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?

1 1 year paid maternity leave for working women-and paid 80-90-100%of earnings
2 access to affordable childcare -so that every woman has a choice -not like it is right now-child care costing me 1200£ a month which is half my salary

problem solved. Now lets talk how to make it real

Where I live it costs £20k to put one child in full time nursery. Tax free childcare knocks off £2k, so I would need to earn £18k. Plus about £5k to cover transport, and maybe £2k to buy essentials like clothes and makeup and get my hair tidied up etc. Then I’d have to pay student loan payments. So to break even I’d need a pre-tax salary of approx £35k.

The median average salary in the UK is about £31k. And by definition 50% of people earn less than that! So you need to earn above average just to break even - which locks more than half of mothers out of the job market until their child is at least 3. And once you’re out it’s very hard to get back in.

At age 3 the 30 free hours kicks in and halves your childcare bill. Which is only useful if you only have one child - if you have a second child you’re still in the situation where the cost of childcare outweighs potential earnings. By the time both kids are at school you’ve been out of work for 6-7 years.

And bear in mind that the £35k earners are just barely breaking even. Not profiting. Not making their family better off. Just breaking even.

So you’ve been out of work for several years and then you have to find a job which allows enough flexibility to cover dropoffs and pickups and sick days. No wonder so many mums don’t/can’t work!

We need massively subsidised childcare so mums don’t end up missing years of work, and more flexible jobs which allow them to work around their commitments. We might as well ask for the moon on a stick.

As soon as you massively subsidize childcare you create a cascade which makes it very difficult for women not to work and put their kids in said childcare. They can no longer afford to make the choice not to work.

Where are the dads in all of this? As a minimum, wouldn’t it be helpful if they could get flexible jobs too so the women aren’t the ones that always have to drop everything for school pick up/illness etc?

Some could, and do.

But it will never be the case that all jobs are flexible. Some people will be in less flexible positions.

And you will probably always have more women who are wanting the flexible positions compared to men unless you push them into positions where they can't do that.

I worked with a man whose wife earnt much more than him but she was the one that worked PT. When I asked him why he hadn't gone PT when they had DC he said his wife still earnt more than him working 3 days a week so it made sense for her to work PT. While they were undoubtedly minimising their earnings in the higher tax bracket I did think it was amusing because can you ever imagine a higher earning man choosing to go PT while his lower earning wife worked FT

Yes, somehow the outcome is always the woman goes part time and the man stays full time.

ok not always, a friend had twins and both her and DH asked to reduce to 4 days. Hers was agreed, his refused.

That's such a clear summary. Thanks.

Honestly, if they way our societies normatively exploit, make invisible and penalise women for the unpaid care work that we are structurally coerced to do, is not sex-based oppression, I don't know what is.

Yes, it's like who takes whose names - there's always a good, logical reason why it 'just makes sense' to default to the man keeping his job/name. I think it's in Caroline Criado Perez's book that she cites a piece of research where they spoke to couples where one was a medical doctor and one was an academic. When the woman was the MD the couple would explain that it just made sense for her to be the one working flexibly because it was so much easier in her job than his. And when the woman was the academic the couple would explain that it just made sense for her to be the one working flexibly because it was so much easier in her job than his...

There is also a really widespread belief that it's harder for men to get applications to work part-time through, which I'm sure is true in some cases but is also a bit if a self-perpetuating thing - they don't apply because they 'know' they won't be allowed. When DH and I both went down to four days a week people were totally unsurprised for me but a lot were surprised that his work allowed it, even though there are quite a few women in his workplace who work part-time.

The surname parallel occurred to me too @Hardbackwriter .

Oh my name was so boring / difficult to spell.
He hasn't got any brothers (when his surname is Jones).

But I didn't want to derail the thread!

I suspect men are less likely to have part time approved and don't want to risk the long term consequences. (which women don't really have a choice about of course). Which is why there should laws enabling anyone to reduce to 4 days and making some of parental leave use it or lose it to increase uptake.

Excellent post, I’ve noticed the same amongst my friends. Somehow it always works out that the woman’s job is more flexible.

I also noticed that when I was pregnant and on maternity leave, I was often asked if I’d return part-time. My DH was never asked this once - despite the fact we did the same job!

I've noticed a lot of women in my area who I know through school etc work in work from home type businesses (think hair, beauty, selling stuff), and a lot get sucked into the mlm type business models.
I myself had 5 years out of work totally, and went back to a very junior position. 6 years later I've managed to climb the ladder to a level higher than I left it. That's with primary age children, with an excellent out of school club, and working ft.
I think we do have to factor in the fact that lots of women do actually want to be with their kids when little. I made the choice knowing the risks to my career and luckily its been OK.
What might help could be a way to access training when you're not in work to keep up your skills, whether specialist or generic office skills etc.

This is an excellent thread on such a complex and frustrating topic.
I’ve been very lucky in my personal experience but have also seen how systemic the problems are.
DH & I have one child who’s a teenager now. When he was born I was already pretty senior in my organisation with a supportive CEO who didn’t bat an eyelid that I would go back 4 days a week (actually I worked full time after returning at six months for a while, but found it a grind, and had friends who all worked part time and enjoyed their children more - there is a lot to what others have said about spending time with your child and I felt I was missing out on time I would never get back, so I dropped Fridays). Our son was in private nursery the rest of the time which he enjoyed. DH was also FT and we alternated drop offs etc. As he was about to start school, DH was made redundant and decided to freelance from home, and roughly the same time I changed jobs (same company) and my responsibilities shot up, so I went back to FT while DH covered school runs, cooking etc (he was / is brilliant). A few years again after that, I felt burnt out, changed jobs again and went part time 4 days again.
Throughout this I had felt that my employer was progressive and flexible but as I became more involved in HR I came to see this was just a reflection of my experience and not universal; I saw plenty of cases of managers refusing flexible working requests for no good reason. Chances of a good outcome depended largely on the line manager and were patchy. The gender pay gap widened in my last years there and I could see why.
I ran a project during the pandemic which succeeded in working 100% remotely and flexibly: my leadership team was mostly female and we had a number of part timers partly for parenthood and partly for other things (like chronic health conditions). It worked really well, everyone respected each other’s flexibility and availability and the project was successful. But this was not the norm.
Some of the things I have come across that frustrate me and I would like to change have already been raised upthread but here are a few:

1. women who are effectively underpaid relative to men by the time they have children so they end up being the lower earner already before they have kids - there are lots of reasons for this including women not negotiating pay enough, employers not promoting younger women early enough, paying men more based on ambition and not paying women enough for their potential, and (crucially) employers not keeping accurate records on equal pay for equal work and examining the records in promotions and pay reviews across the board (this has been the law since the 70s but it is very easy for employers to say they abide by the law whilst seldom if ever being challenged to prove it on the data).
2. Couples treating their money as separate so it’s the woman’s salary that “pays” for childcare instead of pooling the household finances: I know there are considerations like tax brackets etc but I think that if the default were to look at household income instead of individual income then it would encourage more partners to think childcare expense/ responsibility is theirs as well as the mother’s
3. Gaby Hinsliff wrote a good book about a decade ago on this which suggested BOTH parents do 4 days a week with a different day off: that way, she argued, you only need 60% of childcare but you retain 80% of earnings; both get to spend time with offspring and both maximise chances of staying on the career ladder. Thought that was brilliant - why don’t more people take it? Oh yes…
4. employers don’t encourage/ force/ pay men enough to take paternity leave and go part time. Agree with others that men should be allocated use it or lose it PAID leave and it should be NORMAL to work part time.
5. cost of childcare being the highest in Europe - I worked with lots of Europeans who couldn’t believe it was so high here. It should be state provided and subsidised from the age of one, same as infant and primary school.

What gets my goat about all this is that we all know raising the next generation is a burden but why should it fall disproportionately on one sex? After the first 3-6 months, men can easily step in (this is where their full time paid leave should be) and there is no reason women’s caring should continue to be defaulted from that point on. For those who want to stay at home under age 5, I’ll be more radical and say it should be paid for by the state - even minimum wage would be massive and no, I don’t mind paying my taxes for that. God knows I’ve paid enough over the years and would far rather it were spent valuing that kind of invisible, economy/ future human-building work than pissing £38b on test and trace that never worked. We have the money. We just don’t spend it on the right things.

Not entirely relevant, but could someone explain 'use it or lose it'? I know it sounds straightforward but I still can't get my head round how it works.

”Use it or lose it” means it can’t be transferred to the other partner.

Under the current shared parental leave system, the father can only take leave if the mother “gives up” some of hers.

If the leave is “use it or lose it” then it is only available to one partner and if they don’t take it then it is just lost. So for example an additional 3 month period of parental leave could be made available to fathers (or the non-birthing parent if it is a same sex couple) and they either take it or they don’t, but they can’t give it to the mother to take instead.

Thank you

Great post, MotherOfCatBoy. I agree with all you say.

Having read this thread, like another poster, 4 day week for all employees with children seems like a sensible way forward. Not sure I agree with use it or lose it, although if maternity leave were extended so that either parent could take time after first year some dad's might be interested? Of course, none of this touches issues around pay gap and at best might soften motherhood penalty. What is needed is a radical reimagining that centres, values and remunerates women for the work we currently do unpaid. And also controversially, recognises the benefit to children of that work.

For two people to have flexible jobs and share childcare, flexible jobs have to exist. And they don’t. At least not decent “career” flexible jobs. Flexible jobs tend to be shitty, and couples can’t afford for both of them to be in shitty jobs. So one parent has to take a shitty job for the flexibility and shoulder all the childcare, in order for the other parent to be able to have a decent job which doesn’t permit any flexibility. Again, it comes back to employers not providing decent jobs that permit the employee to do childcare as well.

I've noticed a lot of women in my area who I know through school etc work in work from home type businesses (think hair, beauty, selling stuff), and a lot get sucked into the mlm type business models
Because they are desperate to work, but jobs aren’t flexible to fit around childcare and especially sick days. MLM seems like a flexible way to earn money - of course it’s a load of rubbish, but it just shows how desperate people are for flexible ways to earn.

employers don’t encourage/ force/ pay men enough to take paternity leave
If I took maternity leave it was paid at 90% of salary. If DH took paternity leave it was paid at the statutory rate of £156 per week. Unsurprisingly we couldn’t afford for him to take any paternity leave! We would be over £1k a week out of pocket and we simply couldn’t afford that. A huge step towards equality would be paying maternity and paternity leave equally.

@Schlaar i totally agree on paying men for paternity leave. Many will rightly think if they’re not paid, why should they/ how can they? It should be the same as maternity leave and paid the same.

I agree. But to be fair, some here seem to be speaking from a place of real financial privilege. I'm new to this board, so I'm not familiar with the demographic. Having spent a lot of time working with very disadvantaged women/families, £1200 a month is a very average salary on a zero hours contract. I don't think paternity leave is a significant concern, particularly as it is not going to address the motherhood penalty for these women.

So whilst flexible jobs are shitty then women can take them but obviously a man shouldn’t be expected to. But if flexible jobs are good then men can take them too? Is that what you’re saying?

I don’t think anybody is arguing that better paternity leave would be the silver bullet which solves everything, it could be one of several measures.

As for low-income women I agree that they’re in a really difficult position. The women I know who are on low incomes are able to claim back the vast majority of their childcare costs (85% I think) - I’m not saying that this makes everything easy for them as it doesn’t, I’m just mentioning it.

Hi. Yes I know about the childcare component of UC. UC only pays 85% for one child up to around 650 a month. About a grand for two kids. And as far as I can see 650 does not even come close to paying for f/t nursery place for an under 3. I guess the expectation is that once the child is 2 & 15 free hours kick in, the woman might be able to return to paid work, if she can find a nursery place and if she doesn’t have any other f/t childcare costs?

The point really is that during all of these early years unable to afford to outsource childcare, she is working unpaid. The effect of this on pension, career etc will follow her for the rest of her life. Women’s poverty is a real thing. The motherhood penalty operates at a very sharp end for low income women.

And frankly, higher earning women are able to return to paid work because that are outsourcing childcare to these exact women, who having been out of the labour market for many years, find poorly paid work in commercial childcare settings. I dunno. It’s all mad. And I’m just ranting now so… :)

Yes I agree with you, low-earning women are at the sharp end. I think low-earning people are at the sharp end when it comes to pretty much everything as our society is very unequal.

Please don’t take this the wrong way as I’m not trying to start an argument, only continue this very interesting debate. But you’ve just done exactly what I tried to point out in previous posts by singling out high-earning women for outsourcing childcare. In the majority of cases, there are two working parents there who are both using childcare to enable them to continue their careers, pensions etc. Childcare is not just the women’s responsibility to sort out but society constantly reinforces that it is. Regardless of class and income, all women (and men) are repeatedly given the message that mothers are the ones who need to change, compromise, juggle everything. And fathers can just carry on as they were before.