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.

Where did I say that?

I was giving the example of my Mum and pretty every woman I knew in my small little world as a child.

You haven’t got a chip on your shoulder at all, have you?

How have to extracted that from @MrsZiggywinkle 's post ?

The crap about how demanding and complex jobs now compared to the past. Plenty of demanding jobs done by women in the past, we weren't all doing very part-time low paid jobs.

Your mother might have been doing low paid part time jobs, not everyone was. Plenty of women did demanding complex jobs. You werent just giving an example you generalised about the difference in jobs then and now.

Not a chip just want a bit of accuracy and respect for the women who were actually doing complex demanding work even if you didn't know them.

What time frame are you talking about though?

each decade you go back the glass ceiling was lower and the amount of women who had the opportunity to do complex or well paid work is smaller.

and complex and demanding are different and not necessarily connected.

there were fairly limited opportunities for my mother after marriage and children in then 70s and 80s but that started to improve in the 90s

for my grandmothers there were very limited choices post war -
it was all demanding but not complex

for the generations before there were no choices

i would argue that prior to the 90s the volume of women doing well
paid complex work was rather limited

Thank you

My Mum wanted to go back to work after she had my sister in the late 60s. She ended up a SAHM for a few years before finding something. Was low paid and part time because there was little in the way she could manage otherwise.

When I say work is hard and demanding now I’m not saying that women didn’t ever do those jobs. I’m saying that what used to be fairly standard jobs that were now 9 to 5 ask people to bring their whole selves to work, work through lunch, work late, log on later, all this 24/7 bullshit that is driven by the partriarchy and is so damaging to family life and work life balance.

Those posters who have been ‘offended’ by my post because they are thinking I have insinuated that women NEVER did complex or demanding have completely missed the point.

I think this is where class comes into this argument too. I was the first person in my immediate family to stay in school past 15. Then first in my extended family past 18. Then uni. Then first one to have a professional job. And I'm only a teacher.

None of the previous women in my family had the opportunity to be educated to the standard which would have enabled careers, which makes me v angry. Such wasted potential, because it 'wasn't for the likes of us'.But that's another thread

When I say work is hard and demanding now I’m not saying that women didn’t ever do those jobs. I’m saying that what used to be fairly standard jobs that were now 9 to 5 ask people to bring their whole selves to work, work through lunch, work late, log on later, all this 24/7 bullshit that is driven by the partriarchy and is so damaging to family life and work life balance.

I'm not so sure I agree with this.

I think work is different now but in many ways it has never been more flexible. There are loads of posters on here doing the school run every day while working full time. I don't do it, I use childcare, but many do. Some even see it as a basic right and post about how pissed off they are if they have a manager who expects them to work 9-5

When I say work is hard and demanding now I’m not saying that women didn’t ever do those jobs. I’m saying that what used to be fairly standard jobs that were now 9 to 5 ask people to bring their whole selves to work, work through lunch, work late, log on later, all this 24/7 bullshit that is driven by the partriarchy and is so damaging to family life and work life balance.

Sorry this is utter nonsense. Work has never been more flexible, work-life balance was not even a thing until the past decade or so and employees have never had as many rights as they do now.
The idea, in the 1990s, of demanding flexible hours to fit around looking after your children is just laughable.
Where on earth are you getting this information from and what has it got to do with the patriochy? Unless you mean women should have special rights because they are women? We 90s workers fought for equality not special treatment.

Work may be easier, but I think ‘life” is worse. Yes, undoubtedly food is better appliances are better and so on, but there is a pessimism in the social air that is hard to miss, and no community much. People just aren’t happy.

My mother was from a middle class family and it wasn't much better. She didn't go to university, although her brother did, as she was expected to marry a man who would take care of her. Career options were generally teaching or nursing which didn't require degrees back then (1960s)

I also don’t recognise this world of women staying at home and never doing paid work once they had children.
My mother worked full time until the day she reached state retiring age. Her sisters and sisters in law worked too. All until state retiring age. None of them finished work before then.
I didn’t have free childcare I had to pay for it and trust me, it was much harder to arrange then than it is now.
Raising children has always been hard. Some people are more privileged than others in all walks of life. I used to long for a break. Many women had family help, I didn’t so I just got on with it.

My mum had flexible working in the early 80’s so was most definitely a thing by the 90’s!

Not in my world it wasn't. Did anyone else on here have flexible working in the 1990s??

My mum did when she eventually went back to work and her friend worked term time only

Just because things happened for some people doesn’t mean they were the norm for the majority.
Imagine in 40-50 years people saying that back in the 2010s/2020s mothers had enhanced maternity pay for 6-12 months and also fathers had full pay paternity pay for a few months. Now I’m sure there’s a few companies out there that offer these things. But do most people have it? Definitely not.

I have just remembered a woman In another office at my then employer did negotiate finishing an hour earlier so she could pick her child up from nursery. She was married to the manager though and there was a lot of resentment around it from her colleagues of both sexes. It was a hit hush-hush though and was certainly not in her contract.
So it's not correct to say it didn't exist. But to imply it was commonplace is just wrong.

I'm getting this but in the area I live in and the area my husband is from and the area all my cousins are from it was normal and until this thread I had no reason to know differently.

I’m now waiting to be told there was no childcare in the 80’s and 90’s which is always wheeled out on these types of threads. Which is super weird as l had friends at school in the 80’s and 90’s whose mum were childminders. Another friends younger siblings went to nursery in the early 90’s as well

These things are always framed as they just didn’t exist at that time at all. Which simply isn’t true

My brother and I went to a childminder in the 1970s. Mrs Blake.

Exactly. I don't think anyone disagrees that fewer mothers worked in the 80s and 90s - but it's the implication that none did that gets annoying. We literally had a female Prime Minister who had children in the 80s.

I went to a nursery in the early 80s which I am often told couldn't have existed

There was definitely childcare in the 1990s, as most mothers worked. I used a nursery.
What there was not was free childcare. The nursery I used was at a hospital. NHS staff got subsidised fees, but everyone else had to pay the full whack.

I found it really difficult to find after school care in the early 90’s.
I was at university and had one day with a late seminar. I eventually found a service that would pick my DS up for £8 and take him to a local secondary school that was the venue for an after school club. He was the only child that went from
his school and I remember getting a call from the school from the secretary who told me he didn’t seem happy to go and I felt that she was judging me. It would have been so much easier if there was an after school club at my DS’s school.

Yes afterschool care was then recognised by most parents as being more difficult than preschool. We were entering an era when 'latchkey' kids were frowned upon but -despite what the pp said - flexible working was not really a thing. I was lucky because my mum could do school drop-offs and pick-ups but I know many of my friends struggled badly.
Just as well we lived in a golden era when EVERYTHING was easier than it is today 😂