Advantages of Going Back to Work Early

[Judy1234]

Coming out of several other threads this is interesting. As I said elsewhere with my first child I went back to work after 2 weeks. I always work up until I went into labour. I think the longest I took off was 5 week with any of the 5. You don't often get parents writing about returning to work quickly so I thought just setting out some of the advantages might be helpful for those who can't decide how much time to take off at home. I don't want this to be seen as me saying all parents should both be back at their desks within 2 weeks however; just food for thought particularly with the new paternity leave rights coming in next April.

1. The baby does not have a huge wrench when you suddenly return at 6 months or a year. At 2 weeks she can get used to her good childcare from the father, relative, nanny or whatever so has continuity and no shock to the system of a later return.

1. You don't have time to get out of the swing of work so it's all less disrupting to your life.

1. You can establish a breastmilk expressing system early on without worrying about how to manage breastfeeding when going back at 3 months.

1. Both parents are equally as involved with the children. The pattern at home isn't established that the mother does everything to do with the baby. The mother isn't better than the father at child things. You may get a more involved husband.

1. You only lose 10% of pay in the few weeks you take off.

1. You don't lose touch with work, lose promotion, position etc.

1. If I'm allowed say it, being at home with babies can be boring (not for everyone, I know) so you can skip all that and concentrate on the fun cuddles bit.

1. You inconvenience an employer or your customers less. No one will like me for saying this but in the real world fathers and mothers taking leave is hard to manage. I can say this having had to manage maternity leave for two of my nannies over the years.

1. You may find the physical recovery from birth easier in an office than managing small children and domestic work at home with heavy lifting, toddlers who kick you, heavy rubbish to put out, floors to scrub etc.I certainly found sitting still at a desk, time to rest, relax, get drinks at my leisure helped me get back to normal. Dressing in office clothes too helps get you back to being your normal self. I loved leaving behind the clothes at home covered in baby sick etc.

10. Sometimes it aids mental health particularly if you hate being home with a baby.

You see TYP, from my experience, and I think i am somewhere in the middle, your views are as minority as Xenia's.

This doesn't make either of you wrong or right, just polarised at opposite ends of a spectrum.

QGM surely a minority of mothers start working 2 weeks after giving birth, for 12 hours a day, I wasn't talking about her view, I was talking about her actions,
Which appear emotionally retarded imo.

I don't represent the minority of mothers as I actually want to be their main carer.

QGM why so defensive? surely this is just my opinion?

sorry that sounded really arsy, I just re-read your post QGM, you weren't being defensive, you just got me wrong, sorry.

'expat..you don't take anything seriously ? Therein lies the sad difference between you and Xenia,( and others like her...) What sort of example/message are you sending your children ? your daughters ? '

I'm so sad, mozhe, for not making it a priority to chase the allmighty Dollar? For not teaching my daughters the message that they are automatons whose purpose in being born is to live to work, or to be chattel for some twat excuse of a man who sees them as a status symbol?

Whatever, mozhe!

I teach my children to love and respect everything and everyone on this planet, from themselves on down to the smallest life form. That life is too short to let it all slip past you to worship the Golden Calf.

B/c that's where happiness lies, in savouring what life we have. That's where beauty lies.

If it makes me 'sad' b/c I feel that's more important than work or money or material possessions or seeing human beings as status symbols, I'll proudly accept that label!

I feel very, very sorry for your kids, mozhe, I really do.

B/c if you can't learn what unconditional love is in the home, well, that's a poor house as far as I'm concerned.

And beyond sad.

Pitiful and tragic.

that was put so well expat, I whole-heartedly agree, am also very sad for the kids.

Yes, TYP, sorry if I sound arsey either . I am always really glad to read people's views, no matter how different to my own, so I don't mean to sound disrespectful.

It's just that most mothers in my experience spend at least some of their children's childhood at work in some form or other, and very often this compromise is not driven by absolute choices between home and work.

And I kind of feel that although clearly Xenia has gone the whole hog in that respect, that most of us are treading a fine line between guilt and doing the best for our families. Being a 100% SAHM is not an option for many, but nor do I think it should be the only option.

I wouldn't judge Xenia to be a bad mother, just because of her actions as explained here. Her life might seem odd to some, but it is really hard to see why someone would do something so radically different to your own experience.

I have been lurking on this and a couple of other SAHM/WOHM debating threads and am compelled to pitch in!

There are many routes through life and taking one route does not imply a criticism of another, nor should such a criticism be inferred.

I really feel that everyone benefits from such a lively discussion, whether that is the children of SAHMs or WOHMs, or the DHs, or the friends with whom we can continue the debate off line.

Please don't be defensive about whatever route you chose (or had thrust upon you) as the enemy of us all as mothers is the dreaded guilt.

FWIW I am a full time employee and also full time mother of 3 aged 3,2 and 1 (I don't think motherhood comes with a part time option).

QGM I agree that it is hard to apprieciate such a radically different pov, but after reading the OP from xenia, I didn't know where on earth to start with a response.
I presumed that she wanted a response because she had started the thread, but I can't help wondering why she has to bang on about it so much. She either loves to cause a stir, or she is questioning her actions.

expats post was so spot on imo.

OTOH, I would agree with a lot of your last post and would be happy to politely chat away and swap viewpoints for ages.
But Mozhe and xenia are so full-on, I just can't apprieciate that a mother of 5, who is so cold and distant by their actions, needs to spend so long on mn threads selling their way of life in such a way that claims themselves to be superior.

If only they could hear themselves. (my opinion, I know)

Fair enough, TYP, and I agree that if someone felt so happy with their decision, they might not need to justify it so vehemently.

FWIW this debate has turned my views around a lot. I used to be such a feminist and working was so important to my identity. I used to pity women who lost their careers when they had a family, before I had my own. Now I understand why they did, and am trying to work out whether I could stay at home at some stage.

Who cares about career? Thank God for little children, the fountain of all the happiness in my life.

Tiggyhop i really like the way you out it - 'fulltime employee AND fulltime mother'. That's me too - well fairly fulltime employee as am a freelancer. But definitely a fulltime mother in terms of responsibility and emotions!
Like most parents who work I do so because i need the money, not particularly for any notions about 'career' - tho i have selected a job I find vaguely interesting!!
It's awful that we feel the need to judge and criticise each other.

QGM I might be mistaken for a hairy armpitted, don't even bother to look in the mirror (cos the kids come first) lentil weaving weirdo because I have been extreme in my pov on 'the other thread'. But I'm soooo not! I will have a career again one day when the kids are all at school, they will all still come before work, of course, but there is no doubt in my mind that I will work again when I have more time. That time will be here so quickly.
Although I take my carrer seriously I have never lived to work, always worked to live. Now that kids are a huge part of my life I feel like the 'work' I do with my family is always more important, but having a family will still leave room for my carrer.

This debate will never end, ever, but that is good because it is important to question our actions as parents. I am glad that it has helped you out.

(I just got my snotty, coldy baby out of bed and cuddled him on the sofa for ages. All the while I was wondering how he would feel if i wasn't there to make him feel better when he is poorly. Or how would I feel if I had never been able to comfort my poorly kids. It made me squeeze him even harder than ever!)

I haven't read all of this thread so if I'm going off on a tangent ignore me.

REcently I,ve been wondering if I would be better off putting my 1 and 2 year od in f/t care ( 8-6 4 days a week and when they are at school reduce my hours so that I am around for holidays and can meet them at the school gates each day which, oddly, feels more important to me than going to work most days now and not tbeing there for them.

I've notced that my 5 year old seems to need me more than he ever did now that he is at school.

What do mums of older children think?

Please no rants - I have very mixed feelings about putting them into nursery for such a long time each day and feel very vulnerable about criticism on this point- but they seem to love on the one day that they go now, don't look back and(i'm told) play happily all day. Tbh I think they would be happy anywhere with toys and cuddles.

Zookeeper I think you have an interesting point. Mine are 11 & 13 and I don't feel that they need me any less now than when they were tiny. In fact they appreciate the time spent helping them research projects for homework etc. I work part time but often have evening meetings, so am able to save up 'time in lieu' so that I work very little in school holidays (eg only 6 days in whole of summer hols).
When they are at secondary school they become independent from parents in many ways and their lives are taken up by the routine of school/after school activities/music lessons/rugby/homework/eat/sleep...
I think that the fact that we can spend so much time together in the holidays is very important for the whole family - it gives everyone a chance to 'chill out'. So many people tell me that their older children/teenagers are difficult - mine aren't. We have such fun together - often accompanied by their friends whose Mums are at work.
One of my neighbours runs a holiday play scheme and admits that she feels very sad for the kids that come back time after time - spending their whole holidays participating in organised activities with no time just to relax at home.
Of course not everyone can afford to stay at home with their children and many women would not wish to do so. But I do think that we bring these children into the world - it's our choice not theirs - and a minority of people seem to have very little desire for anything more than a quick kiss and cuddle at bedtime.
Hopefully that doesn't sound like a rant - I think that my children and their friends (yes - the ones with the working Mums, too!) are really lovely, interesting people and I count it as a privilege to be able to spend so much time with them

TYP and expat....why are you saying these things ? They are not true...my children, and the children of millions of other WOHMs, are happy and well balanced.If I can I will happily have at least one more because I think I'm doing a very good job on the whole.I love being a mother.
TYP you are wrong, I think your baby would be easily comforted,( and just as well ), by other people, but it is interesting that you think you are indispensible.

This whole debate just proves what a cleft stick women are in. Thankfully on the whole we tend find the way that works for us and we get through.
However, the bottom line is this: there is a tension between our biological role as mother and our social-economic-intellectual-call-it-what-you-will need to be able to support ourselves financially. Any of us could find ourselves having to support our family - we could be divorced, widowed, or our partners could become too ill to work. We need to be able to be economically self supporting.
It is clear from this thread that our definitions of what constitutes enough money differ. Equally, we have differing views on the worth of wealth and the uses to which we would put it. Notwithstanding, any one of us, a bus driver having had a bad day and taken out our DP, might have to stand up to the crease and support the family.
The workplace is built on an almost exclusively male model - ie to a very large extent it relies on the fact that employees will be able to work full time and, if need be, long hours. Women with children (pace Xenia) do tend to want/need to work flexibly.
Ironically, the higher up the career ladder you go as a woman the more likely you are to be able to achieve that goal: if you have a full time senior position before having children you are more likely to be able to convince your boss that you are worth being allowed to leave early (ie 5pm), on the days you are doing nursery pick up duty; or to go part time - on the basis that you can work from home/be available via email, on the mobile etc. Women in that position tend as well to be earing enough to make going part time financially viable, even when you factor in the cost of childcare.
Lower paying or less senior (for want of a better description - my brain is largely fried tonight) jobs tend not to offer that flexibility and their financial worth tends not to be enough to make going part time worthwhile.
Thus, women would be better to go for the higher paid job if they could at the outset.
But: women are under the cosh when they try to hold those jobs in a male-orientated workplace: taking a year out at a time for maternity leave can put you out of touch in a fast developing workplace, it can, no matter how unPC this is to admit, make you look less than wholehearted about the job (compared to male, childless female and superwomen female colleagues); women like Xenia show up those who want to go part time; wives who stay at home make it possible for men to work the long full time hours which in turn make it necessary for women to do that too if they want to compete. The rest of us who are somewhere in between just muddy the water.
Its a nightmare to be honest!!

mozhe you have just proved to me in that post that you are emotionally retarded and you have absolutly no idea how it feels to be in love with your children to the point that when they need you, fuck all else matters. If you seriously think that, oh hang on I have to quote it...

"TYP you are wrong, I think your baby would be easily comforted,( and just as well ), by other people, but it is interesting that you think you are indispensible."

yes when it comes to my babies being poorly, I am totally indispensible.

you should try it sometime, it's a fantastic feeling, it might even soften you up a bit.

Zookeeper. I think you're right. Ds went to nursery FT from 14mo to 2.6 and loved it. Now he is at school, and finding appropriate care would be harder IMO.

You're so right. But things have changed dramatically - even in the last 10 years or so. The pressure is on women to work - those of us who choose to stay at home are reviled by Blair's Govt as 'Economically inactive'. What women should be fighting for is the right to choose whether to pursue a career or stay at home as full time carers.
Surely we should all support each other's right to these choices - not despise anyone not following the same path as ourselves.

That was Pollypeach who was 'so right'.
TYP and mohze I'm afraid that your bickering is exactly the sort of thing that makes me sad.

Mozhe, I AM a WOHM mother. I have to be. I cannot afford nannies and paid staff b/c to me, it wasn't worth my youth to fag away for the Golden Calf.

Fair play to you, if that's what you wanted.

But for some to come on here and call people who made different choices from them glorified prostitutes, name drop and seemingly proudly admit that their own brothers see women as chattel is another matter entirely.

And no, sorry, when my child is ill, she calls out for her mother. There's nothing like the comfort of a mother.

No! I LOVED 'glorified prostitute'. I've just had to go down as a 'homemaker' on my mortgage application FFS. I find that much more offensive.

I prefer 'chattel' and 'status symbol'.

I think someone should designate that as occupation on their tax return.

Not sure I could pull off status symbol...

No 'glorified prostitute' for me. It's the 'glorified' bit I like .

pp, ah this is the interesting bit - "The workplace is built on an almost exclusively male model - ie to a very large extent it relies on the fact that employees will be able to work full time"... That is only true if you're sexist, isn't it? If you're making assumptions that because someone has a penis they won't stay home. It shoudl be a sexually neutral decision, obviously once the first few weeks or months are up. Why do so many of you have homes where tehre is an assumption that it wil lbe the wife who gives up work when so many of the couples i know that is more of an equal decisoin, like with mozhe and me? I was in a meeting today and more women and then and three of us (i.e. all the women there) full time working mothres. In fact only one of the men was the person without children.

What really interests me is I don't feel at all threatened by SAHMs but they seem to be hurt to their heart by anyone daring to suggest that there might in some cases be advantages even to children in mothers working. Why don't they live and let live like more working mothers seem to do? Why do they take this moral high ground?

On the question of children's needs most working parents seem to meet their children's needs. It's not a question of you work so you've never nursed a sick child. Over 22 years I've spent hours on sofas with sick children. There are a lot of hours you spend with your children even if you work.

On the matter of capitalism, again it's not so stark a choice. I too have taught my children, I hope about the things that matter in life but I don't see why you might as well not get a really interesting well paid job and have those other things in your life rather than eking things out with less choice and perhaps no more free time to watch the grass grow anyway. Money can give you the chance of more leisure, perversely.

Also most working mothers are not really just there for the money or else why have the children? As I said else where 5 children from age 3 - 22 in private education/university in fees alone will have cost me £1.5m of income before tax. That's not a materialistic choice. It's a choice of giving love, enjoying being a parent, trying to contribute to the next generation.

expat - agree. I really rise to the bait on this subject! My dh says he's really PROUD that I stayed at home - he'd be unbelievably insulted that anyone would refer to this as glorified prostitution. Aside from the fact that we felt this would benefit our own children, I was able to make a huge contribution to our local community (if I say so myself!) - hours helping in school/running PTA/Residents' Assoc etc. Most of the SAHMs that I know aren't sitting on their arses doing nothing - they're either doing some work at home or taking up various voluntary roles during the school day.
But if other people either can't afford to stay at home or just don't want to then that's THEIR business, not mine and I can't understand why people get so agitated about how other people live their lives. They should be supporting women's right to CHOOSE - not scratching each other's eyes out like this.