Intensive mothers

[Xenia]

It seems pretty clear children benefit a lot if their mother has a good career and here is another piece of evidence of the damage housewives do to children:-

"Stay at home mothers are more likely to be unhappy than those who go out to work, according to new research.
Women who believe in "intensive parenting" are at risk of a range of mental illnesses including depression.

They think women are better parents than men, that mothering should be child centred and that children should be considered sacred and fulfilling.

This may put them in danger of suffering the 'parenthood paradox' where their ideology increases feelings of stress and guilt.

Psychologist Kathryn Rizzo, whose findings are published online in Springer's Journal of Child and Family Studies, said: "If intensive mothering is related to so many negative mental health outcomes, why do women do it?

"They may think that it makes them better mothers, so they are willing to sacrifice their own mental health to enhance their children's cognitive, social and emotional outcomes."
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She said parenting is a big task and requires a variety of skills and expertise. Many women rate the challenge as one of the most fulfilling experiences in life.

But some previous research has suggested it may be detrimental to mental health, with women reporting taking care of their children as more stressful than being at work.

So her team at the University of Mary Washington, Virginia, looked at whether intensive parenting in particular was linked to increased levels of stress, depression and lower life satisfaction among 181 mothers of children under five.

Using an online questionnaire, they found out to what extent the participants endorsed intensive parenting beliefs by measuring their responses to a series of statements.

These included "mothers are the most necessary and capable parent", "parents' happiness is derived primarily from their children" and "parents should always provide their children with stimulating activities that aid in their development".

Others were "parenting is more difficult than working" and "a parent should always sacrifice their needs for the needs of the child".

Overall, the women were satisfied with their lives but had moderate levels of stress and depression.

Almost one in four had symptoms of depression and these negative mental health outcomes were accounted for by their endorsement of intensive parenting attitudes.

When the level of family support was taken into account, those mothers who believed women are the essential parent were less satisfied with their lives. Those who believed that parenting is challenging were more stressed and depressed.

The researchers said overall, the women were satisfied with their lives but had moderate levels of stress and depression.

They added: "In reality, intensive parenting may have the opposite effect on children from what parents intend."

Earlier this year a study of more than 60,000 US mothers found 41 percent of those not in work experienced worry compared to 34 per cent of those employed.

And 28 per cent suffered depression, eleven per cent more than the others. Psychlogists fear the phenomenon is linked with feelings of isolation and a lack of fulfillment. "

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9381449/Stay-at-home-mothers-more-unhappy-than-those-who-work.html

Xenia,was your mother at home all the time and was unhappy?

Emphatic, yes and I know plenty of older people who when they give up work get depressed and die early. Work gives many people meaning andpurpose. In a sense it makes them free and that requirement to strive to achieve (and indeed to strive in order to eat) is what keeps many people sane. It is why some (but not all) of the rich can have problems if they never have to work. Warren Buffet's son was on Radio 4 today and omeone else talking about how to ensure children of the rich do not go the way of the Rausing man. If everything is given to you (whether by a husband off whose earnings you live) or family money you are rarely happy.

However I certainly accept most of us and men too need that balance - family life, people we love and work we like too.

I certainly think women need to ensure their daughters don't and won't marry sexist men. Making sure your sons and daughters don't grow up sexist should make that happen. Ensure daughters do due diligence before marrying, sound out the son in law's views on working women and ask him what kind of childcare he will be arranging when they have children.

(exotic I have done school talks. It's fun. I think it's very important people know huge numbers of women earn a lot and have happy families).
One of the saddest comments on the thread was someone above saying I should realise not all women can reach for success or something like that. All women can. I think we are only limited by limitations we set ourselves. You don't need to be that special to achieve your aims. I am no better than many people. If you really want things and work towards then you can achieve them. We don't wany any girl leaving her school of any kind in the UK at 16 or 18 thinking the likes of me cannot run BP.I am only fit for the call centre (unless her IQ is 90 and clearly she needs to realise she may not be able to do that).

I understand your need to care greatly about this.
But if MN is anything to go by,and I appreciate MN is not truly representative of mums in Britain today,then the great majority are overworked not underworked.

Great Britain has moved on since the fifties and sixties when indeed there were a lot of women at home who were unhappy.

Xenia

A very sensible post Xenia - if you wrote like that all the time I would agree!

xenia well worded last post, and I do not disagree.

Have you had some sort of personality transplant Xenia, wow.
So happy..........will it last?
have one of these.

'If everything is given to you (whether by a husband off whose earnings you live) or family money you are rarely happy.'

If everything is given to you and you are idle (whether by rich parents or a husband, etc) you are rarely happy. The key to tragedy of the Rausing variety is the idleness.

Excellent last post Xenia.

It would be great if it did last!
It is like political parties at election times. I want the positive of what they are going to do and get very irritated, enough to switch off, when they continually tell us what is wrong with the other party. I generally get so irritated by the rubbish Xenia spouts about people who choose to live differently, and her complete lack of understanding of any view bar her own, that I miss anything else.
Her last post was great and I was able to hear the message, and agree with it, because it wasn't spoilt by the usual nonsense. It was worth over 900posts to get there!

Marking place.

I'm intelligent, well-educated and have reached my dream job. I'm also a SAHM now with my 6mo and plan to stay home for a few years while I have a few more.

I love looking after my son and helping him grow and develop, comforting him when he cries, the whole kaboodle. It would break my heart to pass him to someone else.

I am in a line of work that means I should be able to go back into it at some point though I'm reading this thread with extreme interest. Think Xenia makes some interesting points, but also that the whole 'personal is the political' thing will never prevent women like me becoming SAHM. But I understand that it means I am perpetuating a cycle and my employer may not promote females my age for fear of them leaving as I and others have done.

However I don't think the answer is in some kind of community service as Xenia suggests. I think that for (many) women, work-life balance means something more macro than on a day-to-day basis. For me it is having achieved career success, then chronologically staying home to enjoy my babies, then who knows. Having it all doesn't have to mean having it all at once.

My feminist pov is based on that idea actually - that having it all doesn't mean having it all at once. Women should not be penalised in their careers for wanting to be close to their babies. SAHM / working is only binary because capitalism makes it so in its current state. I remain a skilled and valuable person, on hold until I re-enter the workforce.

Bourbon congratulations on your DS. Yes, of course you feel it would break your heart to leave him. I felt the same, twice, when I returned to work after mat leave. But in fact my heart didn't break, neither did my children suffer and we all adapted to a new pattern very well.

I'm not telling you this because I think you should go back to work. But if you know you will want to go back into your field one day, I would highly recommend not cutting your ties completely for a number of years. If you can do some PT or locum work, for example, this will prevent the problem that many of my friends have, that they now have a gap of 5+ years on their CV.

I guess what I am trying to say is that it is not as hard as it may seem to go back to work, and not as easy as it may seem to pick up a career where you left it years earlier. Someone else said on here recently - there are lots off off-ramps, but very few on-ramps.

Xenia , i imagine you as a very focussed and driven individual who is very successful in your chosen sphere . Are you honestly going to tell me that all that focus and drive was simply because you wanted the best for your children or perhaps (and be honest ) because you thrive on it , it lights your fire , you enjoy the buzz etc etc . Not that there is anything wrong with doing something you enjoy , i know lots of women who enjoy caring for their children.
Plus if everyone were like you , well you woul

oops posted too soon , was going to say

if everyone were like you Xenia , then you wouldnt be special would you , you would be normal , im not sure you would like that

'SAHM / working is only binary because capitalism makes it so in its current state'

The way it is set up now, with many employers putting women even unofficially on the mummy track, it seems male dominated business and professions are happy to let a huge amount of human and professional capital go to waste or be under-harnessed.

'there are lots off off-ramps, but very few on-ramps.'

That is something the world of employment should be ashamed of. It is rooted in rank sexism.

"I have respect for people with low status jobs (they tend to have much value IMO) as well as others in high status jobs,"

I will copy and paste it metab....I actually did say I have respect for those in low status up to high status jobs....and if I have insulted anyone because they WOH than I apologise for any comments upthread. It was not intentional as I've already stated that choice is what matters in all of this, there shouldn't be a set standard for everyone...

maths you're right. Many industires seems perfectly happy to lose their female employees and their skills.

Do you think this has goy worse with the advent of globalisation? The pool is now so much bigger to choose from?

DH also states that his firm desperately tried to retain women. It was a huge priority at one time. But the numbers who actually did stay, and the effort involved in keeping just a few, didn't merit the continuance of it as priority.

It has shown itself for what it is (sexism and undervaluing the contribution of women just because they are women, seeing the contribution of women as peripheral and that of men as central and vital) with the advent of technology that could enable millions not to have to be physically present in an office every day, or going to out of town conventions, etc. The ignoring of the possibilities of technology is a telling phenomenon. It makes business or professional practice a matter of claiming an actual piece of RL turf as opposed to an arena where rational use of all available of talent is possbile. There is a whiff of the caveman about it imo.

I don't think globalisation has had much of an effect. The repercussions of globalisation don't need to include employees spending time out of the country.

If 'staying' and contributing (and earning) means having to be physically there, efforts to retain women are probably doomed to fall short.

I would be interested in the cost/benefit analysis involved in the decision to de-prioritise the retention of women. Surely for each woman there would be a separate set of factors -- years-experience-education-special skills-soft skills, etc..

I also note there was no mention of a corresponding 'men as fathers/how do we retain them' effort in your DH's company. I think until the day dawns when it is the norm that all parents will be assumed to take time off when family needs demand it, women will essentially be given the subtle message by HR policies, no matter how progressive they may seem, that they are the ones expected to take the career hit when they have babies. If an organisation doesn't equally value each sex as parents (and put its money where its mouth is) it doesn't equally value each sex as employees.

math I think the skill set of each individual worker is different. However, the value of each worker (male or female) is fairly easy to assess; how much fee income do they bring to the firm.

How they do it, and where they do it, is of little concern.

The reality was and is, that if you take a period of time out of the firm, your clients will go elsewhere. One hopes still within the same firm, but obviously that isn't always the case.
If you return one or two or three years later, the clinets don't come running back to you. No one is that marvelous .
So then you have to build up your client base again. Which costs a hell of a lot of time and mney and effort. And many women simply don't have the appetite for it, post DC. As we can see from this thread, many many women see it as life just being too short to care any more.

What many women would like, would be to return post DC, to a supportive role where they undertake the legal work, but don't have to build up and satisfy the client base.

Unfortunately, such work is undertaken by junior lawyers on (relatively) low pay. They do it as apart of their career progression to partnership. They are plentiful. There is certainly no need to employ highly skilled people with many years post qualification experience...just because it suits family life IYSWIM.

Globalization has had huge effects on the possibilities for women both positive and negative in my profession, and in my firm.

Some of the women (well, 3 of them) who I know for certain have been able to point to me and say 'look, metabilis3 can make this work, so can we, give us a chance to prove it' are not British. They are German. The German attitude towards women in my profession is very very poor. But because of globalization, I have a European role. So, these women know me and know what I do, and their ultimate boss knows me and , because of globalization he has a much more ....modern day view.....himself, and he was able to bring pressure to bear on their immediate boss. So that's a good thing. Exposure to the attitudes of other countries can work in a negative way too though. In my experience most countries are worse than we are. That sometimes gives people an excuse for behaviors that wouldn't normally be tolerated in the uk. Globalization has given a lot of British women opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have had. It has undoubtedly also damaged the opportunities for women in some other countries.

If companies have de-prioritised retention of women as it's a waste of time as they lost them anyway (like so many on mumsnet just leave to make babies and have no commitment to career which is why all those housewives so much damage working women) that is a shame but an inevitable consequence of so many women thinking (usually wrongly) it will make them happy to stare into their babies' eyes for 8 years without a break and do nothing else. In fact once they give up work they realise the "job" at home is tedious low status and makes them economically vulnerable and plenty cannot ever really get back on to a career track again.

Lack of on ramps is not sexist. If men take years out and lose all skills and contacts they also find it hard to get back. That's just common sense. We don't want a surgeon who hasn't operated for 8 years but has learned a lot about which brand of nappy works best on her or his baby to be leading the operation.