Upset by Mumsnet - please cheer me up!

[MargaretCavendish]

So, I started having a look at Mumsnet a month or so ago. My husband and I are thinking of trying for our first child in the next few months, and I was Googling some conception advice (alright, alright, I was actually trying to find out whether I really needed to give up drinking while we tried) and Mumsnet came up. I have become a bit addicted, particularly to AIBU. I know, I know.

Anyway, while I have been enjoying reading it (I've always loved problem pages, etc.) it's also been making me feel really depressed and even panicky about post-baby life. So many partners who see everything to do with babies as not their job, so many women giving up work so that they can dust four fucking times a day, so many women whose lives and worlds seem to have got so, so small. I tell myself it won't be like that for me, that my husband (who is far from perfect, but who is a proud feminist who has never seen us as anything but equals) isn't like that. We're planning to do shared parental leave, so I'd only be at home for five-ish months, and then we're hoping he could drop down to part-time longer term. I earn quite a bit more so it makes financial sense for us; I guess there's also some ideology there too for me. BUT I'm still scared that having a baby might turn me into 'wifey', I guess. So, please tell me that I'm being silly, that you can be a feminist mum (and a feminist dad) and that equal parenting isn't just a pipe dream!

BUT I'm still scared that having a baby might turn me into 'wifey', I guess.

Don't worry. Pregnancy won't change your personality. Not in that way, at the very least.
If you turn from feminist to wifey in the course of nine months, you should perhaps take to wearing a aluminium hat.
(Referring to this comic: www.gynostar.com/archives/comic/man-bites-dog)

From what I heard, the biggest obstacle to smoothly returning to the job can be the husband, or his employer.

Teachers do have good chances to be able to go part-time, and if the employer tries to be difficult about it, be prepared to put your foot down.

It's the big things like this that influence how work inside the home is split up.

Is it possible to talk about this with the employer before you get pregnant? That would, in my opinion, be the wisest course of action. It should also make a refusal more difficult as it would give more planning time.

OP, if you are feeling depressed and close to panic due to reading AIBU, then. I think you know what you have to do. You need to see your GP and stay off AIBU.

I have never met a SAHM who chose to stay home because they wanted to do loads of housework, nor have I read it on here. If you're coming across that on here Multiple times and it is making you unhappy, stop doing it.

I think you're trying to project a notion of motherhood that terrifies you and then distance yourself from that thing. In the process you're ending up being rather sexist about other mothers to bolster your own sense of identity and making yourself unhappy.

Perhaps you need to work on your self esteem rather than seeing yourself as either your job or as mother. Would counselling help? Mother is a relationship to a child. It isn't who you are.

Margaret I was a workaholic before we had children. The fact that I didn't return to work post MAT leave (the first woman in our divison not to do so for a decade) sent shock waves round the company apparently. I love my job, I'm bloody good at it and I earn a great salary.

But after having my DC I never missed it for a moment. Honestly I loved being at home with them and never regretted it. I certainly worked much harder at home!

I did lose that identity to be honest, the "workaholic Nanna" identity. But I found a new identity which was equally me.

Now I'm back at work full time, I'm yet another different version of me. I can't be workaholic me (because 100 hour weeks and DC don't mix) but I'm still doing a bloody good job and I actually even better at some aspects of my job following things I've learned as a Parent.

Please don't assume that SAHM's are at home because they don't have any other options. I good at my job and I'm also great at being a Mum so modest. It doesn't have to be one thing or another.

Btw way, the housework thing is irrelevant to the SAHM/WOHM debate. My house is clean and nicely presented whether I was working 100 HR weeks or was a sleep deprived new Mum, because it happens to be important to me/DH that it is.

My friend's house was a midden when she was working full time, when she was a SAHM and remains that way now she is working part time (we love her but we don't eat there ) However the state of the house isn't important to her or her DH.

You won't suddenly become a domestic goddess because you gestate.

I'm a SAHM but a shit housekeeper, DH does most of the cleaning these days. We share parenting pretty equally although I'm at home with ds2 for the two days a week he's not at preschool. Dh does bath and bedtimes and is a lot more proactive than me about doing stuff with the DC at weekends. It has taken us a few years to get to this point though, I was a childminder when the kids were younger and used to really struggle with working from home and doing all the wife work. It took a lot of discussion and compromise on both parts to get to the equal footing we are on these days.

Hi Margaret, fellow-academic here. I only joined Mn well into pregnancy (having deliberated about whether I wanted a child at all for many of the same reasons that concern you) or I'd have had precisely the same kinds of reaction. I had my son at 39, and he's now 4, and completely wonderful. I am exactly the same work-identified person I was before I had him - my identity hasn't changed (though I found the early baby stage horrendously difficult, and maternity leave, which I had to extend for complicated personal reasons, isolating and depressing) at all, my marriage to an imperfect but beloved feminist husband and co-parent has survived intact, and our boy is an enrichment, not an encroachment.

In fact, I'm more prolific since I had him - I won't lie, it can be frustrating having a more circumscribed work day because of childcare constraints, but I think it's made me more focused and I work more effectively.

Equal parenting is in no sense a pipe dream. I don't in real life know women who worry about household cleanliness, and I know hardly any SAHMs - I suspect that my friendship groups feature women with vocations, artistic careers they couldn't survive without, or professional jobs which have taken such long training that even considering quitting to stay at home with a baby is inconceivable. I've never in RL heard any woman trot out that old Mn chestnut about 'not being able to afford to go back to work', as though childcare 'naturally' only comes out of the salary of the woman who pushed out the baby, and her career is somehow more optional than the baby's father's. Everyone else is getting on with work and life in general much as they did before they had a child.

I agree with other people's suggestions to figure out the shared leave/finances/husband going part-time stuff before you conceive -see what is possible and agree on it. And don't be afraid you are going to turn into someone who dusts skirting boards. Having a child is not a personality transplant.

It's bloody hard being an academic and a mum and it's not all down to whether your partner is sexist and does his or her share - it's the institutional sexism of your workplace and ordinary sexism of colleagues in ways you probably can't imagine and wouldn't suspect pre-children, that makes it hard and sometimes impossible.
From what you have said I would say don't do it. You have to be prepared to lose the career that is so much part of your identity and I don't think you are. Obviously not every woman academic leaves after having kids but all it takes is a difficult pregnancy, a bullying boss, a child with SEN.

It's not an old chestnut. Many couples do not earn enough between them to afford to pay childcare, eat and have a roof over their heads.

This is such basic maths I don't see why supposedly intelligent women can't understand it.

It's funny how it's the career of the woman which becomes suddenly optional in such cases, isn't it?

Women are usually paid less, particularly in situations where both are in low paid jobs.

If you are struggling to pay your rent and electricity bill, you don't have the luxury of the person who earns more giving up work.

And most people don't have 'careers.' They just have jobs.

Cute, while I agree with much of your post I'm afraid that, while you might not have many people of your acquaintance who are unable to afford to go back to work, that is the experience of a large number of women in the UK. If you have 2 people on NLW or even a fair way above that, then adequate childcare for more than one child means that it becomes economically non viable for them both to work. For various reasons to do with some dubious experimental outcomes from the early 20th C, it is generally felt that children are better off with their mothers by society and so women end up as SAHM.

Not an old chestnut. People's lived or endured reality.

Your post seems to suggest that one can't be a feminist and a SAHM.

I won't be going back to work. Reasons why:

1. DH earns four times as much as I do. We can easily live on his income.
2. I'm a PA. I like my job but it's not a career and I'm not that fussed about it. I never have been. I'm a homebody.
3. If I did go back to work, after child care and travel costs I'd be bringing in maybe an extra £100 a month. Not really worth it for us.

I assure you I am a proud feminist.

I knew deep down before I had dc that my x was a sexist who'd prefer to leave 90% of the childcare to me (don't ask, I had self-esteem issues).

So I think if you know that your childs father is a decent fair man then there is no reason to fear motherhood.

We need to structure society in a way that leaves women less vulnerable though. Women are pressured by their biology, their inferior salaries (not in your case, but generally) by the fact that having a child at all leaves them vulnerable. I think ARSE HOLES will capitalize on this vulnerability. If they know their child's mother is in a corner or worse, trapped.

Sorry to be so blunt.

It's not funny at all CuteHoor, but quite apart from the average salary issue as mentioned, given that the woman is the one who has to be pregnant (which can involve considerable time off if she's not lucky enough to have an easy pregnancy) and the one whose job security and progression are likely to be damaged if her employer is sexist, it's no mystery why it happens even in highly egalitarian couples.

Cute it depends where you are. About a third of the SAHP's in my DC's classes are men.

I took a career break by choice. My career wasn't 'optional' I actively chose to participate full time in my children's early years. As do many women (and men).

I agree with all your posts almond pudding. There are many families where one parent is priced out of work because of the cost of childcare. It may be an old Mumsnet chestnut but it is the unpleasant truth for a lot of people.

OP, have you talked to your DP about how you're getting upset and worried about this? Has he been supportive/reassuring?

mumonarocket I hear you because although i am a feminist too, it was assumed when I was stuck at home on benefits basically that I couldn't be a feminist. I had to make the most economic choice at the time. It wasn't my ideal scenario, but at the time, it made the most sense, weighing everything up, children's well-being, fruitlessness of operating at a LOSS every month...... But anyway. I work now. I never assume a SAHM is not a feminist. I think each family is an economic unit and I think that if all roles are valued equally then it's not the business of outsiders. It takes confidence to tune out the bzzzz shwhsishs though.

...............and, I allowed myself to get upset reading threads on mumsnet too. Many years ago now. But I shouldn't have pushed my nose in the vomit. I felt so worthless as it was, that to have my worst fears compounded, ie, this is what some people think of you........ (for not working) it was upsetting. But in real life I have found that it is often the most intelligent hardworking ambitious of my friends who get that working has a lot of costs!!

Almond and Palmer, I come right from the bottom of the working classes, and grew up in some pretty extreme poverty, illiteracy and unemployment, so I can assure you I'm well aware of poverty, the costs of childcare, and the fact that many - too many - women are lower earners than their male partners, for reasons that are not arbitrary (and, might I say, not unconnected to the idea that female work outside the home is optional and can be dispensed with after children, which in turn feeds the institutional sexism of some workplaces, which view women who are parents are uncommitted etc etc).

However, the OP has stated that she is the higher earner, so that's not the issue here. I am by far the lower earner in my marriage, but my career, which I have worked enormously hard for, is not optional, in any sense. Childcare costs are joint household expenses, not mine because I am the lower earner.

Bibbity, mine are now teens and I dread to think how they are going to deal with these issues in a few years, given rising job insecurity and house prices.

Also an academic and someone who never thought of motherhood as the main objective in life, or stopping work.

However, do be aware that motherhood makes you responsible for a little person in a way that you haven't been before. Hopefully your husband really is a feminist and will be just as engaged and feel just as responsible for your babies as you do. But, the balance in many relationships is that the husband feels that the mother is more responsible for the children, and that the mother does feel that weight of responsibility (from herself and from society).
Rarely any man is asked how he reconciles work and family life, whereas most working women are.

Having said all that, motherhood can also bring a lot of over-protectiveness over our children, and we do have to let go and let our partners deal with them in their own way, even if we don't always agree with it. :)

Cute, I never said it was the issue for the OP. You brought it up. I never suggested they weren't joint expenses. You're creating a straw man.

And I would never assume a SAHM was not a feminist. I would deplore the set of circumstances which meant that she felt compelled to stay at home, if that was not a freely made choice on her part.

Nanna, when I lived in London, a lot of the SAHPs I came across were fathers, too - I now live in a part of rural England where the governing assumption is that women with children don't work, with knock-on effects for available childcare etc etc.

Mine are teens too and I share your concerns almond.