To wonder why people have children when they clearly put their career first, by having a 24hr maternity nurse from day one and a full-time nanny from 3 months?

[gogetter]

Call me old fashioned but why bother when you are going to see your child for maybe an hour a day on weekdays?
It's not financially needed for mum to return to work (far from) so why leave your teeny weeny baby with a nanny during the most amazing time of their lifes?

A bit strange I fear!

eleusis - that was my point - the research is swinging towards the SAHM at the moment but you can find research to support whatever point of view you hold and I am sure that in a year a whole bunch of research will be published to refute all this and the pendulum will swing back the other way. That is what pendulums do which is why I used the analogy. I was merely countering the idea put forward by Xenia that children of working parents are some how all round better people. It is not a fact - it is the result of some research and all research is subject to the possibility of falsification.

I think it's fairly neutral actually and I can't be bothered to cite any more advantanges of women working. It's just if somenoe chooses to suggest why bother to have children if the mother (not the father) returns to work then they have to expect those of us who believe it is better for women to work to castigate them appropriately.

By all means try to get more men into the home and more women into board rooms but if they both want to work then that's probably best all round.

Seeing that you said if they both want to work, Xenia, I agree with your last post...

Xenia posts like your last one make total sense to me. Do you just post comments like the concubine one and compulsory re-education just to get a rise out of people?

In part but isn't marriage where the women doesn't work the provision of sex for pay when you get down to it?

..with the added amusing modern twist that he can't even get the sex as half the mothers at home with babies just refuse it.

lol Xenia....hm...I really don't think that a man with such opinion on marriage would not care if the woman in question works or doesn't....I mean, really what you mean then is, that all married women are concubines, so, to say, lol....
I am sure most men sort of wish it was so, lol...afterall they are just men, eh...

would care, not "would not care."..

I would desperately have loved a 24 hr maternity nurse when I was struggling to breast feed a screaming baby. I'm proud that I didn't have one though. I'd have found surrendering responsibility to a nurse addictive and found it hard to re-gain my independence.

Xenie - In part but isn't marriage where the women doesn't work the provision of sex for pay when you get down to it?

Not sure about that, I don't work but I iron his shirts for sex so doesn't that make him the tart.......

Xania, I most certainly don't have sex with my husband out of some sort of obligation to "thank him" for the roof over my head/clothes on my back/food on the table etc etc etc. It is part of a loving relationship, irelevant of who does or doesn't bring money into the house.

If that is how you see it I think the issues in that sort of a relationship run a lot deeper than going out to work.

Sorry we are all spelling your name wrong now .

can I get 24 hr care for me anywhere?

I don't understand where this idea that SAHM don't work - lack of formal salary doesn't mean that we don't work. The work is the looking after the home and children the pay is the access to the joint pot of money. Marriage is a partnership which gives both parties rights and responsibilities. The working husband gets his children and his home cared for, the wife gets the money from the joint pot to pay for this. It doesn't make the wife subservient to the husband any more than the is subservient to her. If I left my husband with my children he would be up the proverbial without a paddle just as much as I would if he left me. How would he earn the money to pay for the children and home if I wasn't there. A symbiotic relationship not a parasitic one of the SAHM leeching off her husband. Of course couples shouldn't be complacent about relationships but you can't live your life on the basis that your husband is just about to run off! It would drive you mad and would probably would become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

God whats wrong with the 50's? Are you all mad? Comparing it to what we have today and whats that exactly? Society in general had taken a nosedive.No community, no family values I could go on.

Women made to feel that they can have it all? Some of us on here are so desperate to compete with men that they have forgotten what we have.

It doesnt matter if you work or dont.Peoples circumstances usually dictate this. If I had a choice? I would look after my dd and work part time as I personally like the balance. But I have to work full time. And as to which way the pendulum swings, children are more likely to thrive on being with mum full time than snatching a few hours here and there because mum just does not do maternal (I am not talking about working mums here but those ready to admit to that fact)

But does my life, my career come before my child? Never.

And why dont men come under attack? Because they are men. They are in the main bloody crap at multi tasking so taking on childcare? HA HA.Lets face it we are made of different stuff and unless you have a few hairs sprouting out between your tits you cant really argue with that fact.

Shoot me now. Too many women are so hell bent on getting bloody even that they miss the point all together.

If I think of the 50s and the family values then I imagine there was a lot more inequality and hypocrisy. Not sure I liked the music either.

I reckon your right but still think ist better than what we have now

just think they needed tweaking a bit

Sometimes think us women have made a rods for our own backs IFYSWIM

CP men can do the same as women. It's a myth perpetrated by women who want to stay home and men who want to keep them there that having a penis precludes you from cleaning the house and changing nappies. Most businessmen and women cope with lots of tasks and many also have loving families.

If some women get satisfaction out of childcare and housework then fine but I find it hard to believe anyone with half a brain finds that at all interesting as their be all and end all. Women and men have always subcontracted out a load of their obligations. It's how the world has always worked for thousands of years. That does not mean they are not loving competent parents who bring up very much loved children. You don't measure those things by how mnay numbers of times you've changed a nappy or the precise number of hours a day spent with your children. A lot of parents, male and female, know being at home is boring and repetitive and basically domestic service so most of them choose not to do it.

So who are all these businessmen and women subcontracting out to? Presumably those who do childcare and domestic duties for money - so are they all written off as having only half a brain too? Or is it because they do the job for money rather than love they are somehow redeemed. Personally I found working in an office repetitive and boring despite having plenty of responsibility and a professional qualification. Being stuck in the 9 to 5 rut was restrictive and tedious and most of the time I was counting the hours until I got out of there.

There are plenty of ways of using your brain which don't include earning money. I don't know many SAHM who do nothing but child care and domestic duties. Most help out their husbands in their businesses, do voluntary work, dabble in working from home in an informal way or take courses and work towards further qualifications.

Competent parenting may not be measured by the number of nappies you change but nor is it measured by how much you earn. Money isn't everything.

I've never seen the men have problems with multi-tasking round the office.

Men are made of different stuff? Well, yes, IME men are slightly more confident at taking unilateral decisions in general, and women are better at empathising in general (not that you'd think it, looking at threads like this). I don't see how any of this determines what roles OUGHT to be taken.

I look at Norway and I don't see the economy collapsing as a result of companies being forced by law to have women on the board.

I look at Sweden and find them to be a pretty nice bunch of people, seemingly suffering no ill-effects whatsoever from growing up in families where both parents work as standard and virtually all children attend nursery from the age of 9 months and where maternity leave is shared between husband and wife in whatever mix they want (which surprise, surprise, results in Sweden having one of the smallest gaps in genderpay in the whole of the western world)

I look at my parents who were shoved in nurseries/day care from the moment they were born because the entire nation had to go out to work during the second world war, and funny enough they seem pretty cool folk too.

I've no problem with people who do want to stay at home with their babies, but I do see a problem with people then doing so and turning round saying there's no point in having children if you don't intend to do the same, or - as has been suggested on here - the very act is detrimental to our kids. Not at all. Shit childcare is detrimental and so are biggotted opinions. Caring parenting - in whatever format it comes in - isn't. And I personally agree 100% with Xenias view that a careerist mum is a pretty good role model for any daughter. I also believe that more blokes in teaching/childcare would likewise be a bloody good idea too.

recent research have shown that women are slightly better at multi-tasking and men at sequential tasking however it did not show that overall tasks were completed any slower or less efficiently.

Men are perfectly competent at the things they choose to find important. They are often let off the hook by us women either because we choose to or for an easy life.

This discussion could go on forever without ever solving the problem that families need more time of BOTH parents.
A German journalist, Iris Radisch, has recently published a book called 'Die Schule der Frauen' (The School of women) where she discusses the problem of career, children and love.

Of course she has no answer but she analyses that the family has no lobby like the economy does and that therefore people are asked to work very long hours in leading positions. In fact she suggests that if both parents could work on 2/3 time rather than full time there would be more time for family and children. And it would be possible, it is not necessary to work for 10h a day, it is just the norm in our society if one wants to work in a leading position.

In answer to the OP, I think there is no general truth, everybody finds there own modus vivendi.

YABU to suggest women who have to work or do not wish to sacrifice their careers should not be having kids.

Squiffy, I think you will find that Sweden offers much better maternity leave than the UK. They are entitled to 16 months with of their pay - they aren't forced back to work before they are ready. They can split the maternity leave between parents but apparently the take up rate for that is low (about 5%) as men tend to work in the more lucrative and competitive private sector and women work in the poorer-paid public sector so it is still the woman who stays at home during the maternity leave and then goes back to a poorly paid part time job. Apparently the Swedes have the same gender pay gap as the UK. France Portugal and Greece have smaller gaps than us. They aren't that great a role model except that they give more maternity leave.

It is Xenia's right to go back to work and to bring up her children as she sees fit. If it works for her and her children then that is fantastic, good luck to her. What I do object to is her accusing anybody who doesn't follow her example as a half wit. Each family should do what works for them without being ridiculed for their choices.