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.

The flip of this though is my DGM - wasn’t allowed to attend university because ‘it wasn’t worth it for girls’ and was (fairly clearly looking back) clinically depressed as a result of having to spend he whole life as a housewife when far more academic than her (lovely but of his time) husband. I’m not convinced it was better for her…

You’re not wrong. When I got divorced, and was back commuting and working full time with four children in nursery/school, trying to keep up with the various sports and activities they were involved in, I needed to hire in 25 hours of childcare, and if I’d had money to spare (which I didn’t) I’d also have hired in four hours of weekly cleaning and four hours of weekly laundry/ironing, as I had no leisure time and indeed was sleep deprived for a few years until I got a hybrid role.

We're Indian, maybe different cultural expectations

Whereas I didn't know anyone whose mum didn't work 🤷🏻‍♀️ they couldn't afford not too

So much of this!!!!

we run a 2 full time, often abroad travel with 2 children and a dog. No outside home help and they still both make after school activities and get school drop off daily and a pick up on a Friday.

grandparent help on odd days on the school holidays.

it’s doable you just need to be beyond organised, we see the time spent together on holidays far more valuable than ensuring a 3pm pick up when they go to clubs.

I will never understand the concept of people continually adding to family if it’s not working for them, you made the choice.

I don’t think this is true at all.

I think people are SCREAMING out for “the village”- they’re just not sure how to make it work alongside the demands of modern working life.

Millennial / Gen Z parents are working SO many more hours, as so many more mums are working FT, that our more limited time with children / families feels like it needs to be super intensive. We’re trying to make up for a lack of time, with extra attention/ entertainment / opportunities - so we schedule our time with our kids so much more- and that leads to families becoming quite isolated as we all pursue our packed schedules.

Meanwhile grandparents etc are also still working, largely, and not available in the community in the same way they would once have been.

Generationally, we’re also trying to “correct” some of the less positive parenting practices of the 80s/ early 90s - and the pendulum is swinging too far the other way in that correction (I imagine what you’re talking about is permissive parenting- which is not the same as gentle parenting just for the record). I suspect we’ll settle somewhere more moderate socially, but we have to go through this correction first.

Im not sure what the answer is, but pointing the finger at “parents who don’t want anyone to discipline their kids” isn’t it. It’s more about macroeconomic forces and socioeconomic policy, than individual parents- and there will need to be a major shift in how we think about work, childhood, community and family, before we see anything like a return to closer knit communities.

I grew up in a pretty poor area, everyone worked, hard manual jobs, men working 60 hope weeks labouring or machine work if they got lucky, women with multiple part time jobs cleaning, shop work, fruit picking, factories etc. Benefits couldn't be lived on, you left school and got a job at 14, you made do, everyone helped each other out, 50p for the meter, one mum picking up 5 different kids one day, another doing it the next, primary age children walking home from school and letting themselves in. Only in middle class idylls did daddy go to work in an office while mummy stayed at home and baked. I'm grateful to now have access to education, I went to university which was a fantasy to my parents generation, we have funded childcare, wrap around exists, flexible working, condensed hours, statutory sick pay. There's no way life is harder than it was for my parents.

I'm in my 70s and gave up work when first was born (1978) and went back part-time when second one started junior school (1987). A lot of the mums were able to do the same though none of us were rich.

Yes. The vast majority of women with children have always worked. Mn seems to have a weird sociological blind spot where a disproportionate number of posters think women were rosy-cheeked SAHMs with not a thought in their heads outside Kinder, Küche, Kirche because of the Stalwart Providers they’d married, until nasty old feminism ruined the idyll.

Same here.
My Mum would have been 80 this year. She worked a full time day job, plus three evenings a week for a few years.
I'm in my 50s and have always worked. Although I did have the luxury of going PT for some years when the children were young.
My DDs wih children are both in their 30s. One doesn't work and the other works part time.
So based on that, my mother's generation had it the hardest.

All very good practical advice but I do kind of resent that we have to let our standards drop -eat less healthy, live in mess, kids on screens too much (my house) just to get by.

im 30s my mum was at home full time so we’re both my grandparents.

Where I live there are Victorian houses that were built for workers in the local industry. Now it would certainly take 2 middle class full time incomes to buy the same house. I do sound a misery but think strain on families increasing with each generation.

All very good practical advice but I do kind of resent that we have to let our standards drop -eat less healthy, live in mess, kids on screens too much (my house) just to get by.

im 30s my mum was at home full time so we’re both my grandparents.

Where I live there are Victorian houses that were built for workers in the local industry. Now it would certainly take 2 middle class full time incomes to buy the same house. I do sound a misery but think strain on families increasing with each generation.

I have started putting home life first, as they say you can be replaced in an instant at work but not at home. I don’t do all that above and beyond stuff at work and I still take home the same pay.
I just save some energy for when I get home. Life is short and when I’m gone it’s my children who will remember me not my employer.

Possibly
Im Late 50s
My mum and all aunts and mums friends worked
I worked as did all my friends
I know a few women who didn’t but as these are Private school mums I’m guessing financially they didn’t have to, although most did.

We all juggled with everything, just as you are having to now and very few had family nearby. Even when they did they were all working aswell.
It seems all a blur now. Taking one day at a time and with the exception of remembering being totally exhausted all the time I really don’t know how we got through it with twins and one three years older. I wasn’t obsessed with cleaning….perhaps that helped 😁

I'm South Asian too but my mum went back to work when I was a few months old and continued working till she retired. They paid for childcare. Most women I know in my immediate family or friends of the same culture have always worked - they are educated. graduates, so it was very much a working culture for the women.

My mum was mostly at home full time until I was 12 but that was because she was an army wife and constantly on the move so no one would employ her. No family support at all. Then my dad retired and she had to go back to work full time as we needed the money. The majority of my friend’s mothers worked. This is in the 1980s.

A lot of mothers now complain about lack of village. What they actually want is free childcare to their exact specifications without the responsibility of elder care. That’s what the village used to be. Women caring for children and older family members. Yes there was more community but it didn’t make for less work for women.

I worked a FT career job with two kids as a single mum from the time the youngest was 1. No help from my family who live abroad or my PIL who both worked FT and had carer responsibility. No other family members to help. Dad was useless and only had them for 6 hours on Saturday and I did all the lick ups and drop offs.

My mum was also a single mum working FT in a career job, so to me, the fact there are 2 of you is a gift.

The difference is that standards have gone up too much. Everything has to seem perfect. I prioritised my kids and work. The house....not. Housework was the absolute necessary. Dished done daily. Vaccum once a week, bins emptied when full. Clothes cleaned

What was not not as often as some people: bedding changed only every 3 weeks or so. Bathroom cleaned when needed. Floors wiped when I noticed they were dirty, same with dusting, oh and windows! Ideally, it would have been nice to do more often, more nobody died, and my kids in their 20s are very healthy as I am. Also my kids did eat more processed food than they should have but both were slim and they did get healthy meals at school and weekends. Ironically or not, they are both excellent cooks.

There wasn’t UC, free school meals only if you were unemployed or support with mortgages etc etc

People were more ‘on their own’ financially.

So Agree, much harder

I agree.

I'm 45. My mum was a single mother and worked full time. In those days, no one found it concerning that I would walk home as a young child, let myself in, make a snack, and wait for her to come home. I definitely missed out on the chance to do any extracurricular activities but I'm not sure how many kids in my school did this anyway?

Not saying this was better for me as a child. But there was certainly less pressure on my mum to be present and to be a perfect parent.

Edit: also, people had children younger and could retire earlier. So my grandmothers were very present and able to pick up a lot of slack. My own mum still works at 70 and lives abroad anyway...!

I think working class women always worked, at least part time and maybe from home (sewing etc). My more working class grandma worked in factories when my DM was small, and my more middle class grandma occasionally helped out with the family business.

I do agree there was more of a village though - my DM and uncle used to regularly get taken to the seaside by nuns (like in call the midwife) and my dad's mum lived in the same village as all her sister in laws and they communally watched the DC.

I wouldn't say I am particularly stressed but my DC are in primary school (not non-sleeping toddlers) and I am lucky to have to 'have a village'.

I think women having great careers is wonderful but when you add children into the mix, I believe women have been sold a complete pup.

The pressure and mental load is truly immense.
All of my friends, now 60's with very successful professional career's say it was brutally hard to juggle and have all suffered health wise.

I can wholeheartedly understand one and done for women now. Two and more children is very hard.

Some friends had husbands that definitely contributed BUT they were the organiser and mental load carrier for sure.

These are medics, baristers, school principals, rubbing their own businesses.
Combining both with 3-4 children was very busy.

My mother's generation that had professional career's had lots of help, a cleaner, childcare and didn't do any of the driving around of children that has emerged in the past 25 years.
Money went much much further years ago.
It was possibly to live extremely well with one not to mind two professional careers.

I tell my children to think long and hard before having children.
It is not something to rush into, particularly for women, whom invariably carry the load.

That's not been my experience.

I've found the biggest issue about "the village" is that many grandparents are not local, or are working full time themselves, so the amount of support they can provide on a day by day basis is minimal.

If you don't have grandparents close at hand you are reliant on friends - but they are working if they don't have children, or have children themselves and limited.

Plus, parents who do have grandparents close at hand tend to rely solely on them and aren't interested in supporting those parents who don't, but then have no back up when they are away.

People are more suspicious and less friendly. So many posts on MN from people wanting someone to take their child to school as a one off and they don't know a single one of their child's classmates parents.

You aren't wrong, DC and housework and life admin is a whole job. But being a SAHM puts women in a very vulnerable position.

The ideal is to both be part time and have the number of children you can afford in that wage - although I fear it will be none!

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

I'm probable older than you as I'm mid 60s and I'm a firm believer that this trope of previous generations of women not working is a complete fallacy. I'm talking 60s-70s here

If I think back to the streets where I lived and my friends from school, all the mums worked, many full time, sometimes in the evenings when the Dads were home. Kids came home to an empty house with parents both at work. Work wasn't a career as such, just a means of earning money to pay the bills. So probably termed working class.

My Dad worked away during the week, so my Mum didn't have the chance to take herself off to the gym, her way of keeping fit was the walk into and back from work. Oh God I'm starting to sound like a Monthy Python sketch.

Look - parents with young families are and always have been under pressure. The causes of the pressure change over time however pressure remains.

On a more practical note - rather than hiring the occaisional baby sitter, hire in people who will take the strain in other areas, eg a cleaner / housekeeper who will keep the house clean, change the beds, a gardener to mow the lawn etc. yes the mental load remains but there is some support. I get it that financially things can be tight so this may not be possible.

Women of my mother’s generation (middle class, can’t speak for the other classes) were very much expected to give up work to have kids when they got married, so glad this isn’t the norm any more.

I’d much rather be at work than looking after kids and doing housework, it’s so much more interesting and far far easier. We both work full time in paid jobs and have a cleaner. I wish we also had a cook, but instead there’s a lot of fish fingers, baked potatoes and batch cooking on the weekend.

It can be another part time job organising all the kid stuff so I decided to stop at one as it is defo me doing all this extra stuff. That’s how I survive it. He’s almost 5 and it’s a lot better now, he’s a great little chap and fun to be with.