“He wouldn’t be where he is if I hadn’t sacrificed my career”

[BooFuckingHoo2]

I am expecting a flaming for this .

AIBU to think this is often untrue? I know many men with stay at home wives and kids who, in all honesty, whilst happy to have kids (because the wife does all the wifework) would probably have been equally happy with either no kids or extensive wraparound childcare and an equally high earning wife.

I often see it trotted out on here “I sacrificed my career to look after our children” - but the for the majority of women (aside from some exceptions e.g. husband working abroad) I’m sure it was a welcome choice and not something they were strong armed into. In my experience (unless childcare costs eclipse the wife’s salary) the husband is usually indifferent (aside from the wankers who want a trophy wife) as to whether the wife works or not.

Equally “he wouldn’t be where he is in his career if it wasn’t for me”. I’m sure there’s a small minority of women who’ve accelerated their husbands career but I think for most, they’d have been the same with or without their wife, although granted possibly with no children or higher childcare costs.

AIBU?

@MrsKoala obviously circumstances are different but amongst my friends. colleagues, school parents pretty much everyone has 2 kids (3 max), spaces them out (2-3 yrs to limit childcare costs). 90% of us work albeit most p/t. But because we stayed in our jobs & we have "earned" flexi & can wfh it meant when we are out the other side & dc are in school we don't have to start again on a low salary.
Obviously this depends on career pre dc & some careers allow for gaps but imo it's can be short sighted to give up work because you only earn what the childcare costs.

Yes @PerveenMistry I even said in a post upthread I accept the consequences of my decisions. I was late 30s so time was running out. My last 3 jobs had ended in redundancy. My ‘career’ had ceased to exist. I had to get a job in a call centre on min wage so it seemed now or never. We could afford me to be a sahm but not to work.

Which begs the question - do SAHMs actually want to get out there and work?

Considering many not all, refuse to work after the kids start school....I don't think they do.

It suits many women to stay at home, because they don't want to work...For those who want to work, they find a way....however, I do accept that if the job they had BC (before children) was a low paid...or minimum wage job...then the childcare cost will be too high to make it worthwhile.

@SantasBritchesSpelleas

Know v few mothers who have been able to sustain FT work / career progression, largely due IMO to fathers being unwilling to change their working life much at all.

But do they not have this sort of conversation before they decide to start a family?

Exactly.

@Ohalrightthen
That will likely be my set up when I have kids. My partner will prob drop a day (or maybe 2 days and work Saturdays) and then nursery the other 3 or 4 days.

[quote jillypill]@MrsKoala obviously circumstances are different but amongst my friends. colleagues, school parents pretty much everyone has 2 kids (3 max), spaces them out (2-3 yrs to limit childcare costs). 90% of us work albeit most p/t. But because we stayed in our jobs & we have "earned" flexi & can wfh it meant when we are out the other side & dc are in school we don't have to start again on a low salary.
Obviously this depends on career pre dc & some careers allow for gaps but imo it's can be short sighted to give up work because you only earn what the childcare costs. [/quote]

Yes. Even if most pay is going to childcare for several years, one is building experience, skills and credibility in the jobs market.

I think many simply don't want to work and conjure what they believe to be socially acceptable excuses.

I think the element missing from the op is an acknowledgement of of social and economic constraints on the "choice" to stay at home. Choices are rarely made entirely without pressures both external and personal.

Viewed externally I chose to sahm for over a decade, gave up a decent job in transport planning. Returning to work a couple of years ago part time.

I know however my choices were limited by my situation. We moved away from London where my job was, to be closer to family (following a cancer diagnosis that meant we felt it important to be around). My husband worked long hours and was on call at weekends. I had three children in quick succession and two are autistic. We made choices as a family knowing my earning potential would be affected. But felt our situation demanded it. I was involved in volunteer work for years that led to my current job.

Now I am working DH may change career, we are trying to get into a position where he doesn't have the sole responsibility of being main bread winner. That would be easier if I had continued to work, but the children would definitely have struggled. They are only managing in school as well as they do because home is predictable, quiet and meets their needs.

So there is no ideal. Most people make their choices without the benefit of hindsight. It is easy to point out problems with someone else's life, much more difficult to offer solutions that don't have their own shortcomings.

@C8H10N4O2

Choices have consequences

But in this case the consequences are largely borne by women.

Have your children close together - minimises the career hit, can wreck you physically and costs a bomb in childcare for the early years

Space them out by a few years each - need to start early, take a new maternity hit each time you get back on the work track

And of course this assumes that fertility is under your control.

I might one day meet a man who has given much thought to any of these. The most exercised they get if asked what they plan to do when an impending baby is abdicate responsibility by saying 'its up to my wife' thereby sounding very supportive whilst making it clear they don't se much changing in their own careers. the young women I meet in my industry (still few compared to men) think of very little else if they want to combine a family and a career.

I would say in most cases the choices also are mostly made by women.

Including settling for less than ideal partners and then playing the put-upon martyr.

I'm one of those!

When the DC were tiny DH and I both worked and were middle-ranking. In my job a job could suddenly develop complications and require us to continue working into the night with no notice. DH's job would have a problem develop abroad requiring someone with his specialised expertise and the 'clout' of being reasonably senior in the Head Office to go to where the problem was. Usually the local staff had done their best to sort it out and the need for extra input would become apparent very suddenly.

For either job refusal to stay on or go away as necessary was resentfully accepted on one or two occasions, but any more than that and the employee's committment to the job was doubted and remembered when the time came for promotion or offering a more interesting and demanding project, which would, over time, lead to career progression.

It became clear that the day was going to come when I would be most unpopular by refusing to stay late again at the same time as DH would make himself unpopular by refusing to leave the country at short notice again and that would lead to tensions between us as well as at work. We talked it over. One solution would be live-in childcare, which would mean moving house as well, to accommodate that. I decided that in order to have the life I wanted: no hard-to-resolve clashes between us, no regular fights about whose job was more important, no fights about who could take time off when the childcare failed, one or other of the children's parents being present most of the time, one person, rather than several being on top of all the domestic arrangements and so on, I would give up my job.

DH was fully aware of the sacrifice I was making career-wise and how smoothly home ran when it was clear with whom the buck always stopped for all things home and child related. But it was quite clear, too, that being the person who could always step up for the overnight flight to somewhere-I'd-never-heard of with 2 hours notice, and no 'having to see what DW says' or 'making childcare arrangements' or even 'if I do this, can I have time off for that', did his career no harm at all. He became the go-to person to sort out all sorts of problems, which increased his expertise.

Meanwhile, rather than lunch and talk about home decor, I threw myself into a new 'career', volunteering. I started with helping out at playgroups, then nursery, then school, then moved into various organisations in the community. I didn't return to paid work, which made life very easy every time something needed sorting out even when the DC were at secondary school. But I did develop expertise in a whole variety of different fields and came to know a large number of people locally. I think my horizons were far broader than they would have been had I just been working in my original field. And both DH and I knew that we were both making different, but valuable contributions to the family and the incoming money was due equally to both of us.

In terms of coping with a new dc, DH had 3 months off (which I think is standard in a lot of firms now) & we spread it over 6 months. It made a huge difference in terms of me mentally being able to cope with the exhaustion, breastfeeding etc.

I think it’s a personal choice depending on circumstances but in the whole I do agree OP. I have several friends who claim their husband wound t have the career he has if they hadn’t stayed at home. Which begs the question, what about those of us with two successful careers and children? We’re all thriving in this house and we see lots of our kids. Maybe we’re just lucky. But having a working wife certainly hasn’t held back my dh!

I’m a single parent and while I paid my nanny fairly she doesn’t earn half my salary or deserve half my assets for doing her job

That’s because she didn’t carry your children to the detriment of her own health, or birth them, or have to go on maternity leave to care for them for free. And presumably you don’t love her and you didn’t enter into a contract of marriage whereby you agree to share everything with her?

I have seen plenty of women in my work place who have kids and who are advancing. It is always about paying for childcare. I will say that a lot of the senior positions are filled with men and a lot of the senior women are childless but I think that is just society catching up and that there will be more women in senior positions who have kids but it takes time for that change to be felt.

I made a job change when my husband was away with work. In order to make it work I needed to use an au pair but it worked and my career moved forward. But I have always taken the approach that my kids are one element of my life, they are not my whole life and that I still am a person who wants to have a career because in 10 years they will be moving out and going to university and then what?

Yes. Even if most pay is going to childcare for several years, one is building experience, skills and credibility in the jobs market.

But that’s only if you get the type of job with some kind of progression. Receptionist/admin at a small company isn’t really a career with lots of potential. Like pp have said you need to have a career type job to go back to really.

But do they not have this sort of conversation before they decide to start a family?

I did. I was surprised at how naive H was about it all. He assumed all women got full pay for a year and that childcare was free! Then he assumed my mum would quit her job and look after the kids for free too However this opinion isn’t uncommon. I’ve worked in loads of places where women who are pregnant seem to also believe this to be the case, then get very upset at how they are going to cope and how unfair it all is when they are told the reality. I’d really like it to be taught in schools what your statutory pay is etc. When I worked at a school the teens were similarly clueless to the realities of the costs of working and tax.

I was surprised at how naive H was about it all. He assumed all women got full pay for a year and that childcare was free!

To be fair, I had no idea that maternity pay was so shit and childcare costs so high. Even the most generous of maternity packages are up to 6 months full / part paid then taking holiday and statutory. £150 or whatever it is for stat pay / maternity allowance is peanuts. Then childcare costs are just so high.

All these women who step down to give men preferential treatment in their career. These are solvent men who can and should pay for childcare to accommodate last minute work related demands. The oft touted airport dash,or the last minute site visit etc. However,the actuality is they expect (and get) women stepping down and stepping aside for them. This reinforces their sense of entitlement and belief rooted in lived experience that women can and should step aside for men. Self perpetuating cycle of discrimination.

Meanwhile, for the step down parent the task of role modelling and demonstrating women in workplace is delegated to other working women.

Honestly, whilst you’re encouraging your daughters to do well, go to uni, or train for a job,to plan careers and learning are you including the caveat and do be prepared to give it up for a man.

Meanwhile, for the step down parent the task of role modelling and demonstrating women in workplace is delegated to other working women

My mum and dad worked my whole childhood (mum main breadwinner) they modelled to me that I absolutely did not want that for my children. I will be modelling to all my children that work is not the b all and end all. That often having a less traditionally ‘successful’ job and having more life balance is happier for everyone. That the Protestant work ethic has its flaws. That you can be working and not in the workplace. I expect their fathers hours will also have an effect on their opinions on working and family life too.

@HeelsHandbagPerfumeCoffee

All these women who step down to give men preferential treatment in their career. These are solvent men who can and should pay for childcare to accommodate last minute work related demands. The oft touted airport dash,or the last minute site visit etc. However,the actuality is they expect (and get) women stepping down and stepping aside for them. This reinforces their sense of entitlement and belief rooted in lived experience that women can and should step aside for men. Self perpetuating cycle of discrimination.

Meanwhile, for the step down parent the task of role modelling and demonstrating women in workplace is delegated to other working women.

Honestly, whilst you’re encouraging your daughters to do well, go to uni, or train for a job,to plan careers and learning are you including the caveat and do be prepared to give it up for a man.

Very few women ‘step down’ and ‘give up for a man’ in a spirit of pure, selfless martyrdom. Facilitating the man’s career is often a byproduct of their decision, but rarely the end in and of itself.

However, women (and increasingly some men) do step down for other reasons, including finding it less stressful and taxing on their mental health and that of their families (perfectly legitimate). There’s no point having a miserable working setup just to prove a point to some random mumsnetter..

And please, don’t overinflate your own importance in modelling working behaviour to young girls...as though that’s the main reason people climb up the career ladder, exhausting themselves in the process (“we’re thinking of the young girls”!!!) All our decisions, to work or to stay at home, or a combination, are motivated by some element of self-interest. Some women just enjoy their careers - end of. A legitimate goal, but let’s not turn it into an altruistic endeavour.

Moreover, a career is not necessarily a virtue in and of itself, nor is the absence of one a moral deficit. There are many desirable traits that I would want my son and daughter to emulate which don’t relate to how money they earn (/earn for other people).

@Circumlocutious - hear, hear!

As a child or adolescent If your mum doesn’t work how can she model employment or authentically discuss work? That then falls to other working women. The teachers,the TA, other women in the workplace. If there is no maternal experience of working and having children there is limited scope to discuss experience.

You might think the dad would be able to model that? My DD hasn't lived with a working father as DH gave up when she was born, I don't think she has any trouble computing that other kids' fathers work! We can't role model all the possibilities for our children.

@HeelsHandbagPerfumeCoffee - and single parents are shite role models too, then, aren’t they? They do a lousy job of modelling a good relationship.

I'm always a bit dismayed by the scorn on here for SAHP. I couldn't have done it myself, and would have chosen to be childless if the price of children was giving up a job I love and do well. But I have a husband who was willing and able to do it, which makes my life infinitely easier, and I have enough imagination to see why other parents in different situations might make choices different from mine.

On mn career and/or money isn’t everything when it relates to women & girls
On When a man has no career or money and the woman pays he’s a cocklodger to be gotten rid off

I only ever read the pursuit of money or career as avaricious when it relates to women on mn...it’s only Money
However when it comes to the men, meanwhile they’re getting on/off planes, being great providers and earning 6figures

It’s never just money when it’s men...It’s a much more than that

If it’s just money why didn’t these men step down, earn less for the overall wellbeing of the family? Oh I know...because they don’t want to, don’t think they have to, they have a women who’ll take the hit

These are solvent men who can and should pay for childcare to accommodate last minute work related demands

Where would he magic up that kind of last-minute, paid-for childcare? I wouldn’t be happy knowing my child was being looked after by some randomer I’ve never met and whom they don’t know from Adam. They’d hate it too.

I grew up with both parents working. My dad was often abroad for long stretches at a time and so my brother and I were in wrap around care with a really boring childminder until early evening most days while mum was working. And we both fucking hated it. We also had an au pair living with us for a year and it was dreadful. She cried all the time about missing her family and she had an eating disorder. Nightmare.

Im not anti-childcare. I have used full time childcare in the past. And I use part time childcare now. But I put a huge amount of effort into finding childcare where my children are happy to be there and feel safe and secure. That’s not as easy as it sounds.

On MN people are so flippant and quick to say ‘just get a babysitter’, ‘just get an au pair’, ‘just hire a nanny’ like there is an abundance of great, flexible, quality childcare resources out there whom you can trust your kids will love at first sight.