Equality at home - Can this really be achieved?

[marga73]

There is an issue I've been wanting to discuss for a long time. It's the issue of equality inside the house.

Even though women now work and are able to gain respectable positions in the workplace, and we can say that some level of equality has been attained, it seems to me that once they have children, women lose more than men in terms of work opportunities and financial independence. And all because the house and the children still seem to be a "woman's job".

It's all great to find women who are happy being the SAHP, but don't these women feel sometimes that being 100% financially dependent on their husbands is frustrating? Doesn't this situation make them feel trapped and powerless? Is it OK for women to sacrifice their independence for the sake of their children and the house keeping?

I work part-time, and have two small children, and still feel trapped sometimes. I'm grateful in many ways that my husband earns enough so we don't have to worry about paying for mortgage, food, childcare etc - and I contribute to this too - but I feel it's far beyond from the ideal I had when I was young and it really annoys me. If I'm honest, it makes me very angry.

I would like a society where men and women work part time, share domestic tasks 50/50, and look after their children part time, and therefore pay for everything on equal terms. Is this too much to ask in the fierce capitalist society we live today? Am I naive to think that should be the case?

I didnt say that I did !
If I was at work DH was at home and vice versa - My DC have never been in any type of childcare wordfactory.

Xpost again !

I agree wordfactory that flexibility and shifts etc can be a godsend although when they are tiny it feels a bit like a treadmill of childcare/work but it gets easier when they are older.
I do think thought that all good parents provide resources- books/experiences/talk and discuss when they are together and that can take place whether you SAH or WOH.

Sorry wordfactory if any of my replies were snippy - I know we are lucky to have such flexibility .
Am just fed up of hearing that you cannot possibly have a happy and successful family life if both parents work.

OK, here's the basic equation for equality within the home if you are living in a household as a family with more than one adult in it: All adults have the same amount of leisure time - that is, time spent doing something the adult wants to do, for the adult's own benefit, that doesn't involve chores or childcare. If only one adult is working outside the home and bringing in money, that adult may well spend less actual time on housework and childcare, but that adult doesn't get to finish doing the paid job and be waited on by the adult who is not in paid employment, the adult with the paid job does not get ownership of all the available leisure time. And as children get bigger, they can contribute to the domestic work as well as needing less time to be spent on their physical care (you don't need to watch a 10-year-old constantly or change his/her nappy several times a day) (OK sorry this is a post and a hypothesis predicated on any children within the family not having the sort of SN which means they will need the same sort of constant care as a toddler for the whole of their lives), so that the amount of leisure time available to the family increases - and so does every family member's share of that leisure time.

I really dont think exoticthat one person has to have a "lesser job".

You really think that both parents can be the head of a company.?

I don't think they have to have a lesser job, if they both have more lowly ones with some flexibility but if (to use Xenia's example) the head of BP is married to the head of Ernst Young I don't see how they cope.
Which one is going to ferry DCs to football training in early evening, cook the meal, do the school run in the morning, help with homework, get up to the ill DC in the night and clear up vomit at 2am, mow the lawn, produce a costume for a school play, say 'no I can't go to Rome next week because my partner is abroad that week'. It is impossible unless you pay someone to do most of it. It really doesn't matter if you pay for a gardener etc but I can't think it is good for the DCs if you are simply not there, with mother saying 'I'll Skype from Rome and help you will your homework and Daddy will Skype from Paris tomorrow and we will make it up by having a lovely day on Saturday!
I know someone who teaches in a boarding school in Surrey where a lot of the DCs are local-the parents are just too busy to have them at home. It solves the problem of what to do with them during the week and they certainly throw ridiculous amounts of money their way as pocket money but I feel very sorry for them.
I know this is extreme and most people are not talking about this level of work, but Xenia is making out that we should see this sort of a job as an aim-whereas I would hate to see even one parent in it.

exoticfruits - that's a very good post that illustrates precisely where the problems lie.

There was a good article in last Saturday's Telegraph that raised the issue of parenting by iPhone. DP forwarded it to a friend of his who has recently given up his global investment life-in-a-plane career job in order to spend more time with his three DCs who are all (a) brilliant (b) at fantastic schools (c) severely going off the rails from lack of parental attention.

I know that people will say it is extreme and it is not what they mean, but it is in reply to Xenia who wants more women at the top. My argument is that you can only get more women at the top if they have a supportive partner. There is no reason at all why it shouldn't be the woman in the top job-but I don't see how you have both and DCs.

It's not extreme in my neck of the woods, nor among the families I know in England either. It's what happens almost inevitably when you have two high-performers in a couple.

Xenia clearly married down so that her career could come first, and then got into trouble in her marriage because her H and she were not compatible. Why does she think that is a better solution than two equals in a couple deciding at some point that there isn't space for two ambitious careers in the same family and one of them scaling back - but staying together?

An interesting article. I rather let Xenia's comment that a high IQ gets you a top job pass me by-it simply doesn't in my experience. The days of anyone walking into a good job are gone. It is tough when you hit the real world-whatever your education and qualifications.

Getting a top job is certainly not IQ dependent. There is a lot more graft that brain required most of the time! Graft is good, but I don't know anyone who has reached the top without a lot of people (often unacknowledged) picking up the pieces around them.

I think there is something about not having 2 partners in highly time consuming roles. That would be very very difficult and I dont know any couple in that position. Wider family also has a role but I know everyone is not in that lucky position.
I think there is give and take in a relationship, I certainly wouldnt call it 'marrying down' when a more successful partner marries a less successful one. That is really putting a disproportionate emphasis on someones earning power, although for some people this is very important.

Interesting article in the Telegraph - clearly Miriam Gonzalez Durantez is earning far more than her husband.

They seem to make the high powered mix work although I am sure they have an army of help.
Nick Clegg

The Clegg-Gonzalez family is insufferable. Both of them were born into huge privilege, have massive networks and fallbacks and yet set themselves up as some kind of example that anyone who works hard could and should achieve.

The Camerons are a lot more honest about the good fortune they were born into.

Funny but I dont get that from them at all and I never got the impression that they were trying to hide their advantages. Her parents were teachers and yes her father did become mayor and she got university scholarships so although her background was comfortable and somewhat privileged I imagine that she still had to work for what she achieved.
I am ambiguous about the Camerons, I neither particularly like or dislike them, they are just a bit blah

exotic I didnt realise you were talking about heads of companies etc

Ive got no experience of that type of role but I would imagine that couples in that type of situation would be able to afford the help needed - probably they could afford to be very picky and employ highly qualified nannies who would be expected to to do the things you describe.

i have a pretty high iq and i'm spectacularly useless to the working world - certainly at this point in my life. i don't think high iq is a qualification for a great job.

The same Camerons who claimed to be "middle class"?

FWIW, it really doesn't matter what arrangments each family have as long as they are well-thought out and implemented with love and good intentions. I know someone who lived apart from his mother (single parent) monday-friday while his mother pursued a career. 40 years later, he is astonishingly successful, almost universally well-liked and exceptionally close to his mother with no apparent 'ishoos.'

There is no 'right' way to bring up a child and constantly harking back to the WOHM/SAHM debate sets women against each other instead of uniting them so that they can change the system to juggle children and career/job more easily.

exotic I didnt realise you were talking about heads of companies etc

This is why I am coming out as extreme-I am merely replying to Xenia, who seems to be away at the moment. It is perfectly possible for most people to manage e.g. 2 teachers, a teacher and a doctor etc but Xenia thinks that the ideal job which is 'wonderful and fascinating' is at the top and we are a disgrace if we happily bumble along as a librarian. (or I think she does)

Exotic If she thinks that then she is very small minded. Its horses for courses. I too would hate to be CEO - apart from the money, its pretty much thankless

My point exactly yakbutter. Xenia has never explained to me how the surgeon can do his job without the nurses, cleaners, cooks, laundry staff etc. I have yet to discover how the country operates with only doctors, lawyers and company directors and she hasn't enlightened me. She once said that no one should be a cleaner-they should aim to set up their own cleaning company so that we have masses of companies and no actual cleaners!

ONe of the other problems with the whole business of work and employment is that a lot of the most essential jobs, the ones that have to be done and can't be contracted out to a slave-labour factory in the developing world, are the worst paid.
Because they are seen as women's jobs, and women are not seen as worthy of money. All the low-level cleaning, caring, catering etc jobs are still percieved on some level as work that women should be doing out of love and duty, not for a wage. I still remember DS's first keyworker at nursery saying she was leaving the nursery to go and work on the checkout in Morrisons. Because the money was better.

People want cheap childcare-if we really paid nursery staff what they deserved then people wouldn't be able to afford childcare. It is the same with care of the elderly-until it is given the status and wage it needs you will get poor staff- and if you attracted high calibre staff people couldn't afford it.