mothers with young children are the most discriminated against at work

[paddingtonbear1]

I haven't actually found this in my company, and it's very small - only 18 employees. But I can imagine if I looked for another job, I might find it hard to get one, being a mother still under 40. I couldn't believe some of the comments in the 'have your say' on the bbc website though - most people seem to think that women who can't afford to stay at home shouldn't have kids at all! That would be me then! I don't think in this day and age, with mortgages and other rising costs, that's practical. I don't take advantage though, fortunately dd isn't sick very often, and dh does his share.
I think most of the people making the comments were men, or people with no kids...

Scummy Mummy - it's perfectly OK to have a breather from time to time and to leave your child with a trusted relative or babysitter so you can have some time out. But I don't think that two or three 3-hour babysitting sessions a week to give a full-time, 24/7 mother a breather are in any way comparable to whole days or even a whole week in paid childcare.

I feel this way because I have two stepsons whose lives have been blighted by an absent mother. Both have had recurrent periods with shrinks (long before their parents separated). Their mother was told by , members, paedatricians and shrinks that she needed to pay more attention and spend more time with her boys, but she refused to pay heed, and still does. And I see plenty of children around me with the same issues.

Well put mishw. And as the population ages, time off for 'elder-care/trauma' is going to be an increasing factor in the workplace. Of course, I suppose some of us will try to 'outsource' that too, when the time comes

Xenia - just read your phrase below "Why parents want to spend lots of time with their children is another question and some of us, male and female, are happy to work full time and pay others to clean up for us and do most of the fairly mindless hours of childminding."

I think that this says it all and explains your position. You don't enjoy bringing up your children. You're not a modern feminist woman, you're a bog-standard traditional man - out at work during the day, children as playthings at the weekends.

Why don't you just admit to the truth rather than defending a totally incoherent, and scientifically indefensible argument about equality?

good point Anna!

Anna you really think Xenia is a man???

Also is that true about breastfeeding and overeating. I ask cos I am still breasfeeding my 2yr old and she never stops eating. She does not seem overweight though but deffo eats for pleasure. In fact she calls my milk the same word she uses for petit filous. I did start to wonder if I have given her a real sweet tooth ( I understand breast milk is very sweet). I digress.....

Thank you mischw

Drosophila - I think Xenia's attitude to child rearing is that of a traditional man out at work full-time during the week with work as no 1 priority and children as playthings for the weekend. I don't think she really is a male member of the human race. She is really annoying hiding behind 1970s style pseudo-feminist arguments about equality when actually she just hasn't got any maternal instinct and just doesn't enjoy bringing up her children. If that's her problem - fine, I feel very sorry for her children, presumably her husband left her for a real woman - and don't tell us normally-wired mothers off for caring about our children.

Yes, it's true about breastfeeding, check out the WHO site. I'm still breastfeeding my daughter (2y4m) too.

Sorry to butt in - I have not said anything because it has taken me over an hour (my lunch hour!) to read through everything - but it does strike me as a bit unfair to throw personal comments at Xenia when she has obviously been very committed to contributing to this debate, and has put forward a lot of valid points from the perspective of how women can maintain their foothold in the workplace without being seen as a burden. I also work in the City and the expectations are that you remain childless if you want to get anywhere. It is equally demeaning to be denied a personal life as it is to be expected to stay home as soon as you have one. My boss is a bully and has pretty much written off any prospects for me now I have announced I am pregnant. The City is a unforgiving place.

"I feel very sorry for her children, presumably her husband left her for a real woman - and don't tell us normally-wired mothers off for caring about our children."

That is totally uncalled for! I think you should apologise anna . I think your earlier comment about only a mother being the right and proper carer for her children as offensive too. Who are you to judge on the best way to bring up other people's kids? FWIW I've bf all of mine whilst working full-time and then part-time - for at least 18months (DS#2 is 4 now and still feeding at night).

Anyway WTF is a 'real woman'?????

OrmIrian - you find my comments offensive, I find Xenia's offensive (as do plenty of other contributors to this thread). I do happen to believe that it is morally wrong not to bring your children up once you have brought them into this world, and I am surrounded by children (I live in Paris) who are not brought up - they are waited on, fed, and babysat, but not brought up because their parents are out at work for far too much of the time. There are lots of miserable, maladjusted children and young adults out there with no secure relationship to their primary carer and it is not good for our collective future.

kiteflying - I know what you're going through, I've been in the same work environment as you, I have an international career behind me, speak four languages and an expensive and lengthy international education. But it's just life and we need to face it - don't buy into the myth that you have all these choices in life, you don't.

Nasty stuff, Anna. Very, very nasty. Clearly your kindness wiring is appallingly askew at the moment.

Where did you spring from anyway? Have you changed your name or are you new?

Morally wrong? Well perhaps I shouldn't have had children then as there was never any way I could not work as my DH isn't the kind of alpha male who would take care of everything. Financial eugenics.

I frequently disagree with the things that Xenia says but she manages to remain calm whilst constantly dealing with insults and aggression. I don't think I've ever seen her resort to the kind of personal abuse you just did. ANyway I don't suppose she needs me to defend her.

However I still want to know what a 'real woman' is. I don't think I've ever met any other kind.

Completely agree with OrmIrian.

Anna, I am very pro breastfeeding. I've always written a lot about it and encouraged people to do it. I also enjoyed it hugely but I felt able to do it whilst working. I don't think the chilren suffered.

It's very easy to blame step children's problems on your husband's ex wife who probably did her best and you probably don't know the half of what went on in that first marriage.

I think the French do a pretty good job of bringing up their children and life there for women is much easier, fairer and better in many ways.

There is no way you and I will reconcile our positions. I think we are both people rather than I am like a man. Some working parents choose to work presumably like your husband who has abandoned his children to you (if you indeed stayed at home with a child) and others prefer to work. We all work very hard whether we're at home or not and have more in common as parents than between non parents and parents.

Bowlby studied children who were taken from parents for 5 and 6 months and longer and is misapplied. Children can attach well even as babies to a few know loving carers. Our first nanny stayed 10 years which is longer than some husbands stick around.

I very much enjoy making a case as to why stay at home parents can damage their children but will restrain myself here. it's only fair though it's put when stay at home parents suggest working parents damage theirs. It never is though.... Working parents are far too nice.

I am also in the position of not being with an alpha male - we have very different earning capacities and I am sure he would be happy to be the one at home but I truly want to enjoy the child I very nearly wasn't able to have, and like Anna, I think spending time with your children is about more than childminding (actually I think a lot of childminders would agree that there is more to it than feeding and babysitting!). We will be cutting our cloth very differently once bubs is born but I wil not be putting work first any more and nor do I see my employer as having any duty of care towards my children. Although, as a long time feminist, I do wait for the day of revolution when the workplace will acknowledge the value of children to society and stop treating them as a cost to the economy, and a personal luxury item to be paid for solely by parents. Imagine if stone age people decided there was too little food to go around the tribe once the Ice Age hit and so people would have to work harder and stop having children.

So Xenia is actually beating you 5:1 in the breastfeeding stakes, as it happens, Anna.

I think in times like that I babies one couldn't afford were routinely left on hill sides (the Romans and others did that). Twins too in some cultures. Anyway I certainly think it would be easier if we had low cost childcare like others in the EU. Someone from Finland I think had a friend moaning their annual childcare bill at the nursery had risen to £1,500 a year.

It's not a competition, though (and I fed twins, one on each side). Breastfeeding is much nicer topic to write about. I expect Anna and I would have a lot in common on a lot of issues.

It often gets like this - I stay at home and I have the moral high ground. Or I go to work and that's better etc. People male and female work outside the home or don't. Largely children do fine if they're loved in either environment.

Politically I have problems with the fact that women always get trodden down though, do more housework than men, earn less and then get dumped when he runs off with all his money and a woman 20 years younger and because the woman chose not to work her children can suffer etc.

my personal choice is to be a sahm, but that's just it, isn't it? It's my choice. My mum worked full time right from when I was a baby. For her it wasn't a choice. Nor is it for millions of women. I am staggered that you (anna8888) can come on a discussion and declare it 'morally wrong' for mothers to go out to work. Totally astounded

oh xenia, why do you have to go and spoil it and say things I sometimes agree with

Xenia - life for French women is VERY hard. There is no alimony after divorce and minimal child support, and with a near 50% divorce rate, that means women feel forced to work even if their husbands earn a lot of money (in which case women's take-home pay is pathetic, since they are automatically and unavoidably subject to their husband's marginal tax rate). Child care is plentiful and tax-deductible in order to encourage employment among the otherwise unemployable, so the quality is appalling and much less well regulated than in the UK. State schools are really horrible (my stepson's school, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, only has Turkish-type squat-on loos, for just barbaric example), though, admittedly, private schools are cheap and better - though mostly Catholic, which doesn't suit everyone (we're Protestant/Jewish). And the infrastructure of every day life is positively medieval - no Waitrose, so endless queuing at street market stalls if you want decent fresh food, few school canteens, no sports or art or music at school, 19 weeks of school holiday when children need occupying... I could go on...

As for the rest, sure, our differences are not reconcilable.

But I do have pretty damn good idea of how my partner's ex treats her children - since we constantly have to pick up the pieces.

Ernest - I never said it was morally wrong for mothers to go out to work. I said I think it is morally wrong for mothers not to bring up their children. There are, unfortunately, also plenty of mothers who neither work nor bring up their children. And there are mothers who work AND bring up their children, but their lives are horribly difficult and that's the point I have been trying to make all along - why do women subscribe to the myth of superwoman? Why can't they defend their value as mothers?

"the infrastructure of every day life is positively medieval - no Waitrose"

That's hilarious! Why don't you like street markets?

I think your 15:13 post is great, Xenia.

"State schools are really horrible"

that's just rubbish