to want a career and to be a fully involved mum?

[PSCMUM]

i want to work and take my children to school every day, and pick them up on day a week, and be able to go to the odd assembly and school trip. This would mean working 10am-6pm 4 days a week and 10am-2pm and 7pm-10pm on the other day, so i'd do the same amount of work i do now, well i do more than that now, and would continue to, as i bring work home. but i woudl like to do that, and still get the big cases at work, and still have a chance at reaching the top of my game.
Am i wanting too much? Shoudl i just accept the Mummy track until they are all older and I can work the long slavish hours the Uk holds so dear?

Xenia, most women and men aren't working full-time in jobs they love.

Leaving aside all those who work part-time for whatever reason, there are thousands if not millions of people who don't love their jobs. They are unhappy for many reasons - they don't like the job itself, the work is stressful or boring, they don't get on with the people they work with, the pay is inadequate, the hours are too long or too inflexible, they find it hard or impossible to see enough of their families or do the sorts of leisure activities they would like to. You only have to read posts on sites such as this to realise that not all workers, whether they are male or female, are happy in their work, and that sometimes this is indeed damaging their lives. To misquote you, some may seem to be happy with their working lives, but scratch the surface...

It's sad that you have to turn everything into your own one-sided, lop-sided view on life. You have given no constructive advice at all. To turn your advice around again, perhaps you, and many employers, need to realise that people can be good and involved workers without being there every minute of every day.

Message withdrawn

Xenia - on the taking children to school thing - my partner adores taking his children to school, it's one of the highlights of his day and he's always done it every single day, ever since they were three and first went to school.

This morning he got up and drove over to his ex's and then walked the boys to school (one after another, different schools) and I took our daughter to school... and then we went home and enjoyed the morning alone together ... and then we both went to collect her at the end of the morning before he went to the office.

My male boss regularly takes and collects his children to and from school. He will take a day off if his wife, who works part-time, has to go in. He will leave at 3pm if one of the children needs to be taken to the dentist etc.

Consequently, nobody bats an eyelid if I have to work from home, leave early or come in late as long as I do my work.(I work part-time).

Another one of my male colleague regularly leaves early to pick his son up from nursery or comes in late if he needs to take him to the doctors.

The people we work for live in the real world and therefore their attitude to parenting responsibility is enlightened.

Organisations and bosses that still harbour anachronistic beliefs that work is everything and family commitments are an unwarranted nuisance belong to the dark ages. Unfortunately, there are still too many of them around today.

Speedymama - your male boss sounds as if he has a similar enlightened attitude to my partner.

Sometimes I feel pissed off with myself for seducing him because I get envious of the women who work in his head office - they earn really good salaries, get to work at 9.30 am, leave at 6pm latest and can always come and go in office hours for children's appointments etc. His only care is that the work is done.

Absolutely Anna.

Your DH sounds great!

Yes, I think he is

We see loads of him at home that way so I do get to benefit. I just wish I could find a company other than his with a boss like that...

Anna,I remember you said that you had an MBA.

Finding an organisation that will value your training and offer the flexibility you are after is not going to be easy I'm afraid, especially in France. Good luck!

In the mean time, read this and be inspired!

Speedymama - interesting article but even ten years ago there were articles about successful, up-and-coming young women. I'm more interested these days in women who have managed to stay the course and have careers, children and husbands (no divorces ) on track still at 45.

Ah in that case, you need to read an earlier issue from this year that looked at men and women 10 years on.

The women had all fallen off the high flying career fast track because of their commitment to wanting to be around for their children.

The man was dissatisfied because now he was a father, he was not seeing enough of his young son because of work commitments.

Nobody was satisfied.

LOL

It's easy to do and love the career thing when you're young and commitment free. So much harder to have it all...

We can do it all but have it all? No.

That is what I accepted when I had my DTS and hence why I am happy to work part-time.

Sure, you have to make choices. I'm fine with that.

I'm much less fine with political pressure to get all mothers into full-time work. That doesn't help couples work out their own work-life balance, and it doesn't incite companies to take a step back and work out how to accommodate more flexible working patterns.

"I'm more interested these days in women who have managed to stay the course and have careers, children and husbands (no divorces ) on track still at 45."

Actually, there are quite a lot of these on MN, I think!

Anchovy - I agree, I've come across quite a few here who seem to be going in that direction.

But in RL the %age I know who have stayed on track and have it all at 45 is very small . Yet 100% started out on that course.

5 1/2 more years to go...

although i can't bear the phrase "having it all"

Why not?

Sounds so smug!

And it brings to mind shoulderpads and eighties "boardroom babes"

Xenia here's the beef - if women didn't do it, more children would die - of neglect of starvation - of whatever. Women will always have 'more' invested in their kids, from genetic facts to cultural ones.

They invest more in offspring from egg and 9 months pregnancy onwards and the fact that if one investement fails another gargantuan effort is needed to produce another one, where technically, a man invests sperm and can leave it at that. This has a scientfic name (which I won't bother saying as it's meaningless here) and reems of evidence behind it. Your chronic inablity to see the world as it is and only as you think it ought to be is just baffeling for someone of your supposed intellegence.

Xenia, how ridiculous your post it! DO you have any idea of the concept of choice?! I 100% support your right to go to work full time, view the school run as boring etc, and I don't think it makes you a lesser parent - I am a firm believer that happy mums make happy kids. But I expect you to support my right to have a career I love AND to collect my children from school occassionally. The feminist movement was not about forcing women to be a certain way, it was / is about empowering them so that they have choices. I am shocked at your apparent inabilty to recognise that others might want different things out of life to you.

And today at work, something just awful happened. A junior memver of staff rang in around a month ago to say her son had been diagnosed with a potentially very serious illness, and she needed to take some time off as he can't go to nursery, was in hospital etc. She is a single mum, and has no family support and no contact with her ds's dad. So she well and truly goes it alone and I am so in awe! anyway, our team manager was furious that she couldn't come in to work when her ds was in hospital ( i am not making this up) and made her take it as unpaid leave. While she was away, he had a meeting with me and some others at which he suggested she should be demoted upon her return. Nobody agreed with him. She came back to work today, her poor little DS has just started reception, is in breakfast club, AND after school club, which means he attends school from 8am - 5pm, he has to have injections and other medication throughout the day. She asked if she could change her hours to 9-4 so that she could drop him to breakfast club and collect him from after school club. She was told yes, but only on condition you accept this demotion. I was the only one that objected, the general gfeeling being that if she wants a change in hours, she has to take what is on offer. She was previously working 9-4.45. She was very upset. She has been given no option.

I am, needless to say, furious and powerless and think the co I work for is run by neanderthals. (sp I know!)

Message withdrawn

xenia, how refreshing to hear your views (again).
pscmum, your employers sound absolutely foul. get out as soon as and then see how you feel about juggling work / family..... if they treat your poor collegue so callously and contemptuously there is no hope of achieving what you want in this job.
..... and please tell them where to stick their appalling attitudes when you have found yourself a better job won't you?

ROFL, PMSL at Xenia. Making time to take your kids to school will ultimately damage them.

Happy parents ALWAYS make happy kids WOOOOOOAH generalisation express just swept by!!!!!!!

most men and women work full time in work they love you have to imagine my voice here at the highest, squeakiest point the human voice can reach; WHAT planet are you ON?

Urgh, PCSMUM, they sound horrific. I take back my previous post where I suggested you should stick with it - you'll be well out of there. How completely horrible and it sounds as though all the employees are being cowed into submission by dictatorial bosses. And how appalling that the poor woman's work status was discussed in open by her colleagues at the instigation of the boss - how unprofessional. Surely that should be a discussion for the boss and HR alone?