Wise Ruby Wax - working and stay at home parents

[Judy1234]

In today's Telegraph....

"Dear Ruby

I stopped working when I had my third child. It didn't make sense to continue with my job when I had a stressed-out husband requiring my support and children who needed me at home. It was an agonising decision, but my salary only just covered the cost of childcare.

And we didn't need the money - my husband earns six times more than I did. More importantly, I felt really guilty going off to the office every day and leaving my kids behind.

My problem is this: since I stopped working I feel like a non-person. Oddly, it's other women who give me this feeling. Women who have somehow managed to keep their careers afloat through babies, breastfeeding, nappy rash and all the mayhem of motherhood, treat me with barely disguised contempt. It's almost as if, by staying at home, I've lost the right to have an opinion, or say anything interesting. It's deeply upsetting.

Life is hard enough as it is, so why can't women be allies at least? Why can't we respect each other's choices? Amanda M, Edinburgh

Dear Amanda

I have heard that cry from some of my "non-person" friends when they decided to give it all up for breastfeeding duty. The reason I would also probably treat you with disdain if I met you is that I am secretly (well, not so secretly any more) jealous.

You are lucky enough to have a husband who makes six times the amount you made and that really irks me, as I'm sure it would other females.

But in your position, I would have worked anyway, as all my self-esteem is stored up in my job. I could never have applied the word "housewife" to myself. I'd rather have put a sabre through my head.

Although I admire your sacrifice to the little one, on the whole, I find women who don't work to be just a teensy bit boring with their obsession with schools and stools. Not all, just most.

Perhaps other working mothers are reminded how guilty they feel about abandoning the home. Perhaps we take it out on you. Enjoy your home life."

Niecie - absolutely - you either live right next to the school or you have a school bus, in my ideal world.

Unfortunately I have neither solution on option right now. However, I think that the journey to/from school is much more of a pain for my child than for me - how parents can say "it's a bore and so I'll subcontract it" without taking the child into consideration is beyond me. My main motivation for moving nearer school is to make my daughter's life easier.

Anna, with regard to your question it's a good one and I don't know the answer. All I know is that the present system isn't working. I would like to see a complete economic rethink but one which sees the importance of home care for babies/toddlers as top priority (of course not forcing women who want to go out to work to stay at home).

Xenia, I don't think you would be on year 24 of school runs by now because at a certain age children want to travel on their own or with friends. A lot of the mothers of older children at my primary school now have to stand and wave off their children at the top of the road because it isn't cool for mum to drop them off at the gate. You would probably have had breaks on and off from the school run if you had been at home, and of course having a large family with big age gaps makes things more complicated generally.

Not sure what I would have done differently to be honest except invested more when I was single and earning a good salary. At the time I didn't think I had any spare money but looking back I can't believe how much I got through. Having said that I had a wonderful time, went to some great parties, wore some lovely shoes and maybe I shouldn't wish to impose my priorities now on me then!

I split up with a long term partner in my late twenties so I suppose my relationship now has gained a lot from my reflection about what I would do differently then.

I think one of the most important things, whatever decisions we make, is to have a partner who is fully involved in those decisions and fully engaged in making them work.

Evelina - my niece (3) made such a terrible fuss one day when my sister (with the best intentions) went to collect her at school that she ended up going home on the bus anyway. And my stepsons have long asked my partner not to kiss them anywhere in the vicinity of the school.

I agree - I don't think that the school run lasts forever, unless there really is no alternative to parental (or sub-contracted) chauffeuring.

millie865 - we could always do with more money and more fun in life.

Actually, I was very conservative in my 20s, worked hard, saved etc. But I let go quite a bit in my 30s - and thank goodness . I don't regret what I spent then on enjoying myself because it taught me a lot about what was important in life.

School runs -well our older ones got school coaches until they passed their driving tests at 17 so perhaps you're right on school runs except they are spread over a few years the children.

"It is very impertinent of me and feel free to ignore me, but did you plan to have the twins when you did? It seems to me that you must have had them at a time when you career was really taking off. Did you not have children young so that they would be becoming independent at precisely the time your career should be moving up a gear? Or did biology get the better of you and you just decided you wanted more children?"

I was glad to have the first three quite young. I would have liked the next 2 sooner but I was busy doing some work things and then we moved house etc. I always wanted 5 and indeed I said 7 before I married. I wonder what happened to that doctor poster who was working in France and just had baby number 6? Anyway there is something to be said if you marry young for keeping working full time but having the 3 babies before you're 27 so they're getting easier as work gets harder in some ways but then it does mean you have children when you have no power and no money which isn't that easy either.

I've always thought a very good argument for having children young is that you then have a reasonable chance of getting a lot of grandparental support while they are little and you are working.

I know a little girl whose mother works mornings only and who, on average, is looked after by a different grandparent every afternoon of the week, with the remaining day a play date. Hardly arduous for the grandparents and a doddle for the parents.

There are also two children in my daughter's class who are looked after by nannies at their grandparents home - the grandparents offer a nanny to all their grandchildren at their home on a permanent basis, so the children grow up with cousins. Nice if you can get it.

Certanily been that difference with mine and my siblings' children. Although my parents had us in their 30s (fairly oldish) as I was 22 they were still reasonably active so my mother used to take the girls out shopping in London when they are 6 and 8 etc. But now nearly 20 years on my mother's dead, my father might as well be dead, the other grandfather is very fit, still working part time but over 80 and the other grandmother not well so the grandchildren have a very different view of grandparents.

But mine never helped. My brother was only just leaving home when I had mine and my mother rightly was looking forward to some time off after all those years of childcare.

There are lots of good arguments for having your children young, and I sometimes wish I had started earlier so that I could have more. But I am SO glad I didn't have children with the man I was living with in my early twenties. It would have been a disaster!

For me one of the advantages of having children older is that I am much clearer about what I want out of life and relationships and have more confidence about negotiating for it. I wouldn't put up with half the crap I did fifteen years ago.

Luckily for me my mother had me young, so is still an active granny. But if my daughter wants me to be an active granny to her children she'll have to be barely out of her teens before she starts, which probably isn't what I'd want for her.

I wish I had started younger but I just wasn't ready back then. I suppose I could realistically have started at 27 when I got married but I didn't actually want children back then. However, I like the idea of doing what the Queen (and Xenia) did and have a large gap between the first 2 and the second 2 (I can't cope with odd numbers, it had to be 4 if I didn't stop at 2 as I have done). It wasn't meant to be though.

I love the idea of 4 grown-up children coming home for Sunday lunch or Christmas but the reality of taking care of 4 small children at the same time was enough to put me off. I really would have to be a career SAHM if I had to wait for all 4 children to start school which obviously would never do.

my kids are 6 and 9 and my mum is 80

I've got absolutely no family help and now I help look after mum as well as the kids

can't tell you how isolating and extremely difficult this all is

I'm irrationally jealous of other mums with help, dh and I are desperate for even a teeny tiny bit of help but its not there and mum is getting weaker and frailer day by day

its so so hard

but didn't meet dh till I was 29 so couln't have married younger!

for you, snowfun

thanks Anna

One answer snow is earn enough to pay for a nanny and housekeeper out of your own salary as some women do but I know not everyone has the ability to earn those kids of sums. We had no help from anyone except that which I earned and paid for. Although now the older children are older they are unpaid helpers which I hope will be useful when we go skiing at the weekend.

The Spanish Royal family did the same I think - older children big gap and then a second lot. And so did that UK royal, the one whose husband is an art dealer and got cancer, they had 2 more later on. It's quite a nice way to do it. You almost feel slightly grandparent like in terms of experience and being relaxed with the later ones too. I think it must feel like men who have babies in their 20s, divorce after 20 years, marry again and then have a bit more money and time to spend with the children second time around.

Xenia,I've got the ability to earn good money but as I gave up work to be at home with the kids I've lost my chance IYSWIM

I have two children and then a big gap and then two tinies. The age gap is lovely - but in between two sets of children was a marriage breakdown which I wouldn't recommend to anyone. This parenting thing seems much easier now mostly because my DP is an absolutely brilliant father and stepfather - it feels like we are absolutely in it together whereas my ex husband was hopeless: the children were my responsibility and he concentrated on his career which involved long long absences from home.

snowfun - yes, and I'm sure that all things considered, that was the decision you wanted to make .

Xenia's point is, of course, correct - but with the proviso that you actually feel OK about subcontracting the care of your dependents to third parties. This is the big dilemma for (potentially) high-earning women - do you choose to earn a lot of money or do you choose to spend a lot of time with your children (or other dependants)?

Yesterday afternoon I took my daughter to the home of one of her classmates for a party. Actually, it wasn't the child's parents' home, but her grandparents' home. The grandmother employs a nanny (an excellent nanny) to take care of her two daughters' children in her home during the day, while the daughters work - one is MD of a hotel and the other a cardiologist. The grandmother also has other domestic help, and the daughters and their husbands often eat dinner at the grandparents house in the evening after work.

That kind of care/domestic support makes going to work rather a lot easier, I think. But still, both the daughters seem to have pangs about not seeing their children as much as they would wish.

Swedes - it sounds like your experience is like my partner's. He had his first two children with a wife who was totally hands-off and not interested in her children at all. The marriage failed, in a long and painful sort of way.

Now (and we were only having this conversation, as we sometimes do, the night before last) he says he actually feels that there are two parents in the family and that everyone cares about everyone else and how they are progressing and getting on in life.

Do you find that your ex-husband throws a spanner in the works of your family? We have quite a lot of spanners thrown our way... though we are gradually getting better at deflecting them

Anna - I spoke to my exhusband yesterday, asked him how he was and he gave me a ten minute spiel about his work. I thought of Xenia. He lives in Asia, returning only four or five times a year so we don't get too much turbulence. I only wish he would give more notice so that we don't have to cancel things in order to accommodate him. But to be honest I have given up trying to get him to change his destructive ways - so instead I concentrate on insulating us against the effects of his behaviour. It's much much better that way round!

My partner's ex lives 5 minutes away, so we do rather a lot of accommodating of her erratic agenda. We recently had to threaten her with court action to have the boys to live with us full-time (she doesn't want this) to get her to back down (but she did, immediately - her lawyer must have got through to her even if my partner couldn't).

It's very, very tiresome - she wants the boys living with her, because (a) it's a good financial deal for her (b) it's the socially acceptable thing to do (c) she hates living alone, but she doesn't want any of the constraints or responsibilities of their upbringing...

My partner's ex lives 5 minutes away, so we do rather a lot of accommodating of her erratic agenda. We recently had to threaten her with court action to have the boys to live with us full-time (she doesn't want this) to get her to back down (but she did, immediately - her lawyer must have got through to her even if my partner couldn't).

It's very, very tiresome - she wants the boys living with her, because (a) it's a good financial deal for her (b) it's the socially acceptable thing to do (c) she hates living alone, but she doesn't want any of the constraints or responsibilities of their upbringing...

What was she disagreeing with? Where they go to school or something?

She wasn't disagreeing with anything (her only thoughts on school are that she should never have to think about it), she was neglecting them. She wants them to live with her (for the reasons previously stated), but then she travels like crazy for work and when she's in Paris she has a personal trainer all evening on Mondays so doesn't see the boys and goes out every Tuesday and often on Thursdays - and often on the weekends they are with them too. Plus she hasn't arranged a hairdresser/doctor/dentist appointment in 3 years (despite saying she will), never buys them clothes and they always arrive at our house never having seen a toothbrush since the last time they were here. Etc etc etc.

Anyway, my partner had to say to her that if she wasn't home more often (and he always knows what goes on as the boys complain like mad to him) and didn't take better care, he would give 6 months' worth of date to his lawyer who would easily win a court case for residency with us.

Needless to say, there was utter silence for three weeks (as she consulted her lawyer) and then a (emailed) retraction in lawyer-speak on all the work travel and lots of promises about "doing her bit" re doctors etc. We'll see.

for the boys.

You sound like a great step mum, Anna. Surely the boys are old enough now to decide where they want to live? I recall, in my solicitor days, a court battle involving residency of a 12 year old girl. We were acting for the father who wanted custody from the mother for similar neglect type issues that you are describing. The girl really wanted to move in with her dad full time and the judge agreed saying that at age 12 it was basically up to the child.
You really have your hands full with the old MOL issues going on as well. I hope today (another thread) went ok. How do MOL and exwife get on by the way (just being nosy so tell me to mind my own if you like!)

In the UK plenty of people wait until they youngest is 12 or 13 who will then have a say in who they live with. It is a known method for men to get the children living with them - don't divorce until they're of an age to choose.