My unreserved apologies

[jabed]

It seems I have upset MN posters.

I am sorry if you have been upset by me. I apologise.

I wont do it again.

Jabed

Writing a report? You were on here all day yesterday jabed. And as for thread hijack-you are the thread hijack king.

See you later.....

Mothers who work hugely benefit their chidlren and any conned into thinking otherwise and staying home are just listening to propaganda. Until women own 50% of the world's wealth - it is currently 1% they own - every woman who stays home damages other women at work and their children. The personal is political.Women at home present an image to chidlren that women earn nothing, serve men and clean and do childcare (and in some cases provide sex) in return for board and care whilst their man earns all the money. It is a model many people want to abolish and we are succeeding but we have a long way to go before most mumsnetters earn the 10x what their husband does that I do, a very very very long way to go.

Xenia.

Let it out, way2go, am sure you feel better for it, and if anyone can take it like a man, Xenia can. As insults go, I prefer wit or sarcasm myself, but hey! Each to their own.

Back to a point being made earlier, about outcomes for children of working mums, and someone asked whether there is any research. Answer is yes. Most research shows the clearest correlation is between mother's educational level and childrens outcomes, but THIS one shows also that mothers who worked had a positive impact on their children's educational attainment. I do add a small caveat, however: the research paper does reflect the research results I have seen before, but it appears to be an abridged article, without citations. As such I would expect to find a full version if I were to use this for academic purposes.

There is also (to save anyone digging around) research published in March 2011 by the rowntree foundation that suggests outcomes less good where mothers work full time. However, even this research (trotted out with great frequency to prove working mums are bad for children) states this (quoted in full)

Children of more highly educated parents tended to have higher educational attainments and a lower probability of being economically inactive as a young adult. There was also a strong, positive association between parents' occupational status and the probability that their children would gain A-level qualifications. Higher earnings capacity for either parent was generally associated with higher educational attainments for their child and a lower risk of giving birth before the age of 21 for their daughters.

Oh come on Xenia, do the survey - put your £££ where your mouth is, we need more/ your stats.

Interesting that someone mentioned earlier about the children of working mums in low income areas doing worse at school. Ancedotally, this is definately what I remember from my period teaching at seconday school. These kids were called 'latch-door kids'. They would have to let themselves in the door at the end of the school day - often cooking for other younger siblings, older ones mothering younger ones, that sort of thing. They really were one of the worst performing groups because they never had time for homework and at school they just wanted to run around like children and not pretend to be adults anymore.

I just tend to read and larf at Xenia's posts. Long may she continue of MN for a bit of light relief. She is poles apart from myself, and I suspect many others on here, that I find it refreshing to hear from her from time to time.

I particularly like the 100k earners producing likewise 'successful' offspring. There is so much wrong with this assertion. But the main, and not least (and has already been pointed out) objection is to question, do we really want to measure success in terms of hours away from family and income? Most high earners I've met in life are total wankers. IMO, the people that want to chase this sort of reward are pretty objectionable, self-centred and insecure types. They very frequently have drink problems and tumultuous love lives. No surprises there then.

And the other bit about staying at home means you are a servile, stepford-type wifey is just a bit of extremist feminist clap-trap invented to be provocative.

LeBFG

It's a special kind of poster that can make Xenia look polite and well considered.

Yellowtip - check the links in the thread I posted for stats.

Anecdotally, checking the data for DC (academic, independent) school, if I look at the top two children academically in each year (per awards day info), the split seems to be pretty much 50-50 in terms of whether the children have SAHM vs WOHM. Interestingly, the ones in this group with SAHM do have pretty clever mothers even if they don't work any longer (eg: one had been a nuclear physicist, another had been a GP). Whilst extrapolating this is impossible of course, the anecdotal evidence does match the research:- the success and status of the mother seems to follow through to children, regardless of whether she is working or not.....which is kinda neat, and does support some of Xenias comments.

Of course, there will be anomalies (Mark Thatcher)

Well, if I were Xenia, I'd have a colossal chip on my shoulder, too. Albeit she earns LOADS of money (apparently), she clearly isn't in a position of any genuine power and hardly employs anyone, instead working from home and being a surreptious mumsy who likes to ensure she always gets to see her children's plays and performances. She only earns money, she doesn't have influence... oh dear. Not good for women's lib at all. She probably also feels a bit defensive about the early age she started producing children and the large number of children she has inflicted on an overpopulated world - I'll bet she's had people comment on that, making her feel the need to justify her decision to start breeding quite so early and liberally with a man she couldn't get to stick around. Of course, it was his fault - all men are weak and women don't have enough power to keep the b*ggers under control.
And if that doesn't get my own back for apparently being harmful to my children by choosing to stay at home with them for the first few years of their lives, I don't know what does....

(should read surreptitious)

And no, I don't always find Xenia's comments light entertainment and funny - I only find that when she moderates them to the genuinely reasoned, rather than downright offensive. She is clearly an intelligent woman with interesting things to say, but she keeps going and spoiling it all by going OTT.

So I thought I'd join in...

I don't think the fact I have a lot of children is a bad thing for the planet. Indeed I have argued here elsewhere that we need incentives for bright hard working feminist women to have lots of babies as our chidlren do best rather than the perverse incentives the UK has for unemployed 16 year olds to bear children who then get housed and paid for doing so.

Many many City workers can diarise the school play. It is not a problem at all. As soon as you get the school calendar men and women put those types of dates in and to an extent it depends on your interests. I know plenty of fathers who never miss a rugby match - somie take time out even on work days to attend children's matches and drive them round the country (I would have to be paid a lot to go to rugby so that isn't a priority).

I don't think I've ever said what I earn.

Xenia - You've said you own an island and implied you earn 10 times the salary of your ex husband and regularly state that you can easily afford to educate all your children privately.... you also don't seem to know or understand very much about what highly intelligent women who choose to stay at home with their children when they are very small are actually doing with their time, since you take the ridiculous male view that all they could possibly be doing of any use is bottom wiping and house cleaning. But then, what would you know, as you never tried it? You condemn whole swathes of women through your own ignorance and care nothing in any event of the large numbers of women who however hard they worked, would never earn what you earn, even in a society where men and women were treated entirely equally, and therefore could never ensure the quality of childcare which you have assured for your children, unless they and/or their partners did the childcare and/or educating of their children themselves.

Diarising the school play or concert is only ever an issue if the date is set at relatively short notice.

The date regularly is set at short notice in many, many schools. As are parents' evenings, etc. Lack of understanding of other peoples' lives and arrangements generally leads to sweeping statements and assumptions...

I had always thought (but do not have links handy to demonstrate) that the biggest indicator was the educational level of the mother, whether or not she takes a sabbatical to look after children.

Success, wealth and utility are not synonyms.

But then, Xenia has already said before that she happily and deliberately keeps herself separate from the majority of people, feels no need to mix with them or try to understand them. Yet she preaches to them by turning her personal viewpoint into a political statement of feminist intent.

Xenia - I am so pleased you feel you have brought up the best most successful children because of your influence on them and all the money you have. It is nice to feel proud of your children. (and yourself as a mother)

I will feel I have been successful as a mother (stay at home by the way) if my children grow up happy. Enjoy their life (even if that means staying at home with thier own children) and if they are kind and polite to other people and not belittle, judge or insult others even if they don't agree with them.

Thanks awfully for the biscuit MordionAgenos. It's my very first, I'll treasure it . Though, I'm don't think I actually deserve it unfortunately. If you read my post in it's entirety, I find it hard that someone may think I make Xenia look polite and well considered. Each to their own I suppose.

@rabbit that was kind of my point! It's all very well Xenia pointing out that senior people can organise their own schedules to a large extent. We can. But once we have booked in an overseas trip or speaking engagement or similar then that's almost always it - you end up missing the thing. Of the 3 schools we have, 2 of them are real lastminute.com types. I think they do it on purpose to zing the working parents. :(

Well, LeBFG perhaps you would like being described as pretty objectionable, self-centred and insecure. Or They very frequently have drink problems and tumultuous love lives I didn't. I've never seen Xenia describe SAHMs as typically having drink problems and tumultuous love lives. You certainly did make Xenia look polite. and also well researched since your ridiculous hyperbole was wildly inaccurate. Nobody I work with could be described like that. I'm sure there are some reasonably well paid people who are like that, of course, but I don't know any. And if you genuinely do (and I doubt it) then I think it would say more about you than the income bracket in general.

Perhaps you were just projecting your own drinking habits on to others, hmm?

@mordion... ah, I see .

(Although, of course, I don't think schools do do it on purpose to annoy working parents, they just have to juggle lots of competing interests themselves! ).

ps I'm sure Xenia will inform you that if you chose the correct school for your child, somewhere in North London, you would not have the problem of last minute-ism, because all the parents there are working parents and wouldn't stand for such shenanigans from their child's school.

Ah, but see, I was born in North London, I don't need to live there now like some kind of desperate Northern Arriviste.

I have a colleague who has a daughter at Habs though and he is ALWAYS moaning about missing school things because of short notice. So. And he neither has a drink problem nor, so far as I am aware, a tumultuous love life.