Another working parent survey - load of rubbish or not?

[UnquietDad]

here

Interesting to see how this is squared with all those surveys claiming children are unhappier in nursery.

Bramshott - children have been cared for by all sorts of people depending on the time and culture.

However, babies have always been cared for primarily by their mothers (who spent most of their time pregnant and nursing, remember - no contraception ).

Anna your step-children were cared for by a nanny as a joint decision from both their parents. If their father was not happy wiht this he could have been a SAHD for a few years, since their mother is quite wealthy.

My DD is 3 and says she doesn't want to go to nursery. But also says she doesn't want to come home and I have to retrieve her from under a table by the ankle. My DS is nearly 7 and slightly more rational. He says he likes going to his childminder because he likes to be with the other mindees and also she lets him play on the field every night, but he is glad he doesn't go every night because he likes to be able to have friends round and do things at home.

Crikey Bozza you do presume to know things that you don't .

No, my partner could never have been a SAHD. Why? Because his ex-wife insisted on marrying under the French marriage contract (there is more than one sort of marriage contract in France) called "la séparation des biens". My partner would have had absolutely no claims on his wife's money (capital or income) in the event of divorce, so he had to work.

That sounds like a choice to me, Anna. A wise one, but a choice nonetheless. Lots of women choose to stay home even though they have no legal claim to their partners wealth.

Not sure I would enter into a marriage wher my future spouse had drawn up a document planning for our divorce. But, hey ho, that another choice I suppose.

Eleusis - indeed . Marriage is a bit of a different proposition in France to the UK - they are used to it though it sounds odd to other people. I'm sure you wouldn't like joint taxation either .

My POLs recently changed marriage contract (at great expense) which in turn changes their inheritance situation... family law is so very, very different here to the UK and that impacts people's behaviours and life choices, and it takes a lot of analysis to understand it all (and here is definitely not the place).

Joint taxation. Do you mean man and wife lumped together and taxed as a single unit. By all means, bring it on... I do think the family should be treated as a single unit.

Yup, a single unit.

Which means that the second earner in family is taxed at the first earner's marginal rate, with no allowances (since these have been used by the first earner/family income).

So, say you are a woman with a part-time job that is in itself well-paid on an hourly basis but your income isn't huge at the end of the year. Your husband has a reasonable income and is just taxed at the top rate. You as second earner will be paying full whack top rate on all your income.

You still like it???

Gawd Anna how atrocious.

Am I right in thinking that they also provide very good state childcare in France? Not that there is anything wrong with that of course- but it sounds as if there are a lot of powerful discincentives for women who might otherwise want to go back to work.

State childcare provision is very good by international standards. The French still think there isn't enough of it, however. Where I live, in Paris, it is very difficult to get a place in a state creche if you have a reasonable income - you would need to employ a (tax-deductible) nanny or use a CM.

The issue on joint taxation doesn't, of course, affect the vast majority of couples who don't fall into the top tax bracket (so it makes much more sense to maintain two incomes) or young professional couples. However, when those professional couples get older, it does affect them, and provides a serious disincentive to very highly educated/earning wives of very highly educated/earning men to return to work. So it's all a bit counter-productive for the economy as well as hugely sexist.

Anna888 But so many French women do work. How is that explained?

Wasn't it Bush who said 'the trouble with the French is they don't have a word for entrepreneur'?

olive, you are quite right. No point in these surveys, as those who can afford not to work have the "choice" and those who can't, don't. So its all done in a bit of a vacuum.

Most French people don't pay income tax. Average family earnings here are very low and the threshold for paying income tax is high (though there are other significant payroll taxes that everyone pays).

"Most" French women are on low/middle incomes as are their husbands.

The example I gave affects higher earners. And lots of women won't ever give up work because they are so frightened of divorce (when their claims to their husband's capital/earnings are not nearly as good as in the UK).

Yes, lots of women seem to work for nothing, "just in case".

Oh, and Swedes - you cannot believe how tired I am of hearing French women tell me how they work for their "épanouissement personnel" (personal fulfilment), not money.

The state has done an excellent job of persuading women to work in boring jobs and to hand all their income over as tax by undermining SAHMs and all domestic activities.

Just waiting for the next time some bank clerk tells me they work for their épanouissement personnel...

UQD - Well if those who don't have any choice work, and end up happier (if this survey is to be believed) as a result, then surely that is a good thing? And those with sufficient wealth to choose to stay at home are the unhappiest of all mothers? I don't think it is so simple.

anna yes I have presumed about things I don't know. But it just seems to me that you come on here posting about all the bad decisions your partner's ex has taken and the negative impact that has had on the children as though he is totally absolved of any responsibility for the upbringing of the children prior to meeting you.

Come on Bozza, that wasn't the point of the post at all.

The point was that we need to fully discuss the choices we make that affect our children with them.

As Eleusis so rightly says, parents generally have far more experience and know better than children what is good for the family.

Children nevertheless, I firmly believe, need the opportunity to express their feelings about the decisions made that affect them.

That was the point (with examples) that I was making. It so happened that Eleusis tried to get me to say that I was influencing the boys into noticing that their childhood had been different to their sister's - which isn't the case, as I also pointed out - the boys notice every last difference/perceived injustice, as children are wont to do.

Do you understand the point now?

A lot of different things involved here. Firstly, the stuff about the idealisation of woman-as-domestic-applicance being about getting women out of the job market is true, but prior to that was the Victorian angel-at-the-hearth crap which was again to do with wages and economics as much as anything. Prior to the industrial revolution, remember, most people worked at or around their homes, be it farming, weaving, innkeeping - and the children were around their parents, generally learning the trade and having their own jobs to do, with the older ones in charge of the yonger ones etc. The spread of paid employment outside the home to the point where it's almost universal in the West changed all that.

Also this whether or not women/children are unhappy isn;t just about whether or not the children are in childcare. Good old economics and class distinction feature yet again. The mother who does not go out of the home to work for an employer, but has a nanny and a life filled with 'charity' work and lunches, etc, is quite a different propostiion from the mother who doesn't go out to work because the only job she could get would pay less than state benefits, but who has her DC with her 24/7 indoors on some estate with no play facilities...
then there's the work outside the home that is reasonably paid, interesting and leaves you with a feeling of achievement as opposed to the shitty exploitative minimum-wage job you have to take on because your rent is too high to be paid by a single income.
SO all this SAHM/WOHM stuff is usually fussd over by morons who just don't like the idea of accepting that women are human beings rather than a class of not-quite-humans who exist to service men and provide them with children while removing the need for them to do any of the work involved in raising those children.

quite

"SO all this SAHM/WOHM stuff is usually fussd over by morons who just don't like the idea of accepting that women are human beings rather than a class of not-quite-humans who exist to service men and provide them with children while removing the need for them to do any of the work involved in raising those children."

Excellent point!

Have been pondering over this thread and just come back online, so apologies if it looks like I am lobbing comments in and running away again, as I have no time to catch up and am supposed to be cooking tea!

I was thinking that I'm sure if you asked my DD if she'd rather I worked or stayed at home, she would say stay at home, but then if I asked her if she'd rather I always went to the supermarket when she was in bed so she never had to come, she'd go for that too, or if she'd rather I never had to interupt a game to cook the dinner. Sadly none of these things are going to happen! One of the reasons we overanalyse the issue of working mothers (as someone else said, no-one ever questions a father's decision to work) is because we percieve it as a 'choice'. If we can move away from that, and accept that most women work in some form, for at least some of the time they are bringing up their children (which doesn't magically stop at 5), then it becomes a different debate entirely. If the debate is that some very young children are not thriving in a nursery environment, then that's the issue - perhaps they'd be better in a different nursery, or with a childminder, or cared for by a relative, or if either or both parents tried to reduce their hours etc.

I don't think that one group of mothers is necessarily happier than the other. As long as you are happy with the way you live your life there is no need for these decisive surveys.
Women are so heavily criticised in the media and this is another divide and rule report which makes everyone fel they have to come on here and justify their decisions.
Whatever happened to the sisterhood?