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.

everything in the world has it's moments of intenese boredom. When I used to have a full time job, I loved it and found it bloody dull in equal measures. I feel the same about being a SAHM (I do work, I am a se cello teacher. I only do 3 hrs a week, so it doesn't count!) Some days, I wish I didn't have to endure another tantrum from DS1 because his water is in the purple cup, not the blue one, but then he will do soetnhing fab, or I will get a lovely grin from DS2. At risk of sounding like my mother, I wouldn't miss it for all the tea in China.

QUOTE ~ Xenia "Doesn't matter. The more different views I read the better. It's almost as if though people don't want to see the issue debated that a model of one parent economically dependent on the other might be wrong or that it might have some adverse consequences. There are advantages - you have interesting work stuff to talk about, couples can sometimes stay married longer (not that I'm a good example of that as I'm divorced), perhaps less unfairness so less chance they might stray, never mind the fact the father probably has a closer relationship with his children if the mother works. She's not keeping close to herself her territory - the children which she likes to show off about being better at than him, putting him down in all those nasty ways some (not all) mothers do. He is just as good as she is with the children and she has not problem with that because she also excels in her work."

Xenia - when you insert (not all) in brackets, amidst a 100+ words put-down of SAHMothers I can see it's just there for effect so you can't be accused of saying all SAHMothers are like that. I don't actually believe you. You write far too many of these venemous paragraphs, based on your prejudices for me to think you have a 'give or take', 'each to their own', 'most SAHM's are OK' attitude.

And for what it's worth, that paragraph does not describe my family's life one bit. Where are your statistics to show that my marriage is likely to be shorter or my husband adulterous because I'm choosing not to work for a few years of my childrens' infant life? Why would my DH have less access to getting to know the children? No-one has an individual 'territory' in our household, nor an individual agenda. We are a family. Perhaps you should look up the meaning of the word.

I actually find your posts deeply offensive now - although since this is just a chat board, not offensive enough to give it a second thought once away from Mumsnet.

I do have a serious question. If all parents went back to work soon after the birth of their babies, who would look after the babies?

There's alrady a shortage of childcare in the UK for the under 8s. Since you believe that under 1s ought to have a one-to-one carer, where are all these one-to-one carers going to come from?

aderyn - I so agree with you on this: "when you insert (not all) in brackets, amidst a 100+ words put-down of SAHMothers I can see it's just there for effect so you can't be accused of saying all SAHMothers are like that. I don't actually believe you. You write far too many of these venemous paragraphs, based on your prejudices for me to think you have a 'give or take', 'each to their own', 'most SAHM's are OK' attitude." It's like starting a sentence with "I don;t mean to be rude/funny/awkward/sexist but...."

Actually Xenia - you're so insulting that I actually find you quite hillarious too.

QUOTE "Sometimes wher eyou both have had a really fascinating work day there's a lot of sparking of ideas off each other, mutual ability to benefit each other's business etc and may be if the other one;/s been stuck in with the baby and just says - Here have that - dumping iton you as you walk in so she gets a bit of free time or goes off to bed too exhausted for sex, that may not be as interesting as if you've both done fun things in the day you can chat about rather than ., he did a green poo, I tried baby organics or whatever."

Here have that I'd love to do a Mumsnet poll and find out if anyone has ever said that about their baby! I'd imagine not.

Expat "And FWIW, I think it's derisive to assume that all men are just wanting to hear about a career woman's day and then have a shag."

Excellent point.

Also, you're divorced, despite being so fascinating b/c of your career.

i genuinely feel sorry for anyone who cannot see that watching your own flesh and blood develop and grow is one of the most fascinating things in life. it is life. xenia - can you really not conceive of a relationship where the excitement derived from seeing your children develop can be just as good - hey even better - than talking about work. not everytime, and not for every person, but believe it or not, it's possible. (and fwiw I have an interesting and pretty unusal job)

If you are genuinely interested in the importance of physical contact and love for babies, and not just grandstanding, then I would recommend you read Why Love Matters by the psychologist Sue Gerhardt, and anything by the anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. Both are feminists, but both have seriously investigated the biological nature of motherhood and babyhood and how the two interact. Neither have an agenda of wanting women in the home either. But I did like this quote from Hrdy, who, unlike Carole Paterman has three children, "After the first weeks of living with a baby girl whom mostly slept or quietly nursed through seminars, it became increasingly apparent that in the world I lived in, caring for a baby was incompatible with concentrated work. A new baby's terrifying vulnerability, the magnitude of the responsibility, and the insatiable demands that kept me on-call twenty-four hours a day, came as a shock. Yet, as a primatologist in the post-Bowlby era, what could I do but turn my life over to her?"

As I've said before Xenia I think that the level of your emotional detachment is just very very strange.

the only person I know who didn;t really take mat leave acknowledges that she has not bonded well with her kids. she's having a fourth now and says this time she's going (her words) to "do it properly"

I don't know why I generate such interest. I'm not the only working mother in England who does it not because I have to but because I like it and I think it benefits my family and children.

On the primatology point I'm not a primatologist. I think children of working mothers turn out fine. I have not seen the evidence of emotional damage and psychologists vary in their views as does the research. This is why many parents are happy they both return to work because they don't think they are damaging their children by doing so. Obviously some of you don't agree which is fine in a free country.

On my daughters, they're great. It will be amusing if they marry and give up work for life. We'll see. I hope I'd always support them in their choices. Sadly as someone mentioned below I'm divorced after 19 years of marriage and they can see the problems caused which might cause them to be a bit cautious about giving up work.

But there is absolutely no evidence, contrary to many of your posts, that babies who stay with their mothers suffer any damage or disadvantage. Quite the contrary. Most people are too polite to quote the evidence as they do not wish to upset those of us who did return to work slightly earlier than they may have wished for various reasons. But please don't keep harping on about babies being damaged by being cared for by their mothers as you know perfect well that this goes against all the evidence, sometimes to the chagrin of the researchers.

That's just wrong though. Throughout history women have not raised babies totally alone. Neither do animals. They are present but not alone.

Who knows? My own mother sometimes left us in that kind of way whilst she took the other child shopping or something but she was very scathing of nursery schools. She was an infant teacher and probably reckoned she was better than a school at dealing with under 5s so I was almost 5 before I was left in any kind of sense. My parent didn't even go out in the evenings together ever. No one except my parents had put us to bed ever as a child.

It's not fair to say I am not emotionally attached to my children. I think if you speak to a mother of a 22 year old you're bound to get different views from someone who has just had a baby. It is hard to know what I would be posting if we were 22 years back and I'd just had the first. My recollection was that I worked because I wanted to. I must have missed the baby but not so badly that made me not want to return to work. A lot of parents are able to return to work and many mothers go back full time and I still think they are bonded with the child.

I agree with you that staying with a parent is unlikely to disadvantage a child in emotional and psychological terms unless it's a mother who really hates being home in which case on that individual basis surely it's better for them both she's working and a lot of mothers on here do find it hard at home and better when they work.

ho ho ho

saw Xenia's name and the number of posts

knew she'd be here spouting some inflammatory nonsense

Xenia, I am happy to believe that you are talking from your own genuine experience, and I am glad to hear your perspective.

However, I cannot agree that you are an expert in attachment to babies, having not had the experience of looking after them yourself exclusively.

I was a raving feminist and determined to do just what you did. In the event, I realised that financially I was almost as well off having maternity leave, as well as providing better for my dd in terms of childcare.

I too was quite relieved to drop her off when I went back to work at 5 1/2 months. I realise now that when I went back (only 3 days), and lost the exclusive care of her, this made a huge difference to attachment.

However, with dd2 I have taken a year off, and have realised how much stronger the attachment and bonding becomes over time. Perhaps I regret the decision to go back to work so quickly last time, although we were servicing large debts at the time (relative to income), and so there wasn't a choice.

I think you have proved that there is a trade off between financial rewards and attachment to your children. I would never wish to condemn you for what you have done - how ridiculous to judge someone else for their life, their actions.

But I do wish you would consider whether there is an area of expertise that you do not possess, and that is the experience of looking after your own children exclusively.

If it would be hurtful to think you may have missed out, then I support you in not wishing to rake over something that is too late to change anyway.

GQM ~ I have had the same experience as you. I too went back to work at 5.5 months with DD1, for 3 days per week. I'm still at home with DD2 who is 14 months old and I don't plan to go back to work (if anyone will have me!) until next year when DD1 starts school.

It's a little difficult to say if this sense of 'knowing' DD2 is deeper because I have spent more time with her or whether it is a consequence of her being a subsequent baby. Being more of an expert parent than I was first time round, I have been afforded more opportunity to enjoy DD2, as I wasn't worrying about the ludicrous things I fretted over with my first baby.

However, I stopped work before DD2 was born (for other personal reasons) and spending more time with DD1 (then 22 months) did change our relationship. I don't think it matters so much when they're older and can communicate their needs verbally but as a toddler, I found it much easier to understand and deal with DD1 the more I was around her.

I don't like Xenia's open contempt towards people who have made decisions different to her own (i.e. her caricatures of SAHM's) and I don't necessarily agree with her views over what is best for babies and young children. But, at least she had children. I hold much more contempt for the high-flying career women who remain child-free out of choice but go on to write articles referring to parents as breeders, vilifying them for bringing 'little brats' into the world

I don't have contempt for SAH parents. Setting out some advantages of going back to work early is not contempt for parents who stay at home. Parents should choose, if they have any choice at all.

I also agree with you that the more time you spend with anyone, even the dog, elderly parents, foster children, friends particularly if it's someone you're caring for the greater the attachment. I disagree that having several people involved in that attachment with under 5s harms the under 5s but I agree that you know the children more the more time you spend with them. I can't remember the teachers names of my youngest two. Either that's because I'm getting so old or because I'm nearly in the 20th year of being involved with schools as a parent so perhaps it's lost its novelty or perhaps I'm just uninterested and thinking about work things more. If I were a SAHM I would probably know the teachers' names. I can never remember the names of their classes either. But I do feel very close to the children. We spend a lot of time together, lots of cuddles and they're great fun. I would not have wanted to choose not to have children. When I'm meeting men now my age or older it does make a difference to whether I'd be interested whether they're fathers or not. If adults choose not to have children that does set them apart, much more than any differences between parents who work and those who stay at home.

Well fair enough then, Xenia. You are outlining an alternative to being an SAHM (albeit for high flyers only I suspect).

For what it's worth, some of the comments I have read from SAHM towards you have been worse than anything you have written in return. Looking at some of the vitriol headed your way, I think you were entitled to a bit of a backlash.

No, I don't agree that it's the amount of time you spend with babies/children.( or in fact animals, old people...), that necessarily influences the strength/quality of the bond. It can be a factor, but isn't necessarily the most important. I have seen penty of poor attachments between mothers and children where they spend 24hrs a day in each others company, and good attachment where mothers and children,( including babies ),spend many hours a day apart. rather it is what is happening between mothers and children when they are together that seems to matter more, and also the ability of mothers,( and fathers ), to hold their children in mind when they are apart , and to be able to communicate this to them...can be simple, " I thought about you today, and wondered what you were doing at break ".The child,( if this is repeated every day ), will gradually begin to appreciate that even when are you are apart you are holding him in your mind,and compassionately observing him.
I don't think it matters Xenia that you cannot remember DCs teachers names, it probably doesn't matter to them....otherwise you would remember,and I bet you can remember any number of things that are important...no doubt you'll be ' hounded ' for it though because it sounds ' bad', can't remember her DCs teacher/class names, tut tut..If it's any consulation,( some how I doubt it bothers you....),on a rare school run last week I took DSsX3 to wrong school !( we changed school at beginning of ths term..), they thought it was hilarious...it was a very amusing start to the day which amused me,DSs,staff/patients throughout day...not sure about the ' SAHM ' brigade though, they did look at bit horrified...sod 'em I say !