Domestic zombies, motherhood penalty & childcare

[JessSi]

Hi. New to mumsnet & have been looking for a discussion on pre-school childcare provision – I'm starting this thread in S&G because frankly motherhood, triggers the full weight of sex-based oppression, so seems relevant.

As most people know but in Holly Mead's words from The Times, this week:

“The system is rigged against women, who are at a financial disadvantage from the moment they decide to have a family. While they are on maternity leave they typically receive no pension contributions from their employer. They are then likely to remain out of full-time work for three years, until some free childcare is available. Then they often take low-paid and part-time work to fit around family life. In many cases they will not earn enough to qualify for auto-enrolment, meaning the pension gender gap widens to a chasm.”

To avoid motherhood penalty, the solution is often presented as providing women with the opportunity to outsource the care of their children from birth or shortly after enabling re-entry into the paid labour market as soon as possible. See PregnantthenScrewed’s recent protest about lack of affordable childcare. Although, in many developed countries, looks like women are sensibly taking an anti-natalist approach to motherhood given the economic detriment and vulnerability that it triggers.

But irrationally many women (like me) still do choose to have children and apparently, of women who do have children in the UK, the majority, 8 out 10, (see Frank Young in The Times, 3/11/22) want to spend more time parenting their children, not less.
They don’t want to outsource the care of their children, they want to do it themselves.
Mostly likely because they believe this is in their children’s best interests?

We are told that because of a lack of access to affordable childcare, women are concentrated in unpaid and low paid part-time work but perhaps both things are true, women do not have access to good quality affordable childcare and along with a genuine desire to ensure their children’s needs are properly met, women work unpaid or part-time and absorb a massive economic disadvantage, triggered by motherhood, that continues for the rest of our lives. This situation plays out at the sharp end for single parent women and women in economically abusive co-parenting relationships – whether married/cohabiting or separated.

I don’t think this is ethical or fair.

So. What’s the solution? I often lean in to a wage for housework position but this is problematic in lots of ways.

What's the view of mumsnetter's on all this? And what's the solution?

And if not, what should be done about it?

Don’t make it just about women for a start. It’s about men (fathers) too.

I completely agree with this.

I find it really frustrating when I see campaigns (including from Mumsnet) for more flexible working / affordable childcare etc to help “working mums”.

I know it is well-meant but it reinforces the view that childcare is purely a women’s issue.

I’m not saying I believe that care should be shared equally from birth as the default, before anyone jumps on me. I know that some women want to stay at home with their children and I respect that.

But I find it really unhelpful when the assumption is that men can just carry on as normal after becoming fathers and all the changes have to be made by women / for women.

yes

if a mother dies in childbirth, the father doesn't just get to go back to work after his 2 weeks paternity leave

the reason men can generally do this is the mother is at home, caring for the baby

therefore this is relevant to both mothers and fathers

Taxes are used to pay for health, social security, education, defence, transport etc. The reason that these things are invested in collectively is, I guess, because they are beneficial to us all. We could not expect doctors, nurses, people at the dwp, teachers, soliders, bus drivers etc to work for free. But when it comes to care work it's entirely normative that women will do this work selflessly to their own detriment, unpaid (worth noting that the person who directly benefits economically - in the short and long term - it is the women's partner/the child's other legal parent) and without even a whiff of shame, no-one bats an eye. Blows my mind. Surely, there's a moral case for arguing that as a society we should should be compensating/paying/or something, women for all of the unpaid care work that they are doing?

Sorry but I disagree, I don't see why tax payers should pick up the burden of people choosing to stay at home with their kids. For me the argument here is with the other parent

I don't see why tax payers should pick up the burden of people choosing to stay at home with their kids

Are you happy for tax payers to cover the care of the elderly?

The UK has had some form of extended leave for fathers for years, and in all that time (I work in HR) I have known 2 men who have taken it.

A number more have said they have wanted to take it but their partner has not wanted to give up part of their maternity leave to facilitate it

Yes, in the same way I am happy for tax payers to pick up maternity services and childrens education. I just don't see staying at home for a number of years as a necessity

But you think it's okay for tax payers to pay for childcare between maternity leave and school start?

Plenty of countries already have systems where nursery places are (wholly or in part) state funded. I would suggest that this is mostly done because it makes economic sense, not just for altruistic reasons. 😊My children all went to state nurseries in Italy and it cost me a fraction of what a private nursery would have cost. I don't mind paying for that out of my taxes.

I think one massive benefit would be changing shared parental leave so that there is some leave that has to be taken by Dad or is lost.

I would say six months for each parent and a further six months that can be divided between the parents as they wish. Father's leave must be taken after Mum returns to work.

This gives fathers an incentive to support mothers back to work.

I would also offer free nursery places from a younger age. It is daft that they currently don't kick in until age three meaning that families have to meet the full cost for the first two years if Mum returns to work meaning many women can't afford to return.

I would suggest each child gets a set number of hours every year from their first birthday.

It's not as simple as 'staying at home for a number of years isn't a necessity'. Childcare is an absolute necessity. Parents make decisions (as a couple, usually I would imagine) around a child's best interests, lack of affordable good quality childcare, women's lower earning potential, issues around p/t working etc. which results in women taking on childcare unpaid and absorbing massive economic detriment aka motherhood penalty that lasts for the rest of their lives. How is that ok.

But it's all a choice. It's a choice to have a child, it's a choice to have more than one, it's a choice for a parent to stay at home, it's a choice that parent the mum (it doesn't have to be), it's a choice to go back part time. People on here talk as if it's inevitable that mum has to give up work or go part time but it isn't.

Do I think society needs to change so men take more of the load? Of course I do, but that also requires mums to let go of the reigns a little and stop automatically considering themselves primary carer.

Going back to my original reply, what I simply don't agree with is the idea that 'we' as a society should be paying a wage for a housework role. People need to take responsibility for their own choices and cover it as a family

I hear you. Many women on here seem to be arguing that to even things up men should take on more unpaid care work.

But I sense the choices you talk about are made within an economic, political and cultural context and often there is not really any choice at all. Motherhood structurally economically disadvantages women. Good quality affordable childcare isn't available, families cannot afford for both parents to work p/t or have both parents be penalised for taking parenting leave etc. Interesting discussion.

People on here talk as if it's inevitable that mum has to give up work or go part time but it isn't.

but if the cost of childcare means that you can’t afford to go back to work, then staying at home isn’t a choice, surely? You’re forced into it

Partner up with a good man who wants to provide for a family and enable a mother to be with her children for as long as possible.

Having children is a choice, sure, but it's one that over 80% of women in the UK make according to the ONS (apparently its harder to track the % of men, but assume roughly equal). Personally I think something that will impact the vast majority of people should be treated as a social responsibility by the government.

Properly funded childcare should be considered as infrastructure and available from the age at which maternity leave ends. The current fudge of funded hours is leaving many nurseries massively underpaid by government, so they're having to recoup costs from the unfunded hours, basically pushing up prices for kids under 3 or those not getting funding. The government like to claim to be supporting working families but they're not willing to pay the price.

I personally struggled on maternity leave with my first so for our next I'm taking the first 6 months and DH is taking the next 6 months. We're lucky to have the option but I think it should be available to all, not least because it would stop the assumption amongst men and workplaces that childcare is women's work.

I'm involved in recruitment/interviewing, and I certainly do count years off parenting as useful experience. It's sad when women come in and literally apologise for a 'gap' in their CV - and I mean it when I say it's not a gap, it's years of learning to organise, be a diplomat, teacher, team leader, and I tend to assume that a woman who's spent time looking after her children is a hard worker.

You may be in the minority there. Certainly if you post on Chat or AIBU here with questions about how to showcase the skills you’ve acquired during the parenting years, responses can tend to range from the politely dismissive to the downright offensively misogynistic. Even at best the attitude is ‘you haven’t got a paper qualification, you weren’t supervised, there are no performance reviews in motherhood and I can’t get references, so how can I progress your application?’ I’d be interested in creative ways of bypassing these institutional barriers.

It's not inevitable that it has to be the mum though

I know several people where the person to give up work/go part time is the mum and it's because they want to be the one that stay at home even if it isn't the most sensible decision for the family financially

It's one of those things where radical feminism isn't radical enough. To achieve equality requires a complete revolution in the way society deals with childcare and child-rearing, which in turn requires a revolution in employment, which in turn requires intervening in the labour market in a way that is incredibly unfashionable at the moment.

Housework is reproduction of labour power. It doesn't just benefit your family, it benefits society. Without housework no paid work would be possible, so housework should be seen as essential, just like the education system and health service are seen as essential.

Personally I think the impact of having a few years out from the workplace is overstated. We work 40+ years these days, loads of people take time out for caring responsibilities, travel, study, sick leave etc etc.

I don’t think we have to tie ourselves in knots trying to find all the ways that these breaks in employment have made us more skilled. Just accept that this is the way life goes and that people don’t become unemployable just because they take a few years out.

I don’t have the magic solution for getting employers to come round to that way of thinking though, sadly.

Yes, absolutely.

We need to look at how society is built and runs - as ever, it relies on the subjugation and oppression of a large segment of the world's population.

It would be good if more employers could have the logic of this demonstrated. Surely there are schemes?!

I tend to think of mothers as having extra skills and experience, because ime there's no harder job.

Well that is the approach that marriage where the non-working spouse, usually the woman, is entitled to half of everything plus support to continue to bring up the kids, is supposed to be about.

So you have a family income, essentially, and like other assets it belongs to both.

To some extent this idea was rejected as being sexist. So instead you have this sense of married couples as almost independent financial entities who may or may not choose to combine financial resources.

This is supposed to be better for women, but it's not especially better for mothers.

Society decided that it wanted to have as many women as possible in the workforce because it wanted to increase the labour force and productivity. As a result, most families don't have the choice any longer to have the mum or dad stay home.

That wasn't some kind of altruistic move on the part of the state, and certainly isn't about individual choice.

Affordable, quality childcare should be available for all those who WANT to use it.
Not mandatory (it isn’t in France or Sweden either) but there if needed.
If SAHM works best for your family great, but it should be a real choice which for many women / families it currently isn’t.