Work vs mothering

PostingSummer holiday

Earlier this week two-year-old daughter went on her first proper trip anywhere without me or her dad. I wanted so much to be cool about this; after all, in the scale of things, the trip wasn't that big a deal. I used to hate feeling smothered by my well-meaning - but over-protective - parents.

DSCF2644_Small.JPGAs trips go, this looked pretty innocuous. Beanie's nursery was hiring a bus to take all the children to a seaside town about thirty miles away from where we live. The most hazardous part of the expedition would involve a journey along the nearby motorway in a mini-van, but the driver was the same man who drives all the toddlers to swimming every week. The town in question is a bastion of stone villas, cafes and golf courses, interspersed with hotels that host conferences and weddings.

But this was her first parent-free jaunt - and I couldn't help worrying. (The picture above is of Beanie at the seaside earlier this year - under the watchful gaze of her father.)

The nursery staff were excited about the trip for days beforehand. So much so that voicing my terrors to them seemed a bit rude. They're always kind and cheery with me, Beanie, her granny and her dad. Beanie loves it there - and I wasn't keen to say anything that might rock the boat. Like questioning their ability to look after her for a single day.

"I'm a bit nervous," I finally confessed to one of the nursery assistants last week.

"Why's that? What is it you're worried about," she asked kindly.

I gulped. Might as well be honest "I'm worried you're going to lose her," I replied. I should stop reading the news, all those stories about missing children just frighten me.

She laughed. In a nice way.

"We've got strict staff/child ratios," she said. "And we've been doing this trip for years. It's well organised. We're not going to lose her. We've not lost one yet. Don't worry about that."

I believed what she said. But, even so, spent most of the night beforehand unable to sleep. On the one hand, I didn't want Beanie to miss out on the fun of a seaside trip. And on the other? I couldn't get over my fear of some mishap. I just didn't know what to do for the best.

Eventually I decided I'd tell the staff she couldn't go - no shame in that. They'd understand. What with the pregnancy (five weeks to go, by the way) and everything.

The morning of the expedition dawned. I was hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, pelvic pain, pregnancy weariness and (although I didn't know it at the time) a kidney infection. My husband brought me a cup of tea in bed.

"So, have you made your mind up?" he asked me. "Is she going or not? You'll need to ring nursery and let them know."

I rang nursery, where the woman who answered the phone sounded giddy and excited, making me feel churlish not to enter into the spirit of things.

"If Beanie doesn't go on the trip, will there be anyone left in the nursery to look after her?" I asked.

"No, I'm sorry, there won't be. We're closing the nursery until 4.30pm," she said.

"Well, in that case," I started, trying to keep panic out of my voice, thinking of the work deadlines stacking up ahead of me, the midwives' advice to go to hospital for an emergency check-up, the stomach pains that could be signs of early labour (but thankfully weren't). "Well, in that case," I repeated. "I guess she'd better go."

I'd love to say I let Beanie go because I got over my nerves. But, truth be told, in the end, it was expediency that won out.

When she returned later that day, with sand in her shoes, socks and trousers, tired and happy, she looked puzzled as to why I hugged her so tightly.

Posted 04 June 2008 23:21 | Number of comments: 10 | Comments

Daughter Nursery Work vs mothering

PostingSee, it's not just me

Pregnancy in the over 40s has reached a record high - proving how fashionable it's become to have children later in life. The conception rate has risen across women of all ages - but is most marked in the over 40s. Pregnancies have jumped up by more than 6% from 11.5 per 1,000 women aged 40-44 in 2005, to 12.2 last year. It's worth remembering that the over 40s still account for a tiny percentage of all births - around 3% - but that figure has tripled over recent years as more women, like myself, defer childbearing until later in life.

The Telegraph reports that the news will prompt 'fears that the growing number of older mothers is placing increased pressure on maternity units'. Writing as someone aged 40 and 21 weeks pregnant, you can imagine how thrilled I was to read that. It's such rubbish that older women are causing problems in the NHS.

Apart from going mental when I told a locum GP I was pregnant and she asked me (without looking away from her screen) if I was planning on continuing with my pregnancy, (I never went back to her) I follow all the instructions in pregnancy - little or no alcohol, sticking to (probably spurious) caffeine limits, no cold remedies, fear of pate and liver, obsession with pasteurisation, location of nearby hospitals etc. My roots are growing through grey; I'm too scared to risk hair colouring. Baths are tepid.

Every health professional I've interviewed for my book on being an older mum, Fashionably Late, agrees that older mums are often less of a problem to the health service because, like me, they're compliant and do as they're told, like cutting out smoking, since they want the child so much. That leads to reduced (or zero) risk of complications like listeria infection, foetal alcohol syndrome, poor growth rates.

So it's a bit rich to blame older mums for strains in the health service, whose problems obviously go far beyond a few later starters like myself having babies later on in life.

Needless to say, The Telegraph does not miss the opportunity to have a dig at women concentrating on their careers, claiming that when professional women return to work after having children they often move 'into jobs where the average employee lacks even A-levels'. Can this be true? It's not my experience - or that of my friends. But still, makes for grisly reading.

Older women are often attacked for their 'selfish' emphasis on 'careers' (for 'career' read, grafting away in some horrible job to pay rent/mortgage while being messed around by some bloke too immature to commit to family/children) but this means we've paid shedloads more in tax to fund the NHS. So why shouldn't we cash in our tax investment and get something back? Most of us won't be getting any tax relief on childcare expenses, or much in the way of government maternity benefits, (unlike in most European countries) so we might as well enjoy having our babies on the NHS.

Posted 28 February 2008 15:34 | Number of comments: 11 | Comments

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PostingTaxing times

Now that the hell of filling out tax returns is behind us, I have to vent about the scandal of how couples in the UK receive little or no tax relief on childcare. I am self-employed, so can offset certain expenses again my income. Unfortunately, childcare doesn't count as an 'expense' - which is ridiculous, since I couldn't work if I didn't pay someone else to look after my daughter a couple of days a week. It seems wrong you can offset phone bills, broadband, stationery, printer cartridges (don't get me started on that one) and the odd taxi fare against tax - but not the shedloads of cash that my husband and I shell out on childcare - easily our largest expense. I know that David Cameron has dreamt up some wheeze to promote marriage, which will mean that wives can give their husbands their unused tax allowance - but that isn't going to do anything to help working mothers (and certainly not the unmarried ones). If the government is serious about promoting gender equality in the workplace, it might want to start by doling out better tax treatment of childcare. As things stand, the fact nursery fees don't count as tax-deductable makes me suspect there is still only grudging acceptance of women with young children continuing to work.

Posted 01 February 2008 21:46 | Number of comments: 16 | Comments

Work Work vs mothering

PostingChore wars

Financial pressure on families is so intense that men are increasingly keen for their wives to work, but less so if their children are under school age, reports The Telegraph.

Far from regarding the role of breadwinner as male, the number of men who believe it is the man's job to earn money has dropped by almost half, from 32 per cent in 1989 to 17 per cent in 2006. The findings are part of the latest British Social Attitudes report, an influential government-funded survey.

Women's motives for getting back to work are mixed: some are the main breadwinner, others feel it wrong to waste their education and some say their job is part of their social identity. Many simply need the money.

Some things remain reassuringly unchanged. The battle over who does the household chores has barely moved on in recent years.

Almost eight in 10 people with partners say the woman usually or always does the laundry, a similar proportion to 1994. Surrounded by damp laundry as I type, I can agree with that one, though in fairness to Va-vay, he's good at ironing and more than pulls his weight around the house.

Men and women disagree when it comes to saying how much of the housework they actually do - a situation The Telegraph wittily describes as the "chore wars".

Two thirds of women say that they usually or always do the cleaning but only 54 per cent of men say this of their partner.

The most liberal division of labour is reportedly found among couples where the woman works full-time. Some days I feel pushed working part-time from home. I'm beginning to worry I'll never get the nerve up to go back to full-time work.

Posted 23 January 2008 11:08 | Number of comments: 6 | Comments

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PostingEdinburgh Mum

One of the lovely things about my holiday was coming home and reading the nice comments so many of you left on the site. Thanks to all who commented while I was away. It made for a great welcome home. Another holiday treat was the chance to catch up on some reading, since I went cold turkey on blogging while we were away and left the laptop at home. One of the books I enjoyed best was Alexander McCall Smith's new book The Careful Use of Compliments, the latest in the Sunday Philosophy Club series. Chosen not (just) because it's set in my native Edinburgh, but for the back-cover promise of material on the challenges of late motherhood.

TheCarefulUseOfCompliments.jpgIt was a surprise to find out that Isabel Dalhousie, the book's wealthy philosopher heroine, has just become a new mum. McCall Smith has always been coy on her exact age, but in previous books in the series, I imagined her to be in her 50s. Past child-bearing age, anyway. I mean, for goodness' sake! She drives a Volvo. A green Volvo. She has a housekeeper, (who does most of the child-rearing). She disapproves of her niece Cat's boyfriends and hassles her to dump them. It sounded like she belonged to a different generation to mine, and, well, I fear I'm at the outer limits of childbearing myself. So I jumped to the wrong conclusion.

At the beginning of Careful Use, McCall Smith drops a bombshell. We discover that Isabel remains disapproving of Cat's choice in men. But she has pinched one of the most attractive of the suitors, Jamie, a man 14 years her junior, for herself. And had a baby with him. A baby that arrives "under the bright lights of the Royal Infirmary." The same place where I had Beanie. Crikey!

Now, let me stress here that I am a huge fan of McCall Smith. In fact I pretty much idolise him. My good friend Iota has even suggested I could be a character in one of his books. But even so, I couldn't help feeling irritated about the (fictional) boyfriend-pinching. Part of the point about Isabel is that she's supposed to agonise with herself about right and wrong. Yet  this is about the one area in her life where she doesn't bother with questioning or guilt about her behaviour. It doesn't even seem to occur to her that it might be wrong to get together with a relative's ex-partner.

Isabel's brush with motherhood comes off badly in the book, too. She gets huffy that the local mums and babies group doesn't welcome her with open arms and blames this on her decision to bottle-feed baby Charlie, after finding breast-feeding 'uncomfortable'.

McCall Smith explains: "She had been a member - briefly - of a mother and baby group in Bruntsfield and she had been given looks of disapproval by one or two of the mothers when she had revealed she was not feeding Charlie herself. Those women knew, she thought; they knew that there could be some very good reaons for it, but they could not help their zeal. And she had felt guilty, although she knew it was irrational to feel guilt for something that one could not help."

This must be testimony to McCall Smith's skills as a writer that I responded to this passage with such annoyance, as if this were real-life. I can't agree that people in mums-and-babies groups would treat Isabel like that because she wasn't breastfeeding. They might have raised an eyebrow after hearing about her copping off with a younger relative's partner. They might have wondered why the housekeeper looked after the baby, rather than Isabel.

They might also have been a bit strange towards her due to sleep deprivation since, unlike Isabel, they didn't have a housekeeper to look after their babies. And they might also have wondered about Isabel's decision to spend her baby's early months investigating fraud in the Edinburgh art world, instead of caring for the little boy. But objecting to her bottle-feeding?

Still, I agreed with McCall Smith on the subject of maternal modes of transport. "The mothers in the expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles were the worst, [Jamie] had decided. Why did they need these fuel-hungry contraptions in their urban lives? To barge their way past other, smaller cars, or to make a statement about who they were and what they had?" Judged against that, Isabel's Volvo doesn't look so bad after all.

Posted 08 October 2007 21:59 | Number of comments: 20 | Comments

Angst Books Breastfeeding Daughter Edinburgh Etiquette Older mother Work vs mothering

PostingFood fight

Following my Wednesday rant here about how nonsensical it is to blame working mums for the rise in child obesity, it seems the food companies are getting worried they might end up taking the rap after all. Maybe passing the buck to working mums isn't, errr..., working so well.

Eleven US food firms are about to announce voluntary self-regulation on how they advertise to children. The UK's Chartered Institute of Marketing is urging British companies to follow suit. The Institute's David Thorp said: "Companies must now face up to their responsibilities and decisions must include the likely impact on society. Responsibility no longer ends at the retailer's shelf and those who market to children must look for ways of promoting a more healthy [sic] diet and lifestyle."

I'm sure the thought never crossed their minds that voluntary self-regulation was a palatable pre-emptive to legislation. Still, any development that stops the ridiculous suggestion that working mothers are responsible for children's expanding waistlines is welcome.

Posted 27 July 2007 14:03 | Number of comments: 2 | Comments

Food Guilt Work vs mothering

PostingBreaks and Ladders

Interesting piece in The Economist about patterns of female employment. According to Sylvia Hewlett of the Centre for Work-Life Policy in New York, more than a third (37%) of all professional women drop out of work at some point and even more will spend time working flexibly. Depressingly, getting back into work isn't easy: only 40% manage to find full-time jobs. And even those women who do make it back full-time suffer a huge loss of earnings - a 38% fall for those who've been out of the office for three years or more compared with those who stayed. The report says the big accounting firms do more than many employers to retain "off-ramped" female staff, offering formal career breaks, flexi-time, home working and seasonal schedules which can fit with school holidays. A couple of other employers offer project work to women who don't want to take on full-time positions. Let's hope more employers follow suit.

Posted 26 July 2007 11:57 | Number of comments: 14 | Comments

Home working Money Work Work vs mothering

PostingLeave us mums alone

The children of working mothers are more likely to be obese or overweight, says a new study. Around a quarter of the 13,000 children studied by the Institute of Child Health in London were overweight or obese by the age of three. No prizes for guessing who's allegedly to blame.

"Long hours of maternal employment, rather than lack of any money, may impede young children's access to healthy foods and physical activity," said the researchers.

The more successful mothers are, the worse the problem, which I find hard to believe. Children in households earning £22,000 to £33,000 were 10% more likely to be overweight than in households earning under £11,000.

In the last 25 years stay-at-home mothers have fallen from nearly 55% of the total to just 21%.

Reading studies like this, I wonder why working mothers seem to attract more flak than convicted criminals/fraudsters/estate agents.

What's behind these studies that attempt to guilt-trip hard-working and loving mothers, doing their best to keep a roof over their families' head?

Why don't we see reports criticising the government for lack of affordable, flood-free UK housing that would mean more mums could stay at home?

Or a study calling for better-paid, higher-status part-time jobs, with more flexible working, that would mean fewer parents have to work full-time?

Or more criticism of the food giants that make their money peddling fatty convenience foods to young kids? 

Leave us mums alone, I say.

Posted 25 July 2007 12:51 | Number of comments: 21 | Comments

Angst Food Health Parenting gurus Work Work vs mothering

PostingHome work - oh, and I'm a Rockin Blogger!

After six months of working from home, I'm finally realising there are ways to make it easier on myself and the rest of my family. It seems only polite to share these ideas on home-working with you all. So, here are my suggestions.

Please feel free to disagree or jump in with any ideas of your own.

1. If your budget can stretch to it, invest in a decent office chair.

Using a dining room chair for my work was threatening to cripple me. So I've just ordered a proper swivel chair with good back support. I couldn't stand up straight after some days hunched over the laptop. How I wish I'd done it sooner.

2. Don't use your ordinary home phone for work calls.

Safeguard your privacy. Get VOIP (voice-over internet protocol). Calls are cheaper. And you won't risk picking up the home phone thinking it's your mum or husband, only to find yourself talking to an important client, who will thrill to the accompanying shrieks from your small and attention-deprived child.

3. You might think you're working two days a week. Many of your contacts won't. Set boundaries - politely.

This is a tricky one. Tip 2 helps. Obviously, it's important to strike a balance, and remain flexible to maintain important relationships. After all, this is work. Unless I say "no" sometimes, my 'two-day' week could include every available crack of time, morning, noon and night.

4. Ensure you get some fresh air daily.

It's all too easy never to leave the flat, especially if my husband takes The Bean to nursery. A stroll round the corner to escape the citadel cheers me up no end. Coffee at the local deli/cafe on my own is a real treat.

5. Remember that office workers march to a different beat

How dare my husband get short with me when I've phoned up for a good long chat?

6. Make an effort to meet people

When even the postman is walking faster as you hove into view because you've spent so much time gabbing about weather/holidays/postal strike, it might be time to meet other work-at-homes for a quick coffee.

7. When you're cursing your solitude, remember all the things about office life that got you down

I'd better be discreet here.

8. If you're setting up on your own, give yourself time to get established

Don't expect instant miracles. Be patient. Suffice to say, I am not a patient person. I wish I were. I married someone patient, hoping it would rub off on me. So far it has not worked. I cannot ask for my money back. I cannot send him back now to the lovely vicar who married us. It's too late. The 'return-by' period has expired. I could not imagine living without him. You see, I need his patience.

9. Try to keep at least one day weekly completely work-free

Okay, it's hard to resist a sneaky daily look at that inbox. But at least one day a week of minimal work is refreshing.

10. Don't feel too bad about frequent tea breaks.

Think of all the time wasted in offices catching up with what colleagues did at the weekend. Or hawking round birthday cards. Not to mention "internal meetings". You probably get more concentrated stretches of work done at home.

11. Never buy biscuits

Self-explanatory, I should think. I didn't get this blog title by accident.

Other news:

Erica from Littlemummy has made me a Rockin' Blogger! Thanks, Erica. I'm delighted!

Rockin' Blogger

That means it's my turn to award the Rockin' Blogger to two other sites.

So, here goes... I'd like to choose Omega Mum from Three Kids No Job and Beta Mum from Keir Royale. They both write warm and witty blogs about their lives that I find quite addictive. Omega Mum, Beta Mum, over to you! Your turn to award two blogs you like this thumbs-up.

Erica, thanks also for setting up a UK Parents Blog Ring (details in the blogroll, right). I've already signed up and understand from Erica new members are welcome!

Posted 12 July 2007 22:40 | Number of comments: 32 | Comments

Home Money Work Work at Home Mum Work vs mothering

PostingDisemvowelling

I'm not a girl who's easily scared of acronyms - but it would have been nice to have some warning before I became a mum that my life as a parent, especially a blogging parent, would be dominated by them. Take your pick - are you a Stay at Home Mum (SAHM), Work at Home Mum (WAHM), or just plain sahd?  We all have to be something, it seems.

No offence to my fellow blogger Stay at Home Dad, who's got a nice sense of humour and doesn't seem to take these things too seriously, but is this really how we're supposed to define ourselves as human beings?

It's almost enough to make me want to claim I'm a 'homemaker'. Another fellow blogger, Dooce, has a nice variation on what SAHM might stand for. I'm too inhibited to spell it out here.

Today I came across a new acronym - FTBCWM - for Full-Time By Choice Working Mother. Or EOE, for Embodiment of Evil, in certain circles. Fairly trips off the tongue, doesn't it?

I'm thinking of inventing my own title - PTBCAHWM. Part-Time by Choice at Home Working Mum. The hyphenation's a nightmare. But it fairly sums up my working day. And the world of the working mum is consonant-rich and vowel-poor, you see. My title could, alternatively, be a new transcription of a 5am seagull cry as the beast swoops on our rubbish bags.

Or it could stand for Poor in Time, Bewildered and Confused, At Home When Money permits. That could cover a lot of mothers, I reckon.

If you don't believe me about these titles then have a look over at Alpha Mummy, where a real old cat fight has broken out between stay at home mums and workers. The fights's got so nasty it's ended with one of the more vitriolic participants being disemvowelled - the first time I've ever come across this gruesome process outside medieval England. We were none of us overly endowed with vowels in this battle to start with.

It's not that I have a problem with acronyms in themselves. I mean, I fell in love with and married a paid-up geek. Don't laugh, but our courtship included word games based on car number plates we spotted as we strolled along. The Bean and I share our home with shelves of books with titles like XML Primer Plus, C# for Beginners, ASP.NET and XSLT.  They give me indigestion when I so much as look at them. Don't even get me started on the stash of computing books in the bathroom.

But I could never tell anyone who asked me what I do: "I am a WAHM. A Work at Home Mother." It'd be like being some tragic pop groupie from the 1980s, in denial that George Michael was gay, bouncing about in leg-warmers, ra-ra skirts and feathered earrings.

But when did all this nonsense about parenting types start? And why do we need these silly titles?

Maybe we invented the titles to give ourselves a sense of identity. Just like we coined the phrase 'parenting' for the stuff our own mothers used to do with no other job description besides 'mother'.

When The Bean arrived 15 months ago, people stopped asking me what I did for a living.

Instead, they started saying: "And what does your husband do?" As if The Bean's beaming presence at my side meant I was out of the job market for a while, and if they wanted to know about our financial status they'd need to check on her dad's earning power.

Maybe other women had the same experience, felt the same way, and so dreamt up these titles to give themselves more status.

I don't know what the people who inquired about husband's job were hoping for, but when I told them he was in IT, their faces generally went blank and they'd change the subject. It was sort of a relief. I don't have much IT small talk. Obviously they didn't either. Maybe I should have said: "He's a Mobster dad. Come on, you know, M-O-B. Mainly Office Bound." Or MOB for Man Overboard. Now that would have been a bit more accurate for the crazy early months after The Bean arrived.

Posted 04 July 2007 21:06 | Number of comments: 28 | Comments

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PostingExtreme childcare

I'm no great fan of posh gel Katie Hopkins from the BBC programme The Apprentice, though bless her, anyone who behaves like that must surely have "issues", but even I cringed at her grilling last week on television on the old chestnut of childcare arrangements for her two young daughters. I suspect we've now probably all heard enough about poor old Katie, who might not have got the apprenticeship but has assuredly been appointed pantomime villain to the nation.

But it got me thinking about "help" with childcare again, what's acceptable, what's not. At least Katie appeared to be living with her children, who were looked after by herself and other family. You can't say as much for every mother of young children. I know of one Edinburgh "mum" who spends four days a week working in the City of London, while a team of nannies looks after her little girl back here in Scotland, ferrying her to and from school, ballet lessons, tea parties etc, organising after-school. Some couples employ "night" and "weekend" nannies. And all this is before the kids become old enough for boarding school - the other big parental cop-out. Of course I love nothing better than getting on my moral high-horse and being all judgemental about other people's parenting. I only do it so I won't feel so bad about daughter's twice-weekly time at nursery, and one day with her reprobate Granny.

Posted 12 June 2007 13:33 | Number of comments: 7 | Comments

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PostingWomen of a certain age

The number of women in their 40s going to IVF clinics has doubled, according to a posting on Alpha Mummy, but the likelihood of a successful pregnancy remains as low as ever. The social phenomenon is reportedly caused by more and more women waiting till later in life to have a child, despite the sad truth that fertility falls of a cliff after 35.

No offence to Alpha Mummy, one of my favourite blogs, but I've got to say this story smacks of those "have-it-all" attacks on working mums. You know, the idea that any woman who has the gall to want both career and motherhood will be punished for her audacity - in this instance with infertility. Other variants on the theme include: "Sending your child to nursery will damage him or her". It also doesn't tie with my personal experiences. I had my daughter at 38, comparatively late, yes, but because I only met my husband aged 35, not because of work. You can't legislate for when you fall in love with the right guy.

Nobody writes stories anymore about the success stories of IVF, about the couples blessed with children thanks to these techniques who would otherwise have remained childless, with the woman no doubt labelled "careerist". It's obviously very sad that women are disappointed in their dreams of having children. But to me, this is a scare story that smacks of resentment that women are taking control of their lives and their reproductive fate.

Years ago, as a student, I had a medic friend who insisted to me the medical establishment was run by a bunch of patriarchal old fogeys who wanted women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen by their mid-20s. She claimed stories of declining female fertility were a ruse to keep women out of the workforce  and said she planned to wait till her mid-30s to have kids - which she did, producing a son and daughter.

Now our group of friends is in their late 30s, and the picture's a little more mixed. Some women I know have successfully conceived and carried healthy babies to term in their early 40s. For others it hasn't happened.

What I didn't know until recently, when personal experience put me on the wrong side of the statistics, is that getting pregnant is only half the battle. The miscarriage rate rises to one in three pregnancies for 40-somethings, compared to one in five for all women of childbearing age.

Not something my medic friend told me, or anyone else for that matter. It's not just getting pregnant, it's staying pregnant, and that too gets harder as you get older. Still, I'm sure there's a group of doctors somewhere who'd be only too happy to pontificate on how women should manage their own bodies by researching the subject further, then generating even greater alarm with their findings.  

Posted 08 June 2007 21:56 | Number of comments: 9 | Comments

Pregnancy Work vs mothering Guilt Miscarriage

PostingWorking mum

Good posting at Helena Frith Powell today about the tragic death of Zakia Zaki, a 35-year-old Afghan journalist who was shot as she slept with her 20-month-old baby in her home north of Kabul. Long unpopular with the Taliban, Zaki was one of the few journalists who spoke out against them when they were in power and she ran the US-funded radio station Radio Peace. But it seems what led to her being targeted was being a working mother. Reading the story I felt ashamed of every time I've ever thought I have it hard, juggling work and being a mum.

Posted 07 June 2007 20:43 | Number of comments: 2 | Comments

Work vs mothering

PostingFeminine mistakes

An article on the excellent News for Parents site reports that an American writer has stirred up controversy with a book arguing that mothers who don't work could be risking their financial security, as well as their happiness.

In The Feminine Mistake, Vanity Fair journalist Leslie Bennetts warns stay-at-home mums that their decision to give up economic self-sufficiency and rely on their partner could have disastrous consequences.

The book's title's an ironic nod to fellow American writer Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, the groundbreaking work credited with launching the feminist movement. The book attacked the idea a husband and children were all a woman needed for fulfillment.

The latest book's stirred up a hornet's nest in the US, where according to poor Bennetts, stay-at-home mums are "burning up the blogosphere denouncing me". Last time I checked there were no fewer than 68 heated reviews of the book on Amazon alone, most of them huffy and defensive, all defending the writer's personal choices on working or not working.

Bennetts, herself a working mum, insists she only wants to alert women to dangers in giving up work to rely on a partner's income, like divorce, or a husband losing his job. My fellow blogger Omega Mum over at 3kidsnojob can tell you all about the latter scenario in her entertaining account of what happens when a husband loses his job, in their case through no fault of his own.

Bennetts also says that women who take career breaks planning to get back to work once the kids are ready should know they will take a huge salary hit - and might not get back to the same level at all. And there's also the sense of self-worth that women can gain outside the home. Plus pension entitlement. I'll see what she says about part-time work-at-home mums, and let you know about that.

The report was mostly manna to my web-weary eyes after a sorry day filling up the depleted Mother at Large household coffers. But why do I need a US author I've never even met to validate my parenting choices? Why do I need to read this to feel okay about how I arrange my life? Am I the only mother who needs approval from a book I've not yet read for choosing to work? I'd like to see a time when women can make career decisions without reference to a battery of parenting experts. Then again, maybe most women already do.

Posted 30 May 2007 22:44 | Number of comments: 6 | Comments

Angst Childcare Dilemmas Home working Nursery Work Work vs mothering Parenting gurus

PostingMoney talks

A new survey provides further proof, not that we should need it, that we working mothers are not a bunch of sybaritic "have-it-alls" after all. It proves what many of us probably knew all along: many, if not most, mothers who work do so because their families need the money.

Research published by Scottish Widows says the cost of running a home means that almost half the nation's households need more than one breadwinner to maintain what it calls an "acceptable" standard of living. In other words, most women don't have much choice about whether to work. And those are the households without kids.

What's worse, the firm says: "When it comes to those with dependent children, the need for two incomes increases, with one in two households relying on both partners working."

It notes: "Those with children have, as would be expected, higher levels of debt on both loans and credit cards than those without."

Apparently, the average household with two dependent children is £106,600 in debt, a whopping £19,100 more than the average household without children.

So if any mother reading this is feeling alone in having to return to work to help pay the bills, or guilty about it, now you know you're in good company - about half the rest of the country, in fact.

Now, I don't know what the survey is defining as an acceptable lifestyle. My idea of a comfortable lifestyle is probably fairly modest by the standards of somebody like Dulwich Mum, bless her, who might well have different ideas on lifestyle, as those 4x4s and Dior handbags don't come cheap.

But I'm guessing that when the survey says households need more than one breadwinner to maintain a comfortable lifestyle, they're talking fairly average, low-key aspirations involving one holiday a year, maybe, a car, a  few evenings out, decent threads for her, some hi-tech gimmickry for the bloke,  the odd weekend away, that sort of thing. We're not talking ruthless ambition here, just funding a reasonable lifestyle.

Reading this survey, which I first came across at Enterprise Nation, I couldn't understand how anyone could call a working mother a "have-it-all" - unless they were referring to her levels of debt.

Posted 28 May 2007 16:38 | Number of comments: 10 | Comments

Daughter Dilemmas Husband Work Work vs mothering

PostingThe parenting paradox

You just can't win as a parent. It was my health visitor who explained the parenting paradox to me. If you take your child to ballet/football then you're labelled pushy, she explained. If you don't, you'll feel guilty for not encouraging them. Know the sort of thing I mean? Whatever you do, you can't win.

Fellow Edinburgh blogger Littlemummy did an amusing posting the other week on Socially Recognised Parenting Standards. Reading it made me realise we parents will never achieve parenting perfection, because no ordinary human could ever attain the standards we set ourselves.

I started thinking about the never-ending series of exacting rules and parenting commandments that all contradict and conflict with each other. So even if you manage by some feat of superhuman stamina to meet one of them, then you'll be breaking another at the same time. I suppose the only way round this is to concentrate on what we each think is right, and ignore other people's ideas, however well-meant.

These are a few thoughts on some of the main parenting paradoxes

Breastfeeding

Any young mum can tell you of the immense pressure to breastfeed a new baby. Not so many people talk about how only a few months later there's similar pressure to stop. In hospital after having my daughter my boobs became public property, staff were so keen for me to learn this womanly art. Hands came from everywhere to latch the baby on. Someone even told me to follow the "nose to nipple" mantra - a policy that was to cost my poor nipples untold anguish. Then, just about as soon as I got breastfeeding going smoothly, it seemed to be time to stop. No sooner had we got past the toe-curling agony stage of nipple guards and Lansinoh cream, than people were saying things like: "You've got to wonder who's benefitting from this - the mother or the baby."

Mother-infant bonding

Pick up any of the legions of parenting books available now and you'll read about the virtues of responsive attachment parenting, that involves "baby wearing", baby massage, skin-on-skin contact, and breastfeeding. The idea is these practices supposedly promote a strong bond between mother and infant. Fast forward only a few months later and it's all about fostering a healthy sense of individuality and self-assertion on the baby's part, with dark looks cast at clingy babies. How much is a good thing? When does a good thing turn into something bad? How do you get the balance right? Well, it seems you can't, because the goal posts are always moving.

Work vs parenting

This works a bit like this: you're not quite recognised as a proper human being or accorded any status if, as a mother, you don't do some form of paid work, but if on the other hand you do work then you must also express conflict, regret and guilt for doing so. Truly, no-win all round.

Any mother who loves going to work because they enjoy the banter, get a rest, earn lovely dosh to spend on nice things and can go to the loo alone never admits as much, but instead expresses stoical regret that her life has worked out this way, as if it happened outwith her control.

There's more on this theme over at The Bad Mothers' Club. Any thoughts on other parenting paradoxes?

Posted 27 May 2007 16:37 | Number of comments: 9 | Comments

Angst Breastfeeding Daughter Dilemmas Guilt Paradoxes Parenting gurus Work Work vs mothering

PostingChoosing a nursery

Apparently a chain of London nurseries is promising guaranteed happiness for children or giving parents their money back. After children have been there six weeks it will measure their happiness using a series of 'observational  methods'.

It's a clever marketing wheeze to exploit parental guilt for leaving their children in nurseries in the first place to go to work, although why we should feel guilty for doing this has never been entirely clear to me.

Anyway, it started me thinking about what we can expect from nurseries and how to choose one. I'm no expert on any of this stuff, but these are my thoughts.

Beware the sycophants

One nursery kept talking in its marketing material about "your VILP". VILP? Very Important Little Person. Oh, for goodness' sake.

Watch staff when they're out and about in your area

I don't mean go all weird and spy on them! But I was really impressed by staff from the nursery we eventually chose, because they came across as professional and courteous in the street, whenever I bumped into them. 

Location, location, location

Ideally your nursery is near you, and en route to work

Visible, involved owner?

Ideally with long-term plans to be involved. Most nurseries do a good job, but like any other business they've no doubt attracted their share of charlatans.



Realistic, sane staff

It makes me nervous when people promise the earth, the moon and stars.

Check out what the inspectors think

The Care Commission has good nursery and pre-school reports available to anyone online that will tell you a lot.

Ask around

Find out its informal reputation from other parents



Spend time there

If they have a problem with you wanting to hang out there for a little while, that's worth knowing in itself.

Instinct

Is this a place you'd like to spend time yourself?

Posted 25 May 2007 10:57 | Number of comments: 6 | Comments

Childcare Nursery Work vs mothering Guilt