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.

@ArthurChristmas2 it wasn’t me who said women traditionally take lower paid roles.

I also worked very hard in my 24 years at the same company. A traditionally male dominated sector, which hasn’t really changed in that time.

My H happens to earn considerably more. It’s a strange assumption that that means my job is therefore some kind of entry level half role that I didn’t train for or work hard at.

So my “life decision” to train for and work hard at a profession for over two decades mean I’m somehow to blame for childcare being last on the list for the lockdown exit strategy?

Or are you saying my H should be going part time to share the childcare so that we also end up having to sell our house and cars and well, there would be no childcare at all in that scenario because I’ve probably been made redundant too at this point for not being able to go back to work until August.

Did you expect to be prioritised, Sadie? If people in your life situation had been sent back to work first, would you be complaining that 'women are being forced to put themselves at risk of COVID before men'?

What do you want? Some people are a bit closer to their normal lives, and the price is that they put themselves and their families at higher risk of infection. Who is better off? Or are you one of those who thinks we should all go back to work because you don't believe in COVID? Increased normality = increased risk. Do you want to conflate that into 'Women are being forced to suffer more than anyone'? Why?

@eckhart

I suppose that depends where you are on the coronavirus spectrum.

I’m somewhere between “let’s have a neighbourhood sneezing contest and get it over with” and “it’s okay to have your mum round for a chat in the garden”.

If I was at the other end of the fear-o-meter (“furious curtain twitcher” or “Dettol-ing my lettuce bags”) I might have concerns about returning to work.

As it stands I don’t. I think lockdown should be lifted as soon as possible and everyone should get back to living. Was that hard to grasp from my original post?

It’s not about who goes over the top first as if this is about sending foot soldiers to their certain deaths. That’s utterly melodramatic.

The result of lockdown will set women (mothers) back decades. It’s women who will lose their jobs first (because in two months no one will be talking about the virus, and everyone will be crying about the recession), it will alter people’s rights and people’s access to previously promised supports and services (30 free hours one example).

It’s not my personal choices in life that will create a lower standard of living for a large number of us. It’s patronising and provocative to suggest that.

spend the time with your children and enjoy it

It’s not about who goes over the top first as if this is about sending foot soldiers to their certain deaths. That’s utterly melodramatic

It is, it's very melodramatic. I'm not sure why you've said it, nobody else has said anything even slightly similar.

Many people will lose their jobs. That's not a feminist issue.

30 free hours isn't a feminist issue unless you think childcare is women's work. You clearly do.

It’s not my personal choices in life that will create a lower standard of living for a large number of us. It’s patronising and provocative to suggest that

What are you going to do to change your own situation, though? Talk to your husband so that childcare doesn't fall entirely to you? Or just continue to complain that childcare falls entirely to you? This would not be happening if you had refused to drop into the stereotypical family before COVID.

It’s not my personal choices in life that will create a lower standard of living for a large number of us. It’s patronising and provocative to suggest that

Nobody suggested that.

@Bettyboo1957
Yeah last to get out of lockdown jail and given the percentages- most keyworkers must be female- nurses care home staff ,supermarket workers- those pesky women have got the country through the pandemic so best to keep as many indoors as possible.,Gawd knows what they would if they were all free

You are complaining that women are working and that women are not allowed to return to work. What?

If only I had the foresight to predict a global pandemic 20 years into my relationship. Then we’d have known to decline all opportunities and promotions over the years just in case it meant my husband was in a stronger position than I to return to work.

Yes, if only. If you'd set your life up to better suit your needs, things would be very different for you now.

Finally we agree.

YABU simply because you are whining about your own situation whilst trying to turn it into a gender issue.

In the majority of households whoever earns the most will go back to work 1st and that's common sense. If you wanted that option at any point in your life it was down to you to ensure you're the highest earner.

In my house I have worked all the way through the pandemic due to being a keyworker and despite my husband being the higher earner, as he works for himself and the risks involved he chose to stay at home with the kids.

Is all of this hard? Yes. But it's hard on EVERYONE not just you.

Don't get me wrong, this sucks but I'm really tired of people complaining endlessly about raising their own kids. It's just a horrible thing to do..... you chose to have them.

@puffinandkoala correct. They weren't all teachers, most were male and the ones who were teachers were sixth form specialists. Wrap around is not really something relevant to secondary schools. It made me realise that this issue of whether you can get the childcare to do your job only affects a small fraction of the population at any one time and therefore it's quite likely groups of policymakers are oblivious.

It's quite obvious looking at news announcements that those in charge have not the slightest idea how the education and childcare sectors actually work.

People who think that there’s no longer a societal norm that a man brings home the money and whose job is of greater importance are frankly deluding themselves.

There are a lot of mothers working part time / in jobs that fit around school hours and are often low paid. Of course these women will be prevented from returning to work if there is no school in place. It’s fucking bonkers to pretend otherwise.

Yes there are a number of high paid mothers, and a number of low paid fathers or stay at home fathers. There are also parents who both earn equally and outsource their childcare. However this is not ‘the norm’ in this country.

@KnobChops couldn't agree more!

KnobChops

These threads - any threads about women's issues - attract MRAs. In that sense, some of the comments aren't surprising at all.

This is indeed a sex equality issue.

People who think that there’s no longer a societal norm that a man brings home the money and whose job is of greater importance are frankly deluding themselves.

I couldn’t agree more.

This is evidenced by the number of threads on here where the husband has such a demanding ‘man-job’ with long hours that he can’t possibly be relied on to pick up or drop off a child ever. Women otoh work round this and are generally the single parents with greatest responsibility.

Of course there are men who work around it too but in general when I look round the people I know it’s the women who the final responsibility tends to fall to. My DH really does take responsibility and frequently I’m told how lucky I am .....

"Yes, if only. If you'd set your life up to better suit your needs, things would be very different for you now."

So true. Why do women let all the childcare fall to them? Do they not discuss how things will work with their partner BEFORE they have kids?

I'm not sure young couples do think the man brings home the money. I know my DD and her close friends are career minded, several of them are the main wage earner and now they are starting families it doesn't just seem to be expected that the woman does the childcare, they are 50/50 in her crowd of friends on who becomes the SAHP or cuts their hours.

In my DDs case this would seem normal as I was the parent who went out to work and DH was the one at home. Maybe it varies in different parts of society.

I don’t know what an MRA is but thank you @KnobChops

It’s funny, I’ve yet to meet one of these incredible women who carefully made sure they earned more than their husband just in case there was a pandemic at some point in the future.

In fact I don’t think I know any women who earn more than their husbands full stop.

@Candyfloss99 but we often put our family unit's needs above our own personal needs. Yes I could insist that my partner gave up his high paying contractor wage to stay at home (and probably get made redundant) whilst I went back to my low paying charity admin job but would that be best for our family unit? We then would struggle to pay the mortgage, lose our quality of life, my dc's wouldn't be able to carry on with their hobbies etc.
What we need to address is why women struggle to keep earning the same as men after having children? I think biology has a stronger impact on our life choices than we would like to admit. In theory, women could have two months off and go back after ML but we don't, why don't we want to? It's also about the lack of part time jobs, look at the difference in wages for part time roles rather than full time. You could advertise many minimum wage admin jobs as part time and still have about 50 applicants.

@Sadie789 I don't either and I live in a very bohemian, young area with plenty of people from all walks of life. I know two nurses who are married to eachother who earn roughly the same, but she still does more of the child rearing.

ETA I do know lots of hard working women with hard working husbands.

Maybe the issue here is that a lot of women with jobs are bringing home the bread because the husband is unemployed/useless and they just want to spin it in a different way.

Why are you "far from a feminist"?! Methinks you've not understood what that means and yet you're bemoaning the erosion of the gains made towards equality. The underlying gender inequality in this country is part of our everyday lives but it's made worse by how much we get in our own way by the choices we make and our failure to challenge unequal treatment.
BE a feminist, for all our sakes.

All i hear is people moaning about something/anything! Ok so your dh can go back to work. Turn it around...would you be the one moaning if you had to go back to work but your dh got to stay at home with children? To be honest every one seems disgruntled at something. A lot of our issues are choices we make. See the positive in them. Take this time to be a fun mum with no work or schedule stress. Yes inequality does exist but i for one prefer to be the one at home with my children

Maybe because I’m not the sort of person to apply labels.

I suppose I’m technically an atheist but i would rather have an empty box next to my name than tick the atheist one. Doing that suggests I’m “actively” atheist in that I take time to think about it and worry about how other atheists are treated and their rights in the world. In reality I give it no thought at all so even though there is a name for it, I don’t want to be associated with it.

I would apply a similar logic to the word feminist. For me it has myriad negative connotations that simply don’t reflect how I live my life. Stereotypical or not, I don’t want to be associated with the movement that goes with it.

As I’ve already said I made a mistake using that word in my OP because it has detracted from the issue I wanted to debate and attracted a certain kind of poster.

@michmum if you read my earlier posts my point is that UNDER FULL LOCKDOWN CONDITIONS which we currently are, it’s pretty hard to be a “fun mum” after 8 weeks of sitting in the house or going for a walk with two preschool children.

My original point was that the exit strategy is not addressing any sort of release for children or those who require childcare in order to return to work. The focus is on those free to make that choice without any other structures in place. Which puts those who do require long established solutions such as nursery to enable them to work on the back foot. And means they will be the first to go in the inevitable redundancies that will happen very shortly.