How are mothers supposed to go back to work??

[ArtichokeAardvark]

I've just had the dreaded call from nursery to come and collect DS. 'Hello Mrs X, I'm afraid your son is unwell, please could you come and pick him up asap'.

My son is teething. Yes, he's a bit grumpy, but he's teething. Yes, he has a temperature but it's only 38.0 so not exactly an emergency. They admitted themselves he's running around happily with the other children, just being a little bit whingier than normal.

But no, I have to collect him. No they can't even give Teetha homeopathic stuff without a doctor's prescription. And please could I keep him home for 24 hours after his temp goes back to normal.

I am slammed at work. I'm the only person in my department this week and I'm desperately trying to tie up everything this month before I go on mat leave. I would drop everything if my son was genuinely unwell, but for god's sake he's TEETHING.

How the hell are mothers meant to be able to go back to work? This happens with depressingly regularity and my employer is luckily understanding but their patience is beginning to wear thin...

Atm DH is a student so has done almost all the sickness days of which there have been soooo many. DD is 17 months and started nursery at 9 months when I went back to work. I don't really have a career and I only went back to work then because we couldn't afford to take the unpaid leave. I'm in a low paid job and the only earner. When he starts employment he will automatically earn double what I do and will be in healthcare so can't WFH or flex or anything as will be on rotas for safe staffing levels. So I am going to have to take a bigger hit from then on because he won't be able to move things around at the last minute as easy as I can. My line manager is super understanding (male, works FT, has two under 5s and sometimes takes time off at short notice to care for his children, his wife works PT). It is easy for me to take annual leave or WFH or make up a few hours etc at short notice as he would never turn down a reasonable request like that. Also as I earn half the amount of my DH and don't have a career whereas he will, financially we would need to make that decision to prioritise his job if it came down to it, for the financial safety of our family. We do have 1 grandparent around who will kindly offer childcare in sickness emergencies, an exception being if DD is vomiting which they are not prepared to deal with, which is totally understandable!

It's not impossible for men to have flexibility....it's just many of them use the varying excuses we've seen quoted on this thread. The one that makes me most angry is the ' I earn more than you' card.

And yes,I know not all jobs offer flexibility but lots do.

It's no wonder the gender pay gap is most prevalent once a woman has a baby. There are still serious structural and societal barriers that prevent womens career development....a disgraceful situation to be in in 2019.

Yep Cosmo. Myself and a number of my friends are the higher earning partner and do we pull the “I earn more I can’t do any pick ups” bullshit? No we do not.

I agree it can be a nightmare if the child is ill and you both work. One of my DS was very sick as a baby and that continued throughout childhood as he picked up everything going! I returned to work as the main earner by DP stayed at home with our twin DS (he's wonderful!) He then worked from home when they went to school as our DS continued to be ill frequently. It's not easy though unless you can work from home.

I think most nurseries do this, Get recommendations for a kind loving childminder

you should try having a disabled child... I had to give up work as I was being called by the school pretty much every week, having to speak to teachers and drs,, had hospital appts coming out my ears.. it just wasn't sustainable and there is NO support out there, at all.

The whole thing is ridiculous, it really is.

I hear you! I'm trying to go back to work, looking for something else as baby is now one, but I've always got appointments for the kids or they are off poorly 😩 I'm a single parent and their dad is useless so it's hard :/

Cosmo- I totally agree with you. That line used to really annoy me.

The trouble with littlies is they can be fine one minute, then tank the next. They have maybe seen the signs that he is not well, and are probably erring on the side of caution. It could be a cold/flu/measles/the pox/blah blah plenty of other viruses (the traditional "seasons" for illnesses in young children aren't really applying any more). If it's something possibly contagious he could infect the other children, and worse still, the staff. If all the staff are ill, they might have to temporarily close, then they have multiple families without childcare. Because parents send their children in when they are clearly unwell, I get every! Cold virus out there, and if I miss a day or two of work, I don't get paid.

Spare a thought for mothers of kids with serious illnesses and chronic medical conditions, who invariably are the ones whose careers end as a result. I went back to my career after a year and a half out for my son's surgery/radiation/ follow up.

I'm grateful I managed to elbow my way back in - but it really was that: I had to hide the real reason I took time off work in order to get a job. I tried being honest and got turned down.

So what do people think would be the best way to deal with this?

A) only people who can afford to have one parent at home/both go part time should have kids
B) Some kind of emergency childcare system where you pay for for someone who can pick up your kids where you're ill and care for them at home
C) only having children in a set up where both parents agree to share sickness cover
D) everyone pay extra taxes so that the state can provide childcare.

Any other suggestions?

Nothing finewords. You just muddle along for a few years going your best

I can’t work. I had to give up my flexible part time job because even then I was missing meetings once the twins started nursery because they were constantly sick. When they got chicken pox there was an entire month where one was off nursery. We had constant bugs from January to June. They both have autism but one also has hypoglycaemia that can strike at any minute. I do some work for our company which I can genuinely fit around them and that’s it.

Fortunately our nursery don’t have such a ridiculous policy on temps - they’d barely ever be there if they did. I’d look for a new nursery. Many times I’ve picked up and they’ve told me one has had a temp at some point in the session, they only call to pick them up when they are clearly unwell.

Nothing finewords. You just muddle along for a few years going your best

If I’d been working full time I’d have been fired based on how much time they’ve needed off. If Id shared it with DH we’d both have been fired.

You can’t “muddle through” an entire month where one or other child can’t go to nursery.

A raised temperature is the body fighting an infection. If he is teething then that is coincidental.

Of course there are extreme situations. There isn’t actually a solution though is there?

I don’t know how working mums do it. Mine are older now the youngest is 8 but I still dont see how I could go back to work even now. with 4 dc’s in the winter at least one of them is ill with something. When most jobs only offer 3-4 weeks holidays a year we wouldn’t be able to go away in the school hols like we do now (dh has own business so can work from wherever some of the time). I feel so grateful to have the option of being a SAHM. The only downside is the monotony of housework etc sometimes and feeling your mind isn’t stretched much.
But I agree op it must be really stressful.

The thing is, at the moment, "muddling through" seems to mean

Women being expected to give up their careers/ work in lower paid, part time or flexible roles, so they can lift the heavy end of the log. Meanwhile men sail along, with their higher paid jobs that couldn't possibly be impinged upon, with employers who "wouldn't allow" them to take time off.
This means that employers assume women with kids are unreliable, are less willing to promote them and then hey presto, when a couple has children, it just so happens that the woman is better placed to drop her career....

It impacts me personally - I've had employers be reticent to promote me because there is an assumption (based in cold, hard reality) that I'd be more likely to be an unreliable employee than a man.

The answer to this question is simple
It's only difficult if you are a single parent.

If you want to work you find a man who is happy for you to be equal. To share ALL responsibility including working and for his work to not be more important than yours.

Just the same as a man who wants a sahm for his children finds somebody happy to do that. He doesn't marry a career woman and moan she doesn't want to be a sahm.

You need to get your partners to step up, for them to go pt, be at home more.
But you fall for the excuses, and the fact he earns more, which really shows where your priorities are.

We do sickness and all childcare 50:50 but are just muddling through. I’m also infuriated by all the women deferring to their husbands jobs, it’s effects me too

These discussions always seem to go the same way. 1) Working mum struggling doing the bulk of childcare, asks for advice, 2) people say try and share childcare more equally with the dad, 3) loads of women reply saying that their work is (to some extent) flexible but their partners isn’t so they need to do all the picking up sick child from nursery etc.

I call bullshit. At a societal level all these men and women are working for the same organisations, so why on mumsnet does it seem that 99% of the time the mum works for the more ‘flexible’ organisation?!

One issue is that some men feel that they can’t ask for flexibility in the current work culture. Change needs to be collective but it also starts with the individual - the more it is seen as the norm for a man to need a last minute day off to care for a sick child the better. I simply refuse to believe that all the men mentioned in posts like this have such important jobs they their firm would collapse if they spent a day caring for their sick child.

And in the time it took me to write that at least 3 people have written similar posts!

The nursery years are difficult in terms of frequent sickness, the good thing is that these children rarely get in once in school as they have come across all bugs already.
I suggest you look at nurseries that take children of hospital staff. They understand that when a child goes home or the nursery closes, there is one less nurse, or doctor or surgeon and this has a bigger impact on lots of patients. They try really hard to keep the children at nursery rather than send them home, plus the parents are medically "in the know" and will put up a pretty could case for letting the children stay. Obviously not when genuinely poorly and needing a parent but yes, kids get colds, they teeth, they get mild non specific illnesses with temperatures. Busy nurseries don't really want unhappy sick kids as they take more one-to - one care. Also less children means less staff and someone gets to go home early or do paperwork etc

Teething doesn't cause a raised temperature. All the research has found that raised temperatures and teething are a coincidence and that the child will have a virus of some sort along side teething discomfort. It is estimated that babies spend 30 of their first 52 weeks (1st yr) battling some sort of illness. The treatment is generally the same, calpol or nurofen, so people assume it is teeth. However if they have a raised temperature then they are genuinely unwell. Sorry, I can't quote the sources at this moment in time but I'm sure I can dig them out later if pertinent.

I'm sorry you are finding it difficult atm. I can offer that from experience with nursery the first 6 months will be full of snot and coughing and fever but hopefully you will be smooth sailing after that.

Yep Cosmo. Myself and a number of my friends are the higher earning partner and do we pull the “I earn more I can’t do any pick ups” bullshit? No we do not.

Exactly passthecherrycoke

In my case my DH is the earner but on certain days we prioritise my job. I'm a lecturer and on my teaching days DH HAS to rearrange work if needed because I can't just cancel lectures all the time.
We have very little family support but we've managed to make it work by sharing responsibilities.