Sexist policies - lack of childcare currently meaning mothers can't return to work

[midclegs]

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/24/sexist-policies-mothers-struggle-return-work-uk-childcare

I'm lucky - I can work from home.
I really feel for those Mums who can't go back until they have childcare, it's something the Govt have totally overlooked.

But even I'm struggling - as a single parent this week has been more difficult with the kid not having any schoolwork and daily structure. Like many I'm working 10 hr days whilst still trying to give my kid some sort of quality of life.

On a plus note, it's good to see the words women and mother used in a Guardian article.

@whatnow41 apologies but I need to ask. Why did you take mat leave if you were the higher earner? Why did you have a second child knowing the impact it would have on your career? Having had such a poor experience with your first child, why didn't your husband take leave for the second baby? I can understand a bit of foolish rose-tinted optimism with a first baby but you seem to have made family planning choices with your husband which you knew would hold you back. I would be interested to understand this better.

[quote Lostatsea1988]@whatnow41 apologies but I need to ask. Why did you take mat leave if you were the higher earner? Why did you have a second child knowing the impact it would have on your career? Having had such a poor experience with your first child, why didn't your husband take leave for the second baby? I can understand a bit of foolish rose-tinted optimism with a first baby but you seem to have made family planning choices with your husband which you knew would hold you back. I would be interested to understand this better.[/quote]
Given the extent to which this does happen maybe it’s time we started asking , or admitting, if there is some kind of innate maternal urge that affects only (most) natal females? I’m all for doing away with gender, in terms of stereotypes, but if biology affects us in this way I am not sure we do ourselves or those women who desperately long for children any favours ?

....any favours by denying it? Is what I meant. Was interrupted by my children.

@Gwynfluff

We also need to take into account that predominantly female occupations - however important and socially necessary get paid less than male dominated occupations - nurses, social workers, teachers etc. So again structural inequality means women are more likely to be in lower paid occupations irrespective of who’ve they’ve ‘chosen’ to marry.

Isn’t this actually the main issue? It’s all about access to money. Paying these jobs more and allow genuine part time working for professional jobs would go a long way towards resolving the issue. That, and recognising the value of the hours and hours of unpaid toil, physical and emotional, that women do caring for the more vulnerable in our society. Reacting to the world that we do live in rather than the ideal world that we are lectured that we should change our existing choices (which many many women consider perfectly valid) to create?

Given the extent to which this does happen maybe it’s time we started asking , or admitting, if there is some kind of innate maternal urge that affects only (most) natal females?

I do think that actually, women are just as, if not more, hostile to a more equal division of labour than men, on average. We did shared parental leave and quite a few men I knew told me they had wanted to do it but their partners 'wouldn't let them'. I sort of assumed this was self-serving bollocks, but it turned out that a lot of women were really against the idea, to the point that they seemed angry that we were doing it and did indeed say that they'd never give up 'their leave' in that way. What I found interesting, both in real life and MN, is that there was generally lots of talk about how hard mat leave is, how much easier it is for the man because he just goes and sits at work and drinks coffee, etc - but as soon as you mention shared parental leave a lot of women start talking about how 'they earned' their mat leave through pregnancy/birth etc and they tend to make it very clear that they would resent it enormously if they were at work and their partner was at home. I'm sure in lots of cases that's because they suspect the partner would still expect them to do the bulk of the domestic stuff too, but I found it really striking - and, as I say, quite shocking how many women seemed cross at me for doing it, as if us splitting the leave was taking something away from them.

I've also been cross-examined on it on MN before when I said I was a big fan of shared parental leave and the poster was delighted when I admitted that I'd given up breastfeeding to go back to work because then she could tell me sanctimoniously how she could never have done something so selfish.

@fascinated

Agree - sort at structural and not the individual level. You’ll also make it it better for males too.

Also need to sort the ‘dangerous’ jobs males do as well, as mentioned, so there’s proper sick pay and more employment rights and flexible working (not impacted at all in say the construction industry, which has high rates of Industrial accidents and also mental health/suicidality).

Some of us don't have a husband and the majority of single parent households are headed by women. Any policy that disadvantages single parents is indirectly a sexist policy.

My children are secondary school age and I'm well aware that if this had happened even 2 or 3 years ago I'd have been completely fucked over for lack of childcare. As it is my children have been doing very little school work as I am not at home to supervise and enforce. My 10 year old has been in the care of his 16 yr old sister.

When something is such a blatant oversight, you have to start wondering if it's actually intentional.

Let's be honest, there was a reason that women were forced out of employment into becoming SAHMs in the 1950s, because it solved two problems at once.

If the government is not prioritising childcare it's because they don't see it as a critical enabler to get the economy going. Tories are cold hearted pragmatists, if you give them a solution in which economic units (families) take a personal hit AND one person steps out of the workforce whilst being excluded from unemployment figures AND being ineligible for both childcare benefit and unemployment benefits, then the fact that the majority impacted are women is going to be a footnote. Hell, with some Tories it'd be seen as a benefit.

It's why they've refused to give guidelines to employers. At the moment, they're asking firms to be "considerate" so that individual employers have to decide whether to take the hit, and if not they get blamed by their employees. If they proposed anything specific they'd have to support companies to provide it in some way which means yet more money.

But it’s true that a woman who works outside the home usually ends up with the burden of the mental load and physical/emotional labour too. That’s gender stereotypes in action and it starts from babyhood, with boys and girls socialised very differently and failures in organisational skills/cleaning etc excused with „boys will be boys“ etc etc. It will take generations to fix this and current mothers of boy children would have to act against their own interests by training their offspring to forego the benefit of what is going to be a lot of unpaid labour from their female partners. It’s entirely rational behaviour on their part to perpetuate the current system.

Good point Molten, I think you might be right (especially re unemployment figures) sadly this theory may fall down when they lose significant numbers of experienced workers in certain female-dominated sectors

[quote Lostatsea1988]@whatnow41 apologies but I need to ask. Why did you take mat leave if you were the higher earner? Why did you have a second child knowing the impact it would have on your career? Having had such a poor experience with your first child, why didn't your husband take leave for the second baby? I can understand a bit of foolish rose-tinted optimism with a first baby but you seem to have made family planning choices with your husband which you knew would hold you back. I would be interested to understand this better.[/quote]
I had planned to take 6 months off, and a new role was waiting for me on my return. My pregnancy had been kind of rough and I had planned to work until 38 wks. I couldn't carry on and stopped at 37 wks, and gave birth on my first day of mat leave. Without outing myself, I became disabled due to what happened next. I needed the full 12 months off in order to adjust to being a disabled person as well as a new mum.

Having had infertility treatment and IVF, there was never a choice to be made about a 2nd child, and certainly not one made around finances and my career. When I became pregnant naturally, we truly felt as though everything would work out fine in the end. Both physically and financially. As women we don't just put our careers on hold, we put our bodies on the line to have children too.

I came through the second pregnancy without further injury but my existing condition had been made worse and I'd been unable to take medication while pregnant. I again needed the full 12 months in order to rebuild myself physically and get back on my feet (literally). In my situation, disability discrimination has definitely paid a part in the impact on my career, especially as I'm visibly disabled (using crutches or a wheelchair when necessary).

Shared parental leave wasn't an option when we had our kids, but I still don't see many men taking it in our workplace. What I do see is the raised eyebrows and surprised discussions about the few men who have, it's disappointing.