Toby Young - women don't want most childcare either

[Xenia]

Toby Young in today's Sunday Telegraph magazine Stella argues men do not want even more boring mindless childcare. Well nor do women. So the answer is have good careers as women and then you can avoid that dullness. It is not a gender issue. Clearing up sick is as boring for women as men. Lower earners may well be shunted into that dull stuff and to keep the higher earner man they have to do it but Mr Young needs to know plenty of women don't want to do more childcare either. I always thought two hours a day was pretty good including weekends. Too much more and you'd rather be doing other things.

Noooooo, Parma!

Don't fall for it.

I am all those things (minus the island does a sandpit count?) but I am also not a hairy-handed elitist who may or may not exist.

Her posts are designed to antagonise, not unite.

I agree that equal society needs a poster girl, but please, no. Not Xenia. She'll be too busy drinking cocktails with David Furnish, anyway.

Btw the nooooooooo was paired with a slow motion dive, a la 80s action films.

Xenia has never explained how all these women who aim for the top would get a decent hair cut, get their car serviced, their house cleaned, their DCs cared for etc etc etc- if everyone took her advice there would be no one to do it. Someone once asked for advice about starting as a cleaner to get Xenia say 'start your own cleaning company' - ignoring the fact that someone actually has to do the cleaning!
If men and women didn't settle for less the country wouldn't operate. The top surgeon is utterly useless without nurses and cleaners- his patients would most likely die.
We will have a more equal society when we can appreciate everyone's strengths. A good starting point is to acknowledge that everyone is different and it is a perfectly valid and equal choice to take time off from your career.
I think that Xenia has a good message, she just ruins it by the vitriol that she pours on those who don't wish to go with it. I can't see why it bothers her so much.

Thanks PV. Yes, that is all. It needs to be made clear that huge numbers of women ilke TY do not want to be with their children 12 hours a day and like a nicer balance of work and children. If men can why not women? The thread shows that there are still sexist women out there who think it's fine if men pop in for bed time whereas if I get home at 6 and am with the children after that that is some kind of moral sin and abuse of a child - so it's fine for men but not women? I will never understand that.

It is as if we have to pretend hours of under 3s and their childcare is what all women want to do when plenty just like men find days and days of that boring.

We will have a more equal society when women stop living off male earnings and get more promotions and stop being the one in the family who earns the pin money.

We really need Ms Young on this thread as it is such a good example - she solicitor who potentially could earn £500k to £1m a year if she were any good. He journalist - will always live in relative poverty. So how unless you are really sexist or have a man who insists a woman's place is keeping the children quite whilst he earns his pittance, do you justify her at home and he in his office at home working.

But what if she's not any good?

You are right to say that TY's attitude is appalling. I'm not sure you would find anyone on here to disagree with you on this.

What you do annoy people with is your offensive and somewhat moronic statement... His main problem is marrying a low earner who is just a housewife. Had he married a real woman with a career who out earns him and funds school fees all his problems would be over. His problems come from his sexist set up.

Take out the 'just' (a housewife) and 'real' (woman) from that statement to show you are commentating on TY's personal circumstances and not merely offending almost half of the population then I may even agree with you.

I would genuinely like to know what you mean by 'real woman'?

Whether you like to change nappies or enjoy spending time with your kids is none of my business!

While I couldn't agree more on the sexism question, Xenia, I sometimes can't help wondering what you would have done if more people had listened to you and decided that childcare and low paid work was beneath them.

Your whole lifestyle is based on other people carrying on to do work that you despise, yet you spend your time on Mumsnet telling them that you shouldn't.

So if they shouldn't, who should? Robots? Aliens from Mars?

Somebody has to do it for you if you won't do it yourself. But I totally agree that there is no particular reason why somebody has to be a woman.

Because the majority of women prefer looking after children more than the majority of men full time. You just have to look at the ratio of males to females working in childcare to see that. Women are biologically more nurturing in general. Obviously there are exceptions, but again just look at the vast amount of NRP being male, and i know quite a few men who are happy seeing their children 2-3 days a week or less, I know no women who are, and would assume there isn't a large amount either.
Obviously there are a fair few individual exceptions, but on the whole a lot of women would prefer to be their child's main career if they've chosen to have children.

cory, her answer in the past has been that there are plenty of workers overseas who would like to come and do the menial jobs.

so its ok to exploit foreign born women?

Yes, dogsandcats, but that doesn't really compute with the rest of Xenia's take on things. If there is one thing I am fairly sure about concerning Xenia, it is that she is not racist.

I didnt mean that she was racist. I meant that she thinks that if British workers wont do it, then there are plenty of foreign workers that are happy to.

I agree TY's attitude is appalling and he sounds like an utter dick who is unsuitable to be a governor of a school, let alone a founder.

And I agree with Xenia that there are lots of women who would like to do all the fun bits of parenting without the hard work just like TY states all men do. I would certainly prefer it that way. I get no pleasure or sense of fulfilment out of cleaning up after my kids, listening to them whine, watching them rehearse their actually not very talented rendition of Over the Rainbow for the 600th time, refereeing disagreements, trying to get them too eat when they are too hungry, etc. None of that is fun.

Xenia's solution is utterly unsustainable though. The idea that the cultural solution to the hard bits of childcare is to earn enough to pay someone else to do it is just a decision to screw people over so you can take the cream. There is no way for everyone to earn enough to not have to do childcare (and if there were, who would do the childcare?). So her rants leave me a little cold.

Even this idea that "she's a lawyer so she could earn £500k - £1m if she were any good" is ludicrous. Only a tiny percentage of lawyers earn those kinds of figures. There are many good lawyers who aren't in that league (and quite a few people earning that kind of money who aren't that good at what they do).

It's pretty obvious that Xenia's sense of what is valuable in society is measured pretty much exclusively in terms of money. Obviously, the vast majority of people take account of other factors in their career choices: the topic of the work, the people they will be working with, commute, "social good" etc etc. The surest route to earning 500 to 1m as a solicitor is of course commercial law. Highly lucrative, but lots of people find it pretty fucking dull. They would rather earn less doing clinical negligence work or conveyancing or divorce work etc, all of which pay well but don't routinely pay as much as corporate work.

Ironically, Xenia is wrong about TY's earning potential as a journalist. He's extremely high profile and consequently can command large fees as a speaker, can write books, etc etc. He probably is able to earn 500k a year when these outside interests are taken into account (although as he's been setting up a free school, he may not have had the time or inclination).

As others have said, it's Xenia's insistence that she has the only sane worldview that makes her posts irritating. It's difficult to reconcile with her stated professional success, as megarich solicitors are usually quite good listeners and hence flexible, even if they are bullish. Blind spots are normally professionally difficult to move past.

Incidentally, what I never really understood is how Xenia can feel good about herself when measuring on the yardstick of wealth. Because if she's got the nous to be that good as a solicitor, she could have been equivalently good as a hedge fundie. And then she would have earned 10x the money, or even more.

Xenia - DH has never been inclined to go out and "network" or some other excuse for spending an evening in the bar. He's home for teatime and hangs out with the kids, who both need direct supervision all day because of their SN, while I go and hide in the kitchen for some peace and create a meal for us all.

Similarly, he's no more likely to make himself scarce at the weekend than I am.

No way on Earth would I tolerate a partner who treated our home (modest, but paid for) like a hotel and me like a slave.

Most working parents try to get home to put the children to bed as much as they can. Most do not want to be with the children from 6am to 6pm every day looking after them and keeping house whether those parents are male or female. TY should not suggest women have some kind of basic urge to adore the bits of parenting he doesn't like. In fact we are all just the same as TY but it helps misogynist men to think that women somehow have a tolerance of drudge jobs gene which men don't. We don't. It is just that some women get themselves into sexist relationships or earn so little they have to do the dull stuff.

I would have imagined most solicitors could earn more than most journalists and clearly TY cannot afford 4 sets of school fees so his own earnings are not going that well. In most journalist/solicitor couples it would be the journalist doing bits of working from home to pay for a few extra holidays and the solicitor earning the larger sums. So therefore it looks like a sexist set up for TY.

Xenia, it looks like a sexist setup yes, but I think you are assuming way too much about TY and his reasons for setting up the free school. There's absolutely no evidence that he wanted to send his kids to a private school: there's quite a lot of evidence he wanted to set up a free school that would be as good as a private school.

Most solicitors do not have the ability to earn more than Toby Young - a high profile columnist on national papers with sidelines as an author, playwright and actor, all of which bring in more money, because most solicitors are not partners in a Magic Circle firm. A partner in a high street firm doing divorces is not going to be pulling in 300k plus, are they?

I do get fed up with WOHM women (and I am a WOHM myself) who denigrate staying home with small children as demeaning, boring shit that no one could possibly enjoy. That may be how you feel, but I don't see why that is automatically extrapolated to how all women/parents feel.

And it is often part of statements that tacitly or expressly put down those people (mostly those women) who do do childcare. That's not feminism.

Toby Young is an unpleasant man with a chip on his shoulder caused in large part, it seems to me, by not living up to his father's achievements and not earning enough to have the kind of lifestyle to which he feels entitled. I wish he would stop bothering the world at large with his mitherings about this.

Well one problem is that childcare is paid out of net income rather than gross income. If the tax system didn't distort things so much there would be no need to be a super high earner to afford childcare.

I imagine that the economy and the public finances would be in much better shape if all the skilled women who wanted to were in work and paying for child care out of their gross incomes.

There are some women though (and men) who do enjoy looking after children all day. There are even people who like cleaning. To deny that is as silly as Toby Young trying to claim we all love it.

Looking after children is a valuable and important job that can be more rewarding and interesting than looking at numbers in an excel spreadsheet. I personally like the option to do a bit of both.

To be honest for a woman who loves kids and doesn't have high earning skills being a childminder could be a good option. You are earning your own money, not being totally reliant on your husband and his income and providing an important service to others.

Women never pay for childcare out o0f their income surely? It is just as much an expense for men as women. If my children's father could find and hire nannies nearly 30 years ago I do not see what is wrong with men in 2013 if they see childcare is something only women pay for.

In most families there won't be a lot of spare cash floating around. If one or both of the parents earn less net than the cost of child care which is quite probable then the lower earning parent, sadly most likely statistically to be the woman, will give up their job to look after the children. If they earn about the same then they will need to negotiate between themselves.

Only if there is money to spare to subsidise childcare costs after the bills and mortgage have been paid will it be possible to take a long term view. I will certainly be advising my DD to l

Look at a career that pays well so that she will have more options when she is older.

Single moms often pay for childcare entirely out of own income. Xenia of all people should know that.

"Ms Young ... solicitor who potentially could earn £500k to £1m a year if she were any good."

So... solicitors who don't earn that sort of salary aren't any good, is that right?

Actual solicitor salary data.

I wonder what % of solicitors meet Xenia's definition of "good".

It is correct I pay or used to pay childcare cost entirely out of my salary as i earn a lot more than their father, but other than that in a relationship childcare costs are a couple's expense. That was my point.

I still stand by the fact that most solicitors earn more than most journalists so in a solicitor/journalist couple it would be ridiculous for the solicitor to give up work unless she had been brought up in some kind of religious cult or stepford wife set up where a woman's place is chained to TY's chidlren doing the jobs he does not like doing with them.

What eldritch said.

I am a WOHM, always have been, and a lot of what I have read of Xenia's over the years I admire and agree with - the financial independence, expecting 50-50 shared care, educational choices etc.

But a lot of the good you say Xenia is drowned out by the bigotry and sneering towards those you deem as uneducated, ill educated, lower class or lacking in choice. And your oft said disdain towards those women who chose the caring and educational professions - childcare workers and teachers especially - as they are ill paid, no career progression yada yada. Yet your 5 children, as much as you have loved and raised them yourself, have been impacted directly by those people who you so vehemently criticise. How can you square your dislike of such professions with the reality that those 'silly women' who chose that work have had such a positive and beneficial influence on your 5 children?