Women have their little careers till they have babies. Then they do as little as possible, preferably not working at all after that

[StealthPolarBear]

I am infuriated by this attitude which seems to be prevalent. After women have had babies they only work if they have to, and go part time if they can. But I can't put into words why I work - why wouldn't I? I work for the same reasons as I did before I had children. I work for the same reasons as DH works.
Either of us could give up work and we'd cope. But that was true pre-children. Women continuing to work FT seems to be a slur on their man's ability to 'provide'.

seeker, you are not speaking of yourself, I hope. If you find yourself getting emotional, it is time to take a deep breath.

so basically are we saying, as women we should never make ourselves vulnerable in case someone takes advantage of that?

is this only financially or emotionally to?

I mean why fall in love? have children? that is making yourselves emotionally vulnerable, it means someone is able to hurt you...

I just dont get it tbh.

Like those women who get married and are abused the worst part of the situation is not that they were hurt physically and emotionally, but the fact they were hurt financially.

No woman should make her self financially vulnerable in case she needs to LTB. However why not just say no woman should fall in love or be in a long term relationship incase he turns out to be a B?

I'm with seeker on this one, which is pretty much why I've dropped out. Have nothing else to add to the discussion and don't like the turn it's taken tbh. And YES I know it's not up to me.

Well wipe my eyes,that's quite a dramatic summation nailak and not what anyone said

Op,you work and opine why don't mums work after having baby?
Seeker has posted she doesn't work by choice after having baby?
What do you both have in common?

Yes I work. No I don't opine on why women don't work. I guess we both have child(ren).

Stealth.

FWIW, I know you were asking a legitimate question and had no intention of causing a sah v woh argument.

Let's be clear you quite strident op and subsequent posts about working
To extent you said want it not be be assumed women remove self from workplace!
More in step with other posts,inc mine, than the housewife posts

This is an interesting debate. Or, it would be, if everyone showed a hint of trying to see things from both sides. However, the persistent use of "housewife" to describe somebody who chooses to say at home with their children shows that there is no respect, or wish for a meeting of minds. So hey ho. Have fun running ICI. Or an international relief organization. Or whatever else incredibly high powered and massively well paid careers you all have. Because this is a debate reserved for rich women- poor and/or working class women don't have the luxury of choice. They work in crap jobs because they have to.

It's the debate people chose it to be without you diminishing because you dont concur with all pov

It seems to me that it is only when a man takes the stay at home/childcare role that it becomes a worth while occupation - does their maleness somehow confer a status on it that's not innate? Oh yeah I forgot - because it's women's work it automatically has low status.

I have a feeling that as women we are not going to encourage men to take the role while we constantly under-value it and diminish any woman taking it. Where will the change come from if we don't value the contribution of women in unpaid caring roles in the first place? While there's no doubt WOHMs are discriminated against on a daily basis (pay gap, side-lined after maternity leave etc) the clearest message at the moment still seems to be why on earth would you stay at home or take on any unpaid caring role if you had any other choices? It's not really selling it to men is it? I think this is flawed feminism.

I want to see women represented in all careers but I don't see why the price has to be the undermining of all roles associated with childcare/caring and the home. I want to raise its status so both sexes see it as an equally valid choice because if more men did it, women would be free to make other choices if they wanted to. If we just maintain that it has no value unless we outsource it, which is not always viable for many families anyway, nothing will change. Women will continue to do the majority of unpaid work (and whether you call it a job or not, looking after your own children perhaps with SN or illness or elderly parents is most definitely work and not leisure) and although it may not be realistic to expect capitalism to attach a wage to SAHParenting/caring there is no reason as a society why we can't appreciate its positive impact on families, communities and society as a whole in the same way we should value having women represented in all areas of employment because it impacts positively on society. Why does one have to be crap so the other can be good?

Oh and I don't get all this talk about SAHMs being dependent on their partners. In a healthy relationship it should be a two-way street anyway and in many families childcare cannot realistically be done by anyone else but a parent - so the worker is dependent on the carer too. My DP and I chose to have children - if he wants to work he is dependent on me to look after them and facilitate him working. He would need to be very rich indeed to cover the cost for full-time care and HE of children with SN and illness - and even then I doubt he would have found someone suitable to do the job. We are a unit - joint account, mortgage and savings. Both heavily insured if the worst happens. If there is dependence it's on each other.

I've thought about this a lot and IMO I have only let my daughters down in my choice to SAH if I don't support the rights of women to make different choices than my own or I fail to educate them about the millions of possibilities open to them in life or I don't demonstrate an equal partnership with their father. How can I be letting my daughters down by choosing a path that has responded to their needs as well as my own and kept us together as a family?
Oh yes I forgot because patriarchal capitalism says my role has no intrinsic or economic value - well bugger that I'm not listening anyway I'm a feminist!

Wow I'm knackered now!

The problem is that whenever roles change their gender association, their status changes with it.

E.g. Cheer leading used to be a male sport that women were seen as too delicate for. As women got involved, the cheering was sidelined and became lower status.

Pearl diving, a highly dangerous and physically demanding job. Yet v low paid, and the low pay is accepted as it is done by women so therefore the danger and demands don't matter.

Look how a chef gets paid/respected more than a cook.

And even when the job title and description are the same, men get paid more than women, promoted more than women.

So it's not surprising that women retreat to the private sphere of their families, where they can have some autonomy.

What is the answer? That we respect all people equally, no matter what their job or gender or color etc. that we show that respect by various means, money, kindness, listening to them, acknowledging and making known their abilities etc.

Only we don't. Ina million different ways we let our prejudices and assumptions be know. So by the time a person becomes a parent the decisions are lost predetermined.

scottish i am not saying anyone said that, I am saying idea that woman should never be financially vulnerable, however it is ok to be emotionally and physically vulnerable can be interpreted as an assumption that being without money is more dangerous then having your heart broken, or being physically abused.

Please can someone explain to me why this is wrong.

If we are saying you cannot trust a man to be financially dependent on them, how come we can trust men to be psychically and emotionally involved with them?

ha. I posted earlier about how this is such bi-partisan, emotional and divisive issue here in the UK (I am from Finland). I also acknowledge that the Scandinavian model offers universal, subsidised childcare delivered by childcare professionals educated to a degree level in what is considered a respected and well paid profession (early years education). My sister paid EUR 150 per month for a full time nursery place around the corner in a brand new nursery designed by the town's best architect (we take design seriously up north..). This is a big difference. She is a teacher and when she returned to work after a year's maternity leave she was able to contribute economically (to her family finances, to the tax coffers enabling the state to build more nurseries) without being worse off. I am, involuntarily, a stay at home mum to my three. With my three university degrees. This sits very uncomfortably with me, coming from a country where not having a job if you are fit and healthy is indeed considered plain lazy. The key is in the quality and affordability of childcare. But a country that does not put this at the forefront of policy is enforcing traditional structures and in fact does NOT give women choice. I am not a SAHM by choice. I am because I have seen enough nurseries here being run by illiterate teenagers who work in childcare on minimum wage because they can't get another job.

this is also another UK-specific bunfight. As a long-term expat here I find this country increasingly divided. That and the sexism and this sodding rain makes me think it might be time to up sticks...

Drowninginlaundry- is the general view in Scandanavia that children do better if they are in full time nursery? Or is the main driver of the system that the economy does better if women WOH?

It's not entirely UK specific though, is it. It happens in other countries too (like Australia, where I live; and probably the USA although I wouldn't know).

I have to say that when I emigrated to Australia part of the "deal" was that I wouldn't have to go and find a job - I was a WAHM in the UK because I had my own business as a therapist, but starting that again in Australia would have been incredibly difficult, as I didn't want to bring random unknowns into my home (all the clients I had in the UK were ones I had when I worked in a clinic, so I knew them all and trusted them to be in my home with me and my baby); plus getting all the approvals, professional registration and insurance would have been rather expensive and difficult. But I have already worked for 27 years - so it felt a bit like I had "done that" and now it was time for me to focus on my child, and hopefully have another one. That took a while but now I have DS2 as well, DH is happy for me to be SAHM until he goes to school as well. But by then I'll be 50 and there isn't an awful lot of scope for a 50yo to go back into the workforce, even in Australia!

No doubt I will then try and get some clinic work, restart my business, but we'll see. In the meantime I do have some freelance work from the college I used to work for, so I'm not entirely without occupation - but it's not something I could use to get a job in Australia.

I do think that the main driver of the childcare system in Finland is women working. I know families that could live very comfortably on the husband's wage alone, but the mother works because she did not spend five years at university and 5-10 years building a career to give it all up when she had children. The universal childcare stems from the post-war years of rebuilding, women were needed in factories and the state had to organise childcare to enable women to work. It is now an established set up. I rarely see a debate about whether full time nursery is good for the children or not, whenever I question this I get told 'but what other option do I have, I have a job' with a look reserved for someone slightly dim-witted. So when the starting point is always that both parents work, they have had to create a system to support it. I get that it's really hard to think of children thriving in full time nursery from young age, but when people here think of nurseries as if they are Victorian orphanages they think of what is available here in the UK. It's not the same at all, not at all.

So what if half of a partnership decided, after proper discussion, that they wanted to take, say, two unwaged years to paint, or look after an elderly parent, or pursue an interest, or do charity work, or do a non work related Masters degree?

Lets be clear yes, strident op about assumptions, not the choices women make. Do not try to twist this to make my op something it wasn't. And yes I agree with a lot of what you say, and disagree with some. But the way you say it and interact with people leaves a lot to be desired. As others have mentioned you choose your vocabulary to be as belittling as possible and are never able to consider another point of view. I have no desire to be associated with that style of argument, and tbh having to wade through it diminishes almost all the interest I have in the subject.

SPB, the wretched assumptions flow from women's choices exercised time and again in the same way, and are valid from the standpoint.

The two are not distinct - that is where I see cognitive dissonance in your argument and perhaps a certain intellectual denial (dishonesty?) on your part for the convenience of not derailing your thread for SAHM/WOHM issues which did not work anyway.

You cannot dictate how a thread will go just because you are the OP (not saying you are) but you also cannot complain if others address the elephant in the room.

blueshoes and Scottishmummy - just out of interest is your feeling that women are letting the side down/are not great role models for their daughters if SAHPs purely down to wanting to redress the inequality in the workplace, (which is valid) or is it because you attach no value to SAHParenting/care for the ill/disabled anyway and feel that women are reinforcing their low status by voluntarily doing it unpaid?

Blueshoes- the room is so full of elephants you can hardly move for the bloody things. Which one in particular are you talking about? I am happy to address any of them.

Morning im happy to clarify my points

Let's refrain from pantomime villain boo hiss is sm drunk,oh she's a bad un,she's got funny eyes.it's puerile,it detracts from discussion.and frankly I'm not going to stop posting because someone doesn't like my pov

I am talkin of a general norm,it won't be applicable to all.but it's the recognizable man work,woman housewife familial set up,that's pretty widely enacted.certainly widely discussed on mn

Op posted thoughts that there is a societal expectation by some that post-baby women dont return to work.

after baby that work will cease to be replaced by raising children at home.the dynamic shifts from two working adults,to one waged male and unwaged housewife. The man works,retain career,retain finances,becomes sole earner. The woman give-up work, becomes financially dependent. Essentially enacting a stereotypical patriarchy of male breadwinner,housewife. In my opinion by enacting this patriarchal setup,it maintains it too. It is the demonstrable manifestation of babies=women's work,female domain is home,domestic,childcare.make domain is career,earning,supporting dependents. It maintains,enacts and reinforces stet typical gender roles. This potentially feeds into expectation when woman pg shell give uo work,be housewife. Children in this set up see the stereotypical gender roles,it's their norm.

Now in print,online,and in theory the positive proposed is women in workplace,as colleagues,normalizing and participating in range employment. IMO,by not working,by being housewife it does reinforce and maintain patriarchy. The opportunity to see female work becomes reduced, and at best is discussed in last tense.the mum can recall when I was x,y,z job,last tense,not current. Women's career becomes something to do til you become parent,expectation is it will be mum who give-up work

I think housewife demonstrate limited role model of what women do. Certainly there will be other working women encountered eg teacher,all daily stuff like retail,going gp, or friends,family who work.but the housewife is essentially reliant upon other women demonstrating women working to their own children as they canto it

I want to demonstrate work to my children as I have a belief it's good for mental,physical health,self esteem and give financial security.ones own money

Ok,this is met with but housewife is work,its same as being a childcare worker etc
No, a childcare worker is subject to external rules,regulation etc
But significantly childcare worker is employed,economically active. Watching your own kids isn't work,it's parenting.when I'm watching my kids I'm not working. You can't compare raising own kids to employment

I'm not commenting on women caring role,I'm commenting on women absenting workplace to be housewives.and the impact this has in maintaing patriarchy

There is a difference between stopping paid work to look after children and stopping paid work to be a housewife. My I respectfully ask you to stop using the word housewife.