Career

[ailbhe]

There's a lot of discussion about The Mommy Wars again, apparently. You know - mothers who don't get paid and do stay at home doing childcare think mothers who have paying jobs and use babysitters, nannies, nurseries, et cetera are neglectful and abandoning, and mothers who have paying jobs etc etc think mothers who stay at home are anti-feminist parasites.

I'm the stay at home type (and you're all evil child-abandoning monsters, etc, etc, we can consider that bit said) and I've spent a lot of time over the past two years trying to think it all through.

First, for me, stay at home mothering was a career choice. It's a bit odd, as a career choice, because it means that unless I pop out a baby every couple of years until I'm 45, I will hit unemployment long before retirement age. It also frames the father of my children, who is also my husband, as my employer, a framing which just plain doesn't work, because he can't afford to pay me minimum wage for the hours I work and still cover his half of the mortgage, bills etc, and he also doesn't have the power to sack me, and, er, he's not my employer. Perhaps the child(ren) is (are).

Second, for me, stay at home mothering was something I had always wanted to do. It wasn't a primary goal for my four sisters, who all actively pursued other careers although they want to have children as well. But for me, it was something I wanted to do but thought was impossible from the time I was 14 years old. I grew up knowing that respectable, intelligent women go out to work and have Proper Jobs. And I was clearly intelligent, though I wasn't sure about respectable.

Third, none of the boys I knew, growing up, could imagine a partner who didn't have a job and earn money. No way. I suspect that none of them could imagine doing their fair share of the childcare either, but since they're not around now I can't ask. I vetted serious boyfriends on whether they thought stay at home mothering would be a possibility if we ever settled down together; I have had only two serious boyfriends who passed that test, out of, well, lots. One of them liked the idea but wasn't ready to settle down yet really, and the other married me.

Hrump, where am I going with this?

Ah yes.

None of my boyfriends ever, ever wanted to be stay at home fathers. Not one. Those of you familiar with my past will realise how large the numbers are, and those of you who aren't, well, they're large. I never had a proper girlfriend, but only one of my female friends wanted to settle down, be dependent on a man, and have babies - and she didn't want to do the baby-raising work herself, she just saw it as an easy option. (I wasn't keen on the "dependent on a man" aspect either, and had many wild plans for getting pregnant anonymously and fleeing the country to live off the proceeds of my bestselling angsty novels, but I did, to be fair, recognise them as wild plans - I really thought I'd have to live off the dole).

I've had jobs where management asked casually whether I had plans to have children soon. I've had job interviews where I was asked that, very casually, sometimes very obliquely. I'm well aware that the fact that women are responsible for some stupendously large perecentage of childcare makes it harder for us/them to get and keep jobs, and especially to get and keep high-flying high-powered high-earning jobs. But I don't think that's my fault. I note that my husband has never been asked that, and has only once been made to feel that he shouldn't want to be involved in his baby's life to the extent that he is - it was someone in his management structure who thought paternity leave was a ridiculous joke and had no idea why anyone would want it, and Rob dismissed him as "an unreconstructed chauvinist" anyway.

It's not about whether stay-at-home mothers or working mothers are better mothers, to me, because it's obvious to me that some stay-at-home mothers are great and some are lousy, and some working mothers are great and some are lousy - even when they had a genuinely free choice over which to do, which I'm not convinced happens very often (for instance, my salary before we had a baby would not have covered childcare I would have been happy with, and the maternity leave conditions there weren't great either - plus I fairly often worked 60 hours a week or more and was often ill from work-related stress).

The argument I want to have is why is it women who have to make these "choices" and take all the flak for it? What stops men from doing it?

Comments

[piqueen.livejournal.com]

Since you've shared your personal take on it I'll share mine. I don't think there is a way to answer this in a non personal manner.

I don't have children. At 15 I wanted to have children very badly but was taught that as I was intelligent I should have a career. I wanted to be a nursery nurse and my mother was dragged along with me to various careers events and open days in that theme. All the while trying to talk me out of it on the grounds that it would bore me. So I did a maths degree and I'm training to be an actuary.

I live with a wonderful man who is the same age as me (24) and he is doing a PhD. Both of us would like children but I would like them *now*. It sounds weird and totally unfeminist but the longing is so strong sometimes it's like a craving that's with me all the time. Other days it is a more distant feeling and a building frustration but it never totally goes away. My boyfriend wants to be an academic, has wanted to since as long as he can remember and has cast me in the role of someone who wishes to stiffle this ambition when I insist he do half of the housework (as he does sometimes begrugingly at the moment).

Giving up work to have children isn't feasible whilst he is on a PhD grant and as a postdoc we would struggle on just his money. I earn a lot of money but can't enjoy it because I try to put as much aside as possible in the hope that one day I will be able to live on it for a while and have some children.

My boyfriend would prefer to wait 8-10 years before thinking about children. For him it's more like an academic question. He jokes that if I'm so desparate to have children I will have to find another man. I laugh and say it's okay I don't mind but I do.

Sometimes I feel frustrated, why can't I have a career and some babies and someone to share parenting with who is prepared to make a dent in their career at least as large as the dent I will have to make in mine. All this is complicated by the fact that he loves his job/career whereas I love the security/status that mine affords me.

I don't feel like I have any choice at all and I share your frustration with society.

Sorry to take up so much space in your journal.

[ailbhe]

My mother was told she was too intelligent to take up sewing as a career, so she had to do a degree in organic chemistry instead. So she ended up working for the civil service or something, and got let go as soon as she got married. Now, it so happens that SAHMing is something she loves, but she had no choice at all, and was never able to make a career of the lucrative thing she loves.

I was also under the impression I was too intelligent to be allowed to do something low-status, but luckily my subversive mother is on my side, which makes a big difference. The only problem for her is the being-dependent-on-a-man aspect, which is a very big deal.

And if there's something you can't get from SAHMing, it's money and status. Only traditionally male roles come with those.

[sshi.livejournal.com]

Just one thing here (and I'm well sure you already know this), but being a full-time academic does *not* mean you are exempt doing housework, like the rest of humanity. It really pisses me off when people use academia as some sort of all-encompassing reason for not having to do things that either bore them or they just don't want to do - I know from bitter experience that you need to learn to plan your work in a way that it doesn't take over the rest of your life and you'll find plenty of time to do housework/wash the car/dog/children etc. (Apologies for the small rant, but this one just pushes my buttons!)

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

I think the reason there are so few stay-at-home dads is because women's salaries are still generally lower than men's for the same jobs, so when it comes to "choosing" who will stay home with the kids, then it's usually the lower earner, and hence the woman that will end up doing it. Until all these other disparities are resolved, I don't think that the disparity in childcare can be fixed!

In my case, the cost of childcare is comparable to my take-home salary, so financially there is no reason for me to go to work every day, but I don't think I have the required patience and energy to be a full-time mother, I need my time at work to recover!

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

Yup, Andy earned / earns so much more money than me, that there was no need to even discuss who would be the stay at home parent.

Previously, I'd always earned more than my first husband, so staying at home without a salary was never an option & something I had never, ever thought about as it was so impractical.

I've gone into this stay at home parenting witrh my eyes wide open & no pre-conceptions. The main place I get flack for it is on the net, I can't think of any instance in rl where I ge the same attitude. Oh, yes, perhaps my doctor, who is 52, childless & a part-time GP / part time vicar. I am apparently "too intelliegnt" to be wasting my time at home with my children. That old chestnut again ...

[tafagirl.livejournal.com]

What makes me angry is when women talk about not going back to a career they like and enjoy because there won't be much left of *their salary* after paying for childcare. Why does a family's childcare expense come from the mother's salary only?!

[ailbhe]

In my case, because it shuts people up when they badger me about being a stay at home mother :) It's an easy way to avoid having the discussion.

In real life, it's because childcare, like housework, is the mother's responsibility.

[mrs-warwick.livejournal.com]

I don't see it as the childcare expense only coming from the mother's salary.
If I go back to work, my salary will be combined with my husband's to pay for all the family expenses. If I go back to work, we will have to pay for childcare. Those childcare costs will have to be met by the family budget. If my salary is less than the cost of the childcare, then overall the family budget will be less than what it is now with me not working. We do not have sufficent surplus in our current budget to allow that to happen. Therefore, however much I love my work, it does not make financial sense for me to return to work unless my salary is higher than the childcare costs.

[shreena.livejournal.com]

The answer to your question, in my opinion is a combination of:

Precedent. Very very few men of an age to be fathers grew up with their fathers doing anywhere near equal childcare. Even men who theoretically believe in equality just don't have the habit of thinking in equal terms about children and, even more so, domestic chores. This applies also to women who have the same issue and tend to wind up feeling guilty about it all.

Legal issues - women are entitled to significantly more maternity leave than men are paternity leave. It's inevitable that a woman is going to wind up being more bonded to their baby than the father is unless circumstances were very unusual. Then it becomes a snowball effect - if baby prefers mummy, it becomes harder for daddy to look after baby and for mummy not to feel guilty about leaving baby with daddy and so and so forth.

I am myself free of precedent because of unusual circumstances (and having a father who is in the top 2% of dads worldwide and that's without any hyperbole, if you met him, you'd agree) and I notice the difference between my attitudes and my boyfriend's attitudes because he had the stay-at-home mother.* It's not that he doesn't try to free himself of traditional assumptions, it's just that it's obviously harder for him because the ideal family model in his head is his parents. If we decided to have children together, I would try very hard to wipe out the second problem I mentioned by insisting that we spend the same amount of time with baby/babies because I think it would be particularly important in the light of the issues I already mentioned.

*not that stay-at-home mothers are always going to have this effect on their children, his family set up is _particularly_ traditional due to Catholicism and just personalities.

[sian-shoe.livejournal.com]

Nothing to do with what you want to discuss, but I love my work too much to have children. I can't focus on another being right not, I'm too selfish. I'd rather have career then kids.

Mind you, I'm 23. I might have a different opinion in 10 years time.

[ailbhe]

I wasn't even thinking about people who don't want kids. There's no reason why anyone ought to want kids, after all. Enough people have the biological urge to make global population decline an unrealistic prediction.

But the fact that other women do want kids and are expected by The Universe to be the primary carers may well affect your career options. That's definitely something I want to discuss, and it directly affects you!

[shinydan.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a man...*waits for rain of rotten vegetables to cease* It's not that men can't do it. It's more that Men Don't Do That.

I went to see my god-daughter, recently turned a year old, last weekend. She was sat on my lap, eating(1) her birthday cake for the first time. When I talked about it to James S. on Monday, he gave me a look and asked, "You're not getting clucky, are you?" and I had to admit I was. This, I felt, was obviously deeply suspicious behaviour.

Men Don't Get Clucky. Instead, under normal circumstances, Men Go To The Football and Bring Home The Bacon, even if their child happens to be vegetarian. I have a terrible suspicion that, even if they tried, the voices asking, "he's not a bit poofy, is he?" would be from the unthinking SAHMs crowding around the school playground, waiting for their kids.(2)

I can't see how, but thinking about all this has made me want children again, and take the most active role in their upbringing possible. Because, you know, I think I'd be damn good at it.

Daniel
(1) for certain values of eating, of course
(2) which I've done in connection with my sister's childminding business

[piqueen.livejournal.com]

Can I just ask - are you single? ; )

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

i am 33. i LOVE my career, and am very very ambitious. i also very VERY much want to have at least one child. i don't particularly want to adopt --i very much want the experience of being pregnant.

i've found that most men my age either don't want children, or are married and have them. i don't particularly want a man older than me (i am watching a family friend with a 20 years older than her husband go through watching him become senile etc).

the only way i think i am going to be able to do this is to either have a partner who also works -- so that i can both work and have a baby, AND have my own business. because in my field, i don't think that i can work and have a child. it's incredibly rare. the only times i've seen it are with the women who have their own business! so, i either need a partner who works for the security -- or i need to continue living next door to my mother who would have to provide a good amount of childcare.

all the men i know say they would have a kid "someday" whilst cheerfully ignoring the biological implications of what it means for a woman who is getting older to have a child.

most of the men i know look at children as beings who will "take their lives away" from them.

for my friends who are male who used to think that way, and now have kids, they are all great and very involved fathers -- and interestingly enough -- have really great careers too.

most of the people i know with kids are self-employed, both the mother and the father. so they *both* have flexible hours, and tend to do things like one focuses on the kid part week, and the other partweek, and a grandparent or other caregiver on the third part of the week.

to me this seems very equitable. it's what i'd like too.

i don't know if i'll ever have it. it may be that i have to do it on my own.

n.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

I recommend a younger man. About 8 years younger seems perfect. :-).

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I was remembering at lunch today that I used to feel like it was somehow inappropriate/unpolitic to admit[1] to cow orkers that I wanted to have children someday.

We're in a situation when we can't pay all our bills on just A's salary but could on mine. But we're mostly waiting until I finish mat leave to decide how we're going to pay this. It's still socially more acceptable for me to admit to ambivalence around returning to work than it is for A, though.

I've always earned more than A and that gives me more leeway in this negotiation than is typical. I feel lucky that this is so, but why should I?

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

Forgot the footnote!

[1]I used to feel like it was a slightly shameful thing. I was totally bought into the male-identified equality femininist thing.

[laura0141.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say that I heartily applaud your decision. I don't want kids (never have save for a brief spell when I realised I *shouldn't* have them and sulked) but, if I did have one I hope I'd do as you've done, as my mother did for me, as her mother did for her. It's the way this old-fashioned girl thinks it should be. Children should be cared for by their parents (it doesn't matter whether the 'stay-at-home' is mum or dad to me). I have great admiration for you - you stick to your guns despite the difficulties. Bravo!

[rmc28]

I am not sure why. I do know that I was very very paranoid about work finding out I was trying for a baby, and that it felt like everyone was asking me at Christmas parties whether we were planning a family yet. Once I got pregnant, I'm protected by employment law, but I was angling for more responsibility at the time, and terrified that I'd lose it if I appeared "unreliable", or about to disappear. Now the start of my maternity leave is only 3 months away, I find myself careful to remind people "I'll be back in January, I'll be keeping in touch".

My goal at the moment is to prove-by-living-it that it's possible to work well and have the childcare equally divided between the parents, subject to the initial biological inequality of recovering from childbirth and establishing breastfeeding. It doesn't seem like rocket science to me, and yet everyone who asks me "how are you going to manage childcare" seems to react to my proposed timetable (Tony & I work 5 hours each, 5 days a week, which gives a morning shift and an afternoon shift one of which is at work and one with the baby) as though it's a really radical idea.

I think I lean towards the idea of "people don't have enough examples" and so it becomes self-perpetuating. And the idea of women commonly having actual high-status careers (rather than the traditional low-status "women's work") is still quite new.

My own upbringing wasn't quite the traditional wage-earning-father, stay-at-home mother, although Dad's job was the permanent one and Mum's job(s) temporary. They both really did politics: Dad deliberately didn't get promoted above the point where he'd no longer do shift work to enable him and my mother to shuffle hours and childcare cover so they could both do politics. So it wasn't unusual for Dad to take care of us (though I'm sure it was less than half the time), and as soon as each of us children was considered responsible enough, we got co-opted into looking after the younger ones to free up both parents. I do wonder if I'd have been so motivated/inspired to find an equal division of labour without this not-quite-equal upbringing.

[ailbhe]

It doesn't seem like rocket science to me, and yet everyone who asks me "how are you going to manage childcare" seems to react to my proposed timetable (Tony & I work 5 hours each, 5 days a week, which gives a morning shift and an afternoon shift one of which is at work and one with the baby) as though it's a really radical idea.

It *is* a really radical idea. It's also fair. Fairness is often radical. But then, my staying at home and not being regarded by Rob as a parasite is pretty radical too...

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

galagan has always earned 2-3 times the salary I could, just by virtue of the field(s) he's in, so it made sense for me to stay home for a while. I am thinking of going back into the paid workforce soon, becasue I do miss it, and I think I'll be a better mother to E if my life has that balance in it - because that's my personality.

galagan took a full 12-week paternity leave, because he wasn't going to let anyone deny him that - and I *know* he had coworkers questioning that decision. He has often talked about how he would maybe be interested in having me work and he would stay home with E, but for the fact that he thinks having a "gap" like that on his resume would look bad, and then who would hire him? Women are allowed to take a few years off to have a baby and then go back and people don't think that's strange, but if a guy did it, people would think something was wrong.

[kiya]

I know that I'm of the opinion that the American culture that surrounds me is anti-family. (I can't speak to the cultures of other nations, though I was recently rather sad to learn that the career-ueber-alles attitude existed in the UK as well.)

There's this sense I get that everything is subsidiary to The Work. Personal life is optional. Hobbies optional. Having a life entirely optional. If The Work needs overtime, it gets it. Wanting time away from The Work is questionable; putting that time in for the family is really questionable. (You know, I'm finding American corporate collectivism really alarmingly totalitarian all of a sudden. Hobbies more acceptable than family -- they demand less and don't typically provide an alternate group that might threaten allegiance to The Job.)

The feeling I get is that when women fought for a way to be allowed to work, what they got instead was the right to The Work. Sixteen tons, and what do you get? But The Work itself is misogynistic, misandristic, whatever -- it's anti-people. And because women's hold on the space for The Work is still tenuous, and because typically women were raised in value sets that included valuing family, the inherent misanthropy of The Work hurts.

I'm going to be seriously doing the having-kids thing in a year. And one of the things that really bothers me is that my husband -- with whom I've been discussing childrearing and the like for many years -- may be unable to be there with said produced kids, because The Work may eat him. He likes his job, but it bleeds over, it takes up more of his time, it demands overtime for which he isn't paid because he's on salary ....

This bothers the hell out of me.

I look at the ... I forget where it was, somewhere in Scandanavia ... the place where there's something like a year of parental leave, a month of which is reserved for paternity leave, with pay, and ...

[ailbhe]

I believe that Sweden has parental leave which can be divvied up as the parents prefer, though I think there's a limit to how much of it can be both parents out of the workplace at once. I could be wrong though.

From a slightly different angle...

[murphymom.livejournal.com]

Just looking at this part of your statement - "The argument I want to have is why is it women who have to make these "choices" and take all the flak for it? What stops men from doing it?"

Men don't have the same choice to begin with - a man who wants a child has to get a woman involved somehow, but a woman who wants a child does have the option, impractical as it may seem, to "[get]pregnant anonymously and ... live off the proceeds of ... bestselling angsty novels," (or) "...dole)." We simply have more control over the whole child-bearing process, so it seems to be society's whim/wish/will to force us to "pay" somehow for that privilege by making us view a decision between career and SAHMing as a lose-lose proposition.

Now, mind - I was an SAHM for the majority of my "working" years, which is why I am starting a career in my mid-fifties. Because I have spent so little time in the workforce, and have paid very little into Social Security, and because I now am in a state pension fund, it is unlikely I will ever be able to retire - there just won't be enough money to live on. Mind you, I never considered that when I was busy SAHMing - but others may be more forward-looking and that might be a consideration.

Anyway - just my 2 cents worth (tuppence for consideration).

Re: From a slightly different angle...

[ailbhe]

So basically, because men can get away with not being involved in the raising of their children, and therefore women can con them into not being involved in the raising of their children, women "deserve" (note scare quotes) to be lumbered with all the work of raising the children?

And no, we don't really have more control over the whole child-bearing process, unless you live somewhere with universally available free, safe birth control and abortion. We just have more responsibility for it. Without control. Go us!

[nicolechan.livejournal.com]

Great point! I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this.

This is LondonN7 not being able to login for some reason

[londonn7.livejournal.com]

We live in very interesting times! I'm 31, getting married soon, and we are planning on starting to try in about a year's time...what I find funny is that having been brought up to believe in the power of education and professional advancement, I get to a senior stage in a great career and I see the child+childcare issue about to hit me like a rapidly advancing train. My current job requires me to be in the office from around 9 a.m. until around 7/8 at night, but held very good prospects...but emigration dealt it a tidy blow and now I have secured a very nice public sector job. I try not to think about the fact that at least half of my income will be spent on childcare once we do have a baby....

Re: This is LondonN7 not being able to login for some reason

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Hello London!

Top tip (if I may presume to offer you financial advice): when you start the new job, take the difference between what you live on now and what you'll earn then (or near enough), and stick it in a savings account. With two such demanding jobs, one or both of you may well decide that a period of unpaid parental leave is necessary some time in the first couple of years, and it'll be good to have a nice fat cushion to tide you over. So to speak.

Radza, mixing metaphors since 1976.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

I think it's mainly the wage gap. Certainly, in our household that's a primary consideration. If we found eleventy billion euros on the side of the road and paid off our mortgage, we could live (as we wish to live) on my salary; otherwise not. But it's a circular hell, of course, since part of the reason for the wage gap is that women are assumed to be less valuable workers because they're more likely to take on caring duties.

The modern workplace is designed for People With Wives, as we know.

Thoughts of how we're going to manage my scheduled return to work next February have started rumbling somewhere in the lower reaches of my mind. And yes, I have to fight the tendency to assume it's entirely my responsibility to sort out childcare. (Also, the sick tremor at the thought of O going back to the creche full-time has been noted.)

Thank you for articulating this stuff so I don't have to :-)

[londonn7.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have to fight the tendency to assume that it's entirely my responsibility to sort out everything. I am hoping that my next workplace will look kindly on my appalling affliction of being of childbearing age and having a partner with whom to bear etc. When I got the call with my offer, my boss-to-be made a point of saying that she had noticed the rock on my finger (family heirloom carbon!!) and that they were very family friendly....let's hope so.

I guess O will be a lot older by the time he goes back to the creche, will it be traumatic for him? I'm sure the thought of being away from him until 6 every day is horrendous.

[londonn7.livejournal.com]

Ah-ha! Very prudent. My partner in crime gets a little frazzled at not being able to save money each month, he tells me...to which I of course reply...'Save? but we can't afford socks!! are you nuts?' etc. Of course, the grand old Duke of SSIA is coming our way, but his principal function will be to discharge the cost of the Grand Day Out in December, so your idea is most timely and useful.

Hope you are very well!

Stay-at-home dads

[(Anonymous)]

I was a SAHM and two of my 5 sons are stay-at-home dads.

One has a wife who earns far more than he ever could, so there was no choice over which of them would stay home. When people ask him "Do you work?" He replies, "Yes! I'm bringing up my daughter!".

The other has a wife who's a Nursing Sister and Ward Manager. If she gives up work to raise their 3 little girls under two (twins and then another 1 year later) she loses not only her position of authority on her return to work at some time in the future, but also her registered status, and she would have to 're-train' when she wants to go back. So she works part-time, he works from home part-time, and the girls go to a Nursery part-time.

And another of my sons (who is currently unemployed) is a 25 year-old with two teenage step-children. Currently, he does most of the housework, cooking, etc. It's logical that he should, isn't it? They all think so.

Sorry, forgot to identify myself!

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, Ailbhe. It's Elaine again. Forgot to ID myself. Ooops!

[lovingboth]

If you'd have asked me before I had the chance, I'd have said "No way - babies are boring". (JoJo thinks it's very funny that I ever thought that.)

When I did it, it was lovely. Part of me slightly regrets not doing it for longer, but I do recognise the benefits we've had from a) me working (for the first time in a Real Job) and b) her being at nursery, then nursery school.

As an option, it's not promoted enough. There aren't the - gulp - role-models.