Yet another article re: why mothers should return to work

[boogiewoogie]

Just snatching a couple of minutes during a coffee break, will come back. What do you think of this?

The article author is as blinkered and excessively-generalising as all the ideas she is trying to criticise, accusing of being the same.

I really hated my old career and am so glad I had the chance to give it up, just be a mum for a while, try to think of something new, work wise, that suits the family needs. My children missed 5 scattered days off school in the last 2 weeks due to illness, few employers would have been at all understanding about that. So GLAD not to be juggling.

I happen to know a few women in the same boat as the women she talks about. DP's brother got a sore throat went in to hospital and does 4 days later at the age of 36 leaving 2 boys and a partner, his sister is in a financial crisis after her husband revealed the extent of his financial problems and another friend is in dire straits relying on her reluctant family after her husband left her.

Women's financial independence is very important and frankly I find work crap and would rather stay at home more with DD and DS my sensible side and fearful side always will win out.

that should have been - died 4 days later.....

Having read the article, I'm almost too angry to type!

VEry, very patronising.

'Women who leave work to be full-time mums are taking a gamble they will live to regret, argues the author of the Feminine Mistake'

I could not disagree more. Taking the opposite decision would have left me with far more regrets, personally. To have been working OTH for the last 6 years would have made me incredibly unhappy and I will never regret my decision to be a SAHP to my 3. Money isn't everything. Time with my children is.

I'm not sure I agree that it was 100% ultimately all about "finance" in terms of monthly disposable income/money in bank etc.

I interpreted it as an insight/reminder into the realistic likelihood of ending up as the sole provider for a whole family with the huge pressures that this brings to an individual plus the emotional/pyschological pressure it exerts on family life. It hints at potential detriments to the quality of life for the children from having just one stressed parent trying to provide financially for and emotionally care for their brood whilst possibly in a job that they loathe.

One of the points highlighted by responses on this thread is that people are doing sums purely to decide whether it is financially worthwhile to continue to work in the period immediately after maternity leave ends. This period is just the start of a parent picking up their working life and not necessarily representative of the future. Sitting out the period where childcare costs cancel out earnings is shortsighted but if you really want to be at home with yoour small children it pre-disposes you to say, "done the sums, not worth it 'til they go to school, end of". No considering the long-term loss from prolonged absence from the workplace.

Also, why do we naturally factor in all of the childcare costs against the woman's earnings. If both parents are working, half of those costs should be considered to be as a result of the male partner working after becoming a parent.

'Is it really worth it to be home when your second child loses his fourth tooth if something happens to your spouse and you end up losing the home entirely?'

Well, there are ways to avoid 'losing the home entirely' aren't there?! These things are considered, certainly in our house!

it also assumes that the women earn less, but unfortunately that's so often true. how that came to happen would be an intersting discussion!

If there are ways to avoid losing the family home entirely they usually require forsight and money (in the form of insurance policies).

I'm betting that the parents who plan and can afford the insurance against such mishaps are in the minority so I find that comment a bit patronising.

Yes, very true. What many of us think. Partly why many more women choose to work than don't. It's common sense and given 50% of you will be divorcedand others will have husbands sadly dying you owe it to your children to follow a decent career.

I never envisaged I'd be divorced after 19 years. I know sadly quite a few people in their 40s who have lost husbands and wives through cancer.

"But stay-at-home wives don?t get paid for their contributions and, as one expert whom I quote in my book puts it, marriage is not an equal economic partnership because women assume nearly all of the economic risk. If a couple divorce, the breadwinner walks away with the family?s major asset, which is his career. His stay-at-home wife will have a hard time finding a job and earning an adequate income. As a result, women?s standard of living plummets when their marriages are disrupted, whereas men?s standard of living often rises. And divorce is only one of many risks. ?I finished reading your book at a soccer game, where I was sitting with four women,? one suburban mother told me. ?Two of us are divorced; our husbands left us for younger women. One of us was widowed; her husband dropped dead last year at the age of 49. Only one of us is still married. Then I went home and ran into my neighbour, whose husband has just announced that he?s leaving her because he?s in love with someone else. My neighbour has a law degree but hasn?t worked in 18 years and has no idea how to get a job. I tell you, it?s carnage out here.?

That mother had also had a stellar career which she put on the back burner when her children were small. After her husband decamped she was unable to get another full-time job. He has failed to keep up his child-support payments and she worries constantly about making ends meet. The only job she has been able to get is a part-time assignment with no benefits that pays a tenth of what she was making when she scaled back her career in the early 1990s. Now in her fifties, she lies awake at night wondering how she will support herself in the coming decades, not to mention how to pay for her children?s college education. "

And work is such fun and such a good example to your daughters and sons and the money is fun to spend too and you get all that praise and all the nice bits about being a parent too. It's a win win option which not surprisingly is the one most women take.

agree with gobbledigook

being at home is more important then the money

and I'm speaking as someone who has lived on one wage of £14k approx. for the last 8 years

we're all different, article only puts one view across

'I'm betting that the parents who plan and can afford the insurance against such mishaps are in the minority'

Really?! Do you think so? Hmmm, oh well, my misperception then. I thought more than a minority would consider the possibility of critical illness or death of one partner and cover a loan such a mortgage accordingly. Maybe I'm wrong then.

Does nobody else have life insurance? I wouldn't let DH go out in his car if he did't!

I'm totally with Gobbledigook.

Life insurance doesn't pay out on the death of a marriage which is far more common than the death of a wife/husband.

to have a mortgage you need some basic insurance, but financially the worst case scenario is 2 of you ill/injured & unable to work, with children to support - that kind of insurance is costly & so unlikely that it's a gamble most of us take.

but surely you don't have a baby and think "I'd better get back to work full time incase my marriage breaks up?"

I know we have to be realistic, but to me thats going too far

But there are some of us out there that have taken the decision to be SAHP and have considered the bigger picture, the longer term and made some sort of plan or provision for that. So it's a tad patronising when we are all spoken about under the umbrella of short-sighted imbecile.

But hey, I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it. I'm not worried. Everyone makes their own choices and they are nowt to do with me.

... which is why it is a good option to have children late, when you've had time to save up, pay for the house and have some money in the bank and have some nice royalty payments coming in, Xenia dear. We SAHMs are not all financial morons.

that's the point, that the sensible decisions in life are made with the head, not the heart. yet many of us make major decisions based on finance alone. but then, having a babay at all is completely, financially ludicrous, so the whole whether to work q is minor in comparison

sorry NOT many of us

I agree ssd. Personally I find it a bit odd to go into a marriage already considering what you're going to if it all goes Pete Tong. I know the stats and all that and it could happen to me, but it's not something I worry about for one second. If it happened to me, life would not be as easy as it is now but I would survive, my children would survive (well, we'd more than survive actually for various reasons) and I still wouldn't regret being at home full time in their early years or being the one to do the school run and all the activities around it.

I'm not sending mine to breakfast and after school club just to cover the remote (imo) possibility that I could end up divorced.

i'm with chocolate face! OMG what a bitch! how dare she tell me im a failure as a feminist and woman because i CHOOSE to stay at home and look after my daughter. And let me tell you, the choice was not an easy one, my DP is struggling to set himself up as an independent builder and we are just about keeping our heads above water. Yes my daughter is precious and NO my house is definately not perfect, far bloody from it, its a wreck but we cant afford to do anything about it just now (i have to say the authors opening paragraph whiffs of bitter jealousy if you ask me!). Of course sad things happen and thats shite but should i sacrafice enjoying time with my little girl for a few years just in case hubby gets knocked over by a bus or decides he can't stand my neurosis any more? So the sacrafice for some mums i suspect is missing out on their little ones little years. I know this because i havea 16yo DD and i missed it all i was either working or at uni and its the biggest regret of my life. So no i'm not settling, im actively chosing to be a SAHM in MY daughters and MY best interest. ~Of course there are days when i crave intellectual challenge or adult company (often not a given that the two go together i have to say!) and i get quite pissed off that hubby gets to wander around builders merchants as my routine can be waring, but when i was working i had other whinges. I think my point is that as post feminist women, surely we are able to chose what works for our own families. Many of my friends are working mums and it works just fine for them, thats great, they are great mums too. That was their choice. I will probably go back to work before little one goes to school but for now im going to make the most of every day because when my 16yo dd comes home with yet another peircing or yet another strop on (makes catherine tate look tame) then im starkly reminded that they are little for such a short time. So if i am being selfish, foolish and irresponsible for choosing this life - i couldn't give a flying f*&^!!!!!

dont you HAVE to have life insurance if you have a repayment mortgage anyway?

I couldnt give a toss whether people return to work or not, but I am in a similar position to gess. I had my daughter pretty young and she had severe disabilities aswell. There is no way on this earth i could have returned to work, even part time whilst she was small. I didnt want to either. I started working part time whilst they were quite small, but childcare is a massive problem if you have a disabled child. It is also a major problem if you are on a small salary scale.

Life isnt simple I'm afraid. We cant live our lives worrying, oh if the worst happened, if dh leaves me...etc. I am not a fatalist anyway and refuse to be one. i live my life how I see fit and it isnt around material possesions and my forking pension

Plus I have two dogs and my neighbour wouldnt be pleased if i left them all day alone. Cant we have an article about dogs and returning to work

i still think to be 'true feminists' we shouldn't be asking whether it's best for th woman to stay home - but how come the men often seem to be earning more anyway? how come the ssumption is that it will be the mum who stays home, bot just whether one parent would, and why it's so hard to get child-friendly work, be it pt, ft or after a career break? instead we seem to discuss whether it's right to be a sahm or wohm.