"Working for nothing"

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

Probably just me.... but does anyone else get annoyed when a woman in a partnership says 'after I've paid for the childcare there's nothing left out of my wages'? The implication being that childcare is the woman's sole responsibility and that, if she doesn't stay home to do it herself, the cost of hiring someone else to look after the children is entirely hers... even if there is a wage-earning second parent. The conversation then goes on to something like....'I'd be better off if I stopped work'...or ... 'It's hardly worth me going out to work'. As if her contribution is totally negated and her job worthless.

More accurate to say that paying for child care reduces the household income in total. Shared cost, shared responsibility. But no-one ever phrases it that way. Wonder why.

Agreed Captain, until men are required to re-think their choices and what they need to take responsibility for with regard to childcare and home, then nothing changes.

Perhaps, you should start a thread in Education/Behaviour and Development about that pickled? I'm not sure this is the right board for that.

I don't think you need two home-based parents, that's for sure (and I don't think that that of itself is a recipe for family harmony) but I am not in that situation - if I go out to work, I need to pay other people to replace me (be that tutors, shrinks, cleaners or cooks!).

Basically it depends on whether you see a need for your particular skills at home or not.

true MummyBerryJuice, apologies

thanks Bonsoir

Snowmama -

I agree (I think) that we are discussing symptoms not causes. In particular in these discussions I think often it goes straight from the difficulty of combining work and family life to locating that as a problem in the workplace (discrimination, and the way that work is organised). While that is certainly part of it, many of the causes go back to choices between parents, and before people become parents.

I don't know what the answer is. I went to a very academic girls school, where almost none of the teachers were mothers, and they gave us a completely career focused expectations; to be ambitious and not to feel limited to following traditional female career paths. But when I had my kids I did think 'why didn't anybody tell me that some jobs are easier to combine with parenthood than others?' (e.g. London centric jobs, with lots of travel and which depend on networks rather than a formalised professional development pathway are particularly hard to get back into). It was just not something that had occurred to me before. At the same time I would hate to go back to the days of going to the careers office and being asked if you wanted to be a nurse, secretary or teacher.

I guess the point is that some jobs are inherently harder to combine with active parenthood than others. Where these difficulties are just because no one has thought about how to make the job more flexible and parent-friendly then that should be addressed, but sometimes we just have to make choices about what is important in our lives at that point. Both girls and boys should both think about their ambitions and roles in the future as parents (to the extent that you think about anything in the future as a teenager!)

It is about expectations of motherhood and of fatherhood. How many parents are happy for their daughter to do an arts degree, but more worried if their son pursues a course of study which doesn't obviously lead to a career path that could support a family?

Himalaya, completely agree, and I have thought that often, in terms of 'where do you start, and what are the implications of this'

Though if I was going to be perverse and argumentative, I would say that ironically if more women refused to SAHP (the female 'brain drain' from organisations is pretty amazing/shocking - depending on your view point).

Then companies and society would be forced to change and adapt and working flexibility to combine parenthood and and working, because they wouldn't have a choice.

My company has bent over backwards to help me make it work (London centric, lots of travel, network dependent, male dominated job). For two reasons - firstly, I make them lots of money, but secondly, on a personal level, when I became single it suddenly became very visible to my (mainly male) bosses, that I am the primary breadwinner (that was actually true before but 'invisibly' so).

There are active initiatives within these companies asking ' how can we recruit and retain women', and for me it would be better to have the option of all careers is viable to both women and men, but that careers/workplace options are built in such a way that both mothers and fathers have flexibility to manage their childcare/domestic responsibilities.

I also genuinely think it is possible - public sector I believe is better - but under such pressure at the moment.

Snowmama - I agree if more women refused to SAHP and more men did, or did more employers would have to respond.

As your experience shows it is possible to stay in these non-traditional jobs (London centric, lots of travel, network dependent, male dominated etc..) if you want to enough, and your employer is enlightened.

The thing is though the pressures pushing women out of these kinds of jobs are particularly strong if they are in a partnership and have have been a SAHP for longer than maternity leave, moved to the suburbs, lost their networks, taken on a bigger mortgage which means that their DH has to give 110% at work etc.. So many women I know with multiple degrees and fascinating work experience behind them are putting their efforts into competitive cupcake baking and being alpha mum of the PTA etc..

Not that these things should not be valued (I know I am tying myself in knots here) just that the choices people make that are rational at the time, set us on pathways that are hard to get off of and end up with the inequalities we see in families and in society.

I also know that focusing on these interesting metropolitan jobs is really an elite preoccupation, and far away from the experience of many women and families who are struggling just for financial survival. But still it is linked to why there are still so few women in top jobs in media, politics, finance, business, science etc...

I often wonder how many men would really like to work more family-friendly jobs. Most seem to say they can't because of the culture of their job. Though, as has been pointed out, if they were lone parents they'd have to step up in ways they don't when they have a wife, even a working one, to pick up the slack.

But are all men really secretly longing to have a better home/family life, but they keep putting on this big manly front around each other, so are all shooting each other in the collective foot.

Or do they really prefer to work long hours and genuinely see work as more rewarding and important than family life.

Firstly, men need be given longer paid paternity leave, at the same level that women are paid, so that they can't use the excuse of not being able to afford it. I honestly believe that men rush back to work because earning money is their job, while the women stays home and bonds with the baby for 6 months. She learns how the baby relies on her for love, attention, comfort etc etc. He learns that the baby relies on him for money, and working as hard as he can is the best way he can give the baby support.

If men stayed home too, got to spend that time with their children, got to know them as well as mothers do, learned that their children need their affection, attention, love.... not their money.... I honestly believe they'd end up far more family-centric than men tend to be at the moment.

But how to get the men to stay home for those 6 months in the first place, with the big-boy work culture telling them they're being girly and risking their careers if they take that time at home?

It's a catch 22.

I know that dads can now take 6 months paternity leave. But does anyone know if they get an equivalent of SMP (not the feeble £106/week MA) that would actually make staying home affordable?

Annie - I know and have known quite a few men who have made a lot of money early in life and have subsequently "retired" in their 30s to be with their families. Early retirement was their life goal. It never lasts - they all end up starting a new business venture (and sometimes losing a lot of money into the bargain) outside the home - often very far away from home.

"Or do they really prefer to work long hours and genuinely see work as more rewarding and important than family life."

I think it would be a miracle if they didn't, given the way society values paid work, especially for men.

Bonsoir, very interesting!

Precisely. To pretty much all those points, whilst we (women) continue to carry the can on the domestic/childcare front ( SAHP/WOHP) and paid employment continues to be one of the primary ways society values a person, there us little incentive for men to make any changes.

Sorry cannot type today, I meant SAHM and WOHM's both having to take responsibilty for domestics/childcare.

Annie

Yes, I agree. But on the flip side, I wonder how many women really would like to be the primary breadwinner and have their DH/DP do most of the childcare. While I will fight to the end for the rights of those women who do want to follow this path, the majority of women that I know would actually prefer to work a bit less and see more of their children, while their OH continues to work FT. That does not of course mean it should be presumed that this is what all women want, but it does seem to be common...

Minipie - my challenge would be is that 'preference' a social contruction and concious/subconcious response to to cultural definitions, societal constructions and expectations or is it inherent/natural?

I personally believe it social contruction (on multiple levels) - we get 'sold' a story. Marry well, maintain a beautiful house, mother your children wonderfully yourself - this is what you *want - and it is such a great prize that you should take on a big risk with your own financial automomy, independence and status in society to realise it. (...disclaimer: very simplistic description of something that manifests itself in complex ways)

arghh it should read:

social contruction or a concious/subconcious response

snowmama I totally agree, a lot if not all of it is social construction. If girls were brought up assuming that they will be the primary or only breadwinner (the way that boys are), and encouraged to define themselves by their job rather than their family role (the way that boys are) then yes, there would probably be a lot more women who actively wanted and aimed for that role.

minipie - I was hoping family life and working life would be more fairly distributed, not that women would take over as primary earner and men as care-giver. I meant both parent takings 6 months off (ideally together), bonding as a family, and then both resuming their career having taken an equal knock.

Annie, but even to be able to achieve that re-distribution you would you would still have to unpick the scenario minipie identified.

Both partners would have to feel comfortable in both roles -and aspire to taking them on - in terms of, 'now I am going to step up to taking on the domestic front/childcare ' or 'now I am going to kick back and concentrate on my career'.

It is not really possible if it is felt that when Dad is at home and Mum is at work it is somehow a bad or worse scenario than the other way round (if that makes any sense at all!).

snowmama - this is where I entirely disagree. It is not a social construction that I prefer (very, very strongly) to bring up my children and take care of my home myself. The social construction where I live deeply revolves around the notion of outsourcing of childcare and housework. I just love being with my family and at home and I think offices, other than in short, sharp doses for the odd meeting, are dreadfully dull places!

Annie,

taking 6 months off together sounds lovely, but expensive (whoever is paying)- I mean once you resume work and start juggling childcare/work/family life for the next 18 years you might think you could do with some more of that time off later on rather than enforced in the first 6 months.

But then again what happens early on in your child's life can set the pattern for later, and then there is the breast-feeding.

In Sweden don't they get 18 months to be shared between mother and father. I wonder how that works out?

Himalaya - one of my sister's brothers in law was living in Norway when his first child was born. He had forced paternity leave. Like all his male colleagues, he was delighted and, as is the wont, used the time to study for further career progression

Bonsoir, possibly this is true for you.

If it was affordable and attainable for everyone to outsource their childcare and housework (to the extent that you can work a complete day and not return to a second shift of housework) - then it is conceivable that everyone could slot into their 'preferred' role, but for most that is just not the option on the table

I just think that most peoples lives are more ambigious(sp) and most will have to make a somewhat unsatisfactory compromise.

The Scandanavian example (if it is true that paternity leave is used to study), demonstrates how policy changes have to re-inforced by cultural change (including internalising the implications on an indvidual level).

I live somewhere where it is affordable to outsource childcare for almost everyone (and most people live in quite small apartments, rather than in houses with gardens, so there is a lot less domestic labour). I think it's quite a dull way to live and makes for boring societies when every last person spends all their days in a large institution (be that a crèche, a school, a corporation or a public service).

Dull, is one way of looking at it, wherever there are institutions there are people and people make life interesting - but I am not sure I have ever said this is about making life more glamorous or interesting.

My concern is about why mothers predominately take on the responsibility of childcare/domestic work and making life more 'interesting' for their families(for want of a better expresssion) and take on all the risk associated with it.

If the majority of mothers where you are have chosen to take on the affordable and workable solution available, it is perhaps a rejection of that risk, plus you maintain two incomes which arguably in the long term allows you to provide overall for your children (education, health etc) in the long term.

Obviously as you have, not all may make the same choices and may assess the benefit of them being at home is a greater benefit to themselves and their family than the risk to their own personal financial autonomy/independence etc.

Of course fathers could choose also to stay at home with the children using exactly the same calculation.

Maybe women are intrinsically more interesting and varied and are prepared to take on the perceived risks to their financial autonomy (for some) in order to have more fun? I don't exclude this hypothesis for many families I know well! It can be crashingly dull to outsource the whole of your life...