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.

4 Both parents are equally UNINVOLVED with childcare, is what I think you meant.
You cannot possibly mean that because two parents work 12 hour days outside the home the child has more contact with its parents, because that would be nonsense. I would love to see your evidence that partners of women who are temporarily (because in over 90% of cases, that is exactly what it is - and I have the evidence to prove it) caring for their children full time do markedly less childcare than those where both partners work long hours.
In the real world most people juggle, reducing their hours wherever they can, so they can spend time with their children. I see it around me every day.
It's all so black and white in your world.
You either work like a lunatic, hardly daring to step out of the workplace for a minute in case you inconvenience your employer (the same employer who would fire you without a second thought if it meant they made a couple of pennies more profit), or you stay at home as a domestic slave for ever and ever and ever.
I did ask if you would have left your tiny babies in a council-run nursery with semi-illiterate teenagers, or with a childminder in a council flat...but I didn't get a reply on that one. Only stuff about how much your nanny cost, which is totally irrelevant. You have to earn about 50K a year just to pay for a full time nanny out of your taxed earnings. Most people earn around half that before tax.

Looking after children is work, if you pay a nanny to look after your children then you have put a monetary value on it.

SAHMs don't happen to get a "wage" for what they do, but as a SAHM myself I cannot see the logic of working to pay someone to look after my children while I am at work, so I can afford to pay someone to look after my children, when I am perfectly willing and able to look after them myself.

Oh Saadia, but you aren't being Socially Responsible! I mean, I feel guilty every time I weed my own garden because that means I am not employing someone else to do it the time when I could be working for money!

believe it or not xenia, having children isn't ALL about money.

it's about LOVE, simply and utterly.

of course some of us are totally skint, some aren't. we take it as it comes.

but the children come FIRST

YOU SOUND A VERY SAD AND DISILLUSIONED WOMAN TO ME, STOP TRYING TO PROMOTE YOURSELF ON HERE and go and spend some time with your children.

I once read one of xenia and mohze's love-in type conversations on a thread that went something like this...

'oh yes I know plenty of families who have 6,7 or more children and it is seen as a sign of wealth, other than, say, owning a yacht...'

'oh really yes that is very true wonderful yes'

although I read it as.....

(another way to make me look really wealthy and successful hooray! now nobody will ever know how miserable and sad and crap I really feel now!!!)

had a chuckle at that one!

I know we don't often agree, ssd, but I have to say, your last post is SPOT ON.

I hope I never see the day when I see human beings as: status symbols, a sign of anything but love, 'illegal', or anything like that.

Idealistic? Most people who know me would laugh at that.

Most people would say I was harsh and hard, but you know, this thread has shown me, there are those who make me look like a marshmallow by comparison.

I agree, saadia, again, we don't often agree. But I feel as you do. A very wise and true post indeed. Your sons are so blessed to have you. This will show in the type of men they become.

Most working parents love their children and try to spend time with them. I love having a large family. It's fun. There does seem to be an assumption from some of the SAHM posting here that working parents don't love their children. Very strange. An assumption you have taken the better path, rather than just a different path.
Nanny costs - about £27 depending where you live so that's £13,500 out of taxed income - remember children have two parents. That will cover any number of children - nannies are cost efficient compared with nurseries. So yes £13,500 if you pay higher rate tax is about £23,000 of taxed income off each partner. If you're lower rate tax payers it's less. So pick your careers wisely if you want to make family life work well and you would like to continue a career. Many an idealistic and socialist 20 year old struggling with a mortgage and child costs, never mind childcare regrets their rejection of capitalism in their 30s and 40s. You have been warned...

I thought I had answered the question about leaving a baby. No I wouldn't leave a baby of mine in bad care unless I really had to. Most working parents believe it or not put their children's interests before their own. I know the SAHM in their ivory tower armed with their fake psychology books think otherwise but they are badly wrong.

But Xenia, I am saying these things and I am NOT a SAHM.

I've never read a psychology book in my life except for being forced to read a textbook for Psychology 301 for my degree course, of which I hated every minute b/c novels said the same thing only better.

I am in my mid-30s now, the daughter of a capitalist.

What people keep repeating to you ad nauseum is that you seem to see the world primarily in terms of pounds and pence and that seems, quite frankly, freakish to many other mothers.

Good to see you on OTHER threads besides those just discussing work, work, work and money, money, money, though.

Don't you realise that is boring to many people when someone bleats on and on and on about just one topic all the time?

Sorry, I don't know how else to put it but bluntly.

People have said they value your contributions.

So, yes, your views on this thread are obvious, but please feel free to branch out.

I'm not a SAHM either, actually.

And you don't get it about the childcare do you? It's really easy for you with all your money and your live in nannies. But most people CANNOT AFFORD IT. That kind of money is utterly beyond most people. Did I say working mothers didn't love their children? No. And of course they want good childcare if they have to work, but good childcare costs a lot of money. YOu seem to think it is such a mark of a loser not to be rich and that everyone should do a job that makes them rich. Well, that ain't how capitalism works, is it?
Do you honestly think that a woman who wants to take one to five years out of her career to care for her young children when the family can afford it, when going to work would make her miserable, when she's a brilliant, happy mother and there are clear proven benefits to her children, should go to work full time anyway and hand over the most enjoyable & rewarding job of her life to someone else? That seems to be gist of your posts, and it makes absolutely no sense to me.

You even seem to say that it is a woman's duty to society to work full time even if she doesn't want to AND the family suffers a financial loss if she does.

Tbf, Xenia, you do seem a little out of touch w/the reality most people live in.

Where would we be if everyone chose careers just based on the money to be earned?

The people you entrusted w/the care of your newborn children don't earn half what you do. The people who taught your children to read would be lucky to see £50,000/pa.

What about them?

Are they losers or too bad for them b/c they followed their passion, but it just happened to be something that isn't going to earn them millions.

Why does it all have to be black and white?

Surely someone of your education and background has the reasoning skills to deduce that this doesn't hold true for all of British society.

FWIW, I do not regret for one minute not spending my 20s chasing the Almighty Buck.

I only had one youth, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

So now I can't afford to farm my children out to strangers to care for?

I wouldn't want to even if I had the money, b/c IME, it just jacks kids up.

Actually, I know people with very happy, thriving children who have gone to nurseries or childminders nearly full time from a very early age (not two weeks!). But to do this with my kids ould have made ME totally miserable. I think my happiness does have value (and I'm not even going into the reasons why it would have been damaging to one of my children).
Anyway, I really think I've said all I have to say on this subject. (though I'm still giggling at the thought of a millionaire sneering at ivory towers...)

expat, I'm a bit surprised you saying we don't agree. I'm not sure why you think that, is it cos I said why do people give cowmad a hard time on MN? I asked as I didn't follow any or much of cowmads threads and I missed the ho-ha and wondered why she gets peoples backs up so much! Anyway, just to let you know I read a lot of your posts and often nod in agreement, you don't seem to say much I disagree with. All I know is your not driven by money, a lot like me, therefore you don't have much of it(again like me).People like xenia seem to be the opposite and I feel she'd expect people like us to be extremely jealous of her and her lifestyle, instead of accepting we feel genuine pity for her and her "choices".

thank you expat

Yes, I agree with dara. On the whole if the childcare is good I don't think teh children mind or are damaged (and if the home isn't good then they benefit) but it's the parents - some mothers (and a few fathers) cannot bear to be apart which is fair enough - let that father stay home (or mother for that matter) if the family can afford it. I've never said otherwise. I have said some parents don't want to be home and it doesn't damage the children and also set out on the thread some advantages of an early return over a later return.

The money issue is fascinating. As I said I was wrestling with it when I was 15 which was in 1975 so a good long time ago. I think most parents have chosen love, relationships etc over money simply by having children at all. They are an expensive choice and you don't have children to get money unless you're in a very poor financial position and need the child benefit etc but that's quite rare. Usually having children is a financial sacrifice which working and non working parents both make. So in a sense we're on the same side in choosing life/children over money. I suppose in some cultures babies equal financial support and another wage particularly sons (which is why you can't know your child's sex around where I live in utero because so many choose to murder baby girls before birth).

I work because I love the work actually much more than for the money. The money has given me choices and freedoms but my life has never been about the money per se.

Hi Xenia, I tend not to get involved on a thread when I see your name because tbh I'm not sure that you exist as the details you have given don't add up. in a nutshell, high-flying career girls don't spend as much time as you do on internet chatrooms.

I did ask you on another thread what you did for a living and you didn't answer, so here goes again what do you do?

I'm not being hostile; I find this whole SAHM v working mothers thing boring. I'm genuinely curious.

see you do understand xena! me and all my mates had no choice but to have kids otherwise we never would have been given such nice big houses or loads money to spend. I thought you would look down on me but you don't do you? secretly half the reason you are doing all this is because you really do care for my type.
thankyou thankyou thankyou.

ps)I cant believe you know people who have murdered their babies. You get so much money for each one so why would someone do that?dont they get sent to prizon?

right on sponger
that should give you a nice warm feeling inside xenia!

Indeed. This week's Child Benefit is paying for our skiing holiday this year. Last week's paid for their school fees.

I'm going to have another baby just so I can buy a villa in Spain next year.

lol bacon

It's called abortion. I did say before birth. The richer ones sex select and just implant boys.