So where does it go wrong for women?

[Falalalafishfingers]

I'm sure this has been asked a 1009 times!
Read so many times in threads that it makes more sense for woman to give up work/ cut hours as dh/dp earns so much more. This suggests that men are already earning more pre-children?
So where does it go wrong? My guess is university.

@Gracelaced

'NoChristmasbreak' - women don't give up their intelligence to stay home and raise their families. It takes intelligence to raise children well. It's a hard yet vital job and it's time society valued it as much as 'careers'.

Thank fuck someone else said that.

Isn’t it a factor that speaking generally, women are more likely to choose jobs which allow them to work nearer home, or part-time hours because they have a stronger desire to be at home with children, than men do. Therefore, either in the couple of years before having children (but with them in the horizon) they start adjusting their career by either moving into roles or companies that they think will fit with this. These jobs are lower paying and have less promotion prospects

I think the key thing is that even when mothers have equally or better paying jobs and a partner who says they are committed to sharing childcare and household burdens, in actuality the burden and responsibility for thinking about it and planning day-today falls mostly on women. They can have the highly paid job, but also spend longer on child pick-ups, thinking about extra curricular activities, taking time off for child illness, organising the shopping etc and find it much harder to switch off from these things. Because if the cultural past and expectations on men, they are more able to ‘leave that to their wife’ and switch off from far more things associated with children. It is a given that the other person will deal with it, unless it is expressly delegated to them. Especially when there are 2 children, this burden takes its toll in terms of women changing to jobs which are closer to home, more flexible hours etc which are less well laid and with less promotion prospects. It is usually women who adjust their careers - that often happens once there are 2 children and one perhaps is entering an educational setting with school-based hours which can make working harder.

Another key thing is that often the key promotion times come during child-bearing years. Women who are on maternity leave are less likely to go for them. Those who just returned from maternity leave or know they might have another baby next year are less likely to apply. A gap is created.

I got a very very well paid role at 21, in teaching, but kept being passed over for promotions, by men younger than me, who had been with the company less time.
Eventually I asked my boss (a female) why that was and she told me that I would be “likely to go off for 12 months plus to have a baby” as I was in a serious relationship. She retired later that year, to hand her role to another bloke, who once again, passed me over for promotions.
5 years after I joined the company (in which time no less than 17 men were promoted over me and one older woman) my husband and I had our first baby.
When I returned to work, it was made abundantly clear that they tolerated the time off for Maternity leave, but that I would be overlooked for any other promotions.
So I took redundancy when it was offered and now have a job in health care which is crap pay but my own hours to suit the kids....my husband meanwhile, is in Telecoms/computing, has had numerous promotions and side shifts, a number of pay increases and a LOT of money put into his CPD (which I was not granted because “you’ll leave us soon to have a baby”)
Society is sexist. If I could earn my husbands wage and he be a SAHD I would do it in a heartbeat!

If I'm blunt, I remember being excited to take some time out of the office to have kids because I was fed up with all the harassment, sexism, bullying and general unpleasantness that I and the other young women had to deal with every fucking day. It's tiresome and it wears women down and out until they drop out.

It's structural.

I'm still the higher earner, but I'm the part timer after baby too.

Shared mat leave wasn't possible while exclusively breastfeeding. After taking a year off for Mat Leave, the cost and intense change of full time nursery was too much for my little boy. I'd been caring for him full time, I was better at it than DH, and I was missing him, so I was the one who chose to go part time.

My previous role was more senior but required minimum 2 week transatlantic trips every few months. Fine when I was free and single but not as mum to a toddler. I'd miss him too much, and the jetlag would be untenable with him around.

DH & I met at work, we both did the same job.

But I didn’t want to live to work so I stepped back, before kids.

I still earn much more than the average. DH earns more. He works harder though. I wouldn’t want to work his crazy hours.

I really wish society would atop judging mothers. Even mumsnet do it.
Have a career, dont have a career . Whatever.
But stop treating women that CHOOSE to stay home for the early years like they're friggin stupid or something.
Life is not a competition.

The thing about women instinctively taking on more of the home/childcare stuff....just look at the home schooling going on now, in houses which have 2 full time working parents.....I bet the women are doing more than half. I bet the women are doing more if the organisation of the whole thing and thinking ahead. This is pretty typical. It’s not to say the men won’t play a role, but they might wait for the woman to have looked at it and suggested a smallish role and then taken it on, without any sense of the overall task size or complexity. This kind of thing can only impact on capacity for work for women and capacity to take on more complex roles.

You mean the jobs post university? Women more attracted to less high earning careers. Also men more likely to go for promotion constantly and then get promotion.

There is the fact that a women goes through pregnancy and if she breastfeeds there is that extra commitment to the baby.

I was the one who went to university, and earnt more than DH. I was made redundant on Mat leave.

Self employed now.

For us, it's age. DH is four years older so earns more even though we work in similar fields as he has five or so years on me in working life. I think women are more likely to be with older men than the other way around.

It’s interesting now I am thinking. My colleagues in my career are almost entirely married to men who earn less and have taken on part time roles and been much more active in child care.
The only one of my close friends who has taken a career hit post kids and is pissed off about it is now in a lower paid job with a man who is much less willing to make any compromises for child rearing etc. She is in a different job.
Mind you I am overseas and in a job where not having kids is pretty common and the wage allows for one person to work and to live comfortably on that wage so it makes sense for the other person to drop down to part time and in these cases it is the men that are the lower earners. It does seem the women are all pretty happy with the set up- I don’t know if that is because they are married to intelligent hands on and lovely men or because they seem to have hit the sweet spot of a work life balance

It's about choices too though. I wanted to stay at home and bring up my kids. Career isn't that important to everyone. Men can stay at home too but I think many women want t and that is ok too.

I didn't have my child until I was 43, at which stage I was earning at least three times DH as a self-employed freelance. But in the world I was in, you had to be available to get on a plane to wherever the client wanted, often at short notice, and that wasn't compatible with working part-time, even with a nanny to cover days. For about five or six years, I worked that way but I was working one-third for me, a third for the nanny and a third for the Revenue. It was also a field where the people commissioning me were primarily women in their late 20/early 30s, and their careers slowed right down with motherhood, because the hours were gruelling. So each replacement was younger than the last, and eventually my face no longer fitted. Plus the Internet arrived, and pay scales crashed through the floor because nothing had to be bombproof and printed anymore. And in Cornwall, where I live, there was no demand for my skills. So I did a PGCE, but at 54 I was thwarted by ageism and Michael Gove who took my subject off the curriculum. I hated the years between but concentrated on helping DH build his business, and things cheered up when I got to 60 and stopped feeling that work was essential to justify my existence.

[quote Falalalafishfingers]@Phineyj really? So why do so many women give up their careers?[/quote]
Maybe because not all women are driven by the desire to have a huge salary and climb to the top of the career tree?

Maybe some women actual believe bringing up the next generation to be decent well rounded human beings, is actually a worth while career?

Those children will be there shaping the world long after all these fabulous well paying jobs are distant memories.

But it’s true. Having children damages your career somewhere along the line

demanded a lunch break

How very dare they ...

This makes me so enraged.
Thiamin such an old old sexist and misogynistic view of what women want.

I know many families where the wife out earns the husband and in every case both work full time and the children are in full time childcare. It seems that the husband's rarely make the choice to be SAHDs when it would 'make sense' for them to so it is then often up to the woman to make the childcare work instead.

In my family even though I earn more than DH now I also have chosen not to seek promotion so I can juggle getting the kids to activities and spending time with them. DH just won't prioritise this.

@Iknowwhatudidlastsummer

I worked in teams where women were simply not interested in progressing higher. Thankfully, there are enough ambitious women to raise the bar, but it was mainly the young child-free WOMEN who finished on the dot, and refused to work evenings and weekends, demanded a lunch break and so on.

I always found it puzzling, there was a clear lack of drive from one gender.

You do realise that a lunch break is a legal entitlement and not a privilege?

@HelloThereMeHearties

I hugely out earn DH and he works part time, I definitely spend time on here! Aware we are not the norm but it works well for us.

Many of my friends have stopped working as they'd rather be at home and I think it is just so expected that they will be regardless of what job they were doing (e.g successful lawyers). I have also seen women write off opportunities because they might have children in the next few years which I don't think a man would do.

I am the full time working mum including frequent travel and I feel judged for this too.

I earned more than my husband before we had children (or at least did when I was in a full time permanent contract role in teaching however I had switched to supply for other, non child related reasons). I could potentially find a full time position after may leave and be the main earner.

I just don’t want to. After years of fertility struggles and ending up an older mum, I just don’t want to go back to working full time whilst my daughter is still so little. My husband could in theory give up work - and it’s something we’ve talked about. The difference in salary isn’t huge though - if I was earning 10k+ more than him it would be hard to reason that I should be the one staying home, but as it is we can manage on husband’s salary until I return hopefully part time. Not because he or I are particular high earners, but our outgoings are low and we have savings.

I want to be the main carer. I feel like a terrible feminist and slightly disappointed in myself for feeling this way, but there we are. This is what I want now.

It’s not the career path I’d envisaged for myself but then I already veered from that (to care for my terminally ill mother as it happens, so very much a gender typical issue there too).

I had my first baby when I was only 27. Little I knew I had to put all my goals aside. Then the second came and afford an MBA was obviously not feasible.
Unless you have a massive support network, pursue a high octane career after kids will not happen.
Nevermind I make more than DH, I still do all the house work and I’m responsible for all the cooking and care of our DC.
Yep - I know - won’t last much longer

@TeenPlusTwenties

Also don't women on average marry men older than them? So the men with be 2 or 5 years 'ahead' in their career and so more likely to be earning more when the child comes along?

Was going to say this.

You do realise that a lunch break is a legal entitlement and not a privilege?

you are missing the point. So were they, and they were usually the ones complaining about "sexism" when they never got promoted 🤷

Refusing to attend a meeting at 1:30 because you had scheduled your lunch break between 1 and 2 is unprofessional.

I do have some sympathy with the idea it 'goes wrong' but I also have some objection to the term. I had a well paid career job for 12 years. I found it soulless. I had children and found a lot of purpose in them. I still work but part time and for a lot less but I don't consider that my life has 'gone wrong'.

However, it is hard to make a job and children work together and the onus is much much more on the woman to make it work than the man. It is structural.