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?

I 'kill myself' juggling a full-time, demanding job & 3 dc under 6. Oh & a big scruffy house that is going to be a time- & money-pit for the next decade. Wouldn't have it any other way.

I'd like to see the Head of an academic boys' school warning the lads that parenthood might compromise their careers. Several SAHDs, mostly previously working in demanding professional roles, amongst my acquaintance. No-one seems to have felt it necessary to warn them about this dire eventuality before they'd even set about their A-Levels...

I love my job (most of the time, anyway) - can't believe that 85% of women would stop working and stay at home if not for financial reasons. I would still work if I won the lottery (although probably only part time, I must admit).

i have two daughters....i have told them when (and if) they have dc they should stay at home and look after them....get yourself into a good financial posistion before having dc....real freedom for women is not being forced back to work....

stay at home for at least 3 years....the first 3 years of a childs life is so important.....more important than any job.

that's my advice to my daughters.

It's not freedom if there's a 'should' attached, daftpunk.

I also have 2 daughters (& 1 son). I'll be telling them all that whether they work outside the home or not after having dc is their call, to be agreed with their partners, & the ideal is to have the financial freedom to choose.

Frankly, our childcare bill is such that there'd be no great sacrifices needed if one of us (probably dh) became a SAHP. Your vision of miserable wage slaves doesn't apply to all of us!

What made me so annoyed about this is the assumption that girls will be responsible for childcare.

That may reflect where we are now.

However if we are ever to get the general population to take children and childcare seriously, then it has to become something that boys and girls think they are both responsible for.

To start with teenage girls, telling them that they can't have it all, makes the grievous assumption that only women can take responsibility for looking after children.

I know, clearly (as I am not a stupid woman) that we women bear the children, but it does not mean that we have to take the responsiblity for staying at home and looking after them.

If you want to do that, then that is absolutely your right, and I am all in favour of women who choose to stay at home. I am also, though, in favour of those who choose to go back to work.

But more importantly, I think it is truly crucial for our nation in the future that men regard the welfare and day-to-day care of their children as their responsibility as well.

No longer should it just be the preserve of us women.

does the article difine 'perfect mother'?

woops, I mean define

"who wants to kill themselves trying to juggle a full-time job and a couple of kids...?"

Loads of people (including loads of dads) manage to not kill themselves doing just that. Am surprised you might think otherwise.

That article makes me incredibly sad. Why should women (and not men) have to consider how to combine a career and a family and choose accordingly? Women are technically only exclusively raising children for the 9 months they are pregnant not the 18 years it takes to raise a baby to become an adult. Why does that 9 months mean that women have to choose how they will spend their entire working life?

I had been working in my chosen profession for 20 years before I had children. Why should I have to choose?

I'm confused - who has said that you have to choose?

But do you honestly believe that you have not made a choice now by having children that has affected either your or your partner's career?

So many girls grow up just not realising that compromises have to be made later on - that they themselves may even choose to make those compromises - IF they want to have a family. It may be the girls who change their career track but if they don't want to do that it will have to be their partner and so best to have one who's supportive.

This head is head of a very academic girls school so I find the idea that she would be recommending girls scale down their ambitions odd - and I don't think she's doing that at all.

why should you have to choose...?

it's usually the woman who decides to have a child in the first place....you can't have a baby and then dump it on the man so you can get back to work asap....

What is this 'usually' of which you speak daftpunk? In my universe it's either a joint decision or the result of carelessness after too much wine!

& 'dump it on the man'? Good grief. A baby's not some exotic variety of toxic waste, you know. (Although dd2 has her moments...)

Dh & I agreed before we had dc that I'd be returning to work after 6 months, the baby would be going to a CM, & if that didn't work out then dh putting his career on hold was probably the lesser evil.

If your arrangements suit you, then that's great, but please understand that you're only speaking for you.

WHAT? No - it's 'usually' a joint decision to have a baby - and a joint decision about how that child will then be looked after. As a mother who had my first child and then 'dumped it on the man' so I could go back to work and earn much more money than my dp could have done, I totally, totally disagree with you.

And, had I stayed at home for three years, I would have been a hideous mother and my children would have been less happy - AND we would be much, much poorer.

Your attitude is much worse than anything in the article.

what is this "joint decision" of which you speak...?

women are in total control of whether they have children or not....

if my dh said to me...daftpunk....i'd love to have children with you but i can't afford to support them so you will have to be back to work within 6 months...

do you know what i would have said...?

You know what - I can imagine what you would have said. Because you and I are clearly very, very different in our outlooks. I am now supposed to say something about 'each to their own' or 'life's rich tapestry' or something - but I can't be bothered.

How odd.

I think it's good to prepare girls for the possibility that they may feel torn later on (the situation where someone loves their job but wishes it involved six hour days rather than nine hour ones is very common), but at that point they may find that it is not at all easy to get what they want. At that point, someone who loves their job but no longer wants to do it for 40 hours a week will discover that often she can't 'have it all'. There's more than one way to define 'having it all' - it's more than just having the option to return to full-time work and pick up where you left off to go on maternity leave, using childcare or having a partner at home.

I'd hope you'd have said 'OK, we obviously can't afford children yet, because I definitely want to be a SAHM'...& then started working out, together, how you could improve your financial decision to make it viable.

But your hypothetical circumstances don't apply to my family. I choose to work. So does dh. If either of us came to hate their job, we'd re-evaluate the situation.

The point you're repeatedly missing is that not every parent is desperate to give up WOH, & not every family divvies up gender responsibilities like a 1950s washing powder advert.

yes, i would have said something like that.....

raven.....in all your decision making...did you ever think...i wonder what my dc would like...?

Well, in my family it was actually DH who found having a family changed his attitude to his job. He left a job with weekly foreign travel when DS was about a year old, having been miserable about it for several months.

because i don't believe for one minute that any child would prefer to be with a childminder or at a nursery rather than at home with it's mother (or father)

i wish someone had told me this when i was choosing careers/A levels etc...
many jobs, like my old on in marketing, mean long hours/ European/US travel which are not compatible with working flexibly when you have children (as i WANTED to do). The only way is to have a nanny and the job isn't paid highly enough to make it worthwhile.

my friends in more office based jobs - accountancy/law etc. have had more opportunities to go back to work on a pt basis, working from home etc. Other friends who are consultants/bankers might have to work longer hours but their salary more than pays for a high quality nanny.

"did you ever think...i wonder what my dc would like...?"

oh purlease!?

did you?

But you were not talking about babies being happily left with fathers - you were talking about mothers 'dumping it' on the father, as though that is somehow the mother being selfish and unnatural.