To be confused by the two working parent set up

[Angels1111]

As I return to work from my Christmas break I return to the same conundrum I've been having since kids were born...
...that is confusion at how to handle my multiple roles in life.

I can't help but think that in my mother's generation they had to do the same stuff as us, but with no work. And, there was more of a community to fall back on too - she could get the neighbours to watch us if needed, relatives had more time to visit and play with us, etc. But she had time, to keep herself healthy and to keep us healthy.

Now it feels like a lot of us work in careers which are not conducive to taking long career breaks or going part time. Or, we can't afford to. So we end up juggling everything that comes with having a family with work. My partner does lots but it feels like two people splitting three jobs between them (work, children, house) is more of a stretch and a juggle and I wish every day that I could just focus on the house and kids.

I feel resentful that if I hire a nanny or a baby sitter or get family to help, they'd just play with the kids, feed them lunch, and maybe wash up after lunch wheeras I'd be doing all of that plus the food shop, house cleaning, admin, cooking dinner, washing, homework etc etc simultaneously, and if I wanted to hire someone to truly replace my roles it would take 2-3 people just to do the home stuff let alone work.

But this could just be how I'm handling life! I have a chronic condition so potentially have less energy than the general population, I do handle it a lot better when I'm not flaring.

I think it was a lot easier for some women to not work, as a single income from a professional job by the man enabled the standard of living you need 2 incomes for these days. But not all women or those in poorer income families.

I agree with this. Op has explained word for word what my childhood experience felt like, and everyone I knew was like. It was highly unusual for two parents to work, and even more unusual for them both to work full time. I didn’t know a single mother that worked full time growing up.

Society has become much more materialistic over the years. The cost of living has increased so much, pressure is now placed on women to do more and more. It’s so far from ideal.

I was thinking about this thread again and reflecting that those posters like the OP who grew up with a SAHM and around a lot of SAHMs may find it harder because their expectation and feelings around motherhood are naturally shaped around their own childhood

My parents both worked full time so it felt quite natural to me to do that. I wasn't picked up at 3 from school every day, I went to a childminder, so I don't view that as a natural or essential part of childhood and I don't have any guilt about using wraparound care or childcare generally

I do remember thinking that other mums did things like baking for the school fair but if anything I was sort of proud that my mum had a career instead. I don't carry with me expectations about that sort of thing. I do help with school events if I can, I don't feel guilty if I can't

Society has become much more materialistic over the years. The cost of living has increased so much, pressure is now placed on women to do more and more. It’s so far from ideal.
I think it's the ridiculously high housing costs that must hit the hardest. When I was a SAHM in the 1970's, we bought our first semi (in a London Borough) for £11k. Yes, the mortgage rate was very high but it was very doable on one salary. I honestly don't know how families cope with it all ☹️

And this is why so many mums are burning out. The mental load is an overload. I never had grandparents to help and DH worked away a lot, so I was forced to do nursery and after school childcare. The guilt was overwhelming. But I had no choice as we needed the money and part time jobs were few and far between.
There is an expectation for mums to do it all, and we are the sandwich generation too, so we are also expected to care for our elderly parents while juggling a full time job, family, and home. It is exhausting.
You have to find ways to work smarter, and you need to find some time to yourself so you can recharge. When my kids were younger I found listening to podcasts when driving was my mini escape, or walking the dog on my own first thing to get some peace. You will always be multi tasking, but try to find ways of making your time efficient, and batch cook - put dinners in the slow cooker, and don’t feel guilty if you have to give your child a pre-made sandwich for their tea as you ferry them around to their after school clubs, just so they can eat something. You have to do what you can. Be kind to yourself. We are all doing our best and that has to be enough.

The only solution as far as I can see is to either not have children at all, or a limit to just one child. I can’t imagine why the women of tomorrow would ever consider motherhood in this climate and choose this path for their lives tbh. I do not say that lightly.

My parents lived with us and inlaws were only round the corner, plus a lot of their school friends lived in the same village or street, even, so DDs very much had a sense of community, and I couldn't have done my job without that.

The women in my family always worked. I would not like to have been in my DM's generation with more limited career options presented to them, expected to get married and have kids in their 20s (my DPs resisted having me until their 30s and then only had one - very much outliers among their peers), not able to get a mortgage or HP as a woman, no right to equal pay for many years either- lots of things which made you reliant on a male provider.

There are plenty of challenges today, and I don't wish to diminish that or put down working women doing such an excellent job. But having delved into genealogy, I remind myself from time to time that I come from a long line of women who had a dozen or more pregnancies in their life and did very, very hard manual work and had very few choices and absolutely take my hat off to them.

I feel a lot of our 'stress' is from modern life - being accessible 24/7 & consumerism. We are not allowed to switch off and we need the latest everything. To get it we must work all hours and climb the ladder to keep up with the ever increasing costs.

I miss the days when shops closed on a Sunday. You could call someone, but only on the landline and communication was via post. Things were slower. Our brains were able to switch off and there was time to visit family/friends.

My ideal would be one salary keeps a roof over the families head, and a second part-time salary pays for the nice things, like holidays. Today, two decent salaries and people are just surviving.

Try being a lone parent (widowed) working full time with two young children and very little practical support!

Not everyone can afford a nanny. The entitlement is astounding.

My parents are working class, my dad worked in a factory (skilled position) and my mum was a stay at home mum (in the 90s). They had a mix of working class and middle class friends, lots of stay at home mums. My husband has a minimum wage job and I work very low hours self employed, my working class friends are stay at home mums and middle class friends are holding onto their careers.

I don’t understand the disparity between mine and others experience, yours definitely seems to be the more common on this thread. I live in a completely different part of the country to my parents so it’s not just a location thing (both in England, neither expensive or cheap places to live, fairly average)

Yes! Definitely! I do not think it is that we want other people to babysit as such, just that extended family get togethers do not happen as often and then there isn't really the pop in for a visit culture anymore.

I don’t know OP, my mother worked, my grandmother and my great grandmother worked too.
I think we have it a lot easier, my children are looked after in a very regulated childcare setting, while we are working.
The “village” in our parents generation often meant that older children would be looking after their younger siblings.

My solution was to marry a man who takes a genuinely equal role in parenting our children and managing our lives. I appreciate that this is easier said than done, as there aren’t loads of these men around, but for me this is the solution. It’s the imbalance that feels so awful for women - when you are both genuinely sharing it, it’s far more manageable.

Longer term solution is us raising our boys to have these expectations of being fathers/partners too. For me, I think that expectation was built in because of how my dad was growing up (highly involved, not across all areas but completely in many) and similar for my DH.

My parents find it hard to accept that as a single, full time working parent, I do everything my Dad did (similar level of responsibility job, although I’m paid less, but don’t have his commute) plus everything my Mum did for the family once we were at school. Esp as they also had a cleaner.

And as a result I’m far less likely to live as long!

Your mother might not have worked, plenty of us did. I had my first in the early 70s and I worked, I think the other children in the nursery also had working parents.

Is it tough? Yes it was then and is now. Is it harder for you than it was for me? Probably not.

Many people work 70 or 80 hours a week, it’s not that they don’t want to be involved it’s just not possible in every industry. Others work as pilots or work that takes them away. I don’t know many couples that genuinely have the ability to do 50/50 down the line for childcare or housework. One side or the other in a relationship tends to have a much more demanding role that the other. I also wonder what professional roles genuinely offer part time hours without decimating career progression.

The 50/50 utopia is much, much harder to achieve than we are led to believe - and can disappear at any moment with illness, disability or redundancy.

Depends on the salary don't you think.

Same here. I had two children and always worked F/T outside of the home. Same with DM and DMiL in the 1950s/1960s. However I do remember returning after 6 months ML (that was the maximum in1981) to my job in a large retail company and it was considered unusual for mums to work when babies arrived, so I guess our family was unusual for the time. There were very few nurseries then too. I did have a cleaner.

Yes, it can be hard to achieve, but it helps if the will and expectation is equally there on both sides. My DH is a teacher and was working very long hours like you said, so he went part time to up the childcare and reduce the teacher load. He has specifically prioritised family. I am fortunate to have a professional role where I can be flexible around things like school plays etc., which he can’t be if they aren’t on his non working days.

I am not at all saying that it’s easy or straightforward to have it all. It really isn’t and we don’t either. But it helps enormously if both parents expect to play equal roles wherever possible. We both feel a lot less alone and much better understood and supported. Probably wouldn’t work for everyone but it was pretty much a non negotiable for me.

Who looked after the babies back then? If few nurseries/no family etc. I do think it wasn't frowned upon to leave children at home younger than it is today, emphasising the need for wrap around care. I remember walking to and from school at an age I would never allow for my own dcs.

My parents were born in the 1940s and became parents in the 1970s. My mum didn't work when we were young only due to my sibling's poor health. So that was circumstantial and temporary. Every other woman she knew, who became parents from the early 1960s through to the mid 1980s, all worked. Some full-time, some part-time.

My grandmothers, born in 1911 and 1918 both worked. One was the mother of 5 kids and the other a mother of 4. The women of their generation in their peer group also worked.

There must be a class thing going on here. Poor women have never had the luxury of becoming non-contributors to the family finances on a large or long-term scale. They may have had to work AROUND the main wage earner's hours, and depended more on informal childcare arrangements, but they worked.

I agree. I’m mid 50s and only knew one Mum who worked full time as a teacher. Most Mums worked part time. Mine was particularly lucky with her job as it fitted around Dad’s shifts. We weren’t rich but had a decent standard of living and lived in a nice area.

Lots of people on here will say you are wrong though. Most Mums were working 80 hours a week down the mines.

Well, in terms of 'wraparound' care, my father started school in the late 1940s. His mother walked him to school on the first morning and told him to pay attention. There was a reason for that.

Thereafter it was his job to walk himself to school in the morning and home in the afternoon. His mother by then had 4 (!) younger children at home so she could not be walking him to and from school. That would blow the minds of this generation's car-ferried infants but I formed the impression he was far from alone and his mother wasn't considered negligent.

Haha, I love that! There is definately too much taxiing around, very few walk, and they live near to schools! I think the issue now is child protection services would be called! There is definately a balance.