motherhood survery - slighted a lot of us - anyone feel the same

[suzywong]

I don't want my first message ever to be a rant, but I have to say that question 18 of the Modern Motherhood Survey in this month's bulletin ignored enitrely the option of giving one's status as 'full-time mother'. Many of us are through choice or economic reasons or just because. Why, Mumsnet, did you ask respondents to the survey to qualify our status according to wages? Surley this would be the ideal platform so validate and the status of Full Time Mothers.
Now it's not that I've got a chip on my shoulder, I love being a FTM and I'm sure many of us do, let's just see it in print as an option of identity!
Did anyone else feel disappointed by this pigeon-holing?

I was disappointed to read yesterday Justine being quoted in the Sunday Times as saying "in a recent survey the majority of mothers carried out most of the parenting" (or words to that effect). From the survey questions, that is NOT a valid conclusion that can be made - not unless a majority had actually answered either "100%" or "greater than 75%".

I had answered reluctantly - the 50 to 74% - but with the fear that my answer would lumped in to the very conclusion that Justine has been quoted as coming to.

For the record - I share parenting responsibilities 50:50 with my dh. So my answer was correct- but the conclusion WRONG.

It actually nearly caused an argument at home, as dh saw it as attitudes (in general) and Mumsnet (in particular) as being biased against men and the (he believes many) men that DO take their fair share.

Along the same lines as Batters, my DH does 50% of the childcare when he's at home but I work fewer hours than he does so the net result is he does less. That must be the case for many if not most couples.

JanZ
Like you I was disappointed that there wasn't a 50:50 option as that's the case in our house. However, I suspect that it's still true that the majority or mothers do most of the childcare. Judging by friends and reading the threads here, that seems to be true for most.

I'm not disagreeing that it may well be the case that women do most of the parenting (oops - double negatives there!) - just that AS THE SURVEY WAS STRUCTURED, that was not a conclusion that could be drawn. I suspect that had there been an option for 50:50, only a minority would have opted for that. But at least you could then draw an accurate conclusion that (provided they answered that way!) the majority of women did greater than 50% of the care.

As I work ft, and ds goes to a childminder 5 days a week, dh and I have always shared looking after him 50:50. As it happens, dh recently took voluntary redundancy, so technically has "more" time to look after ds. However, we took the joint decision to keep ds at the childminders ft - although dh does occasionally take him out for treats (and also he is now the one who takes ds to the doctor's when necessary). For the first couple of months dh needed the time for himself to recover (he had been highly stressed) and the last couple of months he has been exploring other opportunities - doing some work for a business contact and beginning to get the ideas together for his own business.

So technically he could be doing more - but isn't. We don't want to disturb ds, who is very happy at the childminder - and we enjoy sharing (equally of course!) the time we do have with ds in the mornings, evenings and weekends. In fact, dh probably changes more nappies than I do, as he does every morning one during the week (I am NOT a morning person and dh is), and in the evening, we take it in turns to put him to bed. At weekends, it's whoever notices he needs his nappy changed!

Interestingly, on re-checking, the original question wasn't about child care - but about "parental load". Isn't earing money to look after the family part of the parental load?

Janz , I completely agree with you.
the structure of the survey did not allow for those of us with a 50:50 split to indicate this.