To think this is a case of sour grapes?

[Diaria]

Woman believes that childless women pick up the slack for working Mums….

Reading this, she sounds bitter, sour and traumatised by her prior fertility battle and failed relationship.

She worked in retail; it is of course mental and draining around Christmas time.

Essentially, the argument is that childless women are forgotten and mothers get all these perks along the way like total exhaustion but I digress…

She even goes so far as to complain about mothers having a paid maternity leave (often a pittance) and complains about her having to save £500 a month and not being given a free holiday…… maternity isn’t hopping around Thailand and most mothers couldn’t afford to save £500 a month!!

Anyway, I have no patience for this… but discuss.

I quit because I can't bear picking up the slack for working mums

https://mol.im/a/12860533

I don’t entirely agree with the woman who posted a response.

Again she used parental leave when I think she dependents leave. But not 100% there. She did take the entire week, 2 shifts off. But if she was spoken to about her attendance, that’s not appropriate.

Getting shift patterns late is terrible for everyone. Not just parents. Everyone has a life outside work. She says she felt her kids were a burden to them. Well if she was telling them she wouldn’t work over Christmas, the kids were a burden to the company. That’s life.

She wanted a job that worked around her kids. Retail for a big retailer was never going to be able to work entirely around your kids and their activities. Not all the time. Lots of jobs can’t.

I think she made the right decision and found a role with a small retailer who is happy to accommodate. I do also like that she mentioned what employers could do, though briefly. I do think more stores should look at seasonal staff. It’s works well in quite a few retailers. But then I also think shops should be closed Boxing Day as well.

I don’t really like her view that people don’t priortise her children when organising lots of people because they just don’t understand. Even if they did have kids and did understand doesn’t mean she should get priority. Other people have things that are important to them. Her and her kids can’t be everyone’s priority all the time.

In my work I am lucky. Because it’s job that based on weekly out puts, we can accommodate most peoples activities, especially at Christmas. Whether that be children’s concerts, or someone wanting to attend the home their parent is in for their Christmas Carol afternoon or someone that wants to leave early because their friends are having their annual Christmas party. That’s not always possible in some roles. It works on my teams because they all know that both the team and myself will do what I can to make it work. That’s doesn’t mean I never have to say no. Which is always taken well because it’s rare we can’t make it work.

Neither article is designed to make anything better. Both are designed as click bait. Both articles only seem to mention other women, I think. Don’t mention anything about why women end up doing the majority of the childcare. This article never mentions a father or why aren’t taking time off. It does mention her own business, which I think is probably impacting as well.

I think there could have been a far better response if someone was desperate to do one.

I don’t agree with the response article either. It’s the complete polar opposite and designed to inflame. Neither piece does any justice to women’s issues and resolving conflict between the two groups of people. But then that wouldn’t sell news stories.

Most mothers wouldn’t behave like this and would be more reasonable, for example taking xmas eve and xmas but working the rest, provided they can get childcare.

The idea that children would develop a poor relationship with their mother on account of her having to work is looney. We have a lot of women in our family in retail and the kids understand Mummy needs to work to put food on the table. It is the Mums career path and main job.

Where this lady differs is the retail job is pin money essentially, she can’t continue in a part time role in the profession she is trained for so she is forced to do a lower paid job that she has no interest in nor commitment to, in order to attempt to work around having children. Which is obviously going to be a bad deal for retail.

This is something I have seen, I know a tonne of people who returned after maternity to be denied, made redundant, or demoted after they made flexible working requests. They then left their industries and went into roles they were overqualified for simply because they fit with the school run.

I did manage to listen to the woman’s hour interview (the segment was shorter than I thought), and one thing that struck me was that while the mega problems in retail at present are discussed the causation of them - covid - isn’t acknowledged. The bad conditions are emphasised in the response article too.

My DH left retail management directly because of this and the inhumane expectations that resulted. So did almost all the people he was friendly with.

Due to covid there has been a mass exodus of retail staff to more “secure” jobs such as the civil service. This leaves skeleton staff, lack of commitment and expertise, a lot of staff who ended up with mental health issues over the furlough period, complete dejection in some…. It isn’t workable and of course puts pressure on remaining staff putting them into conflict when you can’t get shifts covered because the staff aren’t there. Expansion of staff isn’t going to be plausible for many companies right now.

For my DH, dealing with the staff problems, management being worked up to 7 days a week, particularly erratic shift patterns, all of which hit like a freight train after covid made the job not worth it…. But nothing to do with working Mums.

I’ll grant you there may be an ongoing issue with some people taking the piss, but again remember there was the recession in 2008 which caused a tonne of problems in retail impacting on staff so overall it has been a very tough, inhospitable environment for a sustained period.

Finally, I had a look at Sammy’s website and while I liked the bright colours and energy of it, I’m not sure if it would have appealed to me when I was without a family. The introduction to the site is very anti-mum and the anger over the fertility issues and mistreatment by mums is apparent…. Personally when I went through fertility issues I found reading others stories distressing so I don’t know why so much content is based around this and the fertility angle if it’s meant to be uplifting. The logo is brilliant and the overall idea. If it centres more on the lives of childless/child free women, rather than the reason for being there, then it could be a winner. My impression, as a person who went through/is still going through gynae/fertility issues is that parts of it are a bit depressing for the childless and quite a bit of it is a bit alienating for the childfree. It wouldn’t take much to adjust the frame but I think a lot of healing is needed.