To be sick of reading on MN that you are a "good role model" to your dd if you go back to work??

[ssd]

have read this over various posts on MN over the years

usually posters give various reasons to return to work, all viable and good, but then the poster throws in the "good role model" shite

why always harp back to this?

if you love your kids, teach them to respect and care for others, learn manners and discipline THEN you are a good role model

most of us eventually will return to work at some stage and if we don't we will still be good role models unless we are lying about the house taking drugs and leaving the kids to go feral, which I;m sure not too many of us do!

I know I'll get slated on here as the going back to work to be a good role model line seems to be very poplular round here and I'm not trying to wind up posters who use it, it just seems to me people work out of necessity, not to be a role model

And BTW where's all the role models for ds's??? or is just loving them enough?

Smallorange, sadly so very true. I was a manager of a hotel who was made redundant on maternity leave. Before I announced my pregnancy they were telling me they wanted to promote me.

If I had a DD (have 2 boys) I would tell her think very carefully about the career she chooses. The public sector seems to offer more flexibility for young mums. Or get a job as a well paid lawyer, just like Xenia.

Totally agree with Happywomble and Riven 'I am not going to slave for some company to keep you happy. Feminism was about 'choice' not forcing other women to do what you think is right. I don't want to 'go out to work' ta very much. I work bloody hard at home.' Excellent words.

There are days when Xenias 2-hour per day rle sounds mihgtly appealing ...

Kiitywise
I can understand what you are saying. My mum worked 12 hours a day and i was daydreaming of having a mum who comes to collect me from school and bakes my birthday cake. And thats why i would prefer if i could afford it to not work myself.

I have noticed the same among my friends and collegues. Those who had SAHM are happier to work and those who had WOHM prefer to stay home. Childrens dont follow the parents. Most of times do the opposite of what their parents did.

It will be very funny - but not a big surprise- to see Xenia's dd choosing a very different path. Becoming a SAHM or spending ten years travelling around in India and Tibet and stick the finger to Capitalism

Thing about the denial of female competition in feminism - even Chris Hitchens and the Archbishoop of Canterbury can have dinner together discussing their differences, even though they are pretty much moral enemies. Because we deny - or rather - aren't allowed to admit to female competition, people like Xenia can say other women should behave like 'this' so I can have 'that'. And if they don't they are betraying the sisterhood. You would only hear the most begrudged men carrying the same argumeent to the 'brotherhood'.

Thing is, maybe feminism functions up to a certain level, say when true discrimunation and sexism exists, as it did even 20 years ago. Now that middle class women aren't particulaly oppressed at all, it really doesn't have anything to offer them. After sexism/racism is dealt with, your left with competition, and everyone is competing with each other. The goal of feminism to create 'true' equality for all is just not possible. Some competition must exist.

And that's what we see here, on MN, every day?

opps, mortal enemies

There is a huge assumption that doing "what one wants to" and "what is personally fulfilling" is somehow right per se. I cannot help but notice ground zero for the banking crisis is the anglo saxon economies, those who have lost faith in the traditional family culture and are happy to contract out the care of their children to so called "nurseries" (actually just child care) or a succession of nannies, none of whom stay that long.

Before I get attacked from all sides, I will state that there is no single correct solution and happy parents do make happy children. On the other hand, that should be balanced with some self sacrifice. Choosing to work to put good food on one's family's table and give them decent shelter is not the same as working for the ski holiday and the winter break in the caribbean. Equally there is no rule saying that it HAS to be the woman who stays at home, a shared solution ot Dad at home also work just fine (as do v involved grandparents, for those lucky enough to have them).

What I do clearly believe to be wrong is two parents with big careers and young children both choosing to remain "self fulfilled" and buying in childcare. It just does not really work.

I'm sorry but I so don't agree with your post Aligrylls.

Kittiwise

hmm more than the one glaring similaruty to our lives then methinks the two things could well be linked

as i have said earlier.. I had a mother figure who ( until she buggered off) was utterly disinterested in mothering and indeed delighted in pouring scorn on the things i now hold dear!

I am well educated but how i LOVE talking laundry and children's toys!

That's true, Ali. It's a huge luxury to be able to have a job that you find fullfilling. As if all of the people working at the checkjout in Waitrose have that choice. (Just imagine if they asserted that imaginary choice - where would all the worthy upper-middle classes get their quinoa!?)

It is very true that 'the meek shall inherit the earth', not the high fliers, if/when the plug is pulled big time.

We all have to do our own cost/benefit analysis using the opportunites and the resourses avalable to us.

I expect the people working in Waitrose are happy to be working for a good employer that treats them well, probably gives them a nice Waitrose discount and a profit share. It would be nice if there were more companies set up like JLP.

Waitrose also appear not to discriminate by age whereas many employers are only interested in recruiting people in their 20s and early 30s.

haha. Yes,we blebs line up to work in Waitrose rather than Tescos, and know which side of our bread is buttered!

you have to smile to work in waitrose!

They are lovely actually. But so are the checkout women in Asda, come to think about it. You get life stories in Asda!

in Tesco the woman recently told me she used to teach a bo with the same name (unusual ) as my ds

turned out she had been a deputy head and then suddenly decided she had had enough!

Ali - I know famiies like that where bothwork. One where both are actuaries, another where one is a politician, the other a barrister. The children are all lovely, family life happy.
Also what about single women are they not allowed a fullfilling carrer then? My friend who works for the UN has kids but no partner. Should she now give up and say sod it to all those women relying on her in the developing world.
And what about those parents who don't have 'big' jobs, just low paid, crap ones, but ones that none the less require children to go to child minders/grandmas/holiday clubs?

smallorange - I work in the private sector (though I work 4 days rather than 5), I can;t afford a Nanny in London even though I am at a senior level because I took a huge pay cut to work for a company which allows me to work a four day week.

In fact my new job is run by a woman who works a four day week and has a DS the same age as mine.

The difficulty in London is when you add the cost of housing and the cost of childcare, your options become significantly more limited especially if like me you are single.

In fact I am extremely lucky to have the work and home life that I do.

My mother worked and though it was in a shop attached to our house and thereofre more accessible to me, it was very long hours and no holidays and required me to work too from about 12.

It didn't put me off working at all. Having a fuckwit father who I hardly saw did put me off marriage though

My DH was diagnosed with a life threatening illness a couple of years ago (prognosis very good now). We were on the verge of relocating and I would give up my job - we didn't and I haven't. That experience brought it home in crystal clarity that if the worst happened, I would need to work. And under those terrible circumstances, would I want to drag myself off to interviews and put in all the required effort necessary when starting a new job ... absolutely not. So I kept my job, still work part time, would at times gladly give it up, but value beyond measure the security it gives me and my children for the future.

People work for many reasons and even if it is money based, it is not always to pay for the next skiing holiday.

Litchick,

As I already said, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

However, I think we need to reserve judgement on the children of your friends until they are adults. Will they have a moral code based on sound values or purely material ones? Will they feel that self-fulfilment in terms of a career is the only worthy goal in life?

I am not talking in terms of "allow" or "not allow". I merely said that a balance should be made between self fulfilment and what one wants to give one's child in terms of a time commitment. And, it is a balance. It is either naive or disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Even for those able to afford a nanny, it is no longer the victorian model where the nanny remained with the family for the duration of the child's upbringing. It is a succession of women all with their own "needs" for "self fulfilment", who stay for a year or two and then depart, leaving tearful children wondering what they have done wrong.

Aligrylls - it really doesn't follow that because both parents work, the family's moral code is based purely on material values!!! How insulting

I agree Ali,

Everybody seems to say 'my friend works full time and her dc are happy..' . Well all children seem happy anyway. We dont know until they are grown ups if they feel resentful or not and how it is going to affect their own choices.

And good point about the nannies too (i have been a nanny myself), they tend to stay one or max 2 years (unless they get extremly good deal, i have stayed once for 5 years for a Xenia-like family who paid me soooo well)

But as a nanny i dont believe this image of 'happy-career woman'. It might be outside yes. But almost all my former employers have broke down and cried in my arms at some point - when they were burnt out or when the child wanted me and not the mum at the school play... I feel very sorry for those women and i dont say this in a patronising way. Of course they probably say to friends or internet forums how happy they are

And what would these sound values be then? Things are not clear that clear cut.
Yes, there are families where the parents career is paramount and where money is considered the most important thing. The children lead a separate life from their workaholic parents, and get spoiled to overcompensate. Never met one, though, sounds more like the plot of a cheap novel than RL!
Most parents work for a mixture of need/self fulfillment (if they are lucky enough to enjoy what they do)/their personal values and why not, even to pay for extra holidays.

It is odd that whenever I tentatively question one particular lifestyle choice, that of two people, both with big careers, who contract out the care of their children, I get aggressively jumped on. Are people really so uncomfortable that I have this particular perspective?

I have at no point criticised single parents, parents who both have to work to give their family basic comforts etc etc.

And, Wishingchair, if two wealthy people both decide to continue full time working, it does kind of imply that they put their material wealth (or, at any rate, personal ambition) above spending time with their own offspring. That is a choice that they have every right to make, but does speak to their value system.