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Teenage girls should be prepared not to expect it all

259 replies

BecauseImWorthIt · 14/11/2009 20:07

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?

OP posts:
Morosky · 16/11/2009 20:42

Exactly agingoth I don't understand how having a penis means that you can't or should not look after children.

My dp makes an excellent almost full time father and his penis is huge, so I am sure the rest of the male population could cope.

noddyholder · 16/11/2009 20:49

morosky

JANEITEisntErudite · 16/11/2009 20:53

Snap Morosky. Maybe only well-endowed men are 'man' enough to stay at home, without feeling that it 'unmans' them to do so? Excuse the 'man' stuff - have been teaching 'Macbeth' and doing the 'you're not a real man' scene!

Iggipepperedfillet · 16/11/2009 20:54

Mathanxiety - loved your post of 15.47. Sums up the problem perfectly.

ravenAK · 16/11/2009 21:05

Dh occasionally trips over his when trying to round up the dc. It's a problem.

Lady Macbeth, now there was a lady would've been better off delegating the childcare to Him Indoors...

daftpunk · 16/11/2009 21:10

what has any of this has got to do with being good in bed....?

Morosky · 16/11/2009 21:15

I didn't say it had anything to do with being good in bed. I was just pondering how the possession of a penis prevented a man from being a full time parent especially when mine manages so well.

He has also just appeared with a bunch of flowers, a cup of tea and a good snog to keep me motivated in my mumsnetting marking.

I am so in love.

dittany · 16/11/2009 21:15

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

daftpunk · 16/11/2009 21:16

omg...do my posts ever make any sense...? sorry i'm watching something arty on BBC2...not concentrating...

Iggipepperedfillet · 16/11/2009 21:17

Morosky. If I knew where you lived I'd be round! You shouldn't keep him to yourself you know, it's greedy.

daftpunk · 16/11/2009 21:21

dittany...i don't think he feels that way at all....he just likes the male/female role model thing...

he's actually ok...not an idiot..you know...he wont go off to india to "find himself" ....

agingoth · 16/11/2009 21:26

only state pension DP!

Make sure you know what DH is planning for your retirement. If you did divorce (god forbid) you would be entitled to a share of it.

inveteratenamechanger · 16/11/2009 21:28

Yes, what makes me cross about this whole debate is that there is not enough discussion of how financially vulnerable women who stop work, or downsize their careers can be.

If I were head of a girls' school, I would tell them that financial independence (or as close as you can get) is a wonderful thing.

Fivesetsofschoolfees · 16/11/2009 21:31

This thread is so frustrating.

The speech is not meant to be about what boys/men should do. It is about the ambitions and expectations of girls. Insisting that boys should be included just means that girls, yet again, get relegated to the background.

Boys do not face the same dilemmas because of the culture of our country. They are allowed to have a 1950s 'traditional' role, or they are allowed to be 'new man'. Either way is fine and draws no debate.

For girls to thrive in the corporate world, they have more problems. They almost have to behave like 1950s men, which means being totally committed and competitive. They can do this in the early years of their career, without question. However, it is hard for women when they start having children. Priorities change, compromises are made. When they used to say 'how high' when their bosses asked them to jump, they are now accountable to the childminder and her ticking clock. Yes, their husbands should do their fair share, and most try their best, but men and women are wired differently.

My husband is great with the children and the house but he doesn't worry about the same things I worry about. If he needed to pick up children from a childminder, and his boss called him in five minutes before he was about to leave, he would have the meeting. It would not occur to him that he was now on £5 for every 15 minutes, nor would he tell his boss it was inconvenient. He wouldn't worry about the future relationship with the childminder. A woman does get stressed out by these things.

I have been in that environment. I worked for a multinational while having my first two children. Juggling travel was a constant stress for me, and trying to not bring attention to my problems. I used to delegate most travel to one of my direct reports, hoping that my boss wouldn't notice too much and command me to go wherever.

I worked through this because I thought I had to. I was privately educated at great sacrifice, and the first person in my family to go to university, blah blah blah. I felt that it was my duty to have a 'career'. I couldn't give up so retrained and downshifted to a more family friendly job. I was finally rescued from this by having my third child (childcare too expensive to justify working). What an epiphany.

I spent several years as a SAHM (loved it) and resumed my career quite smoothly, 10 years behind where I might have been but very happy with my lot in life.

I can look back and see that I had a couple of years of working in a high powered environment that didn't make me happy or fulfilled and generally caused me stress. If I had managed the situation differently, I could have had a very workable compromise, which would have still ticked all the boxes.

That is the advice to the current crop of bright girls. Manage your career to suit your values.

agingoth · 16/11/2009 21:31

inveterate, I think that that is because there is a general cultural clinging to the myth that women will/must 'give up everything' once a child comes along and that men will/must 'support' them in this (which ends up too often meaning financial support only).

Clearly this isn't the case for many if it ever was.

inveteratenamechanger · 16/11/2009 21:38

Fivesetsofschoolfees: "My husband is great with the children and the house but he doesn't worry about the same things I worry about. If he needed to pick up children from a childminder, and his boss called him in five minutes before he was about to leave, he would have the meeting. It would not occur to him that he was now on £5 for every 15 minutes, nor would he tell his boss it was inconvenient. He wouldn't worry about the future relationship with the childminder."

This is why BOYS need to be having this sort of talk, not girls! I do not believe that men are wired differently, they are simply socialised differently - to believe that their work is so important that it takes priority over both their children waiting to be picked up and the childminder wanting to finish her working day.

agingoth, yes there are very sad threads on MN all the time about women being left by their husbands and realising what a crap financial position they are in.

Iggipepperedfillet · 16/11/2009 21:45

"Boys do not face the same dilemmas because of the culture of our country. They are allowed to have a 1950s 'traditional' role, or they are allowed to be 'new man'. Either way is fine and draws no debate".

I just don't believe this Five. Gender roles that restrict women's choices inhibit those for me too. It's NOT true to say that a man who asks to work part-time, or stays at home with DCs, draws no debate. Or that it doesn't affect their careers/how people look at them.

A better work/life balance for women could and should involve men having the same. It would be a win/win situation.

Morosky · 16/11/2009 22:08

I also think that supposed gender traits are the products of socialisation rather than a genuine biological difference.

When my dp first started working part time he was quite rubbish at organising the home, remembering what dd had after school etc, he is now very good at it.

I don't work in the corporate world but do work in a demanding and very competitive environment. Now that dp is at home he is able to fully support me in that career so that during the week in term time I am able to fully focus on my job knowing that my home is running smoothly. He does a good job at that because he wants to and gets a lot from doing it. I get a lot from doing well at work because that is the kind of person I am. We are wired as individuals not as a gender or sex IMO.

My job can be stressful at times but I utterly adore it, I don't feel unhappy or unfulfilled. Dp is rather ambivalent about working.

daftpunk · 16/11/2009 22:08

thank you agingoth.....i am totally dependant on dh.....will have to do a bit of financial planning....

Morosky · 16/11/2009 22:11

I was totally dependent on my ex husband who earned a very very good income. When he booted me out I was homeless, penniless and he tried to get custody of my dd because of my poverty.

I know very few men are twats on that grand of a scale but I could never be finacially dependent on a man. Even though I know my dp is very different from my ex husband I would always feel uncomfortable relying on a man again.

daftpunk · 16/11/2009 22:14

oh Morosky...

send me to bed happy....

ravenAK · 16/11/2009 22:21

Agree inveterate.

My dh does (or did) have a similar tendency to regard matters childcare as being of less importance than keeping in with his boss.

He has now been retrained, partly by me giving him almighty bollockings, but more effectively by the CM quietly talking him through the knock-on effect on her end of day routine. She'll do an outstanding job to absorb work emergencies that genuinely mean one of us is running late - she's fed our 3 dc, found them pyjamas & had them overnight once when my boss was being a cock & dh was working away for the week - but she doesn't appreciate being buggered about without so much as a warning phone call, & dh has had to learn this.

Which is why this speech gets my hackles up, I think. It's long past time that boys grew up learning that everyone in a family has to make compromises & juggle.

agingoth · 16/11/2009 22:24

DP, how about a bedtime chat with dh about his financial plans for your joint retirement?

daftpunk · 16/11/2009 22:27

ha ha...

i'm the one with great expectations...

(my parents are loaded)

Fivesetsofschoolfees · 16/11/2009 22:28

There you go, inveterate - drawing the debate away from women and towards men. We will never deliver what women need as long as we keep having a male focussed point of view.

When I tell my children to tidy their rooms or empty the dishwasher, they invariably whinge about why their sibling get off scot-free. They don't, I give them other jobs, but each child cannot see that.

It is a puerile debate, and this one is not much different.