Teachers speaking out about parents' long working hours

[vestandknickers]

Here.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27027677

Interesting. I think it is good that this is being raised as an issue.

I am not anti working parents at all, but surely a society that thinks it is ok for children to be at school from 8am to 6pm needs to look at itself.

Hopefully it is still a small minority of children who spend five days a week at school for these hours, but it is good that teachers are speaking out before it becomes seen as an acceptable norm.

In my ideal little world parents would be financially supported/recognised whatever they chose

Until the child was 5 let say and for the first 2 children only

But the country can't afford that!

Actually, the country can afford that Rufus. If we stopped giving tax breaks and handouts tro the rich.

I do find the argument odd. To stay at home until your children are 18 to give them the 'best start'. They have dc at 22 and stay home themselves. So do their dc. When will the benefit be seen?

I always find it difficult - educated women staying home to boost the educational prospects of their daughters, who presumably they want to do the same. In which generation will the women stop putting their daughters first and actually enjoy the fruits of all this sacrifice?

Anyway, this thread has gone wildly off track!

big

I don't think my children would have the opportunity to be SAHPs even if they wanted to be (not sure they do from their recent comments to me!!! )

Besides dd is going to be a movie star

Yes big. And the reality is it is always SAHM. When dads start getting lectured for working and not being SAHD, then I will take this more seriously. At the moment, it is simply another way to bash women.

zactly Grennie

Well to be fair Chunderella I doubt she does every day, she would be doing playground patrol or something sometimes but as I usually scoff a sandwich at my desk I don't feel too bad for her! And of course she does extra stuff like Christmas pageants, netball practice etc but most jobs require extra stuff don't they? My company isvery social and there are constant events & dinners I have to go to - I'm struggling with it at the moment as am nearing end of first trimester and all I want to do after work is lie on the couch and eat toast!

I do agree about the feminism problem. We are now expected to do it all - raise a child, get a career and work and in many households the man still doesn't pull his weight and so we end up with a large proportion of the house work too. We can't do it... DP has told me categorically, having been made redundant that he is never going to be a housewife, he isn't bothered by a messy house until it smells so if I want it tidy I have to do most of it. It also doesn't help that we have everyone particularly women, judging us left right and centre, if you stay at home you should be bringing money in, if you work your kids are missing out... We can't win!

Alita - I am furious for you on your behalf. Your DP has absolutely no right to disrespect you like this.

Feminism never expected women to do it all. The problem is lazy entitled men who disrespect their partners.

I think the difficulty is Grennie, that he seems to think he is doing much more than he is, yet I rarely see the evidence for it- for example the other day he told me off when I was cleaning the bathroom as it was his job, I had left it as long as I could with a child in the house waiting for him to do it... which I told him, and he said that he had been doing it but I hadn't noticed- well I'm not sure what he counts as doing it, as I had not at any point seen it looking clean by any stretch of the imagination (I do not have massively high standards) in the 2 weeks since I had done it. Yet he was convinced he had done it...

Littlebear I'm not upset about two income families, I stated that two income families depending on a two income mortgage are destined for two income childcare costs and that this has added to the house price bubble along with other factors.

When a child comes along there is no room for manoeuvre in the family budget. Families need more space and if one parent goes part time they have less money. Children are forced into childcare because of housing costs.

Littlebearpad we need to take feminism out of this argument. We need to focus on families and the wellbeing of children. Men can stay at home too.

When single parents are involved it's a whole nother kettle of fish.

Men can stay at home- but in my experience it's a small percentage of men that want to, and lots of women, like me, would rather be the stay at home parent- I think if it was him I would feel jealous and it would make me miss my child more, knowing how much I was missing out on. Also for me, I feel this is potentially my only chance- he has 3 already, I have one in my belly :) He is thinking about having the snip after this one (he wouldn't until baby is safely born in case the worst happened and we were unable to try again) but I have convinced him to let me get a coil instead in case we decide that we'd like a second in 4 or so years time. So yes if this is the only child I have I want to be able to enjoy it completely- though I have little chance of either of us being able to afford to stay at home, but we will see how it goes, I'm a nursing student so will take a year off on maternity leave and then do my final year with a 1 year old and then they will be 2 before I am looking at working.

I thin

FFS.

The main issue is schools and teachers being used as childcare options. That shouldn't be the case. They are learning providers. Not childcare.

Definitely agree about being learning providers and not childcare (or administrators, or social workers, or responsible for every single thing a child requires till it is 18...) In France where I used to teach that was clearly understood b y everyone, but in this country teachers and the unions have just meekly accepted everything piled on them. I wish one of the unions would stand up and say - we are professionally qualified to teach, and the rest needs to be staffed by others.

Big, that is what I always thought too.

My grandma had to stop working when she got married, though she loved work.

My mum stopped working when she had me, though she was badly suited to being an SAHM.

Damn straight I'm going to work.

Horse but you blame the increase in house prices on two income families.

And I'm sorry but you can't take feminism out of this. It's intrinsic to women working out of the house.

Interesting thread on house prices:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1378050-Feminism-and-house-prices

Early post:
From an economist background - You're right - the increase in double-earning households in one of the factors that increased house prices in the past 3 decades, but the other critical factors are:

• Sustained low interest rates
• Huge increase in mortgages at close to, or even above, 100% of the value of the housen
• Development of buy to let mortages, leading to increase in private landlords
• Increasing number of households (from a mixture of birth rates, longer life-expectancy, migration to UK, and smaller average household size)

Against this there has been chronic under-supply of housing because of the planning system in the UK, and people's innate opposition to any housing being built anywhere near them.

SO, you have not enough housing, and increasing abilty to pay for housing, so house prices go up. Increasing double-income households is one factor amoungst many in causing this.

Yes I know Doctrine, it is just one of the factors but it was one of the first to come along. You forgot sale of council homes, which was the another one and that came along in the late 70s. And the abolition of rent control which made buying cheaper than renting for the first time.

There is one other factor which is social division - a stark difference between a 'nice' area to live and an undesirable area has evolved which does two things - increasing demand for the nice areas and starving, if you like, the nasty areas. It's what the US has had for decades and it's sad that it's come to this.

Where families and childcare come into this I'm not sure but it's a result of combined pressures which mean households feel compelled to have two incomes when they have children. Their only alternative is to move to skanky ex drug den or a flat in a run down council estate and people prefer to put their children into childcare.

The only real way for families to avoid too much childcare for their children is for both partners to have flexible working hours so that one partner can be there in the morning, the other in the afternoon. It's what my parents did and it worked. No childcare required apart from very early days and that was just a few hours. But already in the early 70s there was pressure on them both to work to cover the mortgage, it's not really anything new.

My mother gave up her wish for a career in music for something better paid and more flexible and my Dad had a stressful teaching job, they certainly made sacrifices for having a large family with no financial backup from anyone.

Thanks for the link Doctrine - I thought there were just two of us that made the link between dinkie mortgages (80s speak for dual income) and house price rises. Obviously more people have made the connection.

Although there were many other factors, this has in theory doubled house prices and creating a much more competetive market.

We are all slaves to money now and it's very sad. The only SAHMs I know now are lucky financially or are carers and get extra benefits. My parents could never have survived in the environment we live in today. It's all so wrong.

It's not really a lot to do with feminism, it's about unchecked capitalism which puts immense pressure on families. It does affect women more than men but ultimately it puts pressure on children and that's the part of the equation I care about. Childcare needs to be exceptional to compensate for this loss of family time.

As is usual in free market capitalist structures, the weakest and those with no voice suffer most and take the brunt of the pressure. In this case it's children.

Just read the first few comments on the article that seem to think it is an attack on working parents, that is not what I read at all. I found it to be a criticism of the hours of employment conditions and I totally agree with it. Of course lots of children would go hungry in the present work climate if their parents did not submit these long hours. You might as well blame plantation slaves for neglecting their children.

"Although there were many other factors, this has in theory doubled house prices and creating a much more competetive market. "

In which theory, please?

I keep coming back to "what's the alternative?" If women earning well is being blamed for increasing house prices, the alternatives are men stop working in the same numbers that women used to, or women don't get the opportunity to work. Which of these alternatives do you favour?

Horse you seem to be under the misapprehension that if house pirces were lower all families would opt to have just one working parent.

But that's no longer the case.

I know lot of SAHMs. Lots and lots (I live in the La La Land of commutor line to the City). And many don't actively want to stay at home. It has come about because theitr DH works in a demanding job and often travles and perhps the Mum too used to have that kind of job.

Lots of them would love to work and wish their DHs worked less hours to make it viable.

There is also an increasing number of women with young children who don't give up their job, despite the fact that they easily could. They just don't want to.