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.

How can we denigrate each other for not being feminists when we are agreed that women still face structural and sociological inequality and wish to address the issue? That was my understanding of feminism. The "feminist movement", having quickly googled has about three definitions of tortuous intellectual ambiguity delving into gender and sexuality etc - which are relevant but also deeply personal - IMHO to effect meaningful change we have to get back to the basic premise that women's rights are still undermined by their biology and the expectations attached to possession of that biology.

I was thinking this today. It seems to be all the women in my life who are jacking their jobs in, running themselves ragged, managing homeschool with work etc

My SIL and I were nattering on the phone today and she mentioned my brother is going back to work in two weeks. They’ve had a letter from the school strongly discouraging them from sending the kids back and if they do go back it will be one or two days. She works but part time so it is her who will be giving the career up. She was just about to start going full time and putting Her career first for the first time ever too. She’ll essentially be at home with the kids homeschooling, cooking cleaning etc all day every day with no help or respite until this is over. It’s just like the men are expected to go back to work, probably putting extra hours and effort in now they’re back, and thinking ‘phew!’ As they wave their wives and kids good bye every morning. I know there’s people in worse situations I really do but it just rankles how mums are just expected to pick up the slack. Imagine if my brother said to his boss ‘can I go back part time as we have all the kids at home and they need homeschooling and supervising all day’ ... his boss would say ‘but what about your wife?’

Motherhood is usually the time that inequality between the sexes becomes shining into view. For mothers.

Perhaps consider the opinions of feminist women, what do you have to lose?

Do you think women would have obtained the freedoms we have, being nice? Do you no appreciation for the sacrifices women made in history, resulting in the freedoms you now enjoy?

If there's a gender split in this way, it could also be argued that men are being asked to go out and put themselves at risk/endanger others when women aren't. Do they want the responsibility of hauling COVID 19 into their family homes, or might they prefer to continue working from home in comparative safety?

There are advantages to going back to work, and there are advantages to not going back to work.

I don't have a young children anymore but if this had happened when she was primary she ...

I'd have been returning to work first despite earning much much less than dh.

Dh can work from home. I teach, so technically could have been turning to work full time in a weeks time and would have been on rota since March. Dh would have had to do the childcare as well as work in the home.

So it's not necessarily the men who will be working outside the home first, bit the person who earns the most.

For us it would be who couldn't work from home.

Wow. Really sad to see so many apparent feminists belittling the role of a mother staying at home to look after her children. Calling it ‘putting up with shit’ etc. Measuring their worth by whether they have a full time job and how far up the career ladder they’ve gotten and what their salary is. One could argue that you’ve completely fallen into the game that men designed - thinking that career/money is the measure of success. Believe it or not some women actually do like raising their family and not because they’ve been socially conditioned into it. Perhaps you are the ones who have been socially conditioned into thinking that the jobs that have historically been done mainly by men are somehow superior.

My question would be why only now is she considering full time? Did she not have the opportunity to do it sooner. Maybe her DH should be the one to say to his boss, I have childcare responsibilities - I can't come back. His wife has a job too so she's in the same boat.

I understand all the reasons why not but we can just say we're being oppressed by society's expectations of women and then do nothing about it in own lives.

Your SIL is in that position because she hasn't said to her husband, no - I want to keep my job. If she's presuming she's the one that will have to make all the sacrifices for having children, then she will be.

In my view, feminism is about women's role in society and that reciprocal relationship. It has changed meaning and definition over the years. I think it's different for every woman.

My view is that you should never be without someway of supporting yourself in life
I don't take a good view of women that allow men to fund them and are then surprised when they don't have any self agency.

The thread is too long for me to read it all tonight but a pp mentioned that the OPs OH earned more. Well, why? That's part of the problem. Women are not equal, never will be, never.

Some of us may be luckier than others, more successful but it seems to me they are a great minority.

Thank you @OldQueen1969

Certainly the many male parents with whom I work claim to support their partners careers but then express themselves as quite pleased anytime they can wiggle out of parenting duties.

By contrast DSS(40) appears to rush home in order to spend time with his children and delights in making their packed lunches for school.

I get that there would be no guarantees in advance about which type of parent anyone would turn out to be. Once you find out, it would be much too late to do anything about it. Sigh.

@Sadie789, it's ultimately your family's own choices.
We both work from home, we give each other time. I'd be seriously pissed off if DH expected me to be stuck at home while he's meeting friends and playing sports.
It's up to you and how you arrange the time with your DH.

Yanbu at all op. Some of you who think that it's op's fault that she's in the position she is in ought to read "invisible women", and irn your eyes to the ongoing inequalities. And shame on those of you who blame the op for her situation just because you managed to beat the system. Fact is that childcare is still largely seen as a woman's role, men are still higher earners, women work in service times which can't be done from home.

’Men seem to be able to lock themselves away in a study, while women are working at the kitchen table – and also trying to home educate’ (From the linked Guardian article).

I’ve seen this a lot on threads posted by women who can’t get work done because their partners have locked themselves away.

It’s like it’s sacrilegious to even question whether the husband / partner needs to be locked in his study 9-6 even when the woman has caught him playing video games!

@bumbleymummy I think that being able to have some control over your life is far superior than being unhappy with what you have and blaming external factors.

Full respect to all stay at home parents. I think a lot of people go into thinking that it's an easy ride and then are resentful when they realise it's definitely not easy.

I also couldn't see myself being reliant on another person financially. I wish these things didn't matter but they do.

What's wrong with looking after the home and kids fgs! I understand some women want to work that's fine but honestly , kids aren't commodities that get in the way of your life.

@bumble YES!

It’s like it’s sacrilegious to even question whether the husband / partner needs to be locked in his study 9-6 even when the woman has caught him playing video games!

I simply don’t know why women with financial independence put up with this. I’ve always made it perfectly clear that my work and career is as important to me as his is to him. End of. There have been a few times where he hasn’t got it and I have spelled it out loud and clear. For example, NO I will not move for your work and so on.

Lack of equal pay and the gender pay gap drives a lot of this. DH and I have identical qualifications, my experience is slightly better, we went for jobs in a place nearby when we were in our late 20s. We both got offered the same job at the same organisation but he got offered £10k more than me. No explanation apart from he has male genetalia (not required for the role!) HR were not interested in discussing it. We took the jobs because the economy was having a bad time, jobs were hard to come by and they were local. From then on in he's flown in salary and I've had to take on most caring responsibility and mental load as he's now very senior and works long hours, my career stalled due to having to do school pick ups etc. If we had been offered equal pay then it would probably be a lot more balanced and I wouldn't now be in lockdown homeschooling hell!

@Ffsnosexallowed 'Whose fault it is' isn't the way to tackle the issue. 'Who can take responsibility for the solution' is the way forward.

If someone is being bullied, it's the bully's fault, 100%, and not the victim's. But the responsibility for the solution can be taken by either the bully (by not bullying anymore) or, crucially, by the victim (by removing themselves from the situation/setting new boundaries/refusing to be affected by the bullying)

If the victim simply continues to refuse any responsibility, there will be no solution, because the bully will not suddenly resolve the situation on their own.

Looking for whose fault it is is the negative, backwards looking view of the situation. Trying to get someone to take some responsibility for resolving the issue is positive and forwards looking. It is empowering to women to say that they can take some responsibility for resolving this. It's nothing like saying it's their fault.

Believe it or not some women actually do like raising their family and not because they’ve been socially conditioned into it

And that’s fine, but then don’t moan about it. Especially don’t moan about being at home looking after kids at the weekend while your dh goes off to play golf with his mates. Because the OP does have a choice about that. She chooses to put up with it.

There's nothing wrong with looking after the home and kids. There's a lot wrong with being forced to do all of it, whether by a partner who talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk, or by a government that swings wildly between 'school isn't childcare' and 'school is childcare'.

I don't call myself a feminist either. I think sexism very much exists and I will fight against it in my own way for as long as I can. I don't need to take on a label to do so.

A pp said something about women choosing to have children with men who do not take on their fair share of the responsibility - but we can't predict the future. You can have a conversation about it before getting pregnant. He may agree that he will take on his fair share. However, once the baby is actually there if he doesn't live up to his side of the bargain, what can you do? And that's if you even got to have that conversation. That's not including pregnancy that is a result of rape or coercion, or contraception failures.

I'm not saying that it's an individuals fault for this situation, either a man or a woman. It's a societal and cultural issue. It's all of our fault and responsibility to see women as equal to men.

I sat in in an Economics seminar with a group of other teachers a year or so ago, along with some think-tank people. We were discussing the gender pay gap. I mentioned the variable availability of wrap around care and how hard it is to find the information out when looking at schools. I was the only person in the room who had heard of wrap around care.

I don’t see a correlation with ‘raising your family’ and ‘being at home 24/7’ it’s perfectly possible to raise a family whilst both parents work. Especially when the kids start school.

Societal and cultural issues are made of individual situations. OP's first post is riddled with her own sexism, which taints her view of this whole crisis. Golf clubs are re-opened so that's an advantage to men? Childcare is needed so that means women have to stay at home?

OP is actively stating that it's overdue in her own eyes that her husband can go back to work, and yet her whole point is that she's pissed off that her husband can go back to work.

As I said upthread, OP needs to decide if she's playing the game or not, rather than play it and complain about it at the same time.