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?

FB=bf

Up until very recently DH and I were both pretty much full time (I am technically part time) and split childcare duties between us. I take care of school holidays (teacher) and he did all evening pick-ups and after school stuff as he could work from home.

Recently he took a new job that means he can't do any more childcare during the week. The job is in the city and is a long train commute.

We both thought long and hard before he took on this new job. I have a disability that means big career jumps are just not going to be possible for me. I'm lucky to be in any form of employment in my chosen career. This was an opportunity that DH just couldn't turn down.

What really boils my piss is that in teaching, a profession dominated by women, employers still think it's acceptable to place impenetrable barriers to career progression on part-timers. At our school all posts of additional responsibility are only available full-time. This will effectively trap me in mainscale teaching for eternity as my disability means I can only ever cope with part-time work.

Are fathers who work ft 'incredibly selfish'?? Sad that what has been a nuanced and interesting discussion has been hijacked by sometime peddling tired and sexist old cliches.

from me too. How unbelievably selfish, depriving children of a chance to form a deep and loving relationship with a father, and vice versa.

oh and needaninsight the reason I only saw baby DS2 at the weekends was because I could only find FT work and we couldn't survive on one wage. Thankfully their father cared for them at the times I was at work and consequently they are very close to him.

Teaching seems awful for flexible working. The thing that I don't understand is that it seems to be out in the open discrimination against part time workers. A friend of mine said she wanted to be head of department before she had children as they would never recruit someone part time but you had a chance if you got the post and then reduced the hours. It seems really old fashioned.

I'm a teacher. We have one or two dept heads who a p/t but it wouldn't work for year heads and there are no p/t in senior management. However, I would say that it is easier than some other jobs to return after mat leave/part time or even a few years out of teaching and then progress.
It is also good from the point of view of not needing to pay for childcare in the school holidays if you have older kids.

I'd say the more relevant physical factor is pregnancy/birth complications and ill health slightlyglitterbrained. While I support the new leave splitting provisions, I'm always concerned when anyone raises the possibility of a portion of leave being specifically reserved for the father, as in some Scandinavian countries, simply because I don't trust the UK to make it additional to the nine month paid entitlement rather than it coming out of what women are already entitled to. Nine months is not that long, really, particularly not if you need to take much of it during the pregnancy. This, rather than breastfeeding, is what would make me cling to an arrangement that supports inequality in that the mother's entitlement is greater than the fathers and some of the leave is exclusively hers.

Penguins I don't think anyone was saying that breastfeeding is never relevant, just that it usually isn't because such a small minority of women are still doing it by the end of ML. I do accept that there are some women who choose not to return to work because it would limit their breastfeeding in a way they find unacceptable.

Also, if I were the sort of dreadful individual who didn't want even the other parent moulding my children during their infancy, I probably wouldn't be calling anyone else a nightmare...

After having my dc's I was desperate NOT to go back to work, I couldn't bear to leave them in a nursery or with a nanny. My DH, despite being a devoted dad didn't feel the same at all. I also bf my 3rd DC for over a year.

I never expected to feel that way, and assumed I'd go back to work full time. I'm still very happy with my choice, and it's probably not a very "feminist" decision but I certainly consider myself a feminist and would never judge a woman who chose differently.

So for me I guess it was some sort of ingrained maternal instinct. And yes I have financial independence in case DH up and leaves us. Thankfully highly unlikely as we are all so lovely!

I find it intriguing that the OP thinks a SAHD is a feminist dream - I don't think it is at all. Surely we should all be looking towards a society where after a short leave for the mother to recover and breast feed both parents care and both parents earn i.e. both parents working part time.

I know several dads that have gone part time on this model, but then we often socialise with people that are like ourselves in attitude.

I couldn't wait to go back to work after dd was born. We shared mat leave and then I went back full time and dh part time. I earn more than dh and enjoy my job more so it was just the best way for us. I still managed to bf until dd was 18months. It wasn't always easy and it only worked for ua because I live and work in the same town and have flexi time so could meet with dh and dd and do a feed during lunch.

I do find it odd how often people seem surprised by the hours we work and I find myself explaining our decision far more then we would if it was the other way around.

I'm not sure a short leave for the mother to recover is a feminist dream either, not when a significant minority of us need several months. You'd need at least some provision for that.

"millenia when a mother's strong instinct to care for their young was essential for their survival"

Hrmm. We do know that in many traditional societies children are looked after in a much more communal fashion, eg by many relatives. The model of a woman purely caring for her own children in the home is relatively recent/unusual rather than "natural". Mothers have always worked doing things other than childcare.

Also most societies that we know about are, to varying degrees, patriarchal. It's impossible to consider "what's natural" without considering "how society views the class that does the reproducing".

It's interesting but I worked a 4 day week for seven years (interspersed with maternity leave) and got a new job full time this June. I really now want to go back to 4 days.

I feel like I will never progress in my career anyway even if I do work full time and as it is I am missing out on so much.

Never picking my kids up school I feel quite detached from their lives and I want to be with them more especially the little one.

Not sure why I feel this way about the kids but my husband doesn't.

I think the decision to go part-time can come for many people at the same time as realising that their job isn't all they hoped for, and that the career path is pretty closed off to them anyway.

It does seem to be the norm for the woman to go part-time or to stay at home with the kids, but there are also a lot of families where this is not the case. It doesn't bother me either way as long as the parents have discussed it and both are happy with their decision. And I would say looking at my own circle of family and friends/acquaintances this is overwhelmingly not the case. And that's where the problems arise in my opinion. When people don't talk about important things like family, childcare, careers, dreams, aspirations etc.

Also I wonder whether it might have something to do with the normal division of work during maternity leave? The mother is often the primary carer for the baby and it's difficult to let someone else take on that role later even if it it's your partner and you would get to have a chance at resuming/starting/building a career.

Iggi I agree. It might well be partly down to sexism in the workplace though that so many women find themselves in that position.

But also I do think we get oversold careers. Sitting at a desk for 40+ hours a week slogging away for someone else is often not actually that fun.

Having said that I think I'd prefer my manager's job actually and I reckon I'd be able to do it quite easily. However even if I work full time I don't think it will be that easy to achieve.

Maybe they want, or it's the best for their family.
Because we are geared up towards this and society expects this.
Because some women marry arses who won't go pt themselves.
Not all women are work or career driven and only want pt work.
Lots of reasons.

There are more men cutting down hours now than there used to be.

Gross generalisation alert: it remains true that many 'male' career paths are higher earning/more specialist/more responsibility/longer training than many typically 'female' jobs - I think that is the underlying crux of the matter.
If more women aimed as high as their male counterparts and more men were able to see reward and benefit in spending more time with their families, the discrepancies would not be as wide.

And the nonsense about women being 'natural caregivers' and 'maternal instinct' would become less pervasive. I find that a really pernicious thing to say - men are deprived of developing more naturing skills and women are made to feel somehow remiss or 'faulty' if they don't feel the overwhelming need to spend all their time and energy on their offspring.

Of course all sorts of people/couples/families make all sorts of choices and decide on how to divide WOH/SAH duties, but I question how free that 'choice' is in every case.

I know I thought I made a choice, but really it was simply assumed I'd go part-time, including by myself

Very true leedy. Personally I'm as suspicious of the idea that culture plays no part as I am of the idea that biology plays none either. It's all very well describing things as innate, but it's guesswork really.

I also agree with iggi. Personally I like working a bit and I quite like my job, I think I'm a better person and parent doing some paid employment. But I hadn't appreciated before I started my full time career how much I wouldn't want to be in work every weekday for most of the time I'm awake. Kids gave me a reason to go PT, and happily coincided with DH and I both earning several grand more (pro rata obv) than we did before having them. So we could afford to do it.

There are plenty of men who aren't all that good at their jobs too. There's more of a sense of entitlement though - can remember an ex-colleague explaining how he was encouraging his gobsmackingly incompetent friend to go for promotion because "he deserves a decent wage, man his age should be on at least 40k".

I think there are lots of good examples to set your children and strangely working has never been one that was of interest to me.

So you can only be a feminist if you work and have a house husband then?
Looking after your own children is childcare, heard it all now.
So are childcare workers the new parents then, if parents provide childcare?

When you spend time with your own children, do you see yourself as providing childcare? How weird.

Are you conflating wanting to go part time with not being that good at your job slightlyglitterbrained? I like to think I'm still quite decent at mine despite not wanting to do it every single day.

It really isn't weird to regard looking after one's own children as providing childcare newlife. I know you don't like it when that term is used, but the word childcare means caring for children and that is what we do when we look after our little ones.

I do sometimes think, though, that perhaps MN could do with inventing another term for caring for children that only refers to the childcare/Not Childcare that parents do. Kleethwazzle or something, a nonsense word that nobody can complain about the connotations of. We've had so many roundabout discussions and derailings on the issue. Not aimed at you particularly there newlife, you've been involved but no more so than plenty of others. She who is without sin etc.