there was no benefit in continuing to work at a loss. I’m sure there are many low paid jobs in which that’s the case.

Anyway, my employer sacked me as soon as I got pregnant (they made an excuse to get around the law but I know why they sacked me). So by the time I gave birth and recovered I’d already been unemployed for over a year. Even that short spell of unemployment is a difficult obstacle to overcome when attempting to return to work.

But at the same time I feel men are very good at shirking their responsibilities, and waiting til they're asked to do something. Hence the mental load

You can't speak for all men, speak for yourself - your DH is good at shirking clearly then.

Even if not in work, you can still pay money into a personal pension, btw - and get tax relief on all of it if you pay no more than £240 a month into it, meaning that your contribution is bumped up to £300 per month by HMRC.

We do 50 50. Until I joined mums net it never occurred to me that lots of women still did 90pc of jobs at home

I work 4 days he does 5 and travels and earns a lot more
I do meal planning and cooking and tidying and washing and pick up the slack when he's away
He does more pick ups and drop offs more early mornings and nights for children, DIY and garden and finances. Other admin tends to be shared. I think I do more of the mental load though.

I really think before people get married or have kids they should be made to agree with their partner how household tasks are split and how it will change if they had children and if one partner changes work hours. I think encouraging men to take paternity leave would help as both would see it from the others perspective

MilkyCuppa - but can't you see that your work was about more than money? Clearly for you it was also about self-esteem and knowing you were using your brain in a particular way. I think if you were less depressed, you might be a bit less negative about what you are doing now, and might be able to find more ways to find what you do more stimulating. Also, with your background, you would probably be great as a school governor when your children are at school. Unpaid, yes, but can be intellectually stimulating!

I didn't work for 7 years milkycuppa. Took a low paid office job - 9.30-2.30 around school hours for just under £8k in 2003. It was in a function where prof quals were a possibility. I worked my socks off to deliver, introducing better ways to do things. After two years they made a role two grades higher for me and full-time. The extra money funded an au-pair. A year later they sponsored my prof quals which took two years with a full-time job and family.

I'm not very clever; got mediocre O/A'Levels, dropped out of uni after a term but I am very very organised, my glass is always half full and I work very hard and very smart. I am now the director of my service in a large organisation.

@cosytidy I think you’d have a more comfortable life if it wasn’t for your DH getting you into debt. Does he have a gambling problem? If you can’t trust him with money, it must make you feel resentful towards him.

Why does he work so many hours? Is he avoiding family life on purpose or is he in a job that he can’t switch off from? Either way you need to tell him it’s affecting your marriage and he’s letting his children down by choosing to be a mostly absent father.

@MilkyCuppa for the reasons stated in the rest of my post.

I suppose I just didn’t realise how important it is to earn enough to cover childcare before having a child. I didn’t even know how much childcare costs and how little government help was available until it was already too late.

It’s a cascading spiral - low paid job, have to quit because salary doesn’t cover childcare, depressed and bored, out of work for so long that employability and pension suffers, difficult to get back into work after being absent for years and limited in the hours you can work, career and earning potential and self esteem in many cases are permanently impacted.

Why are we not telling girls “Focus on earning at least £30k above all else, otherwise all your efforts will be wasted because you’ll have to stay at home anyway when you have kids”. It seems pointless to be telling them to follow their dreams if those dreams will have to be abandoned after having kids because they don’t pay enough.

@MilkyCuppa it's not impossible though, you could afford childcare if you stopped seeing it as YOUR responsibility, as I say I was earning 3 times less when I had kids, I had them before my career kicked off. But by staying in work I have worked my way up to a senior position in the 8 years since my eldest was born, this wasn't about me earning enough before having them, but ensuring my husband and I understood it was both our responsibility to pay for the childcare despite who was earning more. We never saw it as "if we've had kids now, I'd better take a step back for a few years" we worked it out together.

How about we teach girls to marry someone who sees them as their equal and doesn't expect them to take a step back from their career when they have children, someone who doesn't see childcare as women's work.

@MilkyCuppa it's not impossible though, you could afford childcare if you stopped seeing it as YOUR responsibility

Seeing it as OUR bill rather than MY bill doesn’t magically put another £5k in our joint bank account though. It’s irrelevant how we see it. What matters is the hard numbers.

But MilkyCuppa - as a couple, you and your dh were earning well over what you required to cover childcare costs. So there was absolutely no need for you to sabotage your career unless you actually wanted to. And as a well educated, intelligent woman, you are not limited to the one thing you did before you had children, anyway: there will be other opportunities. The biggest barrier is your loss of self-respect and confidence.
What did you do before children that had such a low ceiling on your career development that you would have been stuck on £18k per year forever, despite your qualifications? What transferable skills did you have?

I haven't told my dd to focus on earning £30k above all else but I have told her to focus on a good degree and after that professional qualifications.

My mother told me to focus on making a plan and making sensible choices as her mother told her and her mother's mither before her.

It's all about expectations and low expectations have been the thief of success in the UK education system for years. Allowed to be so because they maintain the status quo of the class system.

You can do anything you want if you want it enough. Only you can stop yourself.

@MilkyCuppa you need to look beyond the length of your own nose. Think long term not short term, as I say my salary has tripled in the years many "take a step back" while it didn't make much financial sense at the time, now my kids are in school it's paying off.

as a couple, you and your dh were earning well over what you required to cover childcare costs

Yes, and as a couple we have significantly more money if I SAH than we do if I work. We’re not in a position to spend thousands of pounds for me to have a job basically as a vanity project or hobby.

I used to research and teach. My skills and knowledge have little value outside of academia. Teaching paid just enough for me to potter around writing research papers and textbooks, but not enough to cover childcare.

So your job was bugger all use to anyone, then, MilkyCuppa and you were always pottering around on a vanity project?