Incentives for SAHMs - anyone read Fiona Phillips today?

[bohemianbint]

Link here

I think if you can get past the slightly guilt-inducing title, what she is basically saying is quite interesting. It's the first thing I've read in a while that doesn't write SAHMs off as useless bovine idiots.

Obviously don't want to start the old fight of working vs sahm, but what do we think about some kind of incentive for mums to stay at home?

FWIW I have recently become a SAHM by accident after stupid sexist boss forced me out of my job - I am taking him to a tribunal. I am looking for work but am pregnant so not sure how that'll go down with potential employers! I'd like to work PT ideally but I feel really under pressure from everyone around me to get a job and stop being a "boring" SAHM.

I am a manager in a big investment bank. I don't know about small companies, but really as a manager you should have a professional attitide to these things. The way I see it, for every woman who does not come back after end of her leave, there are 9 who will return and if treated well become a huge resource to my team because they are bloody efficient, are never sick (even if they themselves think they are always off with sick children, statistically they are not) and are fiercly loyal and likely to stay long-term with me because they know they cannot get better terms elsewhere. Interestingly, a few months ago I created some statistics for my management team showing very clearly that parents (both mums and the dads who were involved in the childcare at home) did nearly double the workload as non-parents and had nearly half the amount of time off in terms of sickness and leave to go to dentists etc. It was there in black and white. Noone could argue with me. I just printed it out as a curiosity, but I think it should probably be forwarded to the Daily mail, or what do you guys think?

God, how I would have loved the government to make it possible for me to stay at home full time with my ds in his pre-school years. By dint of selling up and downsizing I managed to do just two days a week at work for those years but even that has still left us with some debt.

I used to think, if only the government would give ME these childcare 'credits', I could stay home and care for my own child!

I totally agree with juule that it is right that we examine the effects of childcare provision on children. It needs on-going and thorough and far reaching research. It's so important to our future as a society that everyone gets this right.

And, with certain rare exceptions, of COURSE mum is the centre of the world to a pre-schooler. Of course Dad can have this role if he's around enough. But I agree - nature makes our mum the centre of our universe when we're tiny. That is right and healthy and we dismiss that at our peril. Of course children can experience healthy good care from others but we do need to guard against it becoming the norm for weeks-old babies to go to nursery from 8 - 6 mon to fri. IMVHO.

1dilemma made some excellent points earlier about the unfairness of the system. I think it's true that it's the middle income average type families which can get hit the hardest. If you have two parents each earning reasonable but not great incomes, then they often both need to work cos they can't afford not to. So they end up with huge childcare costs, but no benefits, tax credits etc to help. It's ridiculous that two working parents on very average incomes, say 20k each, end up less well off than a family which can afford to live on just one income of, say, 40k. Madness.

Anna, "The mindset I want to change is the one that says a woman's mind is resting/goes to mush while she is on maternity leave. So untrue."

Agree that it is unfair.

I would argue that by offering men largely equal/transferable parental leave as women, this would in time help to shift the societal mindset so that it is equally acceptable for men as well as women to take parental leave, If more men experience first hand for themselves the rigors and rewards of childcare, they are less likely to denigrate the contributions of SAHPs. And once childcare seen as an issue affecting men and women equally, and not just marginalised as a woman's issue, only then will Whitehall take notice. And who knows, along with raising the status of parents who opt to stay at home, we might actually end up with some form of SAHP salary, lol!

So I feel that we would actually be doing ourselves a disservice by trying to claim that childcare is the special emotional and hormonal preserve of women. This study (I thank nooka for the link) in fact shows the opposite, surprisingly, and that father do equally well if not better in the first year: here.

Childcare is a PARENTAL issue. Don't give ammunition to Whitehall to ghetto-ise it into a woman's issue, with the complicity of society.

(Thanks alfiesbabe 1dilemma preens quietly )

Surely it's just a fact of life that a couple with a child on two incomes of £20,000 for two full-time jobs are going to be worse off than a couple with a child where there is one earner in a full-time job with an income of £40,000 and one SAHP? Since the second couple has much more time available for unpaid work (childcare, housework etc) than the first.

FairyMum, I could not agree with you more. Although I work in a very different environment to you quite frankly the parents among us blow the non-parents (both genders represented in both samples) right out of the water in attitude and commitment to the organisation during working hours. We are more productive, more efficient and also, paradoxically, have a more healthily detached attitude to our workplace's little ups and downs. And we are off sick less.

blueshoes - FWIW my partner thinks that if men stop working, they vegetate and go to pot, whereas women don't let themselves go - on the contrary, their brains just have more time to whizz round .

Childcare is a PARENTAL issue. Beautifully summed up Blueshoes

Anna - £100 a week to breastfeed is a pretty poor deal when you're the main breadwinner. And downright laughable when the Government acknowledges that breastfeeding provides the very best start in life for a baby. And the sheer agony I went through to breastfeed my DS was worth a hell of a lot more than £100 a week I can tell you!

Actually, this thread has just gone back to where it started. I commented that I couldn't personally see where the incentive was for both parents to work full time. 1dilemma's example has proved my point exactly.

[Incidentally, I am very and must admit that in the heat of the moment doing my calculation last night I inadvertently left in a figure of £15 a week for 1/2 a day's childcare which I had been experimenting with. Hence if we both worked 16 hours a week we could get help with childcare - not surprising I suppose. Double . However, it is a bit annoying that the only p/t jobs DH can find are less than 16 hours = no childcare credit = can't afford job]

Agree Anna so why does this govt give the second child tax credits and not the first?

And according to some on this thread the inequalities should be increased by allowing the second couple to get an even bigger chunk of income tax free!

Twinkle thanks I'm having another preen

Need to go back and catch up but can I aslo say HG I see your point too and FairyMum that is really interesting must be worth getting somewhere I sometimes think half of mumsnet is journalists maybe one of them will see ths.
I know what you mean about feeling like you have more sick leave, dc was just off ill but I took a day as AL I also compensate by working later when I can (unlike half my collegues over christmas who all took sick leave!)

FWIW 1dilemma, re the tax free payment for your second couple. I would propose a much lower cut off for any such tax credit. Maybe for anyone earning below average income ie less than £24k. I don't know why tax credits are available for people earning c.£59k anyway. The tiny amount of tax credit in comparison to the income makes it hardly worth it.

Starlight I think what you propose sounds OK, your parental leave would be unpaid wouldn't it? Would you feel happier if you took annual leave to cover childminders hols then worked for a bit more before starting your mat. leave?
Isn't some of your maternity pay refunded to the co. by the state anyway? (I think for nannies it is) I also think what cushioncover did (returning full time for the summer holidays then part time is far more stretching the system, wouldn't be allowed where I work)

Agree Twinkle was just using it as an example, it always seemed really unfair to me.

I cannot believe still that my colleague will be sacked cos she aasked for part time?!!

she was going to do my scam..use parental leave for holiday and holiday to take every friday off!

you cansay what you like about tony blair but the last labour goverment have been fantasticv for working mums

1dilemma - I don't know enough about UK child tax credits to give any kind of answer.

However, here in France where families are taxed as a whole (ie all income - and indeed capital, because there is wealth tax on capital in this country - is pooled), it is clearly financially advantageous for the family to have a single full-time very high earner rather than two full-time earners whose pooled income is the equivalent of that single earner.

Where one adult member of the family is a SAHP, that person can do a huge number of jobs (including childcare) that otherwise need to be paid for or done in evenings/at weekends.

Twinklemegan - well, it depends on your perspective.

If you think that the public purse ought to bear all the costs of breastfeeding (because of the health benefits to the mother and child), then £100 is a paltry sum compared to most wages.

If you think, however, as I do, that, while breastfeeding is excellent for health, it is ultimately up to the family to make that decision and to bear its costs (in the same way it is up to the family to bear the costs of food, clothing, heating, toys, activities etc for a child), then £100 is quite a generous incentive.

sprogger - most families in France these days are dual-income - high salaries aren't that common here (there isn't the City and all the wealth that generates in the UK) and need two incomes to survive. And culturally women are highly acclimatised to the idea that they should work outside the home. So, no, what you say is not particularly true.

However, in the highest income brackets, it is clearly true that it is a crap deal for the second earner (or indeed, for a family to have a second earner), which is perverse as often the most highly qualified women, married to the most highly qualified men, find themselves in a position where it is silly for them to work for short-term financial gain (obviously there are other issues re pension and security in case of divorce, bereavement etc).