Can they make her work F/T?

[Clarinet60]

My friend returns from 6 months Mat leave next week. She wants to return p/t but they've told her she must work f/t. Does this depend on her contract, or is everyone entitled to p/t?

Xenia - as mentioned elsewhere, it's now compulsory for Swedish fathers to take 3 months of the epic parental leave awarded in Sweden. ( think about 15-18 depending on what annual leave you have to throw at it).

My friend has waited a lot longer than most for this baby and has been through much trauma to get her. There's no way she's going to skip back to work and pretend her child is a hobby. If they don't give her flexible working, she'll jack, and quite right too (in her case).

(btw, as this thread is about my friend, I can't discuss her partner's work circumstances)

ouch! Don't like the implication that some parents see their children as a 'hobby' - that's pretty insulting to the many mums and dads who have no choice but to work. Fair enough for someone to resign if they can't get part time work - thats their decision, but please show respect for those who might make a different decision or not even have the choice.

Just shows people's prejudices against working mothers (never against working fathers). Men are saints whether they work or not. Women who work are evils hobbyists even if they choose to work from preference. We've a long way to go to get anything like sexual equality in the minds of most men and women in the UK and women can be much more sexist than men. Sigh....

phuck off xenia.

ebenezer, that last post wasn't directed at you or anyone else who needs to work on this thread or others - I am sick and tired of the offensive posts that xenia constantly makes about work and sah, even on this thread which was intended to be a genuine fact finder. The gloves are off - I'm sick of pussyfooting around her and if the cap fits, re hobbying then she can phucking well wear it. xenia likes to boast that she spends the amount of time with her children that some people give to their hobbies - it's about her and only her, so no need for you to feel attacked.

I have tried to explain why I can't bring my friend's partner into this post and why it is about HER feelings about returning to work and nothing to do with sexism. If people are too thick to understand that, then tough.

I think the hobbyist phrase is a great one because is sums up that view very well. A lot of men are hobbyists too if you want to use that phrase, as is anyone who works out of choice even part time work. I suppose the question is when does parenting take you aside from the hobby bit - stay at home mothers with help (many mumsnetters actually are home full time and have childcare are presumably hobbyists too) so do you need to spend say 10 hours a day with your under 5 before you get some glorious halo of perfect motherhood which means you aren't just having children as a hobby?

As you'll notice from my posts xenia, unlike you, I don't separate men from women on this issue. My husband works stupid hours (from choice) and the children are certainly more like a hobby for him, and it shows in his relationship with them.

I stand by the hobby phrase - that's the way I feel on my work days. On those days, I see my children for 10 minutes in the morning and about an hour at night. They're hardly the main event of the day on those days, are they? They feel more like a side issue that I just slot onto the end of the day. I don't spend all day thinking about them - I can't, I'm too busy. That's why I don't want to work F/T - because I don't like that feeling.

Some people get over that feeling because they have to, but for me, you can't argue with the truth of the maths in the time.

Just in case any F/T working parents are feeling got-at - you have to be heavy-handed with xenia - she doesn't get subtlety.

If it's ok for xenia to say that people should work F/T and that childcare is a dross job, then it should be ok for me to say that one of the reasons I work P/T is because my children feel like a hobby/ side issue when I don't. Others may not feel the same. Others may not have the same head-space fuck-up from their jobs that I have. Others may be able to balance their lives better, and DO NOT feel like that when working F/T. To each his own. I can only speak for myself, and I'm a woman, not a man, which is why I hardly ever try to speak for men on these threads.

Children and work take up a lot of head space, for me, and I've never had room for both. That doesn't mean that other people don't have better balanced brains. I'm sure most of you do. There. Is that ok? Nobody offended except me? Good.

To answer your point xenia (because that's what polite people do), no, I don't think that people who have even a bit of childcare are hobbyists - and that is a term that can only be applied to me, as I have tried to explain. People who can work without feeling that their child becomes a hobby are obviously not hobbyists. For the F/T SAHparent with childcare, it's a question of balance. If he/she's doing other things all day long, then he/she might well feel that way too.

And talking of choice, my friend, you remember - the one this thread is supposed to be about - is not on the poverty line, so she does have a choice. They have enough equity to both be comfortable if they decided to split, so divorce considerations don't come into it either, xenia. They believe that their child will benefit more from their extra time than their money - children love time, read the research - and they've worked out that between them there won't be much extra money for F/T work because of nursery fees. That's between them you note - they pool their money, counting both earnings as one and both expenses as one. None of this 'ooh, I earned more than you did this month' crap.

I've just thought of something else - somewhere, you said that women 'ride on the back of their husbands' when they SAH. Isn't it sexist to say that? Couldn't the man be accused of riding on the back of his partner by getting her to do the childcare that he should be doing half of?

It will be sexist once we've had 5000 years of women in power on this planet to right the last 5000 years of men and only then we will be back to square one and perhaps sexual neutrality on these matters.

I think the hobbyist word is great. Most men on that basis have children as a hobby and subcontract them out to their wives or their nannies or mothers. Many women do too. Some women at home will have lots of help and not see that much of the children. Victorian model for richer women who didn't work was children with nanny and the mother sees them for an hour before bed. I can see the appeal of that and it works fine.

But I woul dnever say that man should never have had children as he only sees them one hour a day or ditto women. I love them and like the smallish amount of time I spend with them. I just don't want it to be any longer. Also as your own children get older, not sure of the age of yours, they don't usually want to spend hours a day with parents as teenagers although my university three are home a lot because Ithink they like to be here and to talk to me and I'd say we had a good relationship. Who can say if it's worse than if I'd not worked. I imagine it has elements of a classic father relationship as I spend with the time father's do but with some mother features because I'm fairly feminine etc.

I would never say that man or women should never have children because he/she sees them 1 hours a day either.