"In western society, we use sophisticated mockery to diminish the too-devoted parent.

[emkana]

We characterise women as fettishly connected to their babies if they breastfeed openly and for as long as nature intended. We seduce them back to work and the marital bed and proclaim them weak if they put their own needs on hold while attending to those of small children."

(From Deborah Jackson, Baby Wisdom.)

What do you think? Is she right or not?

TSAP,re women trying to give you contact details odf local speed dealer. What way out people you are mixing with!

PMSL misread the title totally

thought we used 'sophisticated monkeys' then

ok back to your serious discussion

WAS mixing with moondog I hasten to add, they were friends of my ex husband rather than mine. They were one thing I was glad to loose with the divorce

as a research scientist, it is virtually impossible for me to go P-T. I don't know any PT scientists. I can now see how professional woemn with higher (post graduate) education are forced into low paid jobs after having children. if you want to go FT, it seems relatively easy but PT work at the level you were at pre-kids seems very hard to get.

Sorry, but I'm not convinced she was supporting such an opinion. I'm going to have to read it all now!

Senora - There's and argument that says that it's because nursing is seen as a feminised job that it's wages are traditionally low. The whole workplace has become what is termed 'feminised' after the fall of the heavy industries - the service industry for example, where wages are generally kept at a minimum.

Nooka, this post-feminist tagline of 'choice' is a bit of a smokescreen IMO. As Imelda Whelehan asks in Overloaded, '..who contols the 'choices available'?

Bosscat - Law is about as much a pillar of the 'patriachy' as it's possible to get. Its saddening but your expeience does seem to support the general male centric 'cut and thrust' of the area. I'm not advocating that view by the way, just recognising it.

BTW, what's your Africa theory Senora?

I absolutely agree with Monkeytrousers. Once largish numbers of women begin to move into any profession its status and rates of pay immediately begin to fall.
Re pressure on women's bodies, did anyone see the horrible close up of Posh's stretchmarks on her tummy?? Would they do that if she'd had an accident and had scars?
I'm not particularly a fan of Deborah Jackson, but yes, I do think that she is saying something that is broadly true.

bosscat - I too used to work as a corporate lawyer for a top 20 City firm. I stopped work in the City even before I got pregnant because I didn't want to work to midnight every day (which I did all the time) while I was pregnant.

So I was fully committed to my baby even before he was born...shock horror !! Reserach shows that women who work long, stressful hours (plus I was 35 when I got pregnant) are much more likley to have a miscarriage or premature baby.

I get alot of comments from my mother (you have a Masters, you spent 7 years at university, bla, bla..) and my mother-in-law for giving up an extremely well-paid job with lots of status. Obviously being a full-time mum to a 13 month old isn't well-paid nor does it have any status !!

My mother also thought I was mad to breastfeed beyond 6 months because she thinks DS (now 13 months) is too thin (he isn't off course - he is just less chubby than he used to be but incredibly active, healthy, gorgeous skin, etc.)

Yes, I love the "curtailed" breastfeeding thing too ! I don't ever want to be the one to "curtail" it and will let DS to "extend" it as long as he wants to even if it means me going to his nursery when he is 3 and I have to go and breastfeed him there at lunch time - that's how strongly I feel about it !!

In fact I have often thought of going to my old law firm which is full of pin-stripe suited old f**ts and taking out a boob and breastfeeding my toddler right in front of them !

Ohh, I'm up for that!!

I'm with the Africa theory: I have taken 'time out' (and there's another phrase which gets my goat - it's not time out, it's just another part of your life) periodically to travel and have had some potential employers think that I'm a loose cannon, I'll stay with them for a short time and then I'll be off again. Do I want to work for them?? Probably not - they're probably mired in other assumptions too. Do I wish I'd made different choices just so they'd think I was employable? Not if I'd be swapping the memory of galloping on horseback through the Arabian desert at dawn for one of sitting in a stuffy office taking helpdesk calls from someone who can't figure out how to power on their monitor. My father-in-law died of cancer this year at the age of 62 - without having the time to do some of the things he'd hoped to do in retirement - so I am reminded that at the end of the line, you only have to reconcile your choices to yourself, not to some employer droid whose name you'll have forgotten by then. Besides - in that circumstance, it won't be said employer fighting for hospice care and measuring out your morphine - it will probably be one of those children you've taken 'time out' to be with.

I'm sure my parents think my education has been wasted though. A few years ago, when I heard that an old friend from school had two children under three, with a third on the way, my father said 'What's happened with her degree now then? In the nappy bin, I suppose...' Like it wasn't worth educating her at all. I'm now seven months pregnant with their first grandchild and that comment stings - although I'm sure he'd never say similar to my face. However, I spent most of my childhood and teenage years with their ambition for me being shoved down my throat and I don't think it ever made me very happy - so if they haven't learnt by now that I'm not going to end up running MI5 or following in the footsteps of Helena Kennedy, then that's very sad for them.

One thing we can do is oppose the UK opt out on the EU restricted working week. That handicaps women even more.

bosscat - I remember in the Times/Sunday Times 'best companies to work for' there were a couple of legal firms, one of them in Manchester I'm sure, who were cited as having a lot of female staff and good work/life balance policies. May be worth a speculative application.

senor postraphe - in many ways Labour are following that policy Lone parenst who child is school age are necouraged to go on to New Deal for lone parents, I think if tehy were to actively pursue the adult worker model any further there would be an outcry which is why it is limite dbut a lot of policies regarding support fo rfamilies and changes to dla etc support tyhis idea

Yeah for this thread.

I was an Manager for young peoples home and had been with the company for 7 years, then had dd felt pressured to go back to work as they were still paying me my salary while on mat leave, went back for 7 months and thought nope don't want this, the long hours missing things dd's 1st tooth, crawl etc so handed in my notice. the director of the company so bitter:

1. started to set me up
2. planned a leaving party but did not tell me
3. put a sticky label in my card saying enjoy domestic bliss, you will regret it.

3yrs on a i don't i love ever minute of it. DD is staring full time in Sept but i still want to be ther for her, and will be. No job is worth missing my dd's growing up time.
My sil moans away (behind my back) but she regrets she did not do the same, work is not more important than my dd!!!!!!

ARHHHHHHHHHHH.

I agree with Bosscat's argument - I think you're much more stigmatised as a mother trying to get back into your career than you are as a mother who breastfeeds or co-sleeps. The latter is just a case of holding your head up high and telling your critics to mind their own business. The former can be a lot more difficult to deal with.

Also agree with Nooka's comments - I don't theink "we" do think that anyway. Some people in society feel squeamish about extended maternal contact (mainly old ladies in sauinsbury's cafe I found!) but they're hardly presenting you with a real problem are they. If you make an informed choice to become a SAHM and can afford to do so (presumably because your DH can support the family) then that's great - but I don't think you need a medal for it. Just get on with it.

Great post, RedZuleika.

I think it's a shame that there's such pressure to stay on the same linear course all through life. It's almost as if the stage you've just left is only useful as a bargaining chip for the next stage. Can't a degree be time well spent in itself?

Oh, Wordsmith, I really don' t think this is a sahm v working parent debate at all (thank god). Come on, breastfeeding past the earliest days of infancy is not easy to do in this society. I felt extremely uncomfortable feeding my son once he got past six months. I am well aware that it is considered by many people to be 'unnatural' and, indeed, sexual. That viewpoint has even emerged here, on Mumsnet. I think the 'bitty' sketch does actually reflect a widespread unease wtih breastfeeding and, indeed, the mother-child bond - the much-derided apron-strings etc.

I can only afford to be a SATM because of tax credits, and DP earns under 20k a year so we're certainly not rolling in it.

If we had a real choice I think we'd certainly come up with another arrangement. I want to be with my child when he needs me, but so does his dad.

Pragmatically we all have to make sacrifices for our kids, but things could still be alot better.

Aloha, hadn't meant to imply that at all, sorry if that's the way it came across, but I honestly think there are prejudices in society whichever route you choose as a mother. At the end of the day all you can do is tell them to mind their own business! But I would hate a perfectly justifiable and praiseworthy desire on the part of many mothers to stay at home with their kids to become yet another stick to beat mothers who choose to go back to work, for whatever reason. And I honestly do think that having to deal with the prejudices of employers is more difficult in the long run than dealing with the prejudices of strangers (or even your mother in law!)

Hmm, don't know about that. You can change the law and you can sue your employer, but what remedy is there against the MIL from hell?

Divorce!

Meant to add ironic of-course-i-don't-mean-that emoticon there.

Of course you don't...

!!!

Think it is rather fortunate that we are "seduced" back to the marital bed and work. Up until the 1920s most women had no choice on either. The majority of women had to work: be it helping with hunting and foraging way back in our nomadic days, domestic service or farming, textiles, factory work etc etc.
I would imagine in years gone by there was less talk of "not now dear I'm tired/post-natal/sore" when women had to obey men too!!!!!!
This concept of women being able to just stay at home and care for their children is soooooooo new in historical terms. We are lucky, lucky, lucky those of us who have this choice!!!!

Thats true Bugsy, but so is the social isolation that goes with it.

Have I just walked into a Germaine Greer book signing?