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...

Yup it’s hard. Parent like you don’t work, and work like you don’t parent.

Can’t win 🤷🏻‍♀️

And teething poos are definitely a thing 😳

I think it's a bit daft to just shrug off the issues with 'well both parents do it obviously'. As plenty of PP have touched on, there's plenty of single parents out there who don't have that luxury. I'm with my partner, but due to the nature of his job, he wouldn't be able to do this.

Lots of posters responded with the “ask the father to help 50-50” because of the thread title (“mothers” not “parents”), the fact that OP is about to go on maternity leave so very, very likely to have a DP to help, and because OP never even mentioned her DP as a possibility!

Not picking on you, Pepe, just using your post as an example of a lot of posts in this thread (can’t be bothered to scroll too far!)

Of course plenty of parents face challenges e.g. no help, lone parents etc.
Of course loads of jobs aren’t as flexible/have more travel time/are harder to drop in the moment.

But honestly - so, so, SO many posts on MN about male partners with inflexible jobs and high-powered positions that are really threatened by absence and who couldn’t possibly arrange things ANY differently if they tried ... so they won’t try.

Usually, nowadays, women and men can have equivalent jobs and earning power until child-rearing age. And then suddenly the men have all this inflexibility, must-prioritise-his-career shit going on.

I don’t buy it’s genuine in most cases. Not in most cases.

In most cases women get frustrated by having to do all the compromising, burn out and end up quitting. The men keep their careers as they never once even considered life would be different as a parent.

They never looked at family friendly policies when choosing who to work for, they never proactively steered their career towards some flex in those years before parenthood, they just didn’t even have it on their radar.

In most cases that’s just unconscious bias not wilful ignorance.

So when an OP says “how can working mothers work?” I think automatically- when the man in her life takes his turn!

It is tough. It’s tougher for mothers than it is for fathers.

To reverse that, fathers need to do an unpopular and difficult and downright selfless thing and put their hands up for a worse time, in order that their female partners can have a better time.

Turkeys voting for Christmas..,

A Nanny who isn’t a fanny & will cope with childhood illnesses - let alone teething!!

If your budget really can’t stretch to that, a childminder is a nursery who can deal with a teething child. FFS. This country is getting utterly ridiculous.

Exactly nosquirrels

It's often the 'high-powered', senior jobs that offer the most flexibility so I call total bullshit when I see and hear of men who can't possibly leave work to look after their children.

Of course there are exceptions but in most cases it's attitude, unconscious bias and because they simply don't want to.

Yesterday my DS fell at school and cut his head. I'm a lecturer and was teaching so didn't have my phone. My DH, who is in a very senior position, left work and collected him within an hour. I then met them at A&E. Now, someone could have got a message to me but it didn't even occur to DH that he shouldn't be the one to leave work.
I was only half an hour behind him.
The only was we can both still maintain our careers is to work as a team and parent equally.

I have sympathy here, I do a job whereby if I’m not physically there then no business can be conducted. It makes it difficult for me and my husband to share the time off equally.

I found a CM far more flexible (and much better) than nurseries, and DC got sick much, much less - fewer DC and bugs! Our CM was a gem, was v v lucky.

In DC1’s first 18 months at nursery (3 days a week) DC was off sick for six weeks! DH and I used up a lot of (unplanned) annual leave, which was stressful, had new job at the time.

My DH is very unlikely to be available to collect - like many medical types. He can't just drop everything if he's mid operation or even 1 hour away with his arm up a horse's backside...

Of course there are some exceptions but nowhere near as many as some people make out.

Many men just won't have that conversation or see it as women's work.

Doctors and vets I know (south east) whose wives also work have nannies.

The women doctors I know are mainly GPs and work PT.

God, what idiots, sorry op. Hope you bin them off and go for a more sensible nursery or a childminder.

I wanted to be the main carer when our children were young. OH supports , but doesn't have the same closeness that I do.

We had to choose one of us- ideally each working part time would work, but generally much lower paid than full time jobs.

Because of who we are it was me who made the better carer for our young children.

South East vet's wives probably earn more than their DHs or one or both have family money...

I ended up resigning after my 2nd DC. X2 baby DC in nursery, I was getting calls for pickups every fucking week. They caught everything. And DH and I worked at the same workplace, and it was cheaper to cover me than him, so there was NO option of sharing the load, and yet I ended up working twice as hard on the days when I was in and not traipsing back and fore to the nursery to collect them when there was barely a thing wrong with them.Work couldn't be done from home. And after so many instances, I had to take unpaid leave which with a financially abusive DH was fucking great. In the end we ended up splitting up, and I've never quite got back on my feet career wise so have stayed pretty poor ever since. The impact of it has been huge.

When the baby and I were really poorly with an awful sickness bug my husband called in sick for 3 days so he could look after us.
However, if he had said he needs to be at home to look after the baby as his wife is ill he wouldn’t have been allowed to do that.
There’s not a hope in hell his boss would let him leave work to collect a sick child from nursery. He works for a family-run company with a manager stuck in the dark ages.
When he was turning up at work tired after the baby was born and we were sharing the nights / feeds / settling he said ‘isn’t that the woman’s job’?
Some companies really haven’t moved forward with being family friendly or understanding the 50/50 role of both parents.

I split it with my husband. If our son is ill and needs collecting from nursery one of us will go get him based on who did it last time and who has annual leave/carers days left. Luckily my holiday year runs October-September and I get 5 carers days as well and my husbands leave year runs January - December so one of us usually has leave. I'm also lucky that my employer is pretty child friendly and my boss also has two small children so understands what it's like and allows me to work from home if I can and or make up the time later. Only as a last resort would I need to take un-paid leave. If we're really really stuck then in the past my sister has taken a day off to help us. Husbands family is all in Wales/London so there's only us my sister and my elderly parents close by. I'd only ask my parents if we were really really desperate though.

The same as men who back to work.
If there are two of you it's up to you as partners to work out your childcare.
Employers already do enough, women need to look o their partners for equality, not society as a whole.
When you have kids they come with free childcare, if you can't both fit work around your kids, don't have them.

The nursery staff want to make their lives easier and it sounds as though they are pulling a fast one. You pay for him to attend and to be looked after and he is not ill so you should refuse to pick him up or they need to reimburse you for their short comings in childcare.
Look for another nursery, get your partner to help, do a job from home.

I couldn't split 50:50 with my husband. Slightly unreasonable sweeping statement. He would if he could but doesn't have the same flexibility as me.

Your job would replace you in the blink of an eye

Mine worked away and was away for weeks at a time and no family nearby. Sister was 300miles away and other sisters and mum thousands of miles away.DH mum was disabled and bith of our fathers died youngish.

It is hard OP but consider that the temperature may have indicated the arrival of an illness already in the nursery. Like Slapped Cheek, flu, Chicken Pox etc.

@user1472151176 I don’t understand why it’s so impossible for men to get flexibility. Women change jobs, employer and sometimes even turn down promotion opportunities to gain or retain flexibility. Hey so often having a penis means you can’t do the same as these women. It’s odd

Huge amounts of sympathy for you. For everyone saying it’s 50/50 with the dad- sometimes it can’t be?! We had this battle for years, and because I earned significantly less than my husband, his point was he couldn’t be expected to drop work for sick kids as if he lost his job or didn’t be seen to be working hard we’d have a problem. 🤷‍♀️ It made me pretty cross to be honest and was the reason for many of our arguments.

My children are now 11 and 7 and touch wood much more resilient. I now work FT but term time only which makes things much easier. Now they’re older he’s also more able to work from home whereas my job I obviously can’t. So probably now he might work from home one day if they were sick. It’s not ideal and it’s why I didn’t work FT when they were little.

My father was military so there was no chance of him rushing to help out when he was stationed abroad or on tour, so we never had a day off, from reception until year 11. My mum was a teacher at my school so I had to go in, no matter how ill I was she refused to take a day off. That being said, I was never vomiting level sick, and didn't get ill much.

We use a childminder and they're far more flexible and pick up and drop off for me, wouldn't use a nursery purely because they're so rigid

I’m currently sat at home with a poorly daughter wondering exactly the same thing, this is the third week in a row there has been some reason I’ve needed to not be at work for my normal hours and it’s really getting quite stressful.

Me and DH work together so it’s not like we can take it in turns so the company aren’t impacted each time, they are always impacted.

Also, my sister looks after DD when I’m at work and she just won’t watch her if she is poorly.

The way I dealt with this was to have a nanny. Expensive but worth it