That it’s women who are still locked down?

[Sadie789]

My DH goes back to work next week and rightly so, long overdue in my opinion.

However, I can’t go back to work as with two young DC we have no childcare and it’s not possible to do my job from home.

Under normal circumstances without childcare it wouldn’t really be an issue as there would be classes and clubs and play parks and soft plays and friends to meet up with, so a full weekly schedule out and about with things to do.

I can’t take them to the supermarket or round the shops either, no grandparents allowed etc.

As it stands none of these things are available nor are likely to be for a while, so for me my situation has not changed from the initial lockdown - stay at home, go out for exercise (weather permitting).

Meanwhile my DH and the Hs of my friends are all back at work out of the house living normal days. At the weekends the golf is back on so that’s a leisure option.

Many of my friends are also trying to work from home while looking after children, some also homeschooling older ones.

Women who don’t have children are also on the back foot as many of the professions which are traditionally female - hair and beauty, retail, hospitality - remain closed and will be for some time.

Meanwhile men are back in the workplace. When furlough ends it will be those who are able to present for work and give all their attention to their job who are preferred by employers. Recruitment will be skewed by this too. It’s the traditionally male industries that are able to return earlier- outdoor and manual work.

When it does return childcare is likely to be limited in hours and more expensive- Scotland has quietly dropped the 30 free hours from
August that were going to make it financially viable for me to work. Now it’s going to be a matter of me earning a couple of hundred pounds extra per month instead of nearly £1000 that was previously the case.

I am far from a feminist, but it feels like any equality women had gained is being seriously eroded by lockdown and the exit strategy that has deftly avoided any conversation around how women, especially with younger children, are getting the raw deal.

current pause on childcare whilst simultaneously pushing people to return to work is my fault and not the result of a government pandemic response which has been poorly thought out and strongly favours men.

But you have not shown any evidence that this strongly favours men at all. You are just assuming that based on your individual situation and choices.

Sorry I haven’t had time to RTWT again during my 15 minute break from my wummin’s work @artesia but I have always been careful to say “some” and not “all” so if the contents of this thread don’t resonate there’s no need to keep replying.

As for what I would do, or what I think should be done, I think there has been minimal reference to the complete absence of childcare for the foreseeable future. Not schools, childcare. Even for school age children there’s a 6 week summer holiday period with a gaping lack of childcare options.

In neglecting to discuss this huge aspect of enabling people to work (after all, transport to work has been discussed, prepping workplaces for safe return has been discussed etc etc) it shuts down the opportunity to work to a huge number of women (not all of them).

It means women who are taking on full time childcare must remain in lockdown as others are allowed to emerge. This has an impact on all aspects of the woman’s life - financial, social, wellbeing, opportunities to continue personal development or education - as well as impacting the children, the partner, the wider family and so on.

Why haven’t they addressed it? Because they don’t know what to do? Because they don’t want to admit it’s fine for kids to be in childcare settings? Because they want to keep people scared and locked down?

Or because it simply isn’t a high priory for the policy setters (men, childfree women).

Who knows.

What I would do is allow children’s activities to restart, let us go to the play park, let us socialise our kids with other kids, let us sign a waiver and send them to nursery.

Or at least have a discussion about it so that at the very minimum a plan can be made.

“The ratio of mums supporting it to dads is about 1:12 (based on 2 schools, one primary, one secondary).”

What is that based on? If it’s which parent the school phones to check in with that is not good evidence. Our schools have called only me (mother) about our DCs to check on the home learning even though it’s my DH who does the lion’s share of it. I have a constant struggle with the schools to contact my DH first. He’s listed as primary contact. But the staff always ignore that and call me first.

He’s going back to work because he earns more, not because he has a penis.

Gender pay gap would suggest this is not as simple a position as it sounds!

I kept working even when Dd was little even though childcare was a nightmare as I worked shifts. I’ve made career decisions which put me first, including a 4 hr round trip commute daily for one job because I knew it would help my career.

During the same years, did the male partner find it so nightmarish? Or were you taking the strain and doing the emotional labour?

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras

** So you prioritised having children over your education - that was a choice that you made wasn't it?

Why didn't you compete your education before having children, or complete it afterwards, if that was important to you?
**

Nowhere have I said this and your response is utterly rude.

I had my kids in my 40s.

I finished my post graduate level education decades ago.

NoPink
U.K. ONS said the gender pay gap is close to zero for full time workers aged 18-39

The gender pay gap mostly exists due to more women than men choosing to work less after having children.

But the government have made tentative steps to open schools and have been pilloried. Imagine if they had suggested opening soft play and playgrounds, with children sharing equipment??

Have read the first few pages and am thoroughly depressed at the number of people who don't seem to get the difference between anecdotes (your personal experience) and broad social data. Just because you and your immediate social group are not finding women are being disproportionately affected by lockdown compared with men does not mean that women as a whole in this country are not being disproportionately affected.

Also, for everyone who says women have a choice about career, about who goes back to work, about marriage etc. We do not make our choices in a vacuum. We are affected from a young age by people around us and what we see on TV, read in magazines etc etc. You may have been brought up by parents who think women can choose to do what they want and gone to a school with goods career advice. But plenty of women grow up in an environment that subtly (and sometimes overtly) pushes them to the point where they work in a low paid industry that is currently locked down and marry a man who expects them to do childcare because actually they were never presented with a choice by the people/society around them.

Its 2020 the society forcing the mother to stay home to be a “good mother” with the “bad” working mother stigma is not an excuse anymore imho. It hasn’t been since the 1990s.

I had A LOT of pressure when I had my daughter in 2010 about being part time etc. Mainly from family.

Plus, not everyone earns enough to cover nursery fees and while I understand that the middle class mumsnet position is that it’s a joint expense, that doesn’t help much if you can’t afford it as a joint expense (which a lot can’t)

I’m not sure it’s always a choice as such.

I earn fairly well and above average (although not a high earner by mn standards ), but having kids affected my career for sure. It also affected dh’s though as in the end we shared the load as he was by all the nonsense that I got about working.

I am a feminist and married a feminist man who has always supported my career. We both earn similar amounts (although mine is for four days a week). I'm about to start a new job in a senior leadership role which is a huge step up for me and he's planning to take leave/reorganise his work to support me by taking the majority of the childcare for the first few weeks. After that we'll split it. However, we both have flexible jobs and can both work from home. It's going to be hard to pull it off, and involve long hours early mornings, evenings and weekends to balance everything, but it will be doable because we both see our children as a joint responsibility. This is only possible because of career and family decisions we made jointly a long time ago to not prioritise one person's career over the other.

I'm not looking forward to going back to work next week tbh. I was told last week it'd be at least another three weeks so it came as a surprise. However, my job was never really at risk.

The gender pay gap mostly exists due to more women than men choosing to work less after having children.

Laughing that anyone thinks is a real ’choice’. Children require care. I don't think you fully get the extent of that until you have children. For most people, a nanny is not affordable childcare. Therefore the childcare that is available is often a hodge-podge of childminder, breakfast clubs, after school wraparound that doesn't allow a parent to work the hours that a senior role with a commute demand. Someone has to be around to provide care. It's often the Mother as women are socially conditioned to feel guilt at not supplanting their own needs for their children.

Girls need feminist teaching at school. They need to be told about the pitfalls of choosing lower earning careers. And not to have children with men who view child-rearing as women’s work. It should be a key curriculum item - how not to have children with feckless men. What I would have given to have that lesson before I learnt it through experience.

That I prioritised having children over my education and that’s why I earn less (wtf)

Op, in your post at 16:06 you wrote this. That's where I got it from.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras no I didn’t.

Read the post again please.

Sadie789

What, you didn't post that? Who did then?

Okay, haven't read the full thread but I agree with the broad scope of the AIBU - whether lockdown related or not.

I am 51 years old and my whole life has revolved around the expectation that in times of personal crisis, as a capable female, I am expected to "do the right thing" and sacrifice my personal life to care for, manage and facilitate the lives of others of both sexes.

I am not a doormat. I have complied because I have always been the lower earner, the one with "more spare time" which of course should be filled with some sort of responsibility rather than "fun". How could I refuse to care for my MIL as she deteriorated with Alzheimers after she came to live with us? How could I expect my DP to give up his much better paid job and provide personal care that would make him and her thoroughly uncomfortable? How could I refuse to care for my Ex H's daughters alongside my own son at a crucial time in their schooling (GCSE's) when their mother upped sticks to be with her new DP? How could I not help care for my DGM shortly after I graduated from theatre school and should have been networking in London?

Societal expectations are still that women should step up and deal with the domestic issues while men bring home the bacon. Saying no can destabilise ones security and decimate relationships; the leverage of ones children's well-being or the needs of the elderly are powerful weapons.

Telling the Op that she should go back to work and her DH remain at home when her DH is the higher earner is a gross over simplification - from a pragmatic perspective the OP has to make the best choice in her personal circumstances yes - but if her earning power was equal to her DH at least the playing field would be equal.

Ideology is a powerful influence in political maneuvering - on paper women are apparently considered and accommodated in a more progressive way than at any other time in history. In practical terms, chaos reigns. But the bottom line still seems to be that "nice" women, "good" mothers, have to take one for the human team far more regularly than men do.

@Artesia and my personal stance on that is that it’s ridiculous that the media has created there has been a backlash against schools opening, for the very reason that it stands in the way of so many women returning to work.

Obviously I’m not suggesting opening soft plays (although truthfully I would have no qualms going to one, and I feel very sorry for our local, small family owned soft play and cafe as it’s probably game over for them) but allowing more access to nurseries (for one key worker families) or just opening up some activities (small baby classes, re open swing parks) would ease the burden of being locked down on many people, whether they were at home or working.

It is also crushing the little souls of our children being trapped in this repetitive limbo that they can’t possibly be expected to understand.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras I said I was stunned that a PP had suggested that I must have prioritised children over my own education to have ended up the lower paid out of me and my DH.

Couldn’t be further from the case as I am educated to considerably higher level than he is - he left school at 16.

Didn’t do me much good though, eh?

That and two decades watching men being brought in above me to oversee my department (all with female PAs). Not sure how that’s my fault although the implication is I chose the wrong education and the wrong career?

I do what I’m good at and so does my DH. So happens he is good at something that pays considerably higher.

You married the wrong man. You should have chosen one who would support your career/job.
One that is interested in his family, rather than golf.
A man who would go pt to enable you to work.
Don't give me we can't afford to go pt, because childcare must swallow up one salary.

And back we go again "You married the wrong man".

With attitudes like that there is little hope for any meaningful discussion of how society can become more equitable.

If a woman is the higher earner, then she can return to work and the DH remain at home, in exactly the way you describe. It's a family choice who returns.

Each person woman saved is one less zombie to fight.

OP, welcome to feminism.

Don't give me we can't afford to go pt, because childcare must swallow up one salary

What utterly bizarre thinking

Society can become more equitable by women expecting their own husbands to provide equality in the relationship.
It's not rocket science.
If you hitch up with a neanderthal what do you expect?
There are male feminists out there, I found one because it was important to me. Equality is important to me.