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?

Unfashionably intervene in the labour market how?

Difficult topic. No easy answers. Seems to me that one of the hardest part of this discussion is around the best interests of the child. What if leaving a 1 year old in nursery for 40/50 hours a week is not in their best interests?

It's not fair to make digs at women being unable to "let go". I was a woman who had a partner, father of my small children, who made noises about staying at home more. This wouldn't have been state paternity leave - it was before it existed - it would have been an informal arrangement whereby I supported the family and he did childcare. I had no way of saying yes to this in good conscience because he would have been crap at it. His parenting was like baby sitting and he didn't do a thing for me when I was exhausted and vulnerable with a newborn. I knew if I went out and left him for 10 or 11 hours I would come back to have to look after the house, everything for the children that had not been done, and everything for me as a working person out of the house full time. Aside from how miserable that woudl have made me, I couldn't let my children be looked after as shoddily as he did it. he was a stop gap - lots of tv, lots of processed food, nothing difficult, he never pushed things like potty training or said no to anything or developed the child in anyway that would have challenged him. I couldn't say any of this to him of course. If you ask him, you will hear that I wanted to do it all. I so, so, so did not want to do it all but I really cared about whether it was done properly or not.

and this is a story I see again and again on the relationships board

are many men just inherently shit parents? I dunno. but the fact is many ARE shit parents

Men are like that because boys are still socialised to think that women are there for their convenience.

Then they often take low-paid and part-time work to fit around family life.
The question is why is part-time work always low paid? Yes there are a minority of women who are already in good jobs when they get pregnant, and their employer values them enough to let them work part-time for a few years in order to retain them. But what if you get pregnant and you’re not already in a good job where you’re valued? You should still be able to apply for and get a good part-time job later on after pregnancy… but you can’t. The only jobs that actually advertise for part-time from the beginning are shitty ones.

This is the biggest problem imo. Because not only does it prevent mums from getting decent jobs after pregnancy, it also prevents dads from switching to jobs with less hours so they can do their share and allow mum to work.

Why can’t employers offer career level jobs with the salary and responsibilities of a 40 hour post, but for 30 hours only? It would be great if I could work 8-2pm while DH drops the kids at school, then I pick them up at 3pm while he works 11-5pm. But professional jobs only advertise 40 hour posts, which means only one of us can have a 9-5 job while the other is restricted to 10-2 in order to do both schools runs.

when I went part time after my first child, my employer invited me to take a 20% cut in my hourly rate. that was fun (I told them to stop breaking the law, and they did)

I work as a language teacher part-time and the pay is quite good. But I agree, most professional jobs don't seem to be available part time and this needs addressing.

But I agree, most professional jobs don't seem to be available part time and this needs addressing
Employers won’t accept professional employees not being available 9-5. In fact they want to be able to ask you to start early and stay late and go on business trips too.

My husband sometimes has to get the train at 6am to visit a far away client at 9am, and they won’t change the meeting just because he needs to drop off the kids at 8! Or he gets stuck in a meeting that runs after 5pm and it would cost him his job if halfway through the meeting he said “sorry I need to leave now to pick up the kids”. Or if they tell him to travel to see a client and stay in a hotel, and he says “sorry Tuesday is my day to pick up the kids while my wife is at work, I can go on Wednesday instead” he would get sacked for that too.

The fact is, high level jobs demand too much flexibility. You can’t leave just because it’s the end of your shift. Which means there needs to be another person (usually mum) who can pick up the slack. Which means she can’t have a professional job. It stinks.

Why should the mum pick up the slack? Why can’t mums stay in high level jobs and dads pick up the slack?

Maybe if more men took on part time jobs, they’d realise that part time jobs are often a bit rubbish, limit career progression etc. And then things might finally start to improve.

Why should the mum pick up the slack? Why can’t mums stay in high level jobs and dads pick up the slack?
That would work too! But what happens is that couples go “the highest earner needs to keep their job” and because of the gender pay gap that’s usually the man. And Mum is already out of work and being sidelined because of maternity leave (possibly multiple maternity leaves), and maybe she has physical injuries and emotional damage or post natal depression, and maybe she’s breastfeeding, so of course it’s obvious that she should be the one to give her job up.

The odds are stacked. If someone has to give their job up it’s going to be the Mum. So things need to be changed so that nobody has to give their job up and two parents can juggle kids between them. But that would require employers to accept that employees work less than full-time hours and need to always leave at their finishing time because they have kids to pick up. Which they won’t. I 100% believe that the employers are to blame here.

what is really galling about all of this is that everyone seems to think that mothers should work - I mean not everyone but it is basically I think the majority mainstream view that even married mothers "can't expect to stay at home" while their children are minors. But when you actually go out there and try and do it, the structures all around expect you not to: schools ringing you up at the drop of the hat, tradespeople saying they will "drop in", everyone asking you to do things as if you are around all day, and expecting you to be, and behaving put out when you have to arrange things at specific times and / or take leave and / or not do it at all. I am absolutely sick of it. My children are 13 and 11 now and I started out being really conciliatory and apologetic about all the people I had to explain to that I really couldn't be in two places at once. now I am just burning with rage because the years of trying, sincerely trying, in good faith, to produce a result that is exactly equivalent to being in two places at the same time, has worn me to shreds. I am sick to death of it. I work for a company now that expects you to bill hours to individual clients and I absolutely love it because in my old job I was responsible to everyone at the same time. Even though it's purely symbolic as it doesn't lessen my workload - nor does it stop other people bothering me in work hours - I absolutely love the clarity of making a note that I am now doing x job for y client and it will take 2 hours, and feeling that I am absolutely justified in ignoring everyone else for that time. that stress of being alive to all demands at all times is just unbearable.

It’s not just full time hours that are the problem. It’s also that in most high-paying jobs, full-time, to quote that novel I Don’t Know How She Does It, is seen as skiving. Weekends off? Annual leave you can actually take off instead of having to be compensated for it? 5pm finish? Dream on.

I used to be friends with a woman who now has an incredibly high profile high powered career overseas. She has a genius IQ, academics off the scale, the ability to thrive on 5 hours sleep (some people are genuinely wired like this) and a husband who is no slouch intellectually himself but who worked a routine 9-5 job so he could do consistent pick-ups and drop-offs for their sons. She regularly did 70-80 hour weeks which I don’t think is realistic or healthy for the majority to aspire to or for employers to expect.

I’m so glad that this issue has a thread, for me the impact of motherhood is a crucial feminist issue.

I have both worked full-time in a ‘good’ career based job, and now mostly a stay at home single mum (with some self employed work). I have decided to only work part-time because my child has severe disabilities and ‘outsourcing’ means a whole heap of problems, and frankly I want to give my child the best start and I am the best person to do it. There are some excellent fathers, but on the whole, mothers do the most organising and upbringing of the kids, and this should be supported in a feminist way - with better recognition and respect for that role.

I have a whole heap of qualifications, and am a really good worker and yet trying to find work that can fit around my caring duties as a mother (which will probably go on for my DSs lifetime) is almost impossible. I have very little pension, very little financial support, my Ex keeps trying to insist that we can share the childcare more ‘to let me work’ (as he resents maintenance) but his version of parenting is letting his sister ‘mind’ DS which honestly is a health and safety risk, and DS has no quality of care there.

And yet my feminist friends have been quite slow to acknowledge that this is a real feminist issue for me, and also push me to ‘get financially independent’ and they don’t see the cost for DS if I just outsource his care. I’ve seen others do it and the lack of really good continuous carers often results in regression for those with disabilities. Why can’t I be recognised as providing a service for society in the same way that someone in work is? Why am I penalised by society for being a good mother? I am sometimes called ‘a saint’ and that DS is ‘so lucky’ and benefits so much, but in real, monetary, career or security terms I am screwed.

Motherhood, whether for children with very high needs or not, has been downgraded into running around taking your kid to museums at the weekends while you juggle a million things, this is not what us as feminists fought for, we fought for equal rights, for the ability not to be penalised in our careers when we become carers for our children, to have financial power as much as the ‘earner’ if we are the main carers for kids, and to be recognised that quality parenting is very valuable for kids mental security - often from a main carer which 9/10 is the mother.

@trytopullyoursocksup I absolutely agree with everything you have said. I also WANT to be able to chat with the teacher’s as small issues with DS can very quickly become bigger ones if someone else (including his father who never talks to the teachers) picks up. DS has several medical appointments and a short day, plus holidays. No way could I work most ‘high level’ and yet I am ‘higher level’ career wise - but totally passed over because I can only offer 20 hours. I feel completely wasted with all my experience and qualifications, and I also feel very demoted in even my female peer’s eyes who are all now very high level in their jobs.

But when you actually go out there and try and do it, the structures all around expect you not to
Yep. Get a job… but be available at 3pm after school for parents evening or a session about literacy or a meeting about behaviour, and also during the day to chaperone school trips and do the fun run. Get a job… but we need parent governors and PTA and you also need to help with homework. Get a job… but if your child is sick you have to pick them up and keep them at home till they recover, and don’t forget they can’t attend for 48hrs after diarrhoea. Get a job… but it’s not ok to leave if a meeting runs late and you need to pick the kids up.

The fact is you cannot work unless you earn enough to pay someone to do the stuff you can’t do, or have grandparents who do it for free. And an average salary doesn’t cover it.

It’s the value of motherhood that has been eroded, it’s should be respected and supported by employers, partners and society if we as mother’s want to see our children’s plays, take them to medical appointments, be at the school gates. Why did we let society under value this? Why is only working of value?

The fact is, high level jobs demand too much flexibility. You can’t leave just because it’s the end of your shift. Which means there needs to be another person (usually mum) who can pick up the slack. Which means she can’t have a professional job. It stinks.

Essentially in cases like this, the employers is demanding the services of both their employee and of a facilitator or PA who does all the things he (it’s usually a he) can’t do because he’s so busy. So why shouldn’t the employer pay for that?

Perhaps highly paid men should formally employ their spouses like MPs do.

Perhaps highly paid men should formally employ their spouses like MPs do.

Is that a serious suggestion?

I imagine the employer would say the employee is paid enough to afford a PA (or a SAHM). The problem is that in many cases the SAHM didn’t choose that role - she was forced into it because the father was selfish and inconsiderate.

I have had huge arguments with my DH because he keeps working late and I keep saying that’s not ok because I’m not willing to pick up the additional parenting. He says he has to - I say he can’t so he’ll have to find a different job. But at the end of the day, what can I do when he simply doesn’t show up and I’m left holding the baby?

When he got offered a promotion we nearly got divorced when I said he couldn’t accept it because I wasn’t willing to pick up the slack. He said “you can’t tell me what to do!” and I said “fine accept the promotion but you’ll still have to handle your 50% of parenting because I’m not doing it”. Of course then I was being selfish!

The difficulty is that women are not respected. none of these things that women do just happen to be poorly recognised and if women could just do b instead of a, then they would gain respect and be properly facilitated and rewarded. The issue is that women can do a, b, c, right down to z and as soon as a woman is doing it, she's expected to do it for free at the same time as 27 other things.

So in the case of Raddix - when she was picking up the parenting when her husband was working, it was supposed to be an effortless thing she could just fit in. The second she asks her husband to do it, it's impossible, because of course you can't do two things at the same time. Its some weird inconsistency in the laws of physics

Victoria Smith has a book coming out in March which I am keenly anticipating called Hags: the Demonisation of middle aged women. not all mothers are middle aged of course, but I think she has some interesting stuff to say about the general disrespect and even hatred of mothers that is relevant to the way society completely depends on mothers yet throws us under the bus. I don't know what the solutions are because negotiating peaceably and trying hard to find a cooperative way forward in good faith just absolutely shreds us; the hard line alternative, withdrawal of labour, is not open to us because we care about our children.

Oh! That sounds like a great book. Can you pre-order it?

I think you can on amazon

Thanks.