Working Parents

[KittyOShea]

I haven't posted in here before but definitely describe myself as a feminist.

Over the last few weeks I have seen a number of depressing threads on here about wives prioritising their husband's work or calculating their salary excluding childcare costs (only their salary not their joint salary). It seems the husband's career always comes first.

Maybe this is bad form as its a thread inspired by other threads but it's lead me to think about the societal influences that mean it's always the woman who goes part time/ quits work.

I should say here that DH and I were unable to have DC so we have not had to tackle this one but when we were ttc we had decided that if someone had to step back in terms of work it would be him as I am the higher earner and he is much more domesticated than I am. Is this so unusual in the 21st century?

Is there anything we as a society can do that changes this way of thinking?

The TUC study seems to be directly relevant to this thread:

www.tuc.org.uk/equality-issues/gender-equality/equal-pay/pregnancy-discrimination/fathers-working-full-time-earn-21

I'll point out that societally influenced beliefs about the capabilities and desires of various groups have often been considered "natural". It's very convenient.

To go back to the opening post from the responses on here there seem to be plenty of women who don't want "house husbands" and are indeed happy to prioritise their partner 's career.

I'm not sure how you address that, if it needs addressing ,as it seems a choice made by individual women. Personally it's a choice I could not ever have considered as financial independence was important to me.

I gave up my job to care for my children, despite earning 2x my husband's wage. When my eldest was born I was all about continuing to work full time, dh was a sahd... When dc2 was born I just couldn't imagine leaving them to go a job I didn't really care about anymore. Breastfeeding was a huge part of this, I wasn't prepared to leave my baby to go to work - it went against all my instincts.

I never expected to feel this way, especially as I had been fine to go to work and leave dc1. I was brought up to "never rely on a man" and to earn my own money but for now I am following the path that leads to greater happiness for the whole family. YOLO and all that...

I'll point out that societally influenced beliefs about the capabilities and desires of various groups have often been considered "natural". It's very convenient

This, times 100

We're socialised from birth to be carers. It's not "natural" but it feels so. And verrry convenient.

I do not understand how this is considered to be socialisation when it is a mothers choice and desire. I get that some women feel there is an expectation that they stay at home and sacrifice all for their family and I think these women are often frustrated and sometimes depressed in this role as it is not what they would choose, but the SAHM's I know are mainly there by definite choice. I also know many working mums who desperately want to be at home with their little ones but feel they cannot afford to. This seems to me to be an instinctive thing not a social thing and I think it is the reason why there is not complete equality in the workplace in terms of numbers of women in high up demanding and time consuming roles. Not as many women are prepared to sacrifice family time and prefer to take time out of their career when having children and have jobs that allow them quality time with their family.

Vdb, do you say "bless you" when someone sneezes, "sorry for your loss" when someone is bereaved and "thank you" for a gift?

That's socialisation. it's second nature to say those things. It's very hard to separate ingrained socialisation from instinct.

I do not understand how this is considered to be socialisation when it is a mothers choice and desire.

How is it not socialisation? Are the mothers choices made in a social vacuum?

I get that some men feel there is an expectation that they stay at home and sacrifice all for their family and I think these men are often frustrated and sometimes depressed in this role as it is not what they would choose

If my misquote of you here looks odd, it's because of socialisation.

I guess what I am asking is, why do so many mothers feel a 'need' to be with their children when they are small and an actual physical pain being parted from them for any length of time? I actually think that this is the more common reaction .I think if you were to look at social pressures honestly, there is more pressure to return to work than to be a SAHM. That is why you have so many MN threads saying 'I want to be a SAHM but am I setting a bad example to my children? am I making myself financially vulnerable? Am I letting down women? etc.
I think the 'socialisation' of today is opposite to what the norm used to be and yet still most women instinctively want to be with their babies. That is why I put the stuff about primates. It felt very instinctive with me, and I am someone who absolutely loves my job, but was determined that until my kids were all at school, we would survive on one income and I would be at home.

"and an actual physical pain being parted from them for any length of time"

I never felt this and never heard any mothers of my acquaintance say it.

Anecdote isn't data.

Women earn less than men in some part due to their 'choices' of profession.

They migrate towards the caring professions. And they are encouraged to do so, often on the basis that they will be happier (though as we know the caring professions are full to bursting with unhappy, underpaid workers).

Then when the decision to prioritise comes up post children, it's a fairly done deal.

Yes I have no doubt that in a society thay expects men to be primary carers dh would have equal 'paternal insrinct' as I felt, and wouldn't want to be parted from them as much as me. It is socialisation.

I think there's a bigger issue that the value attached to (historically at least) 'male' jobs is higher than jobs seen as typically 'female' roles. Added to this, in my experience, prioritising anything over and above a career is seen as a weakness and will get in the way of promotion etc. If a man chooses to have children he can do this with little effect on his perceived commitment to his career- he can still work late etc as long as there is someone else to look after the children. For a woman, even if the intention is to return to full time work, if she chooses to have children she will need to have some time off during pregnancy (for medical appointments etc), may need to be less flexible than usual about travel etc and is unlikely to want/be able to work incredibly long hours during pregnancy. Then once the baby is born she will need to have some time off for recovery etc. If the parents choose to breast feed the baby, again mum will need to be in charge of this which will make it harder to go straight back to full time work/long hours/travel. The decision to have a breast fed baby will have not such impact on Dad. As a PP has mentioned, in lots of professions there is also a need to 'network' in the evenings/weekends in order to really succeed- again not something that a pregnant/breastfeeding mum will find easy.

Unfortunately, I think that all of the above means that (even if it is incorrect) having a child will impact a woman's perceived commitment to work (and so chances of promotion etc) much more than just the impact of the maternity leave. As other posters have said, this often all happens just at the stage in her career when men/women without children are getting the big promotions so a woman with children can easily find herself lagging behind her peers in terms of promotions etc. This is all demoralising as well as meaning that in a couple which started with equal earning power the woman will often end up being the one to have a career break/change of career etc when the children come along.

I have seen working fathers try to take a more even part in the child care (eg asking for reduced hours/being the one to leave on time to collect the DC) and be viewed with suspicion.

I think that addressing this will need a huge change in the way society and business operates- with 'female' work being more evenly valued, some way of recognising that women who have children do have some (short term) biological needs (pregnancy/bf etc) that should be addressed without impacting career paths, better access to good childcare, and I think most importantly a step change in the way that an involved parent (male or female) is viewed at work. I think that to do all of this will need us to get away from the 'long hours, beers with the boys' culture that I see. It saddens me that I actually think that, although women are proving themselves to be perfectly capable of competing with men at getting in to well paid professions, we are still a million miles away from equality for working parents.

If a man chooses to have children he can do this with little effect on his perceived commitment to his career- he can still work late etc as long as there is someone else to look after the children.

And economic statistics show that men get paid what's called a "marriage bonus" - just by virtue of being married, they get paid more. And that this is increased when they have children.

For women it is generally the reverse. No surprise there.

"and an actual physical pain being parted from them for any length of time"

I never felt this and never heard any mothers of my acquaintance say it.

Anecdote isn't data

I didn't feel that way. I have heard working mothers say that.

Married men being paid more, if that happens, is a bit more complex than they get paid more just for being married. The reason I say "if that happens " is because in all the years I've worked I've never been asked to participate in a survey about my pay or marital status and I'm sure my husband would not have participated if he had (qualifier of course anecdote isn't data).

The reason married women probably get paid less is many of them will reduce their hours. You then go round in a huge circle of whether this is societal pressure or individual women making an individual choice of working less because the joint income permits this.

Female chimps stuck in a cage with their offspring tend not to be very happy

All animals stuck in a cage tend not to be very happy. What point is this supposed to prove?

Married men being paid more, if that happens, is a bit more complex than they get paid more just for being married

AFAIK, it's an economic statistic, not anecdata. Google "marriage premium" and I think yo'll see it's pretty widely recognised that married men generally out-earn similar single men, for example.

The abstract of this paper sets out one set of arguments

www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/iser_working_papers/2005-01.pdf

From the article:

"Nevertheless, a relatively small but statistically significant marriage premium remains even when allowing for a wide range of individual, household, job and employer-related characteristics and time invariant individual specific unobservable effects. Our preferred panel estimates indicate the size of this premium increases with the number of domestic chores for which the spouse is mostly responsible, and falls with the wife’s working hours. The relative sizes of the coefficients suggest that a married man whose wife does not work but whose wife is mostly responsible for four domestic chores enjoys a wage premium of about 4% relative to a single never married man. However this premium almost disappears if the wife also works 40 hours per week in the labour market. We show that the effects of the hours worked and domestic chores carried out by the wife are genuine, and not due to the potential endogeneity of the wife’s decision to work."

I'm surprised at the different attitudes on here as to what the pressure is. I was quite clear I wanted to go back to work and felt a little mild pressure to sah. (Not from dh).
But it's clear other people have had more extreme pressure at both ends of the sah/woh scale.

The reason married women probably get paid less is many of them will reduce their hours. You then go round in a huge circle of whether this is societal pressure or individual women making an individual choice of working less because the joint income permits this

I'm quoting myself but I haven't seen an answer to this question.

On the issue of married men getting paid more because of being relieved of chores which single people and married women aren't whilst anecdote is not of course data this is what I have seen of this.

There is a group of high earning , married men with non working wives who work horrifically long hours. The feminist take on this is they are enabled to do so because of unpaid wife work. Or looking at it another way - their wives are escaping the pressures of the working place, enjoying the benefit of the income and once the children are at school there must be a limit on just how much housework you can do.

What would be more natural, closer to what animals do, is for groups of women and a few men to live together, eat together, do the finding of berries and hunting domestic work together, and so on

Sorry Buffy, this isn't meant to be picking on you but I am not sure that comparison is helpful. Only certain animals behave in a pack fashion - many don't. Female animals separated too early from their young are usually greatly distressed.

"So why do you think that in an age where natural instinct is not often brought into discussions about fairness (tax avoidance schemes are rich people's natural instinct, so they should be entirely above scrutiny; it's children's natural instinct to eat vast quantities of sugar, so we should just let them) it seems so often brought into conversations about how much freedom women have?"

Yy to this.

"We are selective about what aspects of animal behaviour humans are supposed to emulate, and wouldn't you know it those elements are the ones that reinforce the status quo."

And this.

As with my point above, nearly all animal mothers are "working mothers" as they are typically back into their usual daily activities with a chimp clinging to them or out collecting food and bringing it back to base. But the narrative is usually "caring instincts" not "work to provide food and shelter to self and family"