Would you have had kids if you'd known how tough it was?

[Angiel]

I don't know if I would have, its a bit late now though!!

Forgot the most important bit ! YES, of course I would still do it if I had my time again but only if I got a parenting course instead of ante-natal classes.

I think you're right that accountancy firms are more flexible than law firms (don't even get dh started on that!). Mind you dh's previous law firm has been in the best 100 companies for the last 2 years and we have no idea how (maybe becuase dh didn't fill his form in )

Mind you it isn't just in the well paying jobs. I did a PhD- and it is very very difficult to have an academic career and be a Mum (hi tamum!) Different reasons, but still you need to do long long hours. I would quite like a part time academic job (and surely that should be available) - I think it would be rewarding, but it's not possible (I realised that during my PhD which was why I left academia- I knew I wanted a family).

Twink- the Scandinavains always do these things better than us. They do pay a lot more tax than us though. I'd be quite keen to live in Norway/Sweden.

the tax bit was just referring to the 90% maternity pay

oh no, jimjams, you will think i'm on a personal mission to hound you this evening and give you grief about everything you say! ...but, my dh is an academic and his job is heaps more flexible than mine! works 80% of the time from home, sets his own work agenda, which can be as demanding or not as he chooses... he chooses to work very hard but has cut back a lot since ds arrived. he still has quite hefty commitments though. we think his flexibility is a compensating factor for the low salary that means it is highly unlikely i will ever be able to quit work...

i think your phd was science related? i appreciate it might be much more difficult to achieve this flexibility if you need to be lab based a lot of the time for work.

meant to say dh is in an arts related field, which might make it easier for him be flexible.

sorry, one final thing on this particular point, when i read the firm i used to work for had made into the 100 best etc my reaction was that it must have changed a hell of a lot since my day, lol!

aloha
facsinating posting - thanks - I too gave up a lucrative law career - I got accidently pregnant aged 29 and my firm were very unsupportive but I had only been there 6 months! - at that time (1999) I was earning 43k - my contemporaries are now earning around £80 and that's if they havne't made it to partnership. I didn't go back there it was hellish anyway and not family friendly. I did consultancy work and have recently set up a small practice of my own which has its own stresses but I feel the only way to have the life I want is to do this - I can drop ds off at school and pick him up - I do feel very lucky but I feel quite lonely not really a sahm and not part of a group at work either.

northernlass, why do you think I am so addicted to mumsnet? It's my virtual watercooler.

I haven't read all of the posts here, but I have to say I don't think it's been as tough as people make out sometimes. I do think we've been really lucky though, a lovely dd who is not shy to stay with family, eats, sleeps, is generally a happy little girl who we have never had problems with. I know that will probably shatter when she becomes a teenager but I'm not near there yet.

We've just come home from a weeks holiday where dd went out for a meal with her grandpa, who she only sees every 6 months or so if that, for a meal so dh and I could have a meal out together alone and then spent another whole day with dh's step mother so we could have a day shopping alone together. Dd was quite happy to be by herself,i.e without mum or dad present, which makes the whole process of spending time alone a lot easier. Obviously not everyone has it this easy, my cousins son wouldn't stay in a room without his mum until he was about 2 years old.

Someone once asked me if I had ever regretted having my dd when I did. I was 20 when she was born and sometimes I think well, maybe I should hae done this or that before children but when it comes down to it I wouldn't be without her and since my mum died shortly after she was born it means a lot to me now knowing that my mum got to meet her granddaughter before she died.

When my dd is older and legally an adult I and my dh will still be young enough to go out and do other things.

I'm glad we had out dd when we did and nothing can prepare you for parenthood, no matter how many books you read or how many other parents you talk to you just deal with it all in your own way. Obviously there will be down days and I do get them now and again but there are so many other happy days when I really appreciate what I have it makes up for it.

Linnet, it sounds like you are very lucky indeed. How old is your DD? Do you want to have more kids? I'm pregnant now with my second, and although I don't regret my first at all, I wonder if I will regret having another.

aha bk- not hounding me- I think we agree. Yes academia is flexible -once you reach a certain stage- but getting to that stage no way. Short term contracts, moving from one end of the country to another. And the only way to get the permanent job and then get that flexibility is publish publish publish. I was asked by John Krebs (food standards agency man) if I was going to stay in academia. i said no and explained why but he wasn't really interested in talking about it- he went to talk to a brown noser instead

Now I suppose I had children pretty early - ds1 was born when I was 28. This was my choice, having children was always more important to me than any career, so when choosing what to do I did ask myself whether the career was family friendly. I think academia should be. But it only becomes family friendly once you've reached a certain stage- and that wouldn't have happened by the time I was 28.

M

I also laughed out loud when reading that my firm was in the top 20 to work for. We do have lots of senior management going on about diversity at work and have just started a huge "balanceworks" programme. But whilst you can take advantage of this if you are already at an indispensible level (one MD in my dept now works a 3 day week, only one in the office), if you try to take advantage of this flexibility lower down the ladder it is seen as an admission that you never want to go any further. And it applies to men as well as women. One of my colleagues started working strictly 9-5 after his wife suffered pnd after the birth of their 3rd child. He has slowly but steadily been sidelined into an administrative role as he is not seen as someone who can put in the hours required for the more interesting stuff. The only way working from home and career progression go together here is if you do another 3 hours from home after a full day in the office.
So many companies have the view that all their employees should give 120% to their work, and stuff everything else. We really do need a huge change in that attitude to enable companies that happy employees can work more productively. But there will always be young, ambitious people who don't see anything wrong with their careers being the most important thing in their lives and couldn't care that firms take advantage of them as long as they are well renumerated.

These surveys are a waste of time,dh's firm also came off well in on eof them,this is the same firm who also thought it was acceptable to ask him to leave me in labour with ds3 and go to the other end of the country for a fortnight!They do have good policies for support staff and if you are near retirement and very senior but none of this applies to proffessional staff or in fact partners,in my experience the law is especially bad,after all over 50% of those qualifying are female but only a small % of partners.

I think small firms/companies provide a far better working environment. I worked for a reasonably large educational company that was divded into small separate independent schools. It was a fantastic place to work. The school I worked for had about 10 teaching staff. We were treated as individuals. Also the only place I've worked where I could tell my boss to f* off!! This type of compaby would never do well in a survey as they can't afford the private heath care and other benefits, but to be treated as a human each day, with an outside life more than made up for that. DH was always very jealous of my working relationships.

We've heard of human scale education, how about human scale workplaces?

hi jimjams, it's me again, your on-line stalker...

you are completely right about how hard it is when you are trying to get established in academia. before my dh got his permanent job, he was juggling three short-term p/t contracts to make ends meet, two in london and one in hull! it is only since he got his permanent job that he has had the flexibility i mentioned. and we were b**y lucky he got a job near london, many academics are working at opposite ends of the country from their partners. oh, and my real bugbear, most earning less than the average graduate starting salary. they really do it for love of the job!

in terms of other careers, i still think there is a presentee, rather than deliverables based, culture which means that working long hours is seen as a sine qua non for advancement. if there were a critical mass of employees including some men, who were prepared to say "no more!" - and take the salary cut of course - i think many bastions of the long hours culture would be forced to change. unfortunately, that seems a long way off.

i'm very lucky at my place, v. supportive bosses etc. plus i have been there ages and "established" myself. my responsibilities have increased twice since i came back from maternity leave, despite reducing my hours. however, it is actually easier for me now that i'm a bit more senior. it's the junior PMs who are trying to make their names and get promoted who bear the brunt of the long hours necessary. i've done all that in my time...

having said that, i frequently work longer hours than my contract, and still work 5 days a week, and i have deliberately chosen that way of working to enable me to maximise what career chances i have left. would not be able to do it without dh's flexible working and willingness to pitch in and do more than 50% of childcare and chores some weeks when i have to work a lot.

will have to see how things go when i start my new role next month, it is going to be more demanding and higher profile (i hope so, that's what they've promised me! hmmm...) so i could end up forced to work a great deal more. we'll see... at least i can say i've tried!

I don't feel as if I've 'slipped back',more that I've started a new career since ds was born. I am now very freelance, with lots of different clients and the career structure isn't there (deputy editor, editor, editor of bigger magazine...) but it is a different career structure. I get better known, do more high profile features, get paid more etc. It's my own small business, which is a challenge too. And I control my hours etc. I think this is the way forward for so many women. My accountant is a mother who set up on her own so she could work around her kids. I know not everyone can do this, but more and more women are becoming consultants, setting up small businesses etc because they are so tired of the macho presenteeism culture of nearly all firms or the crap pay and conditions of working for others lower down the ladder. Funnily enough all my stepdaughter's career dreams are freelance options - photographer, caterer etc.

Freelance/consultancy is definitely the way to go. TBH I'm not a great believer in fighting to change the system- unless you feel really really passionately about it. It is such hard work you have to feel very strongly. My grandmother managed to work with her MP to get an act pushed through parliament, I get involved in autism/SEN campaigns becuase I feel very strogly that a generation is being forgotten. Would I feel like putting energy into fighting against the presenteeism/macho workplace? Not at all, I'd rather do something like aloha and look for an alternative.

Banging your head against a brick wall is not good for sanity, surely better to look for something else?

see bossykate- I told you we agreed I think the key to flexibility is being established before having children. However I do think if someone wants to do that they should be aware that they may not be able to have those children quite as easily as they could in their 20's. Surely it all comes down to choices? It was never a hard choice for me, I was far more interested in children than a career. Had a career been hugely important to me I would have put children on hold and gone for that.

Freelance/consultancy is definitely the way to go. TBH I'm not a great believer in fighting to change the system- unless you feel really really passionately about it. It is such hard work you have to feel very strongly. My grandmother managed to work with her MP to get an act pushed through parliament, I get involved in autism/SEN campaigns becuase I feel very strogly that a generation is being forgotten. Would I feel like putting energy into fighting against the presenteeism/macho workplace? Not at all, I'd rather do something like aloha and look for an alternative.

Banging your head against a brick wall is not good for sanity, surely better to look for something else?

see bossykate- I told you we agreed I think the key to flexibility is being established before having children. However I do think if someone wants to do that they should be aware that they may not be able to have those children quite as easily as they could in their 20's. Surely it all comes down to choices? It was never a hard choice for me, I was far more interested in children than a career. Had a career been hugely important to me I would have put children on hold and gone for that.

Yes Batters and this will be reflected in the pay scales - the female dominated careers will be lower paid than the male dominated careers.

I just hope that next few generations of women will not give because of very slow progess in getting flexibility in the workplace without being 'sidelined' or even forced out.

Agree with the point Tinker and others made about most men not taking up any flexibility available. I fought like crazy to get my employers to let me work from home two days a week after ds was born (including a very serious threat to resign and bring a tribunal claim when I was about 7.5 months pregnant) and dh, who is a civil servant does not use hardly any of the family-friendly 'benfits'. He works alongside women who work term-time only as well as other part-time arrangements so it isn't as if he could not do the at his level.

Interesting that, Tinker and Sis, about men rarely taking advantage of flexi time, term time working and other family friendly benefits even when they are available. So are we back to the discussion on the other thread about men being 'allowed' to take less responsibility for home and childcare by not taking these options since they see them as benefits solely aimed at women?

And quite sis, re those careers being less well paid once they're seen as 'women's' jobs. We're still a long way off achieving pay equality despite feminism and legislation. Just a random depressing thought!

Absolutely agree www. In my previous company I was the only woman out of our group of around 60 engineers. 6 men had the same job profile as me but less actual responsibility. Guess which one of the 7 was a grade lower than the others ?

Apparently they couldn't upgrade me because the company organagram (!) only had x number of jobs at that grade and they were all full.

What about the trend that I've read is happening in America, with women now having children in their early twenties and then embarking on their careers once the children are of school age? I can see its advantages although I would imagine a woman would need to keep focused on the future to make it work, otherwise it would be easy to get sidelined into something else.