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.

@foreversville
I'm not sure why your post grated on me, but I like my husband am a high earner - 6 figure salaries. When we had kids one of us had to either take a back seat or relegate to a full time live in nanny. We agreed it would be one of us packing it in, fine. I'm the sahm. It's a contract we agreed, he deals with the stresses of work and earns and I deal with childcare.
However lockdown has materially changed the terms and conditions of my side of the contract. No nursery, no cleaning, no school, no play dates or entertainment for the kids - it's all much harder (plus I'm supposed to be shielding). DH side hasn't changed at all except he works at home. He's helping as much as he can but he's busy. So it's hard. It means I can never get back to work as I was planning to do - was interviewing pre lockdown. It doesn't really matter how much both of your earn: usually (not always!) one person has to take a step back and USUALLY that is the woman. And women usually do the lions share of the housework and childcare.

@op
I get what you're saying, even though thread has derailed into a definition of feminism for some reason

Because what this lockdown is going is exposing how choices impact unequally (women being the lower earners; so it makes sense, if only one can work, for it to be the higher earning one)

I'm a woman, not a parent. DH and I have been WFT as directed by our respective organisations since long before the UK lock down. For many years I earned more than him because pay rates in my industry were higher. His has out earned me for ten years as a consultant but is older and I am catching up as in house staff.

A good few of my colleagues are women, almost all the men are parents. The women do appear to accept that the responsibility for parenting is theirs. Any men who step up to any parenting tend to be praised to the sky's.

The thing that makes some, many women the lower earners is choosing to have children with a partner who does not share the role of parenting equally.

Conflating women and parents in this way does us all a disservice. It deflects from the real reason, obfuscates and avoids tacking the underlying reasons.

This has been clear to me since the '80's when I first noticed that parenting issues were disguised as women's matters. I was cross then and and am now saddened that so little appears to have changed.

Do any couples have this conversation before they have children. I would love to know how it goes.

ps if you are not a feminist, then you are happy for women to be paid less than men for doing the exact same job. I am happy to declare that I do believe in equal pay for equal work and am therefore a feminist. I have no.idea what that had go to do with body hair.

RobinHobb

But you could have refused to be the SAHP in the first place if that was important to you and then it would have been your husband in your situation. Unless you’re saying he expected it to be you that gave up work because it’s ‘usually’ the woman. In which case you’re husband would be an arse.

‘Personal choices’ aren’t made in a vacuum. The fact of the matter is that women are still disproportionately doing all the unpaid shit and are impacted socially and economically because of that and vice versa.

If there's enough transparency in the 'vacuum' to see the inequality, there's enough to change it.

Or you can just sit there and feel unhappy. Those are the options. It's not a fun situation to be in, but there it is.

@robinhood if one of you had to stay at home, why did you agree it would be you? Why wasn't it him?

You agreed that you would stay home. He would worry about everything and you would worry about the kids. So, what's the problem? Your sahm 'job' just got harder. A lot of people's job did.

I'm sure the various husband's on here, sole earners, have worries about finances and bills.

I just glossed over the rest of your post.If you chose to be a sahm, you chose it. You gave up your 6 figure job to have children.

Something your husbands won't do, because it's not a smart thing to do.

So in answer to @FinallyHere

I just asked my DP who is my age (51) and has no children of his own (mine are adults) whether if we had a hypothetical baby now, would he expect to share the parenting of it 50 / 50.

Interestingly his response was pretty much "Well, yes, but realistically one of us would have to go out to work......"

So I proposed a scenario where we both worked part-time equally (unlikely in the real world, but hypothetically) and he immediately said of course - he would change nappies, do night feeds yadda yadda quite happily because the child would be the most important thing (especially during lockdown). He also mentioned his Dad was largely absent so he didn't want to be his Dad.

This will never become a reality btw - I am post menopausal and children would not fit our lifestyle at our ages even if it was possible.

My DS's birth father at 24 claimed the same in the 90s - but the reality was that he was expected to climb the career ladder, network socially with his work colleagues, and the idea that he forgo a night at the pub when he was working so hard to give me a break was met with incredulity.

Which may suggest that reality, versus any number of conversations one has with one's significant other prior to actual child rearing may be very different.

Not a definition of feminism, just aghast at cognitive dissonance in complaining about the stark inequality of the sexes, in relation to parenting and work, and to finish it off with 'I'm far from being a feminist'.

Do the other equality movements suffer from such derogation? Do African Americans feel compelled to say 'I'm far from being a racial equality campaigner' ? No, only women are scorned for campaigning for their own interests, and often by other women being cool girls

Depressing as fuck

Think how many of them will still be doing the second shift + homeschooling when they aren't at work.

If they stand for that, that’s up to them. Thank God I have a partner who puts in as much of not more than I do on the domestic front. I wouldn’t stand for being expected to do everything at home as well as go to work. Why do women put up with such shit?

where am I name calling

I’d hazard a guess that calling someone “babe” and telling her to calm her tits would count as name calling and insulting.

Certainly on a thread with quite a few feminists. Which you would know so save the faux innocence.

Why do women put up with such shit?

This. And the only way it will change is if they sop putting up with it. The children of these relationships are seeing mum doing the majority of childcare, cleaning, cooking, homework etc so the cycle continues the majority of the time as the kids grow up and take on the same roles. It’s very depressing.

the only way it will change is if they sop putting up with it. The children of these relationships are seeing mum doing the majority of childcare, cleaning, cooking, homework etc so the cycle continues the majority of the time as the kids grow up and take on the same roles

Exactly.

Why do women put up with such shit? Because they have been conditioned to do so.... The fact that there is greater equality in the past does not mean society is fully equally or that ingrained expectations and stereotypes have been thrown aside by everyone.

@JacobReesMogadishu if we now live in a world where babe is an insult then these truly are the last days of the empire.

And the only way it will change is if they sop putting up with it. The children of these relationships are seeing mum doing the majority of childcare, cleaning, cooking, homework etc so the cycle continues the majority of the time as the kids grow up and take on the same roles. It’s very depressing.

But life is often not that simple especially by the time you are grown up and have a family and are already down one path. It's like LTB. Awfully easily to type, a hell of a sight harder to actually do...

Nobody's saying it's easy, Jasper.

Why do women put up with such shit?

Because the women who don't run the risk of being gas-lighted into thinking they are failures at nurturing, understanding and accommodating their spouses and children and elderly parents who come above them in society's pecking order.

Because the women who don't my find themselves the victims of DV and being blamed for not protecting their children from emotional abuse.

Because the system is still predisposed to see women as mentally unsound when they resist an unpalatable status quo and may limit or deny access to her children.

Because women who don't may find themselves unable to access jobs and housing because of child care responsibilities and limited earning potential.

Because men and women blame the women who try not to put up with such shit for not trying hard enough to rectify their situations.

Shall I go on?

@Sadie789 babe by itself is not an insult, but coupled with “calm your tits” is a derogatory put down. And you know it.

Sometimes you just have to have that fight in your own home.

I support women but nothing going to change with us snivelling in the kitchen about how unfair it is.

Doesn't make it easier when the women campaigning for women's rights and equality are held in contempt by women like the OP

@JacobReesMogadishu you’re clutching at straws and you know it.

Oh I totally agree that I’m lucky that I wasn’t conditioned into thinking it was acceptable. My mum was working full time in the 1970s with a well paid career. Dad did as much domestic labour as my mum did.

So I had a great example at a time when I guess it was quite unusual.

I appreciate it isn’t as easy for everyone but yes I do think it’s time somehow that “we” keep pushing back and saying it isn’t acceptable and needs to change. Not every individual will be able to but maybe slowly the norm will change?

@Sadie789 like I said, save the faux innocence, it’s not washing. Take some responsibility, both for your comments and for your current situation.

@jacobreesmogadishu

I hope you apply the same to the PPs who insulted me. Or is it just because you disagree with my point of view?

And certainly I will take full responsibility for the current global pandemic. My bad.

But life is often not that simple especially by the time you are grown up and have a family and are already down one path. It's like LTB. Awfully easily to type, a hell of a sight harder to actually do...

I firmly believe that in the vast majority of cases where women end up with men like this, the signs were there before they have kids, often even before they live together. It’s just a general attitude and control that these types of men show. Of course some men change once kids arrive but lots of them showed themselves for what they were before and the women choose to ignore it. I have a family member who has a shit husband and an even shitter father. He was also a shit boyfriend before they lived together. She moans now about how he has changed and turned into a horrible man. The reality is that he’s always been a chauvinistic prick.

Personally, having a father that is one of these pathetic excuses of a man, I can spot them easily. I think many other women can to but just let it go. Women need to expect more for themselves and stop settling for these men.