AIBU to want a highflying career as well as being a Mum?

[ManhattanMama]

I've only been back at work for 2 weeks and am already having conflicts between work and homelife which I'm struggling to resolve. I work in investment banking, and before having DS (nearly 7 mths old), I used to work 8am - 6.30pm at a minimum, usually longer. Obviously I've already cut back on my hours, and am generally doing 8.30 to 5.30 which just about leaves me enough to time to dash to daycare to pick DS up before 6.30 (I have to take 2 trains to get there).

The problem I've got is that my job just isn't a predictable 9-5 kind of role - things happen which mean that I may have to start early or work late. I've been asked to take part in a Women in Banking mentoring program which means I'm committed to being at work late every Thursday for the next 6 weeks - I asked DH before agreeing whether he was happy for me to do it and he said yes but (surprise, surprise) - the first time I'm home late and he's in a real strop with me because he had to get all of DS's stuff ready for daycare and do the late night feed by himself. He was literally ignoring me this morning as he was so annoyed, so I had it out with him and he said "Now you're a mum you should be happy to just turn up and do the 9-5 then get home to be with our son, not spending time networking and trying to be the career woman".

AIBU or is this completely out of order? Why can I not have a career AND be a good mum? I've worked my rear end off to get to the position I have at the moment and I don't want to do a half-arsed job now just because I have a baby. Things aren't being helped by the fact that everytime I talk to my Mum she says "DS must be finding it so hard only seeing you for an hour a day" - she gave up work to have kids and thinks I should do the same.

What do you think? AIB selfish to want to keep working even though we can afford for me to stop? Career aside, I don't think I could cope with being home with DS all day - it's much harder than working!

Sorry it's so long...

MrsSparkle, if everyone is different, surely the OP is also different from you.

There are lots of women on this thread who have been in a similar position to OP's on this thread who are equally, if not better qualified, to advise OP, with a better understanding of her job and circumstances.

You are definitely entitled to your view, don't get me wrong. And if you are addressing only the OP, then I think you have got your message loud and clear much earlier on. To which the OP has already responded.

Well the op did ask the question "AIBU to want a highflying career as well as being a Mum?" of which i answered.

Like i have said before, if you post in the AIBU section then your opening yourself up for a debate and critism. Had the op NOT posted in the AIBU and had posted it in a less confrontational section asking for advice, she would have just recieved advice on juggling work with a ds.

criticism

MrsSparkle, the OP posted a question, you answered it with your (valid) disagreement/criticism many times. You post a view on this thread, other posters respond to it from their perspective, even if you claim you are only addressing the OP.

Everyone is acting perfectly reasonably.

It is just a bit of a cop out to state a strong view and then when others give a differing perspective, you say, ohhhh, I am not talking to You about Your circumstances.

I was a barrister doing courtroom stuff all round country. Went back to work when DD 5m old. Loved it. Had nannyshare and reduced caseload of about 50%. Sounds too good to be true? Well it was. My husband works in international investment banking, often away and all the domestic stuff and handovers with nanny fell to me every day no matter what. I was stressed out of my box within about 9months. He coudn't make any adaptations to his working pattern and probably even if could wouldn't because his work was so much better paid than mine. I admitted defeat after about 18 months.
I retrained as personal trainer to work from home and embarked on property development buying derelict house and doing it up. But I miss my old life so much and marriage is struggling probably as a result.

My advice: get nanny, having childcare at your house makes life so much easier. Pay her more to work longer hours or build in some flexi time/overtime to reduce stress on you when you have to work late. Get things straight with your husband from the outset. Its not just you who is a parent.

Re your Mums line of thought - things were so much easier in her day. My Mum thinks I want it all, I don't its just that I got an amazing education and formidible qualifications for a reason and don't expect to file them in box marked previous life because of children.

Re your child. Quality childcare and happy parents are the key. Not whether Mum looks after them all day every day.

Keep going with it. If you stop (as I did) it gets harder and harder to go back. I'm now pregnant with 3rd and still dream of going back but looks less and less likely especially as I am now pregnant with 3rd.

but Nooneshome, what do you wish had happened? my dh works away a lot and i similarly "gave in" and gave up my job to work for myself, from home.
i don't know if it was the best decision ever but it all got too much. Do you really think having a cleaner and the nanny do more hours would be the answer?

Like yours i assume, my dh HAS to travel, that's the job he is in and unless he re-trains (he has dreams of being a teacher) then that is how it is going to be for the next few years. I hope as he becomes more senior he will travel less - as he will have the likes of him working for him who can handle a lot of the overseas meetings and he can telecon in. iykwim.

the most important advice coming from this thread, I think, is that you should think about what you want both for yourself and as a family. other people's views may be interesting and potentially informative but they are not a blueprint for your life.

once you know what you want you then know what you're aiming for and can sort out the practicalities to get there. It is likely to involve all sorts of trade offs and compromises - but then so does all of life.

what's important is that they are your trade offs and compromises - not someone else's who almost certainly has a different target end game anyway.

that, plus the thick skin Anchovy referred to will enable you to not necessarily Have It All, but at least to Have Everything That Matters.

Noone, one answer is never marry a man who works away including those in the army in my view. Second answer is always marry a man who earns less so your career never comes secondary to his. Third marry a man who isn't prepared to be away in the week even if his career suffesr and has to be changed. So in a sense your "failure" entirely stems from a kind of sexism and inequality in the relationship. Because he earned more if something had to give it would be you whereas i suspect for those women who work full time happily on this thread and have very involved husbands who do as much as they at home there is more balance in the sense of similar income and ability to muck in and be home even if just on an every other night basis first.

I certainly agree with this post below:
"I think the message a lot of people have been trying to get across, MsSparkle, and this takes us right back to the OP, that for a mother to be working successfully, a pre-requisite seems to be a collaborative partner, not one who embraces traditional patriarchal roles."

But imagine what is has been like for me - single mother of 5 working full time organising to be away in Europe and the Caribbean etc in the last few years on busienss. Even harder. BUT more importantly entirely possible for a woman (or a man for that matter)

Xenia, when i met dh i was earning more than him and he did not travel (i did).

As the years went by he progressed, moved onto international roles and spent more and more time away. Meanwhile i had two pregnancies where i vomited for months and two maternity leaves - hence my career, understandably, stood still for the best part of 3/4 years.

Re choosing a job where you don't travel, in IT there are no longer roles passed junior management which are not international. IT simply does not happen much in this country anymore. The HQs are in California and the development is done worldwide.

My dh is certainly not sexist. When he is at home i would say he does more than me. Much more. He has turned down a stag do in May of a very good friend because he is travelling the week after and doesn't want to be away for the weekend then the week.

It's not always as black and white as you make out.

Xenia, I really do admire your balls stance. More scales have fallen from my eyes than you can possibly imagine in the last few months thanks to you. I don't always agree with what you say, but I have thoroughly reassessed a lot of the things I thought I believed in before knowing your take on them. If I had truly known what you knew from very young, I think I might have made greater efforts to pursue a career much sooner. I think it may help that you grew up with the parents you grew up with though. Some of us were brought up in virtually Victorian set-ups with horrible fathers. I think that makes a huge difference to girls' self-esteem (and I have 3 sisters, most of whom have managed to overcome the upbringing, but not before our 30s).

blueshoes there has been many posters on here who have shared their own circumstances and where i thought they were being very reasonable because they appear to have a good balance.

But i believe yourself and a few others have tried to paint me as being against working mothers and resent them from having a career which is far from the truth. My comments have been about the op and not about all working mothers because you cannot generalise due to different circumstances. Sorry if you see that as a "cop out" but i have said right from the start i was talking about the op and her circumstances yet people have read my posts and replied to them as if i were talking about ALL working mothers. I couldn't have put it more clearly.

Someone a while ago asked if posters had experience of their own mothers working full time. My mum probably had a similar experience to Xenia - she is a lawyer and had 5 children in 10 years (one died from pneumonia). She took an average of 3 months off on maternity leave with each of us and generally worked full time. When my Dsis and DB were born she was a partner in a provincial law firm and working very long hours.

My grandma did provide childcare for her (rather than a nanny) but it didn't actually affect our relationship with mum at all, we all were and are very close. My dad is lovely but pretty useless and mum decided that the housework would have to give - time with her DCs was too precious to spend cleaning. She has now moved into the public sector and still works full time, mainly because she loves her job and finds it much more interesting than the property law she used to do.

There do have to be compromises (obviously) and you have to accept that you may miss out on developments which you would like to have seen although she is making up for that with grandchildren. However, she is still very close to all 4 of her surviving children and has been a fantastic role model for how you decide the balance which is right for your particular circumstances and get on with it.

Sorry for length of post. In summary - it has only been a benefit to me to have had a FT WOHM.

Thel, that's good to see. Valerie Grove wrote a good book about 20 years ago doing profiles of women with large families who worked full time and were happily married.

duchesse, thanks. I think it helped having fairly emotionally intelligent parents, father a psychiatrist. I am not sure how he ended up doing all the night feeds of the bottle fed babies, once I stopped breastfeeding but he did (may be simply because my mother was exhausted and he was used to being up in the night as a doctor on call) and I certainly remember in the 1960s him going round the house at weekends emptying bins, hoovering and he always came home to lunch every day too in the week which is not something that is done nowadays.

I suspect some girls as teenagers read too much of heat magazine and not enough about how to balance family life and have a fair set up at home. They need exposure perhaps not just through the example of the parents at home but also in their reading material.

Obviously it's a bit much my saying what couples should do when they're married in dealing with things when I ended up getting divorced after 19 years. I'm aware of that contradiction but we certainly didn't have any problems over fair sharing of chores at home - that side of it worked.

Xenia, you know you're wanted on this thread?

I made a useful contribution.

Amidalwish - I wish a compromise position could have been found, like DH doing some of the handovers so I could get early start to get ahead with work or have the odd after work drink or some kind of social life . But it was not possible, macho culture of the city and all that. But ultimately we have different views. His is 'I earn enough cash let's get more help'. Mine is 'I don't want kids being looked after for the majority of the time by paid helpers' so that is really why I gave in. And I'm glad I did. It was definitely the right thing for me to do and its given me an opportunity to do some interesting other projects that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to do. But it has taken its toll on me and on our marriage such that I'm thinking I need a spell of being back at my proper work, not just the fill in stuff that I've been doing very very part time for the last couple of years. But I know I'll only be able to hack it for a few months, I'm lucky though as I can at least do this.

Xenia. How do you do it, 5 kids etc? Many a wise word spoken. What I really would have liked was a man whose work and attitude meant he would do a share of the weekday parenting. But when I got together with him we were both in the same position - trainees in our respective fields, I even earned more than him for a while and kids were not discussed for years or at all until we had them and were considering the options. By that stage it was clear it was my responsibility - I either do it or organise the childcare.

But it is as Mrs Wobble says - all about trade offs. I had to trade career with family, or at least having a family that were looked after the majority of the time by a family member which is important to me.

Sometimes I regret my very left wing education and upbringing, I think it gave great expectations...
What I hope is that I can do enough little spells of a few months here and there back in law over the next few years that I do not lose my nerve. I've been away now for 2 and half years and feel that I am beginning to lose nerve such that I need to go back for a spell to keep my options open and that I can then go back when I've got all the kids in school - a long way off seeing as I'm 3 months pregnant.