To feel sad some women are forced to go back to work

[JTT95]

I think it is messed up that these days a lot of women have to go back to work after maternity leave whether they like it or not. It seems like everyone is sending their babies to nursery at 1 or even earlier. I know that some women want to and are happy to go back but there are many women who are heartbroken to leave their babies so young. I wish it was like the olden days where a man’s wage was enough to suport the whole family.

Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't.

Are you genuinely sure as at my children’s school I reckon about half the mums worked and the other half didn’t. This was a mixed demographic state school. I’d genuinely be interested in the proportion of parents we are SAH until their child is 5 and then 12?

Are you ok? You seem to have an anger problem.

Hello, is that you MIL ?

I would also add @terrafirma2025in the 80s/90s when I was at school, my mum was the only working mum full time. There were some mums who were doing part time work but since there were no breakfast and after school clubs my mum was juggling au pairs and pick ups and it was really difficult. All of my friends had their mums at the school gates at 3.00 - I was definitely the outlier

My mum was a teacher in the 80s and 90s and worked full time. Like many kids at my primary school I was dropped off and collected by a childminder or older siblings. My childminder was a school mum. My friends all had mums who worked. It was very normal.

Exactly this: I agree that advanced capitalism is full of problems and that it would be great if the economy could be restructured to enable greater work/life balance, a more equitable society and all these utopian ideas.

But the hard reality is that the UK economy is in a parlous state. The current government is hanging on by a thread and whatever succeeds it is almost certainly going to be far more right wing, far less progressive and won't have the money to indulge anything like this.

The idea that any government is suddenly going to put in place some sort of benefit which will allow women to step away from their jobs indefinitely and keep their jobs open is fantasy. Moreover while it would be nice for people to take 4,5,6 years off work to be with their children, it effectively removes most people from the workforce permanently. Rightly or wrongly, very people can keep their skills current over a period of half a decade or a decade out of the workforce.

Its a difficult decision to make for women and there are no perfect solutions but its not the job of the state to cushion everyone from economic reality indefinitely because they want more time to play with their children.

at your school but I can attest I was the only one in my class and certainly at my children's primary school lots of the mums didn’t work. Personal anecdotes aren’t necessarily reflective of the whole of society which is why I’d actually be interested in national stats.

Institute for fiscal studies quoted in a bbc report which suggests that in 1975 around 48% of women aged 25 to 54 worked and in 2017 it was 78%

so there has been a change but certainly wasn’t all mother at home in the mid 70s

That figure from the 70s is surprising high!

It certainly puts the bed the idea that most women being at home has ever been the default and that the world we live in now is some sort of perverse reversal of nature.

I think there was a time in the 50s where women were very limited in the work they could do once married

it trapped women like my grandma in violent marriages

Indeed. My mum was degree educated and worked in senior roles in a dynamic creative industry before stopping work to have kids in the early 70s. She basically never worked again; was too long out if work and couldn’t get back in. She was miserable. She spent the last 40 years of her life feeling bored and shut out if life.

I think sometimes people lamenting the fact that women “have to” work have no idea what it was like back then. We would all like an elongated maternity leave: who wouldn’t want that? But just because you are sitting in a stuffy office feeling blue and wishing you were in the park with your kids doesn’t mean you are “heartbroken” and it doesn’t mean you actually want the rest of your life off.

According to these statistics more than half (52%) of women did NOT work in the 1970s.

That’s my experience too. Most mums in the 1970s didn’t work (full time) and were collecting their kids from school.

All I took from this thread is that the OP doesn't want to work so she is justifying this choice by saying it's about the kids. And staying at home looking after kids really isn't that hard, so stop justifying it as a career choice. Just admit that you can't be arsed to work.

I suspect that in the 70s, 48% of women may have 'worked,' but a lot of them were working part-time or around the kids. Eg. my mum did sporadic phone work from home as a market researcher. But she was always there. She just took work as and when. I don't know anyone who had a childminder or nanny. I think I had one friend whose mum used to work in an office and she used to just go home and be alone until 6 or whenever, even in primary school.

We didn’t have a childminder or nanny - we walked ourselves to school almost from the very start of school

if I was off poorly an aunt would sometimes pop in

Suspect that there are a lot of women today with children who work part time

@Bluelilacbella

According to these statistics more than half (52%) of women did NOT work in the 1970s

Sure, but its still close to half working. The received wisdom on some of these threads is that we have an unusually high percentage of women working.

But it turns out even in the backwards 70s (the decade time forgot) nearly half of women worked.

I’m glad today’s women have more choices than in the olden days. They can chose:

• to have a career and go back to work if / when they wish
• a supportive partner who can provide for the whole family and the woman can chose to stay home or not
• anything in between

@PeloMom They don't have more choices. now that one salary is usually often not enough like it used to be.

Even those that do work, many are part-time.

The idea that all mothers work/worked full-time from when their children were babies apart from a brief period in the 1950s (apparently the most evil and sexist decade in history) is absurdly wrong.

Yes, but from experience, I don’t imagine that the figure for primary age children was that high, especially pre-school children. And even then many would have been part-time.

I believe the number of mothers who went back full-time when their child was a baby was very tiny.

I wonder how many of the 48% worked only part time?

And how many of the 48% had primary age kids?