To think that women still can’t have it all?

[Oldbalance]

Posting this off the back of recent decisions I had to made, that have got me thinking about the sacrifices women continue to make if the want DC.

DH and I are TTC our first DC, I am 35 and DH is 38 so already time is less on my side. I was recently offered a new role with a pay rise, but would need to work there for the qualifying period before being entitled to maternity pay, which was only enhanced for 6 weeks. In my current company full salary is paid for 5 months stepping down to half pay. Due to rising COL we would struggle to have a decent quality of life on one salary and that is despite having a small mortgage. In addition the private medical cover in my role covers fertility treatment if we need it, it wouldn’t in new role. Weighing these things up, I decided not to take it, even for the initial pay raise, with a view to looking again if we cannot conceive.

Whilst DH sympathises, I did have to highlight to him the difficulty women face due to these circumstances and when I spelled it all out to him I think he started to understand why it’s a crap deal for women. He is the higher earner to it doesn’t make sense for him to take paternity leave which would be unpaid, it has never even been a consideration that he wouldn’t take a job for more money because of these reasons.

When weighing up what to do, quite a few family members and friends were pretty resigned to the fact that women just can’t have it all and now I’m inclined to agree even though in the past I would have said it was rubbish. But is it unreasonable to say that when it comes down to it, because of biology women actually can’t have it all, or am I missing something here?

@SpringHexagon Please don’t listen to that. It’s rubbish.

@fUNNYfACE36 I suggest you do some proper research before going around making feel like shit with your anecdotal (& I presume highly biased) evidence. Many women fell shit for having to leave their children as it is, many women don’t have a choice.

I had a choice and I still did it as it was in the best interests of my children to have 2 equals as parents.

Women are their own worse enemy, we will never be equals with men.

Take up a new role. Hubby can work part time or, if the new role is paid more, you would be able to afford childcare?
I did the same mistake as you and when we split up, I found myself on a single meagre salary. Don’t do it!

Thanks @SainsBrie
The nursery was a choice, more for development and experiencing things I won't be able to do with her. I feel sometimes that these people who 'have it all' actually make it harder for those of us who aren't fussy, it makes us feel lazy for wanting to be around for our kids more.

I'd be really interested in where you worked and more information on the young people you've worked with to enable you to come to this conclusion because it's certainly not my experience or understanding.

Oh, and children who have spent time in childcare are 'not bringing themselves up' what a ridiculous thing to say.

I know and have worked with men who have taken shared parental leave.

It helped having a male director who is the primary carer of his own children because his wife is the higher earner. The company only paid statutory but due to the culture parents felt welcome and the men did take shared parental leave.

However lots of companies/organisations pay lip service to this.

One of my male friends was pushed out of his job for taking shared parental leave then having flexible working. His job was one that didn't need to be done in standard hours yet his manager, a male middle manager, didn't like him having variable working patterns. The male senior managers were appalled when they found out as they kept losing hard to replace staff under this guy.

Another father I was talking to, told me his company offered all this enhanced parental leave and pay for fathers. He didn't qualify but took paternity leave, some holiday and statutory leave. The response was for some male senior managers in his company to moan at him and ask if he was having any more children.

Then my DP who took shared parental leave and enhanced pay with it, had his own organisation question him on why he was taking so much time off with our daughter. However when they realised he was one of their union reps they backed down. In my DP's case the crap came from HR.

@Reugny I think a lot of this is because it’s fairly exceptional for men to ask. It needs to become the norm, we need high numbers of men asking.

My husband works in NHS IT and they are very ‘family friendly’ he’s still the only one that does it in his large team though.

I don’t think that men are necessarily the main issue here though, I don’t agree that most of them don’t want to equally share childcare. I think a lot of women don’t want their husband to be equal parents. So we are stuck here.

Everyone seems to be employed. If you are self employed try taking months off! You would probably be bankrupt. Everyone just had to sort it out around their own circumstances. If one parent earns multiples of the other, why, with the cost of living as it is, would anyone argue about who does what? Families need an income. If one parent is better placed to get it, so be it. If one parent cannot go for a job, they have to wait. Hopefully there is another chance. Everyone looks at their own circumstances, but they should support each other.

We don't have it all - we just do it all running ourselves ragged in the process.
A man wouldn't even consider doing it all, not when there is a woman there to do it for him.
Then when it comes to divorce suddenly they want 50/50. What a joke.

@RosaBonheur

I took her post to mean that choosing to have children also comes with responsibility to actually do the best you can for that baby and obviously any baby will be usually better off with a parent who loves it better than someone paid a low wage to look after it.

That's pretty obvious?

Hey
Just relax
Seems like you're panicking
Having a kid is a 19y piece really if takes 3m to conceive and 9n to grow

Chill you can and will both work in good jobs, be good parents and enjoy your time. Don't cut yourself up in bits and panic

Every parent I know works FT and has happy well cared for kids. Everyone works FT now. Chill!!

Wow.

I can't believe you just said that.

@RosaBonheur I can't believe you think it's odd to say a baby will always always be better off with it's own parent?

@fUNNYfACE36 for us, past of having it all is being able to afford a nanny.

we’ve had three fabulous nannies over 10 years and by choosing them carefully we have built the extended family we don’t have (our own parents are both too old and live too far away to be hands on).

our nannies have loved / do love our children know them, meet their emotional needs, balance out the odd time when I am struggling by providing emotional stability.

the previous ones remain close friends and regular visitors with a grandma like / auntie like relationships with our children.

group childcare wouldn’t have been right for my children when they were very young, starting nursery with a few short days a week at about two was right for them.

but kids vary. The outgoing boisterous ones thrive in group settings.

and many families do soak part time working when kids are young. Not many 1-3 year olds do 40 hours a week a nursery. A couple of days a week in that setting is fine.

i TOTALLY agree bigger gaps make things easier. We have nearly five years between each of ours. It’s not just cost, it’s easier to handle more than one with bigger gaps - our five year old was thrilled to read a book by herself for half an hour while I settled the baby, etc.

irs easier to see their differences and meet their different needs and get one on one time with each child when they are more spaced out.

@SainsBrie

Totally agree and woman and men need to push for more realistic and human maternity rights.

Well clearly that isn't the case. If you think it is, feel free to share the peer reviewed studies backing up your opinion.

I'm honestly aghast rose.

Please share ours that babies are better off with paid (low) staff? Usually bored teens??

Than their own parent??

My son isn't cared for by bored teens. He goes to a crèche staffed by fantastic trained childcare professionals (the three who take care of his group are, I would guess, in their late 20s, mid 30s and early 50s respectively) where he plays with a diverse group of boys and girls of different backgrounds and ethnicities, does a wide range of different activities, speaks a different language to the one we speak at home, and has a healthy lunch every day.

I love the bones of him and I adore the time we have together before and after crèche and during the weekends and holidays, but I'm under no illusions that if he were at home with me all day he'd be much less sociable and have eaten a lot more crisps and watched a lot more TV.

Depends on the parent, surely?

When I was a student I looked after a five year old girl two afternoons a week. She was born when her mother was full steam ahead in her career and as a result had been in full time childcare since she was 6 months old. She was absolutely lovely little girl with a close and loving relationship with both her parents. Later that year her mother had a second baby after a long struggle with secondary infertility, and accepted voluntary redundancy whilst on maternity leave. I kept in touch with the family for quite a long time after I stopped working for them. A few years later the mother told me her second child had been more difficult, more clingy and more anxious, and she put it down to the fact that she'd had her mother at home all the time and not gone to nursery at a young age like her older sister.

she put it down to the fact that she'd had her mother at home all the time and not gone to nursery at a young age like her older sister
she would say that though....wouldnt she!

I worked PT but I loved if that that I had a couple of days a week at nursery where the kids got to do messy play and forest school and all that, and I didn’t have to think of imaginative things to feed them for lunch. It meant I could cuddle them and take them to toddler groups and cafes on my days and not feel guilty about a bit of peppa pig while I got the cleaning done.

I work more now they’re at school. my career isn’t high flying but satisfying. DH is very hands on but does work more hours at work so I do more of the housework/mental load. We have an old car and have fairly basic U.K. holidays once or twice a year, sometimes we’re busy, sometimes we’re stressed/tired and bicker about who last emptied the bin but in general we are happy doing life together.

Normal family life is a mixture of pragmatism, teamwork and compromise. I think much of it is about our attitude and aiming for contentment rather than some nebulous concept of having it “all” whatever that is.

This.

Of course women can have it all. Why couldn't they?

The op is already reinforcing the old stereotypes and she's not even pregnant

Oh it doesn't make sense for dh to take any leave. But it does make sense for her to not take the better paid job?

How does that logic even work?!

Nothing will change as long as women keep letting men off with doing nothing

I think it is worth remembering that in the 1980s, when “having it all” was a think, the “having it all” that women were deemed so unreasonable for wanting was keeping a man and having children, while also having a non-pin money job. Not that their career would be entirely unaffected by motherhood. The question was what man would put up with his wife having an emasculatingly high-powered job, and what employer would keep a mother in a job when everyone knew mummies would be thinking about school craft projects and wouldn’t have their mind on their work.

Is it shit that you are having to weigh up maternity provision and your husband doesn’t - yes. But having a child will, or should, affect both of your careers - your DH is presumably less likely to say yes to a job with a lot of international travel when your child is young, or might value one with more flexibility if he is doing his share of the nursery pick ups. Etc.

You may find you have a selfish DH who drops all the childcare on you and expects to carry in with his life entirely unchanged (unfortunately it is really hard to predict which ones will do that), but for most parents, their life changes a fuck of a lot when they also have to consider a child who is totally dependent on you.

It makes absolutely no sense to say that no one can have it all because you can't both be a sahp and have a career.

That isn't having it all. It's a nonsense suggestion and is only ever put forward as an argument by those who don't think women should work. That really, being a sahm is the ideal that every woman should want and if they don't then there must be something wrong with them. Especially as everyone knows how damaging childcare is

Its utter bullshit. Made up by women who need to justify their choices some how.

Having it all means having a balance of everything. Which is obviously possible.