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.

[BoffinMum]

This is why housing is expensive in England.

We have only build on 2.3% of the available land

[Shesparkles]

Horsetowater, you're the first person I've come across who shares my opinion! Any time I've voiced it before, people have looked at me like I'm wired to the moon!

[GoodnessIsThatTheTime]

I've often thought that. In my parents generation it was strictly 3x one income, so houses could be bought on a standard income.

3 x average income would be what, 75 grand? Nowhere in the south you can buy even half a house for that. You need 2 incomes to support a mortgage and so the prices go up again etc.

We're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Would love to exist on one salary and have one parent do school/sick/holiday cover and go in to help etc. Can't really afford to but also cant rally afford childcare either!

[horsetowater]

Boffin there are plenty of homes to go round, they just aren't in areas where there people want to actually live. Well paid work in the Regions is what's in short supply, not land or homes.

And there must be an equation to explain how a change in mortgage availability affects house prices?

[morethanpotatoprints]

We have inexpensive houses round here, but not the high wages and the cost of living is a bit better.
We had to move 300 miles for the work when we first started out, 12 years later we moved back where we started from and have never looked back.
You have to do this sometimes and cut your cloth accordingly.
I think young people today want to start off with a lot more than we did. Their expectancies are far greater than ours and society has told them they both need to work.

[itsbetterthanabox]

Boneyback what do you mean the world is not set up for men to do childcare? They do the same jobs as women so what is the issue?

[TheWordFactory]

morethan I think young people have it very much harder to get started these days.

Saddled with debts from university.
House pirces throught he roof, plus the amount of depsoit required is increasdingly large.
Cost of living high.

Plus they know that their future won't be topped up by tax credits, child benefit. Nor will they receive any decent amount of state pension.

I think for those of us who have benefited from any or all of these things, it behoves us to have a little empathy rather than patting ourselevs on the back as to just how marvelous we are...

[hm32]

I don't think they are criticizing parents - more the commercial world. If parents could work more flexible hours, then one parent could start early and finish early, one late and finish late. Children could be dropped off by one parent, and picked up by the other. I saw arrangements such as this, where parents worked shifts, and the children were happy and content.

I used to teach, and I saw the difference between those children in childcare 8-6, and those who went home/to family at 3.30pm. I chose not to have children until I could be there for them, as a direct result of that experience. We're not well off at all with me staying at home (no treats, charity shop clothes etc), but we have enough and my DS is happy. DH's salary will also increase in the years to come.

The article is about the needs of children - not about the needs of their parents. People forget this.

[violetlights]

I just need to say that teaching does not in any way involve 'part-time' hours anymore. My sister is a teacher and some of her teaching posts have involved her working from 6am-midnight, working 7 days a week and throughout the 'holidays'. And that is working with 5 year olds. Seriously. It's horrific. People need to recognise this... that is why so many good teachers are leaving for other professions or private education where at least their pay can better reflect their hours.

Teachers have the same issues as everyone else with childcare and I think it is an issue which needs discussing. The cost of living nowadays means it is extremely hard for either parent to give up work to look after the children even if they think it is in their best interests. Households largely depend on two incomes and the government does nothing to help alleviate this.

[OBface]

Exactly wordfactory. We bought our first house in our mid twenties when the housing market was at its peak - September 2007. Our mortgage requires two salaries to afford it whatever way you spin it.

But even without the pressures of our outgoings I would still choose to work. Honestly not sure what I would do with my time otherwise and have worked hard throughout uni and since to get to where I am. Do appreciate that this is a very personal decision though and I respect others who choose differently. We also benefit from grandparents and a hour circle of friends which enables us to do this.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

There have been articles showing that the graph of increasing house prices and the graph showing increasing women in work aren't closely correlated.

Lending was a competitive business so banks began to lend 4-5 times salary to win more business, regardless of single or couple.

Besides (a) many women have always worked, it's just more are in "career" jobs and (b) wouldn't you rather women could work and have financial independence than the alternative?

[TheWordFactory]

The idea that women have driven up house prices is just pure sexism.

As is the idea that women and children were so much better off during the sixties and seventies.

Serioulsy, how much do you have to hate women to buy into these notions?

[Grennie]

Masses of women in the 60's and 70's were doped up with pills from their Dr to get them through the day. Working class women worked then, but were paid less than men for doing the same job and sexual harassment was something they were told to accept. Middle class women were often totally dependent on their Husbands, which meant they were very vulnerable to abuse and being manipulated and controlled.

Divorce carried great stigma and many women who had a child outside of marriage, were forced to give them up for adoption. Women being beated up by their Husbands were often told by relatives and friends that they had made their bed, so now they had to lie on it. There was very little help for children being sexually abused. I have read of children going into a police station and telling the police their father was raping them, and the police dismissed them.

For a fortunate small group of women it may have been a great time. For many women it was a very harsh time to be a woman.

[Grennie]

My mum impressed on me the idea that I always should be able to support myself by working, so that I was never tied to a partner who treated me badly. She was right to do so.

[horsetowater]

So you think that dual income mortgages and the frequency of them played no part in the increase in house prices in the 70s? Already by the early 80s prices were up so high in London that it was hard to afford even a small flat without a dual income.

House price increases pre-date the banking crisis, pre-date the sale of council homes. Of course the council homes sales added a new surge of first time buyers, but that didn't come until about the mid 80s.

You shouldn't need to have two full time incomes to afford to put a roof over the head of your family.

And I'm not sexist wordfactory just looking for the answers. That's quite insulting actually.

[LittleBearPad]

Well said Wordfactory.

The misogyny on these threads is horrible. Everything is a women's fault, particularly working women - they're the worst. . They're the reason their children aren't growing up in an Enid Blyton story.

You know apart from the fact that that life never existed, not even for Enid Blytons children.

[LittleBearPad]

You are staggering sexist Horse and woefully under informed.

[TheWordFactory]

Grennie but that was fine because the children were the priority.

They were well fed, educated, cared for, safe. Their voice was stroing in society...oh wait a minute.

[horsetowater]

I agree Grennie that the 60s and 70s were a terrible time for women, trying to explain to my daughter about this era is very hard - 'OK so they had the pill, but in the end it meant that although they had a kind of liberty, they had everything, the vote, equal rights, they still had all the sexist attitudes. So although they had more control over their bodies (important though that is) sexual liberty just gave them an extra psychological burden'.

I gave her my copy of Kate Figes 'Life after Birth' instead.

[LittleBearPad]

Well as Grennie also points out it wasn't necessarily a great time to be a child either.

[horsetowater]

Littlebear you have added so much insight into this discussion how grateful poor woefully ill-informed me is.

[TheWordFactory]

horse yes it was an insult.

People who hate women deserve to be insulted!

If you're looking for answers, then read your history. Educate yourself...

But I don't htink you have any intention of doing so. You have your set little paradigm and you're sticking to it!

[GuineaPigGaiters]

'High house prices means you need two incomes to survive, so families have no choice any more.'

I'm going to have to disagree with this. In some areas it MAY be the case, but I don't work...the payoff is we rent, have no holidays/pension/savings/have very basic old bangers and are very careful with money.

I think for many people (please note that I don't say all, there are always those for whom there is genuinely no choice, single parents spring to mind) it's that they want the lifestyle of having a house/car/holidays/nice clothes/nights out over everything else.

A lot of the people I know who have kids in club all the time and where both parents work have a very comfortable lifestyle and could absolutely choose for one parent to be at home instead.

[LittleBearPad]

Good I'm so pleased

Now pop your head out of your little bunker and take a look at how the world really is.

[Grennie]

In London, it was the end of rent control that saw prices soaring. I was living in London at the time, although unfortunately not in a rent controlled place. Once rent control stopped, rents soared. As rents became more expensive, house prices rose as well. The sale of council housing then added to the mix.