Why is it always the woman who goes part time?

[maggiethemagpie]

I never really saw blatant sexism until after I had a baby.....I'm sure it's always been there but I never really thought about it until I had kids and realised that I am very very unusual in that my partner was happy to stay home and do the childcare (luckily he has an income from property) and I chose to return to work, and do a demanding full time job. Sometimes I think we must be living the feminist dream - if indeed the early feminists dreamed of having households with working mothers and househusbands. I'm sure some of them must have. Anyway it's a great example to set my kids.

However amongst all my friends who have had kids, pretty much without exception it is the woman who's had to make the career sacrifice and go part time or stopped work. I don't think many of these women have sat down with their partner and worked out which one would prefer to go part time, and it just so happens to be the woman. I think it's a foregone conclusion that it's the woman's job. Even when both partners work full time, nine times out of ten it's the woman who is doing the nursery drop offs and pick ups. EG my boss returned from maternity recently and it's a big deal when she has to work late and get him to pick the kid up - they never just take it in turns every day or anything. Or, a colleague was forced to go part time to full time. She was really worried about picking up the kids from school on some days as she couldn't get them into after school club. No mention of her partner doing this, or if HE should ask to go part time.

I think until more men begin to consider being the ones to stay at home, things won't progress socially in this area. I know the woman has to be the one to give birth, and until shared parental leave came in recently, only the woman could take an extended period of time off work. But that's just the maternity period, which now can be transferred to the man or shared - what about all the years after that.

Does anyone think this will ever change or are we doomed, as women being the ones to give birth will always be seen as the obvious choice to be the part timer/ stay at home parent?

I suppose now we both do flexi-time by stealth (2 ft salaries). I do 9-3 twice a week in order to do the primary school run (do 8-6 on on other days though) dh works from home 2 days a week. So one of us does pick up 4/5. I have thought about it carefully and am not about to drop to 4/5ths of my salary, when I know I can do the job, its not like my workload would be reduced.

We share childcare between us but unofficially work PT while DH is a contractor so used that flexibility. We tried him FT and paid childcare but it made us and the kids miserable. We're all much happier with the kids being looked after by a parent after school plus a bit of after school club where necessary.

I would not want to go FT - I would hate to not see my 4yo awake and perhaps get 10 sleepy minutes with my 7yo in the evening, and that's what it would mean.

I officially work PY

BF is pretty low on the list of reasons why more women stay at home/go part time. It must be, simply because such a small minority of women in the UK are still doing it by six months. I respect that for some women, bf the only or main reason for their choice, but the numbers plus the fact that some of the women still feeding at six months, a year or whatever go back to work mean bf isn't our answer here.

The point about women formalising their flexi arrangements via part time contracts and the men staying full time and getting flexibility by stealth was an interesting one. Might try that when my kids go to school!

Re part time for maternity pay, I've known couples do it both ways round. I personally wouldn't have gone full time after DC1 unless I had to, because I knew we'd have another in a couple of years and I had zero interest in having to juggle full time work, pregnancy and a toddler (being at home with one fairly biddable NT child was definitely easier than being at work, for both DH and I). Because I didn't work many hours, my salary after commuting costs, tax and NI wasn't that much more than SMP anyway so it fit us well for managing on that. However I also know someone who went back earlier than average and stayed FT because they knew they'd have to have another baby soon if they were having one at all, and she was public sector so her maternity pay was way better than SMP. Depends on circumstances. DH and I work more similar hours now my childbearing days are done.

I often wonder exa y the same OP.

I work FT and my dh works PT. I also bf both my dcs to 18m.

I am very lucky in that i am still able to eat breakfast with my dcs every morning, eat together as a family most evenings, listen to my eldest read and read bedtime stories most nights. My hours and commute mean I can do this, and I try to make these non-negotiables, even if it means working for 2-3 hours when they are in bed.

My dh is very much in the minority at the school gates though.

I don't get the BF thing at all. It seems to be presented as biology is destiny, but it's an extraordinarily weak argument. For women taking a year, expressing doesn't factor in at all. I took 9 months, exclusively bf till 6 months (which makes me part of the ONE PERCENT who do that in the UK. One measly percent), was doing KIT days before that and never felt the need to express at work. If you want to express at work, you have a legal right to a suitable room & somewhere to store expressed milk.

Well there are obviously some women who are still breastfeeding frequently enough at the end of ML that they'd have to choose between work outside the home and continuing to breastfeed in the same way. We've heard from them on MN before and I assume they're telling the truth. I can believe that some of them would prefer option b and have the funds to do so. I also know that not every bf woman returning to work has her rights respected, not all women get on with expressing, not all women could practically have the baby brought to them to feed and that some women do jobs where regular feeding or pumping wouldn't be feasible regardless of the law. So it might be a question of work v bf for some women. It's just that there aren't very many of them in the UK. That's not to say this isn't some women's truth, only that most women SAHing/going PT after ML aren't doing it to breastfeed.

My argument re: BF was more that if you want to do it, even if only for 6 months, and don't have good maternity pay, then it would be very hard for most families to live on the man's p/t salary if he had already gone p/t for that period of time. Most jobs aren't flexible enough to continuously swap between being full and part time as and when the next children come along.

My son and daughter in law follow this pattern. She works 3 days a week, she is the highest earner (at least on scale. I don't know what their takehome is, none of my business).My son works full time. I think it's just their preference. She loves her days at home with their baby. My son has an extremely strong work ethic. He is very hands on and devoted to their son but prefers to work full time.

But some of this tiny fraction of a tiny fraction propose that all other women should change to suit their choices. I've seen the argument made (not on this thread but regularly) that men should not be allowed to share parental leave because of some mythical threat to breastfeeding that clearly isn't supported by numbers. Instead, we should support an arrangement that bolsters inequality.

Surely this only makes sense from a patriarchal viewpoint?

I couldn't wait to have a baby and go part time, no sacrifice whatsoever! DH could and would have done it instead and we'd be better off financially if he had and I'd stayed part time but I wouldn't have been happy with that. I have no intention of ever going back full time, even when DD is at school, only if I absolutely had to e.g. if DH made redundant.
Don't assume that we are all sacrificing our careers!

If I'd stayed full time.

Do think a bout your pension Pointless.

high-fives the other full-time working breastfeeding mothers of toddlers

Fed DS1 until he was 2.5, DS2 is still feeding at 3, I work five days a week and take regular business trips - neither of them were really feeding during the day when I went back (though my excellent workplace has a mother's room for pumping), and I just bring a pump on trips away to avoid exploding in an unsightly fashion. I agree that "mothers need to breastfeed!" isn't much of an argument, unless you're talking about adopting US-style minimal maternity leave.

I also think there's a whole lot of socialization/cultural norms around women's roles and motherhood involved in the "but women just want to spend time with young children more than men, it's natural!" argument. I love my kids dearly but I don't think I feel the need to be with them more than their father. Ditto the "you can see it in the fact that women choose caring jobs!" - I think that's a whole lot more to do with those jobs having culturally been seen as suitable for women than women being somehow inherently suited to them. Also I'm suuuuuuure it's pure coincidence that they tend to be low status/low pay....

Personally the only reason I had children with DP was because I knew (and we'd talked about it A LOT) he'd do 50/50 childcare as much as possible and that neither of our careers would take a back seat. It still seems to be working....

One of the few upsides of minimal, US style maternity leave is that most mothers with a career do return to work full time after having a baby. One of the downsides of extended, UK style maternity leave is that it - almost unconsciously - establishes that it is the mother who will be at home with the child, and makes it harder to go back because the whole family has become used to a pattern of mum-at-home-dad-at-work.

Add into this the fact that women are more likely to work in the public sector than men, and the public sector is more likely than the private sector to offer generous (ie above statutory) PL, and in most cases it really does make financial sense for the mother to be the one at home in the early months - and then to stay there

leedy I don't agree. Yes there is a lot of 'cultural expectations' around child care that is set against millenia when a mother's strong instinct to care for their young was essential for their survival. That hasn't disappeared just because we now have options.

I work in the public sector (NHS). I always thought the maternity benefits meant more women returned (as the alternative is paying back £££)

Not all public sector ML arrangements have the pay-back requirement. And I think it's true that if you return PT that means you don't need to pay back the ML that is topped up beyond statutory, even if that was calculated on FT hours.

Nah, I really do think that women are more likely to want to spend time with babies and children. Fully agree that it is sort-of expected and that child caring jobs are woefully underpaid, but on the whole, if we are talking in terms of numbers/percentages, women are more willing and even sometimes happy to take on the majority child caring role.

Obviously not in your case Leedy, and not in the case of millions of other women who prefer to work full time, but my comment was made purely in terms of numbers.

Fair point about my pension!
I totally agree that it should be more equal between men and women going part time etc but the assumption that we are all sacrificing our careers grates. There was absolutely no expectation for me to go p/t. DH would have supported me to go back f/t if I'd wanted. I gave up a very good salary to lose some responsibility and go p/t but I don't feel that it was a sacrifice, I've never been happier.

Because a lot of mums have children and then realise it is the most important thing, and that actually putting your career first whilst children are so little (and want their mum) is actually incredibly selfish?

I can always get more money. I can always start another career.

I don't want anyone else moulding my babies during the formative years of their life. Dad included if I'm honest. I actually wince at the number of small babies/toddlers who spend 12+ hours a day in childcare just because mum wants to be a hotshot whatever. What was the bloody point of having kids if you're only ever going to see them on a weekend?

How's about a lot of mums actually want (shock horror) to go part time?

As an employer I take a dim view when a female member of staff is always the one to make the call in when the child is ill - never her DH to his employer. You sound like a nightmare employer frankly!!!!

Needaninsight....

You don't want your children's father to mould them??

We've all been civil and this is an interesting discussion. Please don't barge in and accuse mothers who work of being selfish. It's not nice.

I work PT and DH full-time. But this is because I earn more than DH and so my PT wage is just about the same a his FT wage and he is a teacher so gets home at 3.30 just after I get home having picked up the DC.

I realise that we are very lucky and have loads of time together as a family while earning a good joint income.

In the past I have worked FT and he has worked PT but overall the set up we have works best from a financial and time perspective.

FB can be relevant. I too went back to work when DCs were only just over 6 months and then fed until 2-4yrs. However, those FB experiences were v different than other DCs where I was at home nearly all the time. It was not the same.

I came to say what others already have, which is that some dads do reduce hrs or do flexi. I have a far stronger urge than DH to be at home with preschoolers however. These days I do think carefully about my pension. It is a factor in the complex mix.

When you have several preschool aged children the short term impact (years) of childcare costs can be enough to prevent one of you working ft if you simply cannot make the sums add up for those years any other way. That's even if you do care about the longer term.