AIBU to say that some people just cannot work full time or even at all?

[thebeesknees123]

This does seem to be an age old discussion among parents, particularly among women with young children.

I can think of various reasons why people can't work:

Just had a baby and breastfeeding
Mental or physical health conditions
Caring responsibilities - e.g. elderly relative
The money does not cover childcare/commute expenses

Personally, I do work (30 hours per week) but I am lucky in that it is shifts around the school so I don't have childcare costs. I would never slate someone who couldn't find something suitable for their needs or pressure them to take something that is going to cause them undue stress because they are put in a position where they are forced to be unreliable, which, frankly, I would be if I were forced to work 9 to 5.

I'm working (or not at the moment) for an agency. I have been offered several jobs in the last few weeks that start at 8pm. I went into the agency and asked if there was any flexibilty as I could do 8.15/8.30 but the answer was no.

So I am without work and three jobs are vacant...for the sake of 15 minutes. These are basic, minimum wage not really important jobs

sorry 8AM

*I am very surprised that women are still saying that the cost of childcare makes it not worth returning to work. A shift in attitudes is needed here, the cost of childcare is spllit between 2 earners normally, the long term benefits of working far outweigh giving up work and more women need to start to expect more of their partners re childcare, taking time off work etc.

You shouldn't be surprised. The reality is that benefits of working may well be minimal in some circumstances, and aren't necessarily outweighed by the disadvantages. Particularly for people in low paid and physically hard work, the sort that leaves many dealing with the cumulative physical effects of doing it day after day, year after year. There hasn't been much discussion of this in the thread, but it's a point that needs making.

And the point about childcare being a joint cost is totally valid in some circumstances, but is also applied far too often when it's a ridiculous way to look at things. If the lower earner working is going to cost more than they can bring in, not uncommon when there's more than one child and a modest earner, sometimes that £100 a month you might be down is the difference between paying all your bills or not. It makes nary a shit of difference if you think of it as a £50 deficit in the budget each. That won't put shoes on anyone's feet or food in the cupboards. What you're going to do instead if you can't afford to do otherwise right now is you're going to decide the lower earner will give up work for a bit, and you're going to use that £100 to pay the council tax.

@Oldraver TBF, the agency could well be having the same difficulty with a qualified candidate being inflexible for the sake of 15 minutes. There may well be a good reason they need the employee in at that time.

Romany. That’s not the case unilaterally, I know many couples where both have equally fulfilling senior roles and arrange childcare, household tasks etc between them, my DH and I included

Cosmic. How do you think people gain the opportunity of better paid employment in the future if they choose not work when they can? If you want a better paid job going forward you often have start in a lower role and generally there’s progression in most jobs, even shop work can lead on to a supervisory post, managers grade in the future etc...but only if you gain the experience in the first place.

And if someone is ‘too important’ to take more than a week off that would usually imply the organisation they work for is poorly run.

If society doesn't shift then many women will continue to end up with low/no pensions and be in poverty in their old age.

As others have said, many give up their careers and stand back whilst their partners/husbands continue to progress and reap the rewards and often freedoms that this entails. Then (in far too many cases) the men trade them in for a younger model - if the woman hasn't studied/kept anything up ends up only having the option of low paid jobs. I really don't believe that anyones job is soo important that they can't take a small amount of time off to look after their own children. Until women start pushing this men will continue to take advantage.

The other option is for women to tell their partners that parenting is a joint responsiblity and therefore they should be 'paid' to stay at home by their partner.

I know many of you will be laughing at this and I do know that many people are in low paid jobs already. The bottom line is that people are simply not paid properly in this country and it's getting ridiculous. I think people would be more willing to work if they received a fair days pay for a fairs day work.

Personally I think childcare when you don’t stand to make any money is a bit of a red herring.

Being out of the workforce until your child is in school is arguably more detrimental as then you may have to re-enter the workforce at a lower rate. And of course this disproportionately affects women.

many give up their careers and stand back whilst their partners/husbands continue to progress and reap the rewards

The fact is, to progress in a career you need someone in a lesser role to pick up the slack in terms of childcare. If you’re taking days off and not working late then someone else with no commitments will get the promotion. And if the woman is the lower earner at the beginning it’s more likely that she’ll be the one who has to step back while they as a couple focus on progressing the most profitable career - the man’s

I think that for a lot of families it's not childcare that is the biggest problem, it's elderly parents or a family member with a serious health condition. You can pay someone to look after your children (if you have the money) in a way that you can't with other family members.

How do you think people gain the opportunity of better paid employment in the future if they choose not work when they can?

Depends what you’re working as I suppose, or what you’re trained in. Some jobs don’t have prospects and they’re not always the ones you’d think. In the public sector there are many roles where they keep you on the same shitty salary because they can’t afford to pay more. 50 min wage workers under one manager whose job you wouldn’t want even if you could get it because he has to work ridiculous hours and has no life.

Yes Cosmic, given the gender pay gap this will nearly always be the case unless woman do something to change it. If women want to give up work then fine but this should be financed by their partner. They also need to accept that later in life they will be worse off.

Round of applause for ReanimatedSGB 👏👏 👏

Yes for some people it's not economical for them to work but for elective situations (eg having kids) it's wholly reasonable to expect couples to plan for the expense rather than rely on benefits beyond maternity pay. (Caring for disabled relatives is different, this isn't planned for, you need state support). Yes I stayed home, and money was seriously tight but we managed without assistance (we lived overseas so weren't eligible despite us meeting local criteria if we had their nationality).

I work PT and have done since having DS 18 years ago. Initially worked PT so I could spend time at home with him whilst he was growing up, stayed PT through school as otherwise it's paying out childcare for something I'd rather do myself

As DS moved through secondary school I remained PT as by that time I was needing to provide increasing support and care to my elderly parents.

Now in my 50's I don't think I'll ever return to full time work (I hope not to anyway). I enjoy my job but if I ever have to work a full day (normally work 5 hours) I'm exhausted. DH is not a high earner - neither of us are - but our outgoings are low so we are reasonably comfortable.

I appreciate that everyone doesn't have this choice .

To whomever it was up thread who described people who cannot work as "useless" and joked about not being able to "assassinate them":

How do you think such comments make those of us who cannot work, for health reasons, feel?

It is hard enough being disabled, without the ignorant, judgemental and nasty comments we receive.

I give no fucks that you see people like me as useless, because it says far more about you.

I wouldn't like to wish misfortune on anyone, but it would be great if people like the PP had to live with disabilities or health problems for a few days.

We could all say that working full time or working at all is not good for our mental health but then the pressure is on one partner to pay the bills.
I do think that when it comes to work it's more acceptable for a woman to opt out but I know men with mental health problems who would love time out but can't afford to because they are the breadwinners.
And to many ppl use anxiety or depression as an excuse not to work.
Yes you have your genuine cases and those I feel truly sorry for but their are a lot of ppl who label themselves as depressed without really knowing the true meaning or use it as a get out clause because it sounds better than saying I don't want to work.

Apples that’s me, except my children are still primary age.
I have had very severe periods of depression in my teens and 20s but have been off meds for over a decade now. I manage quite well with life in general, but if I work 4 days or more my mh really suffers. Equally my mh suffers if I don’t work at all, so pt is perfect for me.

Ah it was @TheNavigator who said "you can't assassinate the useless.

I appreciate that the rest of your comment was about supporting people, but with shockingly disablist and nasty comments like the above, you undo all your nice words.

I may be shortly joining the priced out of work gang - it will be for the sake of reducing hours by around 4 hours per week and work have said a big fat no to it.

Specific situation if anyone is interested: about to start back from mat leave at my 24 hpw job (3days). I can no longer get around the childcare pick-ups for my kids (3 in different places) and cram in a 9-5 day. DH and I split drop offs but I do all the pick ups as he has to work later and frankly we need his high salary more. Work will allow me to work shorter days using holiday upon my return but not to reduce hours on my contact. They would prefer I work more days to keep the same number of hours - however I'd end up paying for more days childcare than days worked, which makes it unaffordable!

Blackberry. Appreciate that’s difficult for you but assume you understand that to enable you to drop 4 hours your employer has to try and cover that somehow? That means trying to get someone else to work more hours which they might not want to, or be able to especially if colleagues are already full time, as it would be impossible to backfill just 4 hours a week with a new member of staff.

Yes I understand the reasoning behind it Dorset. I'm a little disappointing that they won't do it though as I've been there a long time and it's not a huge reduction in hours.

The pity of it is that it would only be a problem for me for around 15 months, at which point I'd be able to up hours again. It may be that they can fill my post easily but it's also possible that they won't be able to. I could also do the hours if work from home were an option but they've ruled this out too. Reducing from full time to 3 days is allowable but that is their cut off.

BlackBerry. 15 months of 4 hours a week down soon adds up for your employer though and working from home isn’t as easy as many people think, especially when you have three DC to look after too.

Would it not be more sensible to come up with an interim solution on childcare for 15 months to enable you to maintain your hours if the job would work for you long term...

Another thing about the fetishization of 'work' as something that you are paid a wage for (as distinct from eg looking after dependent family members, growing fruit and veg, producing art) is the clusterfuck of the way volunteer work is now treated. It's not acceptable to the DWP for someone who is not in paid employment to volunteer and do something that is beneficial to their local community and to the volunteer themselves - they are supposed to prioritize signing on and 'seeking paid work''. Yet austerity means that lots of vital services are now supposed to be provided by... volunteers. One of my jobs is admin for school governing bodies, and being a school governor is different to what it was a few years ago - the time commitment is massive and governing bodies are supposed to look for high flyers with business experience ie a skillset that would generally require close to a six-figure salary...

Most people would prefer to work in the sense that they would like to spend at least some of their time doing things that are productive, that benefit them and their families and the wider community in some way. Fewer people want to spend their days doing essentially pointless tasks - or activities that are actually not very good for the worker/the community/the environment because the alternative is starvation.

Another problem with current work/business/economics (which quite a lot of posters simply can't comprehend, because they have either got family financial support or are established in a decent job and have been for years) is how much worse things are than they used to be. One of the big problems is the huge growth of agencies/middlefolk/ 'disruption', where there is a layer of people taking a cut out of every transaction. I see quite a bit of well-meant (ish) advice to skint posters that they take up cleaning or ironing or driving a minicab: nowadays it's a lot harder to bring in money doing that because of all the apps and agencies that will undercut what you would charge and keep a chunk of what the client pays.

Dorset I wouldn't even attempt to work with the children at home - the hours would be doable wfh with the children in childcare, the loss of commuting time would allow me to fit a full days work in.

I've obviously considered all the childcare options and ruled alternative options out as either detrimental to the children or because the care itself unavailable for the hours needed. Hence my requesting to change hours - it's not done lightly. I'm aware that this is a choice but it not always as easy as just switching childcare - availability is often low, good options tend to be very pricey and changing around or doing extremely long days would be disruptive to the kids.

One of the things that always strikes me in threads about working or not working after having children is that there seem to be so many women who say they wouldn't earn much and that there husbands earn more so it makes sense from the husband to work full time and the wife not to work at all or very little.

But if you take the data for women and men without children, there isn't a big gap in average earnings.
So how come it seems so disproportionately on this thread and others that women are saying their earnings will be so much less than men when they return to work after maternity leave and so might as well give up.
I mean, I understand that maternity leave might mean you take a hit and companies might judge you poorly. But so much that suddenly you will always be a low earner when full time working men and women without children have a much smaller gap?

Of course leave the workforce for a decade and you probably will never earn as much as your husband. But why isn't it that it always seem to be women giving up work and not men?