Do working mothers need to have hats taken off to them?

[binkie]

I went last night to the Fawcett Society's Inspiring Women event.

Biggest impression was of the vast range of women's differing concerns, of course; but one thing struck me (& the long-term MNer I went with): the panel included only one woman (Meera Syal) with children, and there was a point where with holy hush the other, childless, women said they took their hats off to mothers who work (you know what I mean, paid jobs, outside or from home, that mean you can't do all your own fulltime child-rearing) and that they Couldn't Have Done It Themselves.

Now that bothered me. My life is definitely a bit complicated, with a fulltime job, a 6yo and a nearly-5yo, but it isn't impossible, it has masses of ups and downs but, you know, it's not always even that tough. Obviously it is a matter of personal circumstances - but I was pretty surprised by the air of melodrama.

What do y'all think?

Ah yes, organisation....

Not my strong point, I meant to add

Brief aside Aloha. I find it easier to get us out of the door at 7.55 am than at 10.30. And am still struggling to come to terms with the 9am school thing!

As a SAHM who doesn?t live anywhere near London, has a pants social life really, doesn?t own a suit or a single pair of see-through tights I am feeling rather dowdy and a little thick after reading this thread. Fawcett Society?? - glad I am not the only one not only not to have attended a feminist lecture there but hasn?t even heard of it. I am way way behind those of you who bemoan not finding the time to go to these enlightening events. Hasn?t even crossed my mind to bemoan their passing with my non attendence..
Sometimes, mumsnet is very very bad for my self esteem

I was late for school every day too!
I think sometimes what seems patronising isn't meant that way at all.

Bozza, yes, being used to a nursery run at 7.55am i find we are quite often early for the 8.45 school opening! we have to hang around in the playground.

i have low standards though the girls aren't always as brushed and neat as they should be.

Oh no we are not early we are rushing and I am shouting at DS for not having his shoes on or hsi book bag or whatever. Yet I can have him with everything he needs at the CM and DD at the nursery by the dot of 8 am. Still this is off topic really.

I think the person who mentioned support had a good point as to how easy it is. Kuoni don't feel bad - I am in the same provincial boat as you.

Do you not think the perception of working mothers depends on the economics of the field in which you work? Personally I think it must be harder for women in competitive fields where you are expected to work like a man, or else face being overtaken by all the men and childless women who are clamouring for your job.

I work with people in very macho fields (police, solicitors, law-enforcement stuff), but because there are so few people offering the specialist expertise that I have, I've never had a problem making it clear that I need to balance my children's needs with my work commitments. Anyone who finds that hard to understand is welcome to spend five days phoning round trying to get someone else to take their case... Whereas if you tried to work in corporate finance with that attitude you'd be out on your ear before you could say 'Y2 assembly'.

I agree with you Frogs. And hardest of all to try and combine home life with jobs that are very inflexible for example retail and call centres where you have to be there at your desk when the customer needs you. Also depends on the level you are at - I have found it easier as I have got more seniority at work because I largely run my own workload, have lots of support and am trusted to manage my own time.

Yes, good point frogs - would fit the personalities last night too - Betty Boothroyd and the demands of Parliament, Wendy Hall and the parallel-femalefree-universe of academic engineering, Meera Syal (7 and a half weeks off having her second) and her story of how insurance is so expensive for pregnant actresses that market practice for casting a pregnant character is any old actress and a cushion. So of course the personal was being political.

On the issue of support, yes indeed it's crucial, but not just childcare - also it's role models, and furrow-ploughers, and people who've managed to say the thing to the boss that needed to be said (and survived) so that someone else can say it too. I feel part of my job is being those things, hence why it is so important to say out loud what bugsy2 said so neatly.

Yeah man, I think you should take your hat off to me. i'm a working mum, I work 4 days a week adn my daughter has special needs, is 4 and doesn'rt walk, and I'm 30 weeks pregnant. Yeah you can take your hat off to me, that would be great, thanks.
But I'll be doing the same for you. You're a mother too, and like me, whatever you do, you still fall into bed exhauseted every night, you still get up if they call out for you at 3.30am, like me you cook for them, bath them, read and play with them and like me your children fill up all the space in your head and are your life. So as you take your hat off to me I'll be doing the same to you.

Interesting thread. I work full-time with a two year old daughter and I'm a lone parent (with no nanny in sight!). I don't think you can compare lives - is mine easier or harder than say, a SAHM of four whose husband does nothing around the house? It's just different.

But I do think the position of motherhood, and whether it is valued in society, is a long term problem for feminism, because women will never have equality until child-bearing and rearing is seen as equally valuable as productivity in the workplace. As it is, women will always be faced with choices that men by and large don't have to make, and society doesn't expect them to make. And I think it very much is a trade off, what you gain personally from having children, you are most likely to lose professionally because you can't spend as much time on the job - as for a social life, sorry, forgotten what that is!

Love your post thomcat

Good post Rose32
I suppose (having thought about it a bit more since yesterday) that this kind of comment is slightly more positive and helpful than we usually get to read/hear. I must say that I find it enormously grating to read endless articles by female commentators, which peddle the nonsense that somehow if we all had good quality child care all our problems would be solved, completely ignoring all the many complications of child rearing - school holidays, sickness, homework, after school activities... and the suggestion that "child care" is a one size fits all thing - the same for tiny babies and for teenagers and every child in between.
I know that is the nature of the media, to over simplify complex matters, but I think that (over simplifying wildly myself) feminism has, over the years, dodged the issue of motherhood and colluded in the myth that (a) raising children is demeaning, dull and not as valuable as "proper" work and (b) that you can somehow delegate it while you get on with the proper business of being a successful, or even an inspiring, woman.

but I don't think it's helpful to peddle the "I Don't Know How She Does It" thing either. Martyrdom and admiration are one thing, but real change and radical thinking are quite another.

Motherhood has been hugely devalued- i think it's a pendulum reaction, in that when the pendulum swung away from motherhood being the only option for a women, it had to swing over the other side before it could settle nicely in the centre. it's time it did though, and the current Government is not helping, especially with childcare credits that only pay if you work 16 hours (I worked 15 at one point), and tax credit systems that get it wrong as often as they get it right (seemingly), leaving famillies destitute. When my dh lost his job when I was 36 weeks pg I was told to get straight back to work by a WTC advisor- she meant tomorrow, not after ds arrived!

I think I will take my hat off to anybody who manages to negotiate the minefield of motherhood and build the balance that is right for them and their own family. We all have complications.. single parents, sn kids, ill partners, parents to care for- and it is up to us to find the balance, not some semi-dictatorial government.

I am not going to start on the whole issue of backup, which I think is a crucial element in this - there are jobs which are sustainable with full-time paid/family support and jobs which aren't (I am not saying either that they would be emotionally tenable for all of us, or that those jobs couldn't be done part-time btw). But I do think a lot of it is individual emotional reaction to paid work/childcare. I would find SAHMdom a lot harder than even my current insane juggle.

Can we all go next year??

Have pic of DD2 in Fawcett T-shirt which I am very proud of.

This is an interesting debate really and it hasn't become a WOTH/SAHM row. Personally I feel hats off to everyone!

For me as a full time working mum (as opposed to part-time or from the house or whatever else PC you want) I simply have lower standards That article the other day on Slummy Mummy's was just so me. Outwardly I look fab (Makeup done in car) I look organised (You should see that in-tray - towering pile on top of fridge) and the effortless way I APPEAR to do everything. However it is like a swan All is serene onthe outside, whereas under the surface the legs are going madly I just JUST enough to get by, my kitchen/living rooms are cleanish/tidyish, but don't LOOK at teh hell upstairs. I make the additional home-made cake, so you can't notice the shop bought sandwich filling etc etc. I think that for me, it is about prioritising what is important. I know if I did not work full time, then my house would be cleaner, I would cook more often and do more 'mummy' stuff. But I would be JUST as busy, simply with different things IYKWIM

The only Fawcett t-shirt available (same one as yours, MI: "this is what a feminist looks like") was ds's size. I have explained, and he was gratifyingly astonished that anyone should ever have thought that girls are not as capable as boys etc etc, but: do you think he should wear my conscience?

(And I do really wish you had all been there, but then it would've been even more disappointing when Jenni Murray said that was all we had time for.)

Rose32, good post. Bossykate, go on, I'd love to hear what you think, do step back into this very civilised thread, go on, you know you want to

Binkie, I think we are living as the first/second generation of middle class women who really thought there might be some way they could have a well paid, interesting, stimulating, important job AND lovely happy children, a great marriage and a decent life are finding they can't. As someone said, one of them has to go.

Until the working world changes so that presenteeism and macho cultures are not the prevailing values, well, then, women will suffer because they often pick up the slack from men who are not pulling their weight wrt childcare/the domestic sphere because they have succumbed (often willingly) to this working culture. And women have let them or have succumbed themselves. I appreciate this isn't the case in all professions (and frogs, I take your point about supply and demand in your profession, nice position to be in - not trying to suggest you have it easy though!) but it still is in a lot of them. And while women keep picking up the slack and while child rearing is still seen as mainly the concern of the woman in the relationship - how many of our husbands have been asked about childcare in interviews? none, I bet, but I've been asked more than once - and while men get away with NOT doing their share of child rearing and taking responsibility for domestic stuff then things won't change. But I do think, conversely, that the position of a parent IS different from that of a non parent - and I delberately don't say mother - because children do need parents for things like sickness and crises and people who are not parents don't have the same kind of responsibility, they just don't. Sorry, this is a rambly post with little point other than isn't it all a bit crap! But hey! I suppose my ideal would be a world where the working environment was parent friendly but where it was also a viable financial option to be a sahp if you wanted to and that we could accept that this was also a valuable contribution to society. I think those women who said 'ooh aren't you amazing, I couldn't do that!' might have been saying 'oh, I wouldn't do that, if I had children I wouldn't work!' do you think? In the way that the childless think that it's all baking cakes and non stop fun and relaxation as a sahm? Crunchie, I love your swan description.

And shallow aside, ooh, I didn't know Meera Syal was pregnant, how lovely!

Fascinating thread. Keep meaning to get back in touch with Fawcett (their library was bloody useful for my dissertation).

For me the personal is definitely political.

I would once have been one of those people going 'gosh, I don't know how they do it' . That's because I saw how exhausted my own mother was (single parent, breadwinner, demanding professional jobs). Couldn't imagine how I could possibly have children myself without either a dh wealthy enough to support all of us or a job of my own that could support a nanny.

That's why I didn't have ds until I was 34. Just couldn't see how I could make it work.

Don't quite know what happened to Mr Right-I-earn-enough-for-the-whole-family-but-don't-see-your-work-as-any-less-deserving-of-respect... he never turned up. So here I am, married to someone I love dearly who earns less than me, mother of one, jumping off the career ladder after getting to a fairly senior position and going freelance. Which was never supposed to happen and is still quite scary when I stop and think about it.

I just about killed myself trying to make full-time senior position plus motherhood work and it didn't, for me. And seeing how it very nearly killed my mother (very nasty 'nervous breakdown' after years of holding it all together), I decided not to keep banging my head against a brick wall. The people I know who have made top job plus family work are either a. men or b. have fantastic support either from family or because they can afford a nanny (there are lots of senior jobs in London that don't pay well enough to cover the costs of a nanny unless your partner is also a high-ish earner).

But I take my hat off to women who work in low-paid jobs and struggle to pay the bills and afford food and essentials. Angst over stepping off the career ladder probably seems very self-indulgent to women in that position. Or to single parents, because I'm lucky enough to have a very hands-on dh and can't imagine how we would manage without him.

Not sure what the answer is, except greater respect for contribution mothers (and other carers) make to society, genuinely flexible working that doesn't label you as not committed to your career if you have these kinds of responsibilitiesand some sort of deal to support those parents who do want to be at home instead of forcing all parents into work whether that's the right thing (or the right job) for them or not. Oh, and better wages, training and respect for people working in childcare.

When we start using the phrase "working father" I feel we may be getting somewhere.

Good point, Becky.

Yeah, I think it is bloody hard, trying to juggle everything...

I'm up at 7am, dressed DD (2) and out the door by 8, work till 1, spend all afternoon looking after dd. Hubby puts her to bed, I work (Teacher, so do my marking prep work) from 7 till about 1 am) have about 6 1/2 hours sleep, before getting up to do it all over again! And that's on a good night, as I'm in a newish job, there have been occassions where I have been working up to 4am - and then up 3 hours later! (Happens about 1 a month this year- last year it was once a week, regularly!)

The only break I get is at the weekend, when I have the great opportunity of doing the housework! I'm the main wage earner in the house, so working is compulsory. Thankfully DH does cooking and puts DD to bed etc.

But it is definitely harder than not working (for me!). During my 6 weeks break, I felt so much less stressed, and I even managed to get 8 hours sleep a night... I find looking after 1 toddler a walk in the park compared to 30 disgruntled teenagers!!

I always get comments like "oh, your ds is sooooo lucky to have you, I couldn't cope with all his dietary needs." Well of course you'd cope you daft woman, or your child would die.

I think it's the same for working versus not (paid) working mothers, or people that have twins etc. Nobody who hasn't been in that situation can know how difficult or easy it is, or how difficult or easy they would find it.

Hats off to fathers too!

I describe dh as a working father - just as I describe myself as a working mother.

I also don't see ds as work - he's an investment!