Men whose lives are facilitated by women Part 2

[OlennasWimple]

Continuation of the other thread that got filled up

Just Id you are saying that childcare can be better, no one will disagree.
But saying it’s the work of the devil doesn’t do it any justice either.
Some nurseries are crap. But not all of them.
Some CM are crap but not all do them.
Some after school clubs are crap but again not all of them.

I went to nursery, 3 childminders and after school clubs and have a great memory of all of them (espec the after school club's facilities), apart from 1 childminder.

At secondary I got a key to the house and was home only an hour before my parents because my school was a train journey away.

Your description was not my experience at all.

I'm going to say it again Yolo - your experience isn't everyone's experience.

I do agree though that UK childcare needs to be paid better, longer training, and subsidised way more.

You haven't factored in the guilt yet. The guilt that all mothers seem to be conditioned to feel that most men just simply don't get

"stick them in the nursery where you would be charged £800-1400 for somebody with four educational levels below you to look after your child and be paid absolute peanuts for"
Do only highly educated women have babies and use nurseries now? I had no idea.

RagingFeminist

I wouod be very careful about any comments along the lines ‘once you have a child, they always take the priority’. Because that’s the sort of idea that ONLY women have. Men do not seem to have any issue putting their job/hobby/life still very high up the agenda after they become a father.Second, because it’s totally possible to be a Mum and STILL think about career etc...

Oh I agree with you completely there. It’s not just men who don’t think like that, but childless women also. Please excuse my turn of phrase as it is not meant to be nasty for those struggling with infertility.

I think about my career all the time. Becoming a mother hasn’t killed an individual and a woman in me. I wish it did, as all this crap would have been easier to accept.

I want to have a rewarding paid role outside of my children and family. I want to have my own space. I want to have social standing and respect from society, as I am getting none of this now ‘being a lazy fecker at home sponging off my hard-working husband’.

I am so so happy that my DH doesn’t think along those lines. It did take bringing some awareness for him on my part, but I think he realises now I don’t have an easy life and I actually sacrifice a lot every day for my family, same as he does. The only difference being he is recognised for doing so (and paid) and I am neither.

Maybe we should stop feeling guilty?

I’m nit British and I have to say I’ve never felt guilty of leaving my dcs at nursery. For me that was NORMAL.
Because that’s normal where I’m coming from. Mothers go back to work after 3 months maternity leave (well they were when my dcs were born, it might be more now). They don’t go part time either.
The issue there is about finding the right setting (usually what we wouod call a CM here) but you will not hear all the horror stories we have here about how nursey is damaging to the children. (Actually they wouod say that it’s beneficial as it allows children to get the sort of input from early on, input they dint always get at home....)
Not feeling guilty is making a huge difference, I agree.

Blatant placemark to read later x

Yolo fwiw my dcs would say the same than you. They have very few ‘bad’ memories of being in childcare. And as I said, the bad memories are more about being bored in their last 18 months in primary.

I’m actually wondering what the Scandinavian countries, where the equality between men and women is much better, have done to achieve that better balance?

I’m a Brit living in Sweden,

Firstly, it is not utopia here - very important to point that out ;)

But pinning down exactly what is done is interesting. Firstly I think these countries have a long tradition of a more sexually equal society. The women were key keepers and ran everything and also seem to have done quite a bit of the fighting too - it’s ceryainly never just been the men here wielding a sword. They also came late to Christianity and it’s very patriarchal structure. So I think there’s been a long history of women not quite having as bad a deal as many places. Marriage ceremony for example, is you walk in together to signal equality. There’s no giving away like chattel (I had my father walk me down the not-aisle and that raised eyebrows..,)

I’m not a historian and I’d be very interested if anyone has any links to explore that further.

In the present time... there’s that background and a constant willingness to be fairer. There’s the complex issue of lagom and jamtes law, which you can criticise a lot but it does make things more level. Then there are our eye watering taxes, which mean that they want you to go out and work so policies are put in place to make it more attractive (very few sahms here.) and there is a solid legal framework which (mainly) helps (although my American company ignores it at will...)

There’s a much more conformist society here - you do what the government tells you. I struggle with that as a Brit with a background of eccentricity but I do see why it’s arisen - this is a fucker of a climate and I’m sure than some degree of social cohesion was necessary to survive it.
There’s also a much lower level of toxic machismo. I’m sure that’s both a cause and effect but men here seem far less macho in a bad way (while still being bewilderingly big and manly, I do not know what they feed them on everyone here is HUGE.) blokes are still manly but they dont seem threatened by pushing a peak or going to baby groups.

And the government does step in - they introduced use it or lose it days for fathers because they weren’t taking up the parental leave enough.

Would love to read more about this - I’m aware that many of the examples I’ve listed are more effect than cause.

True - but the more people have equal set-ups, the less competition there will be with men who can work 16 hour days and women that sit at home and enable them to do it.

That will still leave us with facilitated men making a disproportionate amount of the decisions that impact on whether we have equal set ups though...

I don't disagree that we need change, I just think it's important to spell out the position we're in now. It's not the same as it is in countries where the sort of things you mention are more institutionalised, embedded in the culture. The women who fall foul of that aren't doing it wrong. Things are changing a bit, I'm sure they are. But not that fast.

Anatidae - there's loads of stuff written about how Viking women travelled extensively, could inherit, could divorce and could reclaim their dowry. At the same period in time, most Anglo-Saxons were serfs, part of an incredibly patriarcal set up

I recognise Just's description except our school's care doesn't provide breakfast and finishes at 5.30.
Like Raging - I also have a Y6 who has outgrown it but I'm not sure I'm happy to leave home alone. I believe kids are left alone at a younger age (8 or 9) in Scandinavia but I'm aware the cultural norms are different here.

Just, I know how you feel. Am in similar position. .

Just Your description of nursery and breakfast club / after school club rings true here, too. Both my kids dislike ASC (one noisy room with a bit of colouring and a box of toys too young for them) and I try not to make them go more than once a week, and for as little time as possible. To be fair, DH feels the same way - it's very much our last choice of childcare, not our first.

I want to have a rewarding paid role outside of my children and family. I want to have my own space. I want to have social standing and respect from society, as I am getting none of this now ‘being a lazy fecker at home sponging off my hard-working husband’. *

Amen to that. But I'm not going to work at a family level financial loss and/or way less than I earned 6 years ago.

Bold fail. Sorry.

“The birthing and breastfeeding part is what a year mat leave is for. After that, both of you can get up in the night.”

Just a reminder that in the U.K., you have to return to work within 26 weeks to keep the legal right to return to your exact same job. And as many of us have seen, the law still doesn’t prevent companies discriminating.

justs childcare description rings true to me too, except for the bit about the nursery workers, some of whom were highly educated (if poorly paid).
I also wasn't happy to let a yr 6 child go home and be alone for 2 hours after school , which is partly why I changed my job- I realised childcare was going to be an issue at 11/12 and i needed more flexibility.
I used to dream of having a husband to share it all with, to not be the one running to work and running to the childminder at the other end of the day. I have since realised for so many women husbands don't really help at all ( except financially).
At least, while my career was dead in the water, I never had anyone to resent.

“But I'm not going to work at a family level financial loss and/or way less than I earned 6 years ago.”

The standard response to this is to say, oh but (1) you should count your incomes separately and both contribute to childcare and (2) you are thinking too short term, and should keep your hand in at work to be able to earn more later.

But I understand that in reality this can be really hard to do (your kids are only small once, after all, and not every couple can afford the “family level financial loss” to support the lower earner’s career (pretty much always the woman’s) through this period).

I actually don’t have the option to SAH. We could afford DH not to work but not me. I have to say, it’s not always comfortable this way around either and I still have the “mum guilt” and the mental load. At least it means I can’t give up, I guess. If I had the option, I might well have done. I don’t judge those who do, as I know how hard it is.

I remember the moment I felt this empathy the most keenly. I had just got married and career was flying. Had a meeting with our ceo. He started grilling me about baby plans! I hadn’t even thought about it myself yet. He asked what my husband did for work. Did my husband want kids? This was the moment that I realised that women are completely judged for being female, and for this alone, and there was NOTHING I could do to control this - no matter how hard I worked. That day, I felt like quitting. I got so depressed. I wasn’t even pregnant yet. No wonder so many women give up.

I own at least two books in Swedish about the crushing weight of the mental load, one of them called "The family project manager hands in her notice", so Scandinavian countries have not found the winning ticket by any means. They talk about it, though.

Also, as a teen in Sweden I definitely was taught (by books, magazines, people I knew) that having children is hard work, and that gender equality is a worthwhile goal although hard to achieve. I think it's easier if you are prepared for battle, as it were, rather than thinking nothing much will change.

One thing that tends to get overlooked is the very gender-segregated labour market in Scandinavia - Anatidae probably knows much better than me, but men tend to earn more, making their jobs more important despite other factors working against it, ending up in part-time women shouldering more responsibility for their children.

I was positively surprised by the number of female lorry drivers, among other things, at my last visit, so possibly the labour market is changing - lots of fathers work part-time too, but not as many as mothers.

Basically, you are on the back foot already, whether or not you decide to have a family. It’s expected that a family will impact the woman’s ability to perform at work, but not the man’s. I’d like to see that expectation change.