In The Times today: Blind feminism has hurt our children

[twelveyeargap]

Blind feminism has hurt our children

agree with all of you. though surely in an ideal society, we wouldn't feel concerned about using daycare for our children. sorry if I keep banging on this, but I do feel that it is another area that should be improved in this country.

'The message now is that only wealth creation counts.' one of the thrusts of OJ's affluenza hypothesis?

agree with the fact that more women should be angry.

it is also about more women recognising where the demarcation lines should be and insisting on them in the home.

I am at home with ds and have been since he was born, but for the last year (he is 3) have been at college completing a retraining for 3 half days a week (one half day at college the other two in placement).

we are lucky enough to afford a cleaner. We don't iron (dh doesn't wear a suit to work). We both do laundry, probably me more than him, as I am at home. I cook most nights, but that is much more about enjoying and finding cooking relaxing and dh is happy to cook, get his own food on the nights I am out (at least once a week).

dh gets home and does bath and bedtime every night. he also gets up in the morning and does breakfast. Usually I get a lie in on one of the weekend days while he takes ds out somewhere.

I make sure he has at least half a day to himself at the weekends, sometimes all day.

I feel incredibly lucky....but actually it is fair enough isn't it? We share the housework, I do a bit more as I'm at home more of the time....I have to say that if it was up to dh then ds would eat nothing but pasta with cheese and I do do a lot of the initial reading, researching about behaviour/schools/whatever. But he has always joined me in that (from first reading Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions when I was pregnant, really think that many dh's and dp's would benefit from reading this book) and I know he worries at least as much as I do about ds and how he is....he takes parenting incredibly seriously and once I am qualified we will look at him spending more time at home, although if we stay in this country that is unlikely.

So am I some kind of harridan for having this set up? I know we are lucky enough to have the money for cleaner and part time childcare (nanny) but in terms of the split in our duties, is my dh a freak, or is what is freakish the fact that between the ages of 8 and 12 my dad was a SAHD and so I accept fathers being equally involved in parenting as something that is normal and to be expected? I think the latter, and that is why I think that having more SAHD and more parents that both work part-time and care for their children is crucial....THAT is how we are going to get some changes.

franca, children need one on one care for a consistent caregiver. Daycare is a problem in this respect.

from not for.

dh does rush home. he consistently comes home to do bedtime/see ds and then has to go out for work, rather than staying out after work as seems to be the norm. what has made him different. well, he is a fabulous man, but also I think MY expectation of him....and that is something that all women can change.

you all think i'm a smug [word that teecee hates] now don't you?

i'm not. I know I'm lucky financially, but i do think that i have in part made my luck in terms of working things out with dh until we are both in a place which works in terms of parenting ds. originally when we talked about having a baby and I was pregnant, we decided we would fully co-parent and both be part time at home. that never happened. we had a big rough patch about that, and have come out the other side with my feeling like although dh works full time we do co-parent ds.

As much as I can agree that a baby needs one on one care, we can't deny that there is a need for affordable, reliable, inclusive, affectionate daycare. It does exist in other countries, where nurseries aren't necessarily depicted like some kind of dickenians (I made up this word) institutions.
These are countries were the government subsidize daycare, which is not left solely in the hands of private entrepreneurs. In these countries there is a long period of induction when the children start. Children are given a key worker. Staff have precise qualifications. etc. It might not be ideal (depending also on the child's age). But since it will always be needed (what is a single parent supposed to do?), better thing about how to improve the standards.

sophable, you have one child don't you?

one on one care - how are mothers of more than one supposed to achieve this if they are home? get a nanny?

this is where i think oj and sb part company with reality - well one of the things!

There is a drive to make childcare a lot more professional, with proper qualifications and pay...

Where I get glum about the domestic reality is that I - and sadly this appears to be overwhelmingly the case for other mothers - am the parent who knows where everything is. Who rifles through DD1's book bag. Who knows who their friends are and recognises them in the street. Who makes sure they've been nagged into getting their clothes ready the night before. Who sorts out dance club swimming lessons two different childminders playdates haircuts eye tests theatre trips birthday parties yada yada yada. Running through my day is that underpinning concern for sorting out the other stuff.

Wish bloody OJ and SB would divert a bit of sodding energy into reminding more fathers that that stuff - the essential non-noticed stuff - matters, and it takes up space in your head and gets in the way of doing your job properly.

too right mi! allison pearson does this beautifully in i don't know how she does it!

or as i say to dh "why can't men find things "

there is that drive mi, and then oj comes and says that "A significant proportion of the budget has been wasted on the provision of group day care"
now,

one-one care is an impossibility for many of us even if we were full time at home.

My pre-schoolers have often have lower adult-child ratio in their nursery than at home. I've often looked after 4 small children at home (my 3 and my neice), and not alway with my whole attention. In contrast, they get quite a bit of attention at nursery by people who aren't trying to do other things at the same time.

sophable you're certainly not smug, but you are lucky.

I think my DH would ideally like to be in the position of yours but his work culture totally militates against it. He tries to do stuff like bring work home instead of staying in the office, last night was beavering away in the lounge until 1.15 a.m....but he is a barrister and if the judge or senior on the case he's doing says jump, he has to do it. If that means staying away from home for days in courts out of London, that's it. No excuses.

He could give up his job, of course...but he has trained for it for years, loves it, probably couldn't do anything else now. In his chambers he is considered to be pussy-whipped because if he is out for one of his social/client-baiting drinks I usually ring up and expect him to come home. The poor lad.

One of the senior guys in his chambers has currently been banging on about how women will never succeed at the bar because they don't have the 'alpha-male' drive to make the job number 1 in all things. I heard some advertising CEO said a similar thing last year. That is what we are up against: if your partner is in one of these 'alpha-male' jobs, tough for you, you had better be at home doing all the things he'll never have time to do. (IMHO a nanny is not actually enough to give you your life back if your partner is really never there). If you are a woman in one of these jobs god help you if you don't do a full Thatcher and conform to the norms of the boys. YOu won't get to see your kids except when the job lets you, so better make sure that (in your own nonexistent time) you get and administer the perfect childcare.

fennel, you have put it better than i did!

charlieq, what has your dh done to challenge his work culture? or do you both just accept it?

It would be a shame for a barrister to give up the job they've worked for and qualified for and loved. But that's exactly what many women have had to do, and are still doing. Many of them are on mumsnet.

motherinferior- very good point you make- do you agree that if social norms insisted that childcare & domestic work were not basically women's jobs, men would actually start noticing things? Because they would not feel immune from criticism for not doing so and they couldn't assume that a guilty woman would always be there to do it?

This is why I wish we didn't socialise little boys to obsess about cars and trains and spaceships, and encouraged them to nurture and care as much as girls are expected to.

thre's hope charlieq, ds has been a princess until 5 mins ago. he is now playing with cowboys though...

absolutely fennel and I think it's outrageous that these women have to give up.

Unfortunately as I am an earnings free zone, DH's giving up work is even less of an option than it would be for most of us. If he asked me to give up the work I enjoy, I wouldn't do it, so I can't expect him to.

Unfortunately the job he loves carries a massive family penalty shared by a lot of others, male and female. And I think the fact that his job is considered 'prestigious' makes that worse: you're supposed to just know that it comes before everything.

My ability to 'challenge' dh's work culture is notorious among his colleagues, but basically amounts to me being characterised as a ranting feminist harridan (well fair cop) and him getting lots of sympathy for having to 'look after' me so much....

Charlieq, obviously I agree that childcare and domestic work shouldn't be 'women's work'.

I do think that the underpinning 'noticing stuff' is harder to sort than the structural stuff, because it's ingrained in our (sexist) society. It's also intrinsically linked to the fact that those of us lucky enough not to have a Y chromosome are supposed to be 'better with people'.

My point is that James et al should be directing their self-righteous indignation to the men who say oh they can't get flexible working because their employers won't let them, and/or that they're being Discriminated Against As Fathers because of this.

good points mi but IS flexible working really available for men? (I'm asking cos of heard of grand total of 1 man- a public employee- who has one).

All parents of children up to the age of six, and/or disabled children up to the age of 18, have the right to request it, IRCC. Well, how did women get it? By insisting. By trashing our career prospects. By sticking our necks out.

My dp has used the flexible working regulation. He works a 4 day week, and flexitime.

He is the only man in a very male dominated company, an IT firm, to do so. They don't like it. but he used the regulations and won.

He's also resigned twice when companies haven't given him a part time week when he wanted it (and won what he wanted both times, and not hat to actually leave). I think if men are a bit more prepared to stick their necks out they might find it's not as impossible as they think.

Yes it is, but only for a teeny teeny teeny teeny weeny minority, mainly in the charity or public sector.

I work for a charity, most of us work part time from home. Every single one of us, male or female, is hopelessly over-qualified for what we are doing. All of us chose the job because we wanted work that fitted in with our parenting, apart from one, who is looking after his elderly mother and needed his working life to fit in with that.