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.

[piqueen.livejournal.com]

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

I know and it makes me angry. What I meant was it would be easier to take if I loved my work the way he loves his but when I'm honest I really don't.

[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!

[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?!

[tafagirl.livejournal.com]

I was apparently too intelligent to pursue primary school teaching :-0

A couple of years ago I understood that I was too intelligent to pursue work just because I was supposed to want a career.

[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.

[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!

[ailbhe]

I'm too selfish to focus on a money-earning career. I want to stay home and look after babies and children. "Selfishness" is not appropriate as a concept in this space.

[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

[ckd]

Why does "you're too intelligent to x" strike me as just a repurposing of "you're too good to be dating me and that's why I'm breaking up with you"?

[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.

[piqueen.livejournal.com]

Can I just ask - are you single? ; )

[shreena.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, that reminds me of something else that I think factors into it all:

Women who would be happy to have children but would only want to do, say, 30% of the work of raising them, just don't have them generally because it's not easy to find a man who would do 70% of the work.

Men who feel the same way have little trouble in finding a woman to do 70% of the work.

This leads people who haven't given it much thought to suppose that women typically want to do more than half of the work just because the women who aren't in that category have just not wound up having children at all. I am shocked at the number of otherwise bright people who really do think that way.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

heh.

*gets in line*

*then asks*

are you polyamarous? how many kids do you want? they don't HAVE to be the same mother, do they?!

n.
(being silly :)

[piqueen.livejournal.com]

hey I was here first ; )

[ailbhe]

Well, I think that a higher number of adult women ARE more willing to do more of the work, just because women are generally raised to it. I find toddler groups scary and educational places, as a feminist.

[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?

[shreena.livejournal.com]

That's certainly true, I just think the picture is unduly exaggerated by the fact that the women who would have preferred to have been mothers doing 30% of the work are invisible due to not being mothers. I do confess to a personal interest here, though, as someone who will probably end up childless despite preferring (as an ideal solution) having children but being the secondary carer.

[ailbhe]

I have no idea. Why?

[shinydan.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm single. Yes, I'm poly. No, I'm not available at the moment due to brain-'splodey.

Any more questions? 8)

[piqueen.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong of me to think that that is my ideal solution as well? I'm hoping you'll say no. ; )

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

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