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.

Xenia - I can almost feel myself agreeing with you for a change, but much of what you have posted in the past indicates to me that you don't fell threatened by SAHMs - you despise them. Maybe I've got that wrong, but that's how you come across.

'Also most working mothers are not really just there for the money or else why have the children? '

What planet do you live on?

'most' working mothers. You wouldn't know most working mothers if they came up and bit you on the nose. They're your paid lackeys.

What, so there's no possible way a poor woman could have a reason for having kids, no, not when there's all that money out there to chase.

You are a piece of work.

forty I hear what you are saying about the bickering, it must be boring, but I can't help feeling really strongly about this. I certainly don't despise anyone for not choosing the same path as me, far from it.

I despise our govenment for not giving mothers financial incentive to have a choice to sah, and for ploughing so much money into childcare services and childcare grants.

I feel sad that women like mohze and xenia have so many children that simply don't get to see their mothers, for what? money and all the other crap they go on about (self-worth and all that stuff that is obviously only possible to achieve if you take 2 weeks off to give birth then work 12 hour days)

Anyway enough from me, this will be groundhog day otherwise.

Must say though, the few threads recently on this subject have made me feel so blessed to be able to be a sahm, Mohze and xenia et al I thank you for your posts for that reason Maybe i've done the same for you!

Re: 'glorified prostitute' - has anyone thought that the boot might be on the other foot? That I'm the Dominatrix staying at home whilst poor dh has to struggle out and earn a decent enough living to keep us all.
That he's at my beck & call - I dictate how the house is run & control the purse strings.
He's available for sex whenever I want it - unless I'm too tired after a heavy Champagne lunch.

Why do you think I don't get to see my children? I've 4 here tonight. I spent a lot of time with the twins before bed. I've been helping the oldest with her university work, had a chat to my teenage son. I'm around.

I certainly have political and feminist problems with SAHMs. I think they help ensure we never get equality in life, work, politics, business and the more SAHMs there are the more those inequities are engrained. Thankfully SAHMs are gradually getting fewer and fewer so my political agenda is being achieved because most of them resist the model of well educated stay at home status symbol my brother was going on about. They want to play a part in world economic activity, not just help arrange the church flowers and take on roles that aren't paid. I don't despite them that choice (those very very few who have that choice) but I don't think it's good for society or children or the long term good of this country.

TYP - I feel lucky to have been able to choose to stay at home, especially as I had several good friends in the same situation - enough money to stay at home but not much left over when they were tiny. So we could meet up at each other's houses - go out to the park - go swimming etc. ie Have a great time without spending much money. I do realise that people like Xenia would find it a living hell.

There you are, Xenia - told you so! You despise us! Sorry I've made it so damned hard for you!

fp, good point. Quite a lot of homes men fear women in the home, do their bidding there on the female territory - you see it in Muslim homes in Algeria and in a lot of cultures - that structure of female power at home and then respect by men for that female role which we've largely lost here. It seems largely that in the UK it's only in a few marriages as mentioned below where the respect and appreciation by the individual husband (or indeed working wife) that you get that appreciation of the parent at home's role. Those taking that on should know though that husbands die and also divorce and on divorce their view of your role can often change radically and they disappear without paying anything. SAHM can be a bit of family and financial risk.

What I find odd about your posts is the idea that it is an all-or-nothing decision. I don't arrange flowers. I have two small children. And when they're not quite so small I will go back to work. I DID work when I only had the one. I am well-educated. My children know that I was a scientist, then a teacher. They see me studying. They will see me go back to work. I don't think my daughter will be in any way diminished by me having a few years out of my career.

The only one of your points that is valid IMO is that of economic inactivity. And yes, if I worked, paid a nursery for dd and breaksfast and after school clubs for ds then it probably would be better for the economy. But the lives of my family would be considerably more frazzled. If I could afford a nanny, then perhaps. But teaching doesn't quite stretch to that sadly.

Hi. I have watched this thread for a bit I think its about time I said thankyou to you lot who contribute to our economy so generously. Cos if you didnt I wouldnt be able to sit on giant fat arse all day and keep having more kids in my brand new four bedroom housing association house. thankyou for working so hard. if you get your way xena (sahm being extinct) then there will be even more money for me and my mates. I could tell you how much money I get if you like. you could work out how much money you give me!

Xenia quote "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?"

Two points here. How on earth is it going to become the norm for men to work less and spend more time at home when the latter option isn't valued by society.

"Hey dads - staying at home is prostitution, skiving, boring. Why don't YOU try it?"

Second point: I don't really get what you mean. When I gave up work 2 years ago, it was an equal decision between me and my DH. Is it only considered an equal decision if the woman goes back to work? Are you getting muddled up with your goal (and mine) for men to take on an equal share of the childcare? But you and your DH didn't do that... you both went back to work full-time.

Xenia Quote "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."

But not everyone can have a high paying job. That's how capitalsim works. Don't you give any consideration to people who haven't had your advatages in life?

And some of the more interesting jobs I can think of aren't necessarily highly paid. People make choices in life, some people have fewer choices, but not everyone can be the same. Can you only see this issue through your own perspective?

"Why don't they live and let live like more working mothers seem to do? Why do they take this moral high ground?"

v

Woman as economic appendage etc.... I suppose some are aroused by the misogyny of such an unbalanced relationship - she serves him in bed and keeps his house and bears his children and in return he pays financially.......
I suppose the average mumsnet marriage which seems to be virtually sex free (see myriad of no sex in marriage threads) the man pays and doesn't even get the sex back.
They almost make a career of the being a parent (poor over parented children I often think) or you do it more like me - children and career going ahead in tandem and rubbing along together which feels a bit more like real life. I'm not sure this putting your all into little spoilt emperors at home who can barely wipe their bottoms without mummy being there because mummy is making full time motherhood her full time activity and she must be the best at it... always does the children good.

Oh and, "I don?t really like most women as close confidants actually?" Now, there's a surprise.
Work, don't work, enjoy your millions, enjoy your job, whatever.
.

Not a financial risk if you're well insured with a good pension. A good friend lost her husband last year and one of the hardest things for her to accept was going down to pay off her mortgage and realising how well off she will be financially. It's actually made her grief more difficult to bear.
I do agree that there is a huge amount of trust involved in giving up a career to stay at home. I can understand why many women would find it terrifying.
Do you REALLY have a problem with women taking on voluntary roles? Arranging flowers in church would't be my thing at all - nor that of my friends - but what about helping in school, delivering meals on wheels or working in a charity shop? Would that bother you and if so WHY? Should unpaid voluntary work be undertaken only by the blue rinse brigade?

greatfulsponger -

Xenia "I don't despite them that choice (those very very few who have that choice) but I don't think it's good for society or children or the long term good of this country."

Fewer and fewer graduate females are having children. I don't think that's good for society or the long term good of this country.

Is a society made up of mothers working 60 hour weeks really a victory for feminism?

Aderyn - Xenia is dynamic millionairess career woman with loads of wealthy friends married to a...

...teacher.

Do you think he has much of an inferiority complex?

Oi!

You'd have an inferirity complex if you had to live with Xenia

Looks funny without the 'o'! Oops!

My beef with Xenia is not what she's done (though I would hate, hate, hate to do it myself - and I do work) but her clear contempt for anyone who makes a different choice and her total lack of understanding and/or imagination, as I see it, that hardly anyone has the opportunity to make the choices she has (eg have a full time nanny etc). Same goes for Mozhe, who has a huge house, full time live in nanny AND an au pair, and cannot see why everyone can't just 'relax' and enjoy working 60 hours a week in their crappy, badly paid job that would barely cover the gas bill, let alone a £20+K a year nanny's salary.
WOuld either have left their two week old babies from 8-6, five days a week in a scruffy nursery baby room to share one just-out-of-her-teens, barely-literate nursery nurse with two other babies? Yeah, right.

dara - absolutely.
I'm just pleased that bigots are few and far between, aren't you?

Xenia 10.17pm - 'I don't feel at all threatened by SAHMs'
Xenia 10.27 - 'they help ensure we never get equality in life, work, politics, business and the more SAHMs there are the more those inequities are engrained. Thankfully SAHMs are gradually getting fewer and fewer'

What does that tell you?

I do work. Most of my friends - not all - go out to work. I have no problem whatsoever with working mothers. But I can see very clearly that for most of us, working 60 hours a week is not the dream scenario, for lots of reasons. And very, very few of us can afford live in nannies AND au pairs!

I work now - I think most people want to when their children get older. I wonder if X thinks that this makes me a better person?
I won't lose sleep over it, though!

Not sure which points we're talking about now. I don't have a husband but when I did he was a teacher, yes and for a good bit of the marriage we earned much the same..
I don't agree that both goig back to work doesn't mean you share childcare. There is loads of childcare for working parents, all the after school, breakfasts, weekends. Loads of share equally.

On status etc... if we don't value childcare you say therefore men won't do it. Why should that be any different than women unless we think women ought to take on roles that aren't valued.

Would I have gone back to work if I barely covered my childcare costs and had inadequate childcare and my husband could afford for me not to work (rare that couples can survive on one income these days by the way)? Depends. When I was 22 we paid our nanny more than half our joint salaries so one of us was working at a loss but I knew looking over a 40 year career that was a temporary financial loss we could bear and I knew I didn't want to be home all the time with small children.

'I knew I didn't want to be home all the time with small children. '
That's fine - but don't be so intolerant of those who do.