Feminist pub no 12: The Bluestocking Returns, this time with goats!

[YonicScrewdriver]

Welcome!

Vezzie - it would be if I waited until he was at pre-school. But since he's only 5 months old now that would be a hell of a wait. And I couldn't justify putting him in paid childcare before he got his 15 hours just so I could mooch around thinking and doing admin. What is most likely to happen is that he will start nursery or whatever at some point whilst I work (or train). So without a lot of patience and the willingness to have been out of the job market for a loooong time, no, the moment won't come again .

Just one of those things. Not a big deal in the scheme of things. But I worked so bloody hard for 10 years + in the City, then small children. I'd have liked a breather before I got back on the treadmill. Even just a mini one.

"And I couldn't justify putting him in paid childcare before he got his 15 hours just so I could mooch around thinking and doing admin."

If you can afford it, don't rule it out.

It's the affording it bit! It would be one thing if I was bringing in money, and training would mean I would see a proper 'purpose' for sacrifices in terms of long term return.

I think I am wondering what you mean by "couldn't justify" paid childcare. If money is too tight to mention, then that's that.

I don't know when you were planning to go back to work anyway. but say you thought when he was around 1 (just a guess, as if you had maternity leave) then you could line up a few mornings a week with a lovely nursery or local CM from around 6 months that would be pretty low impact on him, and pretty cheap for you. (this is very do as I say, not as I do - I wish I had thought this way or been able to afford to think this way - not sure which)

A big, food-eating baby could really enjoy 9 hours a week with the right CM family and that would be 3 whole mornings or afternoons for you, as long as you line up the right person who is close enough there is effectively no travelling time. It could be around £40 a week. I know it can seem like a wrench to send your little baby out and as if you need a Good Reason, but a jolly morning with some other mother taking him to a baby group is quite a different thing from an 11 hour day while you are in the City.

I am really persuading my past self of course. I am sure you know what you are doing and have looked at all the options.

I think that if it can be covered, it's as important as doing formal training. Maybe some days per week only.

it dawned on me recently -ish that my grand mothers, for instance, both had help during periods when they did not WOH. It is a very modern thing I think that women have come to think of themselves as economic units who must bring money into the house like men, and if they aren't, they must spend as little as possible and deserve no support.

I think the traditional MC way was you paid help, and the traditional working class way was that there were much weaker flimsier boundaries between families such that there was an informal network of support (they still worked bloody hard of course I am sure, by any standards, but although the ratio of adults:work doesn't change by weakening the boundaries between families, the pressure on each individual woman at the most pressured times of her life is somewhat relieved)

I did not process any of this until I was already back at work, and only some time after that did I admit to myself that I was partly back at work to justify the childcare - just a desperate need to be doing something else and to be on my own, thinking, some of the time, and being out Doing A Job is the only way our society legitimises that for women.

If you really have no spare money I would consider a reciprocal arrangement with another family to get that 9 or 10 hours a week. I am probably being over pushy on this because I found mat leave, and then going straight back into full on work, so hard and am desperately trying to boss you around to try the things that I didn't try! sorry

I suppose what I mean by 'can't justify' is that I feel like this period of life is quite intense for all of us. DH works long hours and away. If he said he wanted to go down to three days a week (say) to train or take another job, or look after the children, I'd be very supportive of that. If he said he wanted to spend two days a week mooching and thinking, I'd be a bit . Because it would mean major financial sacrifices for the whole family. It would seem like a massive indulgence on the part of one of us that we couldn't afford for both (and could barely afford for one). I kind of feel that, at this point, we both need to be rowing the boat!

What I might do, if I get to that point, is think about a dedicated, say, term of time for career planning where I had a day a week of childcare or whatever.

Cross post - don't worry Vezzie. Not bossy. All food for thought.

I seem to have diverted this discussion to be all me,me,me. I didn't mean to.

Right but I am not talking about 2 days a week 10 hours childcare in the most expensive nursery that you can find which is suitable for looking after your little darling for maybe 12 hours a day with nap times in proper cots, organically cooked food, "learning journeys", nappy surcharge, etc. That is Eton (almost literally, in cost). I am talking 9 or 10 hours a week with a lovely trustworthy affectionate local person who will charge maybe £4 an hour and just take them along to the playgroups they take their toddler to

I really do have to go to bed. good night and good luck, all

True, true. And if I am no working when he's 1+, maybe that's something I'll consider. Til he's about one, I just want him with me (you know, bar the odd afternoon, etc). I found the end of maternity leave masses more fun than the early bits.

On which topic, in our long term dreams, one day DH and I would like to both be working 4 days (ish) with a day to keep everything else and our mental health ticking over. That could also be the other person's 'full steam ahead' day at work - you know, could agree evening events without checking, could start at 6am if you were having one of those perfect storm weeks, etc. DH also knows he owes me some of those days for all the ones he's been able to take whilst I've been SAHMing.

I recommend that set up penguins!

We did something similar when DD1 was small. Except that the non WOH day was obviously childcare. This would be 'dropping in the dry cleaning-going to ASDA-finally getting to the gym-reading that report you were interested in-taking a nap and doing the school run' day.

You sound like a lovely employer!

But I'm sorry you're getting down. I can completely see that thing with the prawns - I would do that. And then I would be angry with myself for doing it.

About women in the past - something I think must have made a difference was that the sort of work women mostly did, you didn't need up-to-the-minute experience. No such thing as a CV gap.

Off to bed any minute now, but just saw this and had to mention something at work before thread moves on in the morning: A while ago a couple of people left at the same time and interim managers were appointed in their place, one of whom is quite young, no experience etc., and what has absolutely stood out is the level of mentoring and guidance and help he's getting from the other male managers, in contrast to the woman who got appointed. It's not that they won't help her if she asks; it's just that they've never pro-actively offered help the way they do with him. At the planning stages of meetings etc., I heard them say things like "Dave* will need a bit of support here, so maybe I'll go to that one with him and I'll dig out the old contract so we can have a template" and of course, he just accepts that support as part of normal life and doesn't feel he's being given anything extra or has an advantage in any way.

Meanwhile, she only ever asks for help when she's really stuck, because she clearly doesn't feel she has the right to ask for it. And it's not that they won't help her, it's just not embedded into their thought processes and assumptions. And when they do help her, there's an attitude that has crept in that she's been in post long enough now to have picked it all up and she shouldn't need that extra support anymore, so of course she's inhibited from asking. No such attitude has crept in for him.

When the interim period comes to an end, I wonder who will be assessed as having done best? And the men will wonder why women don't perform as well as men, they try their best to promote them and it's not their fault they're not up to it...

So returning to what you were saying Buffy, I strongly suspect that the reason they can't give you consistent parameters, is because the parameters are different depending on who you are.

*Dave's not his real name.

Crikey, Basil

So returning to what you were saying Buffy, I strongly suspect that the reason they can't give you consistent parameters, is because the parameters are different depending on who you are.

Your post above is absolutely right, AskBasil, and resonates strongly with my experience - both things that have happened to me, and things I have observed.

I once was appointed to a one-year academic job filling in for someone else's leave, and a young man was appointed at the same time to an exactly similar job in the same position. The Faculty was supposed to appoint mentors for new appointees, and I didn't seem to get one, but I assumed that it was because I was temporary. I didn't get any support with thd

Agh, pressed send too soon! Will continue.. X

I didn't get any support with the post, either - I had literally just completed my PhD and I was dropped in someone else's workload and had to convene an entire MA on my own with no information whatsoever on what to do and no colleagues in my immediate subject area (several had gone on leave at the same time so I was somehow supposed to be doing everyone's job, not just the person I was actually filling in for.... Male (white, heterosexual) colleague chats with me every so often; he also seems to have lots of work to manage, though not quite as much as me (no MA to convene, for example). Never mind, it's part of academia, thinks I. Fast forward a year of everyone giving me work (sometimes explicitly telling me to do things then afterwards complaining that they should have been done by someone more senior, despite me being perfectly competent at them - eg. I was once sent by the chair of the Faculty to represent my subject area at a funding ranking meeting at which everyone else was a Professor; said professors took umbrage at me being a newly minted PhD in the meeting despite everyone else in my field being off or having refused to go). Anyway, I get to the end of the year, which is heavy in workload terms but enjoyable in many ways, despite bullying from a colleague and no support whatsoever, and I find myself another job, which actually is a bit more lowly than the one-year lecturing post (it's a research post), but for a slightly longer period. In the meantime, several permanent lectureships get advertised in the department - I can't apply for the one in my field though as my own PhD supervisor is actually applying for it instead (long story!) so obviously I can't get a reference for it. Anyway, one day I'm
having a chat with Male Peer who reveals that he has actually just been appointed to one of the permanent posts. Astonished, I say "oh, how lucky - you'll be able to take a well-deserved rest over the summer after the workload from this year!" "Oh no, it's been a very light year actually, I've even managed to publish a couple of articles", says Male Peer. " It was so lucky that X [head of department] was my mentor this year. He has been such a support, protecting my research and telling me exactly how to do everything, how to go about getting a permanent job, he warned me at the start of the year that there would be a permanent job coming up in my field here this year, he has even gone to some meetings for me when I had a research deadline, because he's such a support to young scholars, don't you find? His wife is so charming, she cooks so well when you get invited to their dinner parties!" (Yes, that kind of HoD who is such a support to young scholars but funnily enough it only seems to be the male ones. Ho ho. And that's why I no longer work in academia....)

But it's not just academia is it? It's everywhere. It's sewn into the fabric of how nearly every workplace works. And it's not even deliberate - it's not that these blokes are deliberately, consciously choosing to mentor only people with penises, it's that that's what comes naturally to them and they simply don't feel the same emotional investment in women. They don't have the same sense of investment in our careers, they don't feel our achievements as much of a reflection on them, it doesn't occur to them to choose us instead of men. We're aliens to them and I think that's why they simply can't naturally mentor us the way they do each other.

Going back to what Penguins was saying about childcare: I left my job just before my pregnancy with DD2. I had been quite ill for a while before leaving work and my lovely Mum was concerned that I would become ill again and wanted to help. I am the eldest child and there is a 12 year gap between me and my youngest sibling, so my mum had only recently got her career going after years and years working part-time, night shifts etc following my Dad up and down the country wherever his work took us, so she didn't really want to spend loads of time with my kids (and nor should she). She therefore very kindly paid for DD2 to go to a child-minder for a few hours one day a week so I could have some space to do things that helped me to feel well - whether that be maintaining a certain level of order in my house, or attending medical appointments, or just doing things that made me feel good like gardening. She said that she knew how desperate she had felt at times having young children at home and wished someone had been able to help her at the time, so wanted to help me.

I will be forever grateful to my lovely Mum for this, not only for the difference it made at the time, but perhaps more importantly because I felt I had been given permission to carve out some time for myself, time that I really needed. It feels like an ongoing internal battle to justify time/money that I spend on myself when I'm not contributing financially to the household. I am fortunate that DH is happy with his job and generally chilled out about life so there doesn't seem to be any resentment about what I do with my days - and for the last three years every spare scrap of time not spent child-wrangling has been spent studying so I feel like I'm working towards something that hopefully will one day result in a greater household income (though realistically it will take time to work back up to a salary greater than I earned prior to becoming a SAHM). But it frustrates me that I feel like I ought to think this way, that everything needs to have some financial value attached to it.

I've increased my study hours this year (and paying for DS1 to go to a child-minder a few days a week) and am having to be really strict about not doing any housework after I've dropped the kids off and just sitting down and starting work straight away. This means DH has to do more housework. I feel shit about the whole thing, that I'm being selfish, its a real indulgence, that this isn't benefitting anyone but me, that I'm a waste of space etc and it's so hard not to give in and go and clean the kitchen. I worry that if I push DH too hard to take on too much that he will snap and tell me I'm taking the piss (it would not be in his character to do so, but the worry is there). But I'm so, so sick of being at home and this is an escape route for me (I can't easily go back to what I was doing pre-SAHMing).

Urgh it's so complicated

Yes, I agree (sorry for no paragraphs in previous rambly posts, have had a few G'n'Ts this evening...)

I do however think it can manifest itself much more acutely in academia, because so much of academic careers is based on being vouched for by others (there are few other jobs where references are as long and complex and all have to be submitted before the deadline to be read before a candidate is even considered for interview). So much is based on what mentors do and advise, who you can call upon to vouch for your book proposal, and so on - so the effects of patronage are much more obviously felt. And so much of academic life is so based on the rules being different for different people. The times I've seen what would be considered dreadfully unprofessional behaviour in other sectors pass without comment - from someone's wife being appointed to a lectureship and no-one appearing to think it at all odd that they remained a voting member on the appointments committee, to people's supervisors "intervening" in the readers' reports for their book, to asking illegal questions of female job candidates at interview.... Mmm.

Demis, that sounds lovely.

Vezzie, hope all this is giving you support for your decision to consciously appoint a woman - where many men have subconsciously decided to appoint/promote a man before the candidates are even off the starting blocks.

I hear so many women question if they (or other women) deserve the things they get it...or if it is "Positive discrimination".

How many men ever ask the same. Planet waves story did it occur to him that he was getting preferential treatment? Did it ever?