High earning mothers

[ClarissaG]

I'm interested to start a discussion group for Mums and Mums to be who are juggling (or planning to juggle) a high flying career and motherhood. I loath to use the term 'Power Mums', but those who earn enough (£100k plus) to afford a team of help, but have the kind of pressures and working hour expectations that that level of salary brings.

I read the Mumsnet Guest blog with interest (www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_blogs/1977242-Why-is-society-so-unsupportive-of-high-achieving-power-mums) but the comments less so.

Is there scope for a supportive group for such Mums with practical ideas, experiences and thoughts rather than judgement about whether we can 'have it all'?

I am mid thirties, a VC, 12 weeks pregnant and have not yet told my fellow partners. I want it all but have no idea if that is realistic or how my future is going to pan out!

Surely most referees just would not know that details. My referees know I have dc but are likely to be vague at best on ages or even gender.

This sounds v dodgy indeed. Could they have somehow got it wrong? Ice just been writing several reference letters for people and have read many reference letters on panels and we've never asked those questions!

And yes, indeed in my recent promotion process, the 3 referees I had would at best know that I have 2 kids and very vague ages.

That's very weird. Agree my referees wouldn't know (in that they always ask me in general chit chat how old DCs are and express amazement that they are no longer babies, time doing its thing and ticking ever on...)

So, having been inspired by all of you on this thread (among other things) I am really beginning to reassess the value that my career has for my family and for myself. I am sure I will keep flip flopping but at the moment I am thinking I will not only go back, but want to push harder after my mat leave.

My 2nd baby is just over 3 months and actually, I am not enjoying being off as much as I thought. In fact with two children constantly demanding my attention I feel as if I have even less time, and certainly I am achieving less, than when I was working full time! I also dont think I'm doing nearly as good a job looking after them as I should be, so would be better off outsourcing it to someone more competent!

However, I am still really interested to understand how all of you manage to fit in everything non work related that you need (or want) to do. I understand you have to prioritise and make sacrifices, but for all of us there will be things beyond work and children that we need to find the time and energy to do. Managing your home (everything I have read so far suggests the responsibility for that is always with the woman, even if they have a stay at home partner! Certainly true in my case - my DH is willing to "share" but has no idea what needs doing unless I tell him and is much less bothered by mess than I am (unfortunately living in a tidy and organised environment is one of my main "hygiene factors". I realise this is hugely inefficient but I just cannot stand living in a messy home and not being able to find my stuff)). Exercise? Before mat leave I had been to the gym maybe twice since having DD1 4 years ago and it has really affected my mental and physical stamina (as well as my body shape!). Socialising? (I have never had a huge social life but have been seeing maybe 2-3 friends once a year, which is not enough even for me). Hobbies (what are they? I've given up everything I used to do).

Obviously we all have different priorities but I'm really interested to know what has worked for the rest of you as this is what I struggle with most. Particularly interested in how youve organised the home stuff and what you can or cant get help with as obviously having less to do at home would free up some time for everything else. When I go back I will definitely increase the amount of home help (previously very little) that I have but i am unsure about what exactly I can get help with and how to manage it all without that becoming a job in itself!

Sorry - not meaning to go on about me but really to invite any positive examples of how youve all made it work.

Have a cleaner once a week

Put kids in crèche at the gym once a week

Each have one late night back a week - if you use the for work, networking or meeting friends - your call

Meet faraway friends with kids in a hotel (with a pool for the kids!) on a weekend

Hobbies - get a kindle and read whilst commuting

Brynhilde, it's all about getting the right help. When I was in your position we had a brilliant nanny who also found and supervised the cleaner and organised the builder and anyone else we needed. She managed the house move, although dh and I were allowed to choose the house! I think we chose the school but she was hugely influential. Now all this worked because the decisions she made were the same as we would have. I'd like to think it's because our recruitment was good but I suspect she probably trained us as well as our children. But for this to work you do have to be prepared to cede day to day control of, for example, the organisation of kitchen cupboards. I never minded this but I know plenty of people who would/did.

I agree with BusinessAsUsual and MrsWobble but to add:

We don't/won't have a nanny - both DC will be in nursery after I return from this mat leave. But I have a cleaner for 2 hrs a week at the moment. She currently comes every Tues - dusting/surfaces, bathrooms and Hoover/mop all floors. I think I will ask her to come twice a week- probably on Fri as well as Tues - to strip/remake beds, do floors again and possibly put an online grocery delivery away.

Another point on the house management - don't take responsibility for it all. Don't be in a position where you need to think/decide/plan everything, which is stressful and mentally taxing even if you delegate bits to DH. Instead, split the tasks between you - eg my DH does everything with cars, insurances and utilities. I don't even know when the renewals are. I do all the meal planning and online grocery orders.

Cleaner definitely - we have ours twice a week (5 hrs in total - but it's a big house and she does ironing and some tidying and laundry as well as just cleaning)

Nanny - so she cooks enough food for the weekend, sorts out DC toys and clothes and activities.

Agree with the one late night each per week suggestion. I am currently using mine to catch up on work admin

I don't have hobbies and I don't exercise. I don't think that would be any different if I was a SAHM though. I never did much of these pre DC either! I could do more by asking DH to look after DD by himself at the weekend, but then I'd have to return the favour and I prefer to have his company so I forgo the exercise and hobbies instead. I read on the tube.

Social life - I am lucky to have good friends at work so don't miss out too much. I also work 4 days a week so often see friends on my day off (albeit with DD in tow which isn't quite as relaxing). Every so often there is a girls night out (NCT or uni friends) which is lovely. DH stays home with DD. I do the same for him in return.

Life admin - I try to split this with DH. Basically I do everything DD related and holiday related and anything that requires aesthetic views (eg choosing furniture) and he does most other things. I probably do more but not toooo much more at present. Online grocery shopping we share.

MrsWobble your nanny sounds amazing! Not sure I could cede that much control though....

We used nursery until dd was school age. Dh did drop off and one pick up a week, I did 4 pick ups and worked late every Thursday, so I knew I had everything set up ready for Monday morning and could minimize working at the weekend.

We also had a cleaner and a gardener.

I didn't have much social time when dd was young, partly because dh worked away a lot and we lived in a village so the logistics of a night on the town were problematic. I go out a fair bit now, with dd age 10, several times a month in fact (big whoop). And I go to college once a week for my MA.

I find keeping the house tidy makes for less housework, but I had a couple of years when I didn't work when we moved, so I got it all sorted how I wanted, and reprinted pretty much all of it. I couldn't cope with a house requiring lots if DIY or upkeep unless we could afford a housekeeper type person to co-ordinate all that, and I would rather pay off my mortgage than spend money on that.

Bryn, then you didn't read my posts. My father in the 1960s shared chores with my mother. My children's father did more than I did at home and worked full time. Never accept even for a day a sexist man. Many many women don't. Don't assume everyone has someone who does not do his full share.

I do yoga once a week which is pretty much non-negotiable. I have a group of friends there and sometimes go for a drink afterwards with them. DH and I also go running separately on the evening and at weekends. Being able to go together because we have visitors is a real treat! I think the key is finding hobbies that are at a realistic time or whenever like running and don't take up too much time. DH and I had a day off together recently (with dc at school and nursery) and I was saying he didn't really have any hobbies. He said the things he would like to learn to do (diving, paragliding, caving) take up too much time and he would not want / would not be fair to be away all Saturday every weekend.

I'm really enjoying reading this thread so I thought I'd better join in.

I have a high pressure career, I currently work 4 days a week and do about 44 hours at work per week plus 2 hours work at home every evening.

Some days things seem to difficult to carry on, but at other times i feel things are pretty good as I love my career, and enjoy out sourcing some of the menial tasks at home!

I have a 48 hr nanny and a cleaner twice a week. Between them they do most of the laundry. DC do homework in week with nanny. My DH isn't great at doing domestic stuff TBH so I find ways of addressing that if I can. Our supermarket delivery comes every weekend when I am out on a run so he puts it all away.

I'm hoping as the DC get older things will even out a bit more and my career will take off more.

Nice to read how others in similar situations deal with things.

Thanks all for sharing your perspectives. It's so useful to hear because I have few friends in real life with a similar situation - many of my friends are SAHMs now or work part time. Also I find home help is a bit of a taboo subject so I tend not to discuss it too much.

Mrs Wobble, where do you get hold of someone like that? We did have a nanny for the first year or so after I went back after DD1 but in retrospect I think she was the wrong person. She certainly wouldn't have done any of the things you describe and nor would I have wanted her to! We ended up moving DD1 to full time nursery which worked well for a while but when I go back next time we will need a nanny, as we now have 2 children, DD1 will be at school, DH has a new and more demanding job, and we have a longer commute!

I am not that fussed about "hobbies" either - it is more my husband who thinks i should "do" more probably because he himself does. I do think I need to fit in exercise once or twice a week though. Possibly one evening per week plus a stint at the weekend with kids in crèche.

Ok, I am not that fussed about a "social life" either. But I dont have a lot of friends as such at work so i want at least to keep up with my old friends so I don't become completely isolated. But maybe have to accept that I have to do that at weekends and during holidays - it is easier now that most of us have kids so we can all meet up together.

Sorry Laura - I have read your posts - I was referring to a lot of other articles / literature I have read which paint a very similar picture to ours. In DH's defense, he is not at all sexist and actually in his household his dad does probably more of the housework than his mum, so he thinks that's normal. He certainly does way more than any of our friends, has always shared dropoffs and pickups, etc. it is more that his priorities are different - he will spend hours planning big (and nonessential) projects like restructuring the garden but has no clue about DD1s dinner or the grocery shopping. Maybe that is a fair division but it feels like the overriding responsibility for the home and our day to day life is with me. I guess as always the key will be to give him responsibilities that play to his strengths and interests!

I am also hoping to get the house (and life in general) "set up" the way I want it during my mat leave so we can do as little as possible after that. Just need to try to hold off DH initiating a massive rebuild of the back of the house in the meantime!

We are only at an early stage with this as we have just one DS (15 months) and hoping to have a second soon. Also at the moment DH is on research leave, so although he is working hard on his book, and also has to go away off and on, he doesn't have the pressure of teaching/admin/pastoral stuff etc that he usually has.

We have a cleaner for three hours a week on a Thursday morning; she cleans the whole (not huge) flat and also does some ironing and takes all the rubbish out. She will e.g. unload the dishwasher or washing machine if it needs doing. We are just switching from a childminder to a nanny (from end of April). Very expensive but I think worth it for the convenience.

We are reasonably good about exercise - we both go running/jogging individually - though I have slipped the last 6 weeks as work has been so crazy. We tend to work it in once on a day we work at home and once at the weekend.

I try to socialise as much as possible with work colleagues over a coffee or quick lunch; I do find that other friendships, especially if they don't have children themselves, have really slipped since DS but I hope some will return a bit once we are out of the intense small-child phase. We have some friends with small children whom we sometimes see at weekends, though they are mostly DH's friends originally.

Hobbies - we read a lot (and hardly watch any TV which helps make time for that) and we try to go to the cinema together at least once a fortnight (we book a babysitter) for our own sanity and the sake of the relationship. That's all we manage though really!

Brynhilde, we found our nanny by advertising. But the crucial point to making the arrangement work is your willingness to cede control. I suspect we can all recognise from our own work lives that if you give people responsibility and the opportunity to step up the good ones take it and if you don't give it them they can get frustrated. I always managed my nanny in the same way I managed staff at work, she was as important to my ability to do my job well as my secretary and other staff. But this does mean that I needed to let go of a lot of detailed decision making - and if you are not prepared to accept this it will not work. And it wasn't always easy, there were times when I had to bite my tongue a bit, but you do need to decide how strongly you feel about individual issues and whether it's something important enough to disrupt the balance for. And in my experience there was very little that really met this criteria - so I very rarely put my foot down.

But I do think we had an exceptionally good nanny and we had very good communication between us.

What worked for us was I was not in charge of remembering everyrthing. so their father took them to the dentist for 17 years and remembered to book that and took them and I had nothing to do with it. We had a phase when he did 100% of the washing (and I did not even know how to use the machine and never had to think about if washing needed to be done). he had had his own house before and domestic systems. I did most of our admin and our tax returns. I got school bags ready for the next day and plaited the girls'; hair.
When we were little my father did my brother's bed time routine every night and my other did my sister's and I.

I don't know whether it was because I married someone who expected 50/50 or because I have always been a feminist or because of my own family upbringing or because ultimately I earned 10x what he earned or simply because I was happy to leave things to him to do even if they were not done in the way I did them (that I had the humility to accept I might not do them as well as him or the laziness to enough I did not get lumbered with more than half the dull stuff at home) meant that things worked fairly but it will be a mixture of these reasons. It will be interesting to see what my newly married daughter does if they have children. At present she works longer hours, he earns a bit more because of his bonus. He does all the cooking and most of the organising simply because he's home more. When babies arrive I doubt he will become a lazy sexist pig like many of the men you read about on mumsnet because I didn't tolerate that, my mother didn't and her own mother was widowed with a baby ( my mother) so there was no example even there of lazy man at home.

I organise everything because I am a LP. I do have a very good housekeeper who does 4 mornings a week and picks up from school if I cant. When they were small I had a brilliant FT nanny.

I do have a hobby in that I keep 2 horses, but my DC are teens so now dont care if I am not in the house all the time when they are home.

Ex H helps out a bit, although I didnt train him properly when we were married, so unlike LB's DH, he doenst always do his share!

I have a 4 and 2 year old, always worked full time (for my sanity), just recently got a better paid job. have a live in au pair for 4 yo who is at local school, 2 yo is at ft nursery. au pair is amazing, really amazing. DH & I both work in the city with pressured jobs so it's important to have live in help.
I like to compartmentalise - corporate me, mummy me, wife me. works for me. I do sometimes question my choices but overall we are a happy family that really works. I would not change anything

(MaryS, but not with my typing... lots of typos above. You wouldn't think I'd written 30 books...)

Sitting here at 7.30am on a Saturday peacefully with no one around (teenagers asleep upstairs) the contrast with life with small children is huge. The stage when your children need so much attention passes so quickly. By 7.30 at some stages of our lives we'd have been up and dealing with toddlers since about 5.30am and probably up several times in the night too. So I suppose my advice is hold steady, keep the high paid career going as in a very few years you probably will have teenagers sleeping until quite late who say very little and demand very little.

People writing about "training men" - it just depends on the person, male or female. My children's father had run his own house for a few years when we married (he sold it and moved hundreds of miles for my career by the way when we married). I had only just stopped being a student. So he was the one who knew about things like how to work dishwashers, how to clean an oven, how to lay out your shirts so they didn't need ironing. He had the skills. I didn't. I learned from him. Now that might be because he'd gone to university so been away from a mother doing it all or just luck that we are both equally organised and tidy and hard working. I think a lot of problems come when people marry where one is lazy and the other isn't or one is happy with a lot of mess around the other isn't or one likes to spend every penny and the other is the opposite. If you're similar, whatever your gender, then it's much easier.

doireally is a nice example. Too many press articles suggest women are unhappy if they work full time and all seek more time cleaning the house whereas I don't think that is so. Lots of women (and men) are happier working full time, earning a lot, doing work they love whilst also having happy families at home. That is what I call a balanced life, not a life which is 100% cleaning and serving others at home which is unbalanced for many of us who might find a life like that rather dull.

Laura, complete tangent question but where did your NN come from? Is it a character in a book?

(The name? I just invented it. I wanted a female first name. The second has no particular meaning)

About full time women wanting more time to clean the house...I have recently just gone part time but because I wanted some more me time! Up until now, I'd been leaving home at 5 and returning around 7/8pm just to have to make dinner (married, no kids) or clean up after dinner (we split the task). I now have a couple of glorious hours in the morning just for me and I still outsource domestic work.

How's part time worked for me? Not great so far, but it is improving. I'm the first part timer in my office with my particular arrangement in that I work every day but do shorter days, and for a while my team thought that if I wasn't there, I couldn't see/wouldn't know what they are up to. Grown up people being so naive! I'm now at an incredible push trying to turn the team around so I expect for a few weeks I will practically work full time again, but I don't want to rescind my flexible work arrangement - I'd rather just work unpaid extra hours but deliver the results and then be able to go back to my arranged hours. I think a lot has been the perception from people that I was mummy-tracking myself but now they realized I'm very serious about my work and my team's deliveries.

Oh, and whatever work needs to be done around the house (laundry, cleaning when the cleaner is not around) gets split evenly between DH and I. I guess I've lucked out

Intersting point from doireally about compartmentalising. I have never really figured out to what extent i want to keep work / non work separate or how much I should let then overlap. Doing home admin while at work (which happens ocassionally) or working while at home (which happens all the time)! I think I've been guilty of letting work take over at home too so I'd probably benefit from learning to separate them more. On the other hand I read a lot of examples of women who mix and match very happily.

There is a natural separation between "work me" and "mummy me" just through how I dress though - which was very obvious when I went into work last week and had to put on a suit again - I certainly felt like a different person!