To ask why women are expected to do everything?

[HolyGuacamole28]

I read a depressing article in the Economist today ‘How Motherhood affects careers’ and it stated how more and more women are not progressing as they should after having children. And SAHP is on the rise as more people opt out of a system doomed to failure. I just don’t understand how mothers are physically supposed to work full time in a career/senior role (I do), manage a household (I have a 4 year old, 2 year old and a husband, also FT) that includes washing, cleaning, cooking etc and do activities with the kids, keep fit and see friends. Is this what society expects? Who is supposed to do the household role if both adults work full time? And why do we need two incomes just to survive? (COL is so painful re mortgages, childcare, energy, food). Rant over, just can’t see how society has evolved, it’s just put more on our shoulders. I’m personally at breaking point.

There's so many variables with housework, it's not really helpful to compare. I can sort my whole house if I've got an hour childfree, if I've got my 2 preschoolers trailing me (like I usually do) it's relentless and never quite done.

If cleaning toilets for NNW was the only option my lifes chances had afforded me, I'd far rather do it to facilitate the career of a woman who 'called herself a feminist' than a man. Not only do I want the option to deal with women when I need services such as legal or medical help, but to have feminist women rising to positions of power and influence in society is our best hope for ourselves and our daughters in future. Its actually a pretty low blow to use economically disadvantaged women to try to shame other women into staying out of the workplace to keep the way clear for men.

Am in a similar position.

I find it hard because we are not as old as our friends who are generally in a similar size house to us, but we have a scary mortgage. They have kids in their late teens and early twenties. Our peers are just struggling and in homes that they've really outgrown but can't afford to move up from. So we don't feel fully part of either group and it can create awkward situations at times.

I'm also able to volunteer at the school and I make a point of it, because it's the best thing I can do to support the community as a whole. If I don't, then DS loses out for some things but I'm currently also trying to support the school more generally as I'm helping out with another class at the moment too. If it helps just a little bit with behaviour in the long term it's better for the area. I wouldn't want to be a TA - the responsibility for the commitment and the pay isn't worth it - but I'm happy to help out on my own terms and I don't have to deal with parents. It's eye opening enough.

The comments about getting a cleaner are mind boggling to me. As are the ones about parents having them.

The pattern in the area is that the parents who are struggling to balance everything are also financially stretched up to their eyeballs with paying for after-school clubs, the mortgage and energy costs. They don't qualify for any benefits either. DH helps run a local charity and they've had a number of cases locally where there have been parents who have been desperate to the point of needing food donations. And it's not been the poorest in the community.

Where on earth are you getting the idea that I’m “us[ing] economically disadvantaged women to try to shame other women into staying out of the workplace to keep the way clear for men”?! I said absolutely nothing about women staying out of the workplace. In addition to being a SAHM, I’m also a licensed attorney, and most of the women in my extended family work. My mother, aunt and grandmother were all teachers.

My original post was written in language that tailored it to a very specific group - well-to-do career women who think they’re living the feminist dream because they’re not “held back” by household labor, and ignore the inconvenient fact that they got there by depending on poorer women who don’t have the resources to have these financially stable, personally fulfilling careers. Despite not belonging to that category, other people here decided to be offended because they figured I was talking about all working women who have hired domestic help. As I said elsewhere, if I’m not describing you, I’m not talking about you.

I don’t know about studies in the UK, but when women with small children are surveyed in the US, the majority of them say that if it was financially possible, they would not work full-time. “Work part-time” gets the most votes, and “not work outside the home at all” gets a sizable minority. It’s been that way for decades.

I said in my first post on this thread that I wish it was economically feasible for more people with children to have single-earner homes. I don’t care who the single earner is, or if ”single earner” is actually both parents working part-time. But the vulnerability and high care needs of babies does mean that someone, somewhere in the family, needs to take at least some time off of work.

I do agree it absolutely is down to having children.
That is when a woman’s status is reduced.
Sad but true.
I often wonder why young women are still having children. Are they aware that it almost certainly will hinder their career and earning potential?
Are they aware that there position within their relationship will become vulnerable? That it will damage their relationship at some level. That their oh will almost certainly shift responsibility for childcare and housework onto them.
There are very few relationships where this is not the case.
I can cite examples in every place I have ever worked.
First full time job:
Senior manager was male with a wife at home. Low level managers both female and childfree. All women with children=not management.
Next job. Top boss male with a wife at home. One below him male (can’t remember if he was married.)
Next job: all area managers and senior execs=male. All branch managers=male. A few lower level managers=female but all childfree. Pregnant women actively encouraged to only return to work part time.
Fast forward to current job: senior execs male. Several female managers and all with children. However, every single one of them has help with childcare. Not one of the managers has a husband who is a sahd. All those with school age children rely on their mothers ( and it is mothers not fathers) or childminders. Even in covid when the most senior female manager was working, her dh (who was not working due to covid restrictions) had to spoon feed him about signing on to home schooling. He could not be relied upon to sort out his own child. Absolutely pathetic. Then there were all the working mothers who constantly had to beg for time off to sort out their dcs as “my dh can’t have time off.”
It really is depressing.
As a woman, you have far more chance of not having a lazy partner if you remain childfree.
Once you have a child your hands are tied.
The only option is to leave and you can guarantee your lazy arse ex will not suddenly step up and be a decent parent if he wasn’t when you were together.

Isn't that what maternity leave is for? A parent certainly doesn't need to take an extended leave from work, not if they don't want to.

I'd also give fathers more than 2 weeks of paternity leave so from the start, the standards are set that both parents should take some time out from work when a baby is born.

It’s sad that the only way for your last paragraph to materialise would be if men did it. Then it would be the hardest job of all….

My original post was written in language that tailored it to a very specific group - well-to-do career women who think they’re living the feminist dream because they’re not “held back” by household labor, and ignore the inconvenient fact that they got there by depending on poorer women who don’t have the resources to have these financially stable, personally fulfilling careers. Despite not belonging to that category, other people here decided to be offended because they figured I was talking about all working women who have hired domestic help. As I said elsewhere, if I’m not describing you, I’m not talking about you.

No, people weren't offended. Don't be silly and fall back on lazy stereotypes when your argument is challenged. You were challenged on your characterisation of women, in particular, doing this on the backs of other women - ignoring the much more complex dynamics at play and in particular the reliance of men on women's paid and unpaid labour for their success. You were challenged on your odd characterisation of c-suite women "living the feminist dream" which seems more a media trope than reality and, if reality is such a tiny proportion of working women to be nigh on irrelevant to the whole conversation. You were dismissive of the idea that the creation of paid work for women who by your own admission have precious few employment options was anything but exploitative.

Employment - including self-employment, even at low wages - gives women more options than if they are entirely dependent on men. At all levels of society. Gives them a source of their own income, gives them agency in cases of domestic abuse or abandonment or the death of a spouse.

Tackling and discussing these issues properly rather than indulging in lazy stereotypes will generally lead to reasonable debate - and I think there's been some really interesting debate on this thread. Trying to tear down successful women because they pay other women to do what some have deemed "women's work" while not simultaneously tearing down a man who does likewise (or who hires a handyman or gardener) is hypocritical and suggests underlying biases.

(There's a reason one of my cleaners quit his job as a mechanic to join his wife doing domestic cleaning work. It gives them better pay, a better standard of living and as a family much better flexibility. Maybe people in the US treat people doing their domestic work a lot worse but in my experience, in urban parts of the UK reliable cleaners are in high demand.)

I don’t think almost a year long maternity leave helps, this is when women become the go to parent and often take on most of the household tasks. The partner then offers or doesn’t offer ‘help’ rather than automatically doing their 50%.

What does a "well-to-do career woman who think she's living the feminist dream" actually look like, anyway? How do you distinguish her from just the ordinary well-to-do career woman? Or, because it's not 1985, the woman doing well at work?

Yeah this made a huge difference for us I think. DH and I split the leave and I went back after 6 months. It was hard, especially the first time as the policy had just been brought in and I got lots of comments and he was the only man he knew who did anything like that. Four years later was easier.

But it meant that the household/kid stuff didn't just automatically default to me when I was on mat leave and stay that way after, and he had a chance to be the primary parent and get to know what that's like.

This is what I was getting at. Of course though, most women want to take as much maternity leave as possible and are less likely to agree to shared parental leave.

It's why I would give fathers a longer paternity leave so it becomes the new norm for both parents to take time out and not just dad 'helping' after he goes back to work at 2 weeks.

Octavia, you're not wrong in your overview - but have overlooked one huge change: in the '50s and '60s, the woman's salary wasn't taken into account for mortgages! As late as 1979, XH1 and I couldn't get a local mortgage based on both our salaries - it was a major factor in our moving to London, where banks & building societies had caught up.

If a woman needed to take out a mortgage by herself in the late '70s, many lenders still required a man's guarantee.

Other PPs' points about the vertiginous rise in our lifestyle expectations are very significant, too. As part of the Thatcher government's 1980s 'economic miracle', Brits were encouraged to take on debt. Interest on savings was less than the rate of inflation, so it made sense to buy quickly - and, for several years, the cost of borrowing was much less than inflation.

For those who still had jobs, wage inflation was also rapid so there was a general air of affordability. A couple like XH1 & me, with two equally high salaries going up rapidly and banks begging us to take out more cheap credit, could suddenly afford a ton of stuff that would never have been within our parents' reach.

For people like my lovely cleaner at the time, whose husband was doing odd jobs after being made redundant, nothing was affordable and no amount of cheap credit could make it so. We're still living the repercussions of that decade: it was the start of a new division between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'; it also normalised rampant consumerism which, for most, needed two salaries to maintain.

That change impacted women more immediately than men. It forced us to move very quickly from thinking of paid work as a choice to a necessity. Men had never thought of employment as a choice, so no change for them, and they still didn't think about the work of running their homes and families. They were still 'keeping a wife' (if they still had their jobs) and were fully bought in to a two-salary lifestyle, never stopping to think about who would now look after their daily needs and families. The issue was blindingly clear to their wives, though!

It's nice to see men becoming less stupid about this. It's been 40 years, FGS! I've got to say it's not nice to notice how many men are still stupid about this, or claim to be if they can get away with it.

This post (sorry about the length) more or less explains why I'm quick to advise LTB these days. Women's financial autonomy is a thing - a critically important thing, both personally and economically. Any bloke who's failed to notice, after TWO FUCKING GENERATIONS, that men's responsibilities no longer end as they open the front door, deserves to be left to manage his own life in a bedsit.

Okay, @JassyRadlett , here we go. This is my last response to you, because I don’t know how I can make myself any plainer.

I grew up going to all-female schools with a lot of rich people. I’ve known women like the ones I’m talking about. They have high-powered jobs and they’re happy to trot themselves out as role models for girls. While they do, they explicitly mention feminism.

At the same time, the domestic work in their house is largely done by brown women with no health insurance who are in the US illegally and are paid “under the table.” Their rich employers, of both sexes, downplay and devalue how much they depend on them. We expect men to downplay and devalue how much they depend on domestic work done by women. It is a waste of time to inform people on Mumsnet about this, just like it is a waste of time to inform them that water is wet or that chocolate has sugar.

I don’t want to go into outing details about where I went to school, but the college I graduated from, and other schools like it, produce (and have historically produced) a lot of the women who run feminist websites, or publish academic books on feminism, or start feminist organizations. They are among the people who shape the media discourse about what is considered a feminist issue. I think it’s hypocritical of them to hold themselves up as feminist role models while they ignore the less privileged women who enable them to do so.

If you think they’re such a tiny group as to be inconsequential, great. If this doesn’t correspond to any of your life experience, well, double great. Maybe the UK has a different culture around this - the “no health insurance” thing is definitely not applicable. But that’s my experience with the sort of women I was referring to.

When we had a pre school age child we had a nanny and when kids all at primary we had au pairs. Now we have around 12 hours a week of cleaning support which I know is a lot but we both have demanding jobs and I go to the gym a lot.

Kids are teens and don’t mind cooking their own dinner. DH and I split what’s to be done, he sorts out bills and other admin (need someone to fix roof etc) I order food from Tesco and put washes on (cleaner sorts folds and irons).

Lovely post and I'm glad you have wrote this. You can't have it all none if us can, I often wonder how the mums in high flying jobs mange it? I think even with a helpful partner something (more) has to give. In fact I just can't believe it something must be lacking somewhere! Especially when I read they have 3 or 4 kids. There's absolutely no way!

DH and I manage it because we can both be flexible including WFH and we are truly an equal partnership.

Generally, I don't feel stressed and I don't feel like the housework, cooking etc is this massive stress than takes hours.

I can't think of anything that's lacking at the moment but we'll be going from 1 kid to 3 kids in April so until we adjust, it may happen then. It won't all be on me though, it will be on DH too.

I don't think the experience you are talking about is analogous to the UK - and this is largely a U.K.-based discussion - where we have universal healthcare, for a start.

But you clearly have such a chip on your shoulder about these women that you aren't looking at the larger culprits and drivers.

@SouthLondonMum22 I'm a mum of 1 too. No partner so again totally different for me because it's always all on me. I'm 1 of 4 siblings and I definitely do not believe what looks glossy from the outside. It's so hard because people need money. I wouldn't want to be a SAHM, I think what has happened is though that women have taken on the role of going to work so much and taking on such high job roles (which is nice don't get me wrong) but then the children and the housework still need be organised. It's like the men have taken the women stepping up and working more as an opportunity to take a back seat or something!

They aren’t supposed to. If you both work full time, the child and household stuff gets shared equally

That’s the theory, but I have never seen a single couple who have share chores and child rearing equally after the kids arrive.

In fact, it is a very well documented fact that most men do far less than they did just 2 years after the birth of the first child.

I have the theory that the reason for that is that mum takes over during maternity leave and by the time she is back to work, she is the kid and household expert so the guy takes a step (or 20) back.

Not only do I want the option to deal with women when I need services such as legal or medical help,

THIS!!!!!!!!!

I want to be able to see a female GP who isn't exhausted from doing a second shift at home when I want to talk about getting a PTSD referral to deal with my sexual assault history, thanks.

Well it’s your own fault if you end up in a situation like that. I can’t remember the last time I cooked a “proper meal” as DH does all the cooking. I’m also not 100% sure how our iron works as I never touch it. Sure, I do the cleaning but it’s not like that’s everyday and we have different standards (same with food prep to be fair, the standards are just reversed). DH does more of the kids activities than me too.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia

ive said for a long time all work related childcare should be tax deductible and households should be taxed, not individuals. The current system is very unfair and unsustainable for families.

60 hours per week of childcare is the bare minimum needed for a full time job. I’m working 14-16 hour days right now. My childcare costs are killing me and anything extra I earn will go out the door in childcare costs because I’m paying from income taxed at 47%.

im lucky I’m in the US where I have head of household. It makes a huge difference.

We have Universal Credit and other forms of top-up benefits for low-paid workers. We also don't usually have individual health insurance because we have universal healthcare. Your username "Yanksplaining" is very apt here.

You are very happy to criticise working women for paying illegal immigrants cash-in-hand but are silent on the men who:

• Traffick women to be imprisoned in "pop-up brothels" to be raped dozens of times per day.
• Pay the traffickers to rape these women.
• Pay cash-in-hand to an enslaved illegal immigrant or his gangmaster to get a hand car wash.

If I was here illegally, I'd rather clean a house in the warm and dry than be soaked in water and detergent outdoors or be raped dozens of times per day.

I get a feeling that there are specific individual women that you don't like and have an axe to grind about.