to honestley wonder, why have children if you WANT to work fulltime and are not prepared to make ANY sacrifices?

[milkgoddessmakesthefinestmilk]

i don't mean parents that HAVE to work to provide.

i mean the ones that choose to for no other reason, other than they enjoy their job so much.
if you enjoy your job so much, thats great.
but what i really do not understand is why have children?
no one makes any of these parents have children, you can go though life without having children.

this is 100% genuine question, i just do not get it.

Me? Spice?

Sorry, posey, don't understand

PP, no worries, I thought you were talking to me

Well said, squiffy.

Franca, thanks for enlightening on the Italian position.

The workplace and promotion prospects would improve vastly if the government allowed the current maternity leave to be shared out between both parents as they see fit.

Woman of childbearing age would not be discriminated against as much if employers were just as unsure whether any young men they employed were just as likely to take 6mth-1yr off.

Spicemonster come over to March postnatal and tell us all about it and let us know how you and baby E are getting on.

The government should allow for a retraining period where you can catch up in your profession without the employer or employee losing money.....it would never happen but in the SAHM/WOHM utopia I would like to live in it could!!

But PP, who would fund it, if not the employers? Such a scheme would be an enormous financial liability.
Such retraining already exists in a lot of the public sector (teachers, midwives and nurses) Many large private sector firms also see it as good management to retrain in order to retain their best staff.

This is Utopia, not RL .

Anna- my point was not really about women high up encouraging more to progress higher up in professions (although I do actually think this is a factor, just as women stepping back to spend time with their children is. Women don't have the role models, networks etc that men do).
My point was more that if there are no mothers in these positions then mothers and women will not be well represented. Government policies, medical guidance, teaching methods etc etc will all suffer if there is no direct input from one section of society. And as squiffy said some time back if there are no women at the top who is going to champion flexible working and other aspects of work/life balance for everyone else at all levels?
And in my experience women at the top are not less sympathetic to other women than men, but maybe I've met so few that it's not a very representative sample.

Maybe this will only change when men and women have equal paternity rights?

Yes, we need not equal because women bear the children but we need the new measures coming in in I think 2 years' time where a mother can take 6 months off and a father 6 and I would prefer it if they each have six and it canno tbe transferred. Even then most men won't take it but it will be a step in the right direction.

In fact one of teh best things for working mothers in the next few years to keep them worknig and getting promoted sadly is going to be the recessionary climate. They will need the money from work because of rising food and fuel prices and they won't be able to risk taking time off because there may not be jobs to return to and their husband's jobs won't be secure so that too will act in the long term interests of women working.

"afterall if a child is ill who takes the timf off??" I cannot believe women are in relationships where there is any assumptoin women take time off if a child is off sick. Countless fathers do. Women who tolerate sexism like that in their marriages have only themselves to blame and they damage not only themselves but other women too. It is completely unacceptable to suggest a mother not a father takes time off and anyway if you have a nanny she looks after children when they;re off school with a bug or a cold and if you really are a proper professional I'm afraid it's up to the husband and wife to arrnage back up child care and back up of back up otherwise of course they will be and should be discriminated against at work. It's their act to sort out not the employer's. So go and sort it.

Mmm, proper professional? If your child attends a nursery full time, for argument's sake, and they're ill who looks after them a new nanny? You would seriously expect a person to come and look after a contagious child with norovirus, for example? What if the child is in hospital? Mother and father have equally responsible jobs, although probably not as the woman would have had time off for childbirth. It's not a question of an out of balance relationship, it's the norm. Besides how much of the parent population is represented by two committed professionals?
I think you'll find most companies have, by law, to allow a certain number of days for child emergencies. Is it that much to ask to look after your own sick child?

I agree with the first part of your post, Xenia, and this is in fact not unlike how parental leave is arranged in Sweden: the bulk of the leave can be taken by either parent, but then there is an extra chunk that must be taken by the father, else you lose it.

About the nanny bit: you do sometimes fail to allow in your posts for the fact that society also needs jobs done that are not quite so well paid. Even if we all were equally ambitious and clever, there still wouldn't be enough high-flier jobs for all of us. A company can only have a limited number of directors; the rest do need to be workers. And there are some very important jobs indeed, in nursing, teaching etc, that society cannot do without- so some men and women have to do them. Which makes it a bit utopian to imagine that any and every family could be in a position where they could afford a nanny. Nannies are expensive, which is probably why I've never met anyone around here who employs one.

Many of my friends do jobs where they feel they are making a genuine contribution to society (as teachers, health visitors etc), but where the salaries make a childminder the only option for childcare. Which means endless juggling in case of illness. Doesn't mean they have failed to make something of themselves; they have made something very useful indeed with their lives. Just not well paid.

Ayone with 5 chilren like us who both work full time and are committed to their jobs doesn't take time off when children off with the normal run of childhood things like chicken pox, colds, vomitting bugs. of course they don't not unless they live in cloud cuckoo land. Children don't need a parent with that, just their loved nanny or child minder or granny.

You are allowed unpaid time off for domestic emergencies until you find care so if the child falls off the slide at school and is rushed to A&E you or your husband can leave work and attend but then have to find someone to care for it. you can't then take 4 weeks unpaid leave off to nurse it. That's not how that emergency leave system works. Obviously if a child is seriously ill in hospital all mothers and fathers rush there but not the normal child sickness problems.

Yes, of course some women will work as cleaner, tube train drives, even dust bin men - we need more women in male jobs of all types and use child minders etc but women who might rise to the top we need them out there showing women can work and can lead the nation or the bank or whatever. It's really important for other women that women do progress in that way.

Does noone have anything to say about my post earier today about influence??
I don't think about these things in terms of damage, I think of it in terms of influence
I don't want someone else bringing up my child this early on because I want to influence his life/behaviours. I don't wish to leave this influence to someone else

Who takes time off work if the child is ill? In my house it's sometimes dh, sometimes me. There's no assumption that it'll be me because I gave birth to them. Quite right too.

The law establishes the right for parents to take up to 13 weeks leave for each child (18 weeks for disabled children) without losing employment rights. Government guidelines encourage employers to negotiate their own parental leave arrangements. Where this is not possible, a Fall Back scheme has been included in the regulations

Well StressTeddy that's what you feel. Personally, I don't feel that because my DS is at nursery that the carers have the most influence over him. I do. He loves me most so ergo what I think is most important to him.

If you extend some of these SAHM arguments to their logical conclusion, you end up with a position where a SAHM mother with only one child is ergo a much superior mother to one with several children because she is able to spend more time with one child. Does anyone think that?

As a single parent (sorry to keep banging on but it's relevant) I think it's crucial for my DS to spend time with other people so that he learns to trust and care for other adults other than me. I think the transition to school will be much easier for him than it would be if it were just me and him on our own the whole time.

Call it simplistic, but I calculate it in hours awake. If your children spend more time with others during their waking hours than with you then they have more influence.

Spicemonster, the issue of siblings is quite different to nurseries and I do not see it as a logical conclusion at all. Siblings are something else that is really great for children and mother's influence reigns over all. I do see that as a single parent you have to deal with the needs of your child differently as you have to work, but are you a single parent with no relatives? I don't know many SAHM that do not mix with other people, let their friends/family look after their child whilst they get their hair done or go to the doctors, at the very least.
I think stressteddy is atlking about fulltime care and I think if a child had 8-6 care with someone other than their parents it would be foolish to think that that person did not have any influence. My ds spends a few hours a day with some of his peers at school and he is influenced by them.
I still support your choice to do what you will with your dc and for whichever reasons you have, but I would argue that trusting other adults is not an appropriate skill for very small children.

StressTeddy, you asked about influence. Ds spends more time awake (if you must) in the week with his carers at nursery. I see it as a good thing that he has many carers who take care of him, make him laugh and gives him cuddles and, yes, influence him.

Unless we are hallucinating, dh and I have no doubt that we are the biggest influence in his life. Please do not underestimate the ability of a child to recognise the significance of a mother, which is different from a father, grandparents, from his siblings, from carers and nanny. A baby is not a plant. He is actually extremely socially sophisticated and takes different things from different situations and adjusts his expectations accordingly. That is my observation of my dcs anyway.

In any case, we co-sleep with our (non-sleeping) dcs so in terms of physical time together and contact, I give a SAHP a good run for their money.

In short, I agree with spicemonster.

Oh, and whilst dh and I are the biggest influence in dcs' lives, I celebrate the dcs having other influences and diversity of experiences from their carers and relatives. It adds to the richness of their lives, which is separate and distinct from ours.

Why is it important to raise a cloistered child in terms of influences?

Of course it's different to nurseries, I wasn't comparing it to that. But the argument behind the SAHM position seems to be about the amount of time you spend with your child. Ergo if you have more than one child, you are able to give less attention to each of them as individuals.

Look - I realise it's a stupid conclusion to come to because the situation is not that simple. But that's my point. My DS is better off at nursery because I would be a horrible mother if I had to stay home full time. Even if I did have a partner, I would still work. I don't want to have to choose between my career and my child. It's not Hobson's choice - men have been doing it for centuries.

I also think that being able to trust and form relationships with other people is a crucial skill for all children of whatever age. Encouraging your child to be clingy is not going to do them any favours.