Teenage girls should be prepared not to expect it all

[BecauseImWorthIt]

here

This has made me really angry.

Where is the education for boys? Why are our future citizens (female only) being told that babies/childcare are their responsibility only, whereas their male counterparts can, clearly, expect to have it all?

Agree with fivesetofschoolfees

Its always going to be a girls issue - until boys have babies that is.

Everyone?

Have not read the whole thread-but personally speaking I would raise these things with my teenage daughter if I had one (mine is only a baby). I think despite my education and qualifications I was completely clueless at the impact having children (at a relatively advanced age) would have on my life and career-and I work in a relatively family friendly public sector environment.
I feel very stupid when I look back now on how blithely I had assumed DH and I would split things relatively equally, I would carry on working full-time and all would be hunky dory. Fast forward five years and I work part-time DH works 60 plus hours a week and I really look after everything to do with the house and the children. And I do realise I am very lucky to be able to work part-time. There are many wonderful fathers who raise their children/take equal responsibility for them while their partner works-personally speaking I have only ever met one (a full-time SAHD). I know there are other models in Nordic countries for example but these rely on heavily state subsidised high quality childcare-and I just don't see this happening in the UK.

Yes Five, everyone. Even employers, surely, as they'll get a greater range (if more staff part-time) of committed, happy, well-balanced workers. Obviously employers of the work-'em-till-they-bleed variety won't like it, but I think we'd be better off without them anyway.

dittany;

but it works....

what are we doing wrong...?

would he be less of a sexist if i worked part-time and he went to sainsburys...?

It depends daftpunk why you have split the labour in your household the way you have.

Are you at home because you are a woman or because you want to? Are you at home because you think that is what you think a woman should do or because it is what you freely want to do. Does your dh work because he freely wants to work or because he is avoiding housework? Is he working because he thinks that is what a man does? Would he ever entertain the idea of you working or you both working and both doing more domestic chores?

The problem here is a clash of ideology with realism.

Theoretically, women can aspire to "have it all", and all should strive to foster a utopian society where men and women take equal responsibility for childcare / work flexibly / share household admin etc.

All very admirable. Th teacher here is merely tempering this approach with a more practical vision, which asks young women to take into account the fact that life ain't necessarily going to be like that.

To my mind this is no bad thing; I had plenty of the ideology and career-minded stuff thrown at me, but would perhaps have been wiser and made different decisions if it had been served with a dash of pragmatism.

Well it was 'pragmatic' to point out, in the days of slavery, that without slaves the economy would collapse, and anyway quite a lot of the slaves liked it and were too thick to cope with life on their own.
Institutionalised, unethical equalities aren't going to change overnight, and it's sort of understandable that the huge advances that have been made over the past couple of hundred years have been under constant siege from people who are either doing very well out of the unequal situation or who are too scared of change to want to fix it.

I think actually one of the biggest giveaways that this is sexism is that people would freak completely at the idea of an equivalent figure who said to a lot of schoolboys, look, deal with the fact that many of you are going to be callcentre workers, debt collectors and junior ad sales executives - if the speaker was addressing a lot of private-school attending kids with moderately aspirational middle-class backgrounds.
Now imagine a speaker in an innner city sink school who said, look, half of you are going to spend your lives on the dole and the rest of you are going to flip burgers and stack shelves, deal with it...
AS WELL AS the problems of institutionalized misogyny, the whole way people think about 'work' needs addressing. Life for a lot of people involves shitty nonjobs for lousy money, and many intermediately OK jobs (in terms of the work done being not dangerous an not that boring) demand far too much of the employee WRT hours spent in the workplace not actually doing much, just being visibly there.

Good lord relying on your dh and then parents for you retirement must really affect your self worth and set a dreadful example to your children abot self sufficiency and education..

NH....

i'm not educated...i would never have earn't enough money to support a family...so what did i do..?

i found someone to earn the money for me..

i have excepted i live in a sexist situation....but i wouldn't have wanted to be a single mother...i would have found that boring and exhausting....what else do you do..?....become a lesbian..?
no thanks...i'd be bored with that after a week...

my dc have a father who loves them and i have an easy(ish) life....

if i had a job paying me £100,000 a year my dh would be happy to stay at home....he might be a sexist, but he's not stupid...

You don't need to be in a high flying career to earn enough to jointly contribute financially and socially to the household.There is nothing wrong with staying at home to look after your kids I did it and think a parent at home in the first few years is a great start.But it is about you as an individual.You are v opinionated on how others live and conduct themselves but seem defeatist about how you live.I think it sounds sad that you nthink you can't change anything when you definitley can as you don't need the money urgently so could do voluntary work or college.

If I paid private tuition for my daughter to attend a school whose head was advising her that childcare is a woman's issue I'd be bloody pissed off.

"While clever girls should aim high, there is nothing wrong with them working part-time or not at all when they have children, she will say.

Speaking ahead of the association's annual conference in Harrogate on Monday, Berry said schools had to prepare girls early for the challenges and choices they would face later in life."

children vs. career is not a choice that one has to make because she lacks a penis. Both parents will on occassion have to sacrifice one for the other. But, no one has to actually choose between having children and having a career -- especially not if they are fortunate enough to have a private education.

This woman should be removed from her post at once.

SGB, having known a few boys from the 'better' (!!) public schools, the kind of speeches that get made to them seem to be of this ilk: you are the creme de la creme, the future leaders of this country, you must rise to the challenges that come with being totally superior to the rest of humanity. Etc ad nauseam.

Clearly, these poor girls are being expected to enable the success of their high earning high flying future husbands by not expecting too much themselves. It really stinks.

I wonder if this might be a reason to send girls to mixed gender schools. Let them hear the same speaches and take the same classes that the boys take.

I tend to shy away from anyone who says girls are like this and boys are like that. That is a massive stereotype that applies only to some. And this is crux of the welcome message on the website of the school to whom Jill Berry is the headmistress.

Dame Alice

i'm not really that opinionated NH...i have said a few things about homosexuals and immigrants...that's all..

oh, and i might have made the odd comment on the moldie saga...which i regret.

I have just looked at Tiffin Girls to see how the attitude of the school compares and I found this:

It is our intention that girls should achieve the greatest possible academic success while acquiring the skills, adaptability and maturity, which will help to prepare them for their future careers and for life in the twenty first century.

Few.... so not all girls schools are stuck in the Victorian era.

How about Jill Berry urging girls to arrange their lives as follows:

Have babies while you're a teenager and your parents might be willing to support you and help out when they're babies and you go to school. Then go to uni and by the time you start your career your children will be starting school. By the time your career is really kicking into high gear your children will already be in school full time, and able to be much more independent and less in need of your constant care. You won't have to worry about either your finances or your ticking biological clock. No time off required for maternity leave, clock taken care of. Best of both worlds.