How life has changed

I took 5 years out from my career to be with my children - I know it is not fashionable to say this, but I could not see the point in having them if I was not planning to bring them up.

I went back to work part time and my OH and I shared their care with a bit of nursery thrown in and mutual help from other Mums.

I would have found it very hard to put the children into nursery when they were small, and we were lucky to find a way of not having to do this - but finances were tight, even though we had saved my salary and managed on my OH's in preparation for having children.

I gave up work when I had children, and never went back. My marriage didn’t exactly go wrong, but my husband died (cancer) when he was forty. I had two primary aged children, and I thought they needed me at home. We had good insurance, and financially it was quite manageable although obviously we weren’t rich. The first thing I did was pay off the mortgage with the lump sum from the insurance policy.

I was perfectly happy at home. I was well educated, but an educated mother is good for children and it meant I didn’t find it difficult to occupy my brain. Frantic looking for someone to look after them would have added tension to the situation. I see it all the time. I was there if they were ill, I was there when they got home from school, as my mother had been. It seemed important to me.

o me.

Some things haven’t changed I recently heard a man, probably in his 30s, telling a friend that he helps with the housework and babysits, instead of he does his share of the housework and stays in when his wife goes out.

I cannot stand hearing fathers saying b they're 'babysitting " their own children. You would never hear a mother saying that.

I was perfectly happy at home. I was well educated, but an educated mother is good for children and it meant I didn’t find it difficult to occupy my brain. Frantic looking for someone to look after them would have added tension to the situation. I see it all the time. I was there if they were ill, I was there when they got home from school, as my mother had been. It seemed important to me.

That was exactly how we viewed it. Money was very tight, but I think it is for working mums paying for child care too.

I did not see my education as wasted by being at home for 5 years. It got me back into my career when the time was right, and it helped me to enrich my children's lives in so many ways.

My husband was quite enlightened, he didn’t really do his share, but he worked a lot more hours than I did, at the weekends he did his bit.
But I think we’re just different, if for example, we were all at home, and he realised he needed to pop out, he would pop out.
If I realised I needed to pop out, it would be, oh do you think you could keep an eye on the children for half an hour? X is in her room, Y and Z are in the garden, and then a list of instructions, I would never just walk out and assume that was ok.

I was fortunate that when I returned to work after 7 years out, I had a part time job that fitted in with school times and holidays.

DS, who was 7 at the time, completely forgot that I was going back to work. I had been working for three days, when he heard DH asked something about my job, that he looked at me with amazement and said 'Do you go to work as well, mummy?'

Mind you, he has never lived down the comment he made when he was first told that I was going back to work. He looked at me in horror and said: 'Who is going to cook my dinner?'

Children have two parents.

Why should it be the mother who gives up her career and remains financially dependent on her husband? Why should it be 'working mums' whose wages are spent on childcare, rather than have the costs take out of the family income? Why should it be older women who struggle on partial pensions, or are forced onto benefits like pension credit because they didn't contribute to NI when they were able to work? Why should women who have no choice but to work make NI payments to cover those of those who can afford to stay at home and get theirs paid for them - particularly if those women then make sneering remarks about not knowing why the working mums have children in the first place?

As there are two parents, why shouldn't working fathers come in for any of this scrutiny? Should working dads not have children if they can't stay at home with them? Is it possible for men to 'have it all'? Or is it different if they do, because they are men?

Exactly Doodledog. I've paid my dues all the way. And still can't retire until I'm 67. And yet I know women that either never returned to work after children or who worked part-time who retired at 60.

Well said, Doodledog! I went back to work when both of my children were three months old - not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Being a stay-at-home mum would have literally driven me insane. I look back now and wonder how the hell I did it, but I'm glad I did. It seems that even now, in 2022, women just can't win either way.

Do families work their finances so mothers are expected to pay for childcare? Surely in a marriage, whether their are children or not, money should be a shared resource, unless there is a very good reason for other arrangements.

We have always talked of 'our' money, so any cost associated with children and their care came out of 'our' bank accounts. We had sums of money allocated for personal expenditure, but, otherwise everything was joint.

I think it is rather sweeping to say that if someone (male or female) cannot commit to half the childcare then they shouldn't have children. I got married knowing that my DH was in a job that required a lot of travel, much of it at short notice and that the brunt of running the home and caring for the children would fall on me. But I always approached these things in a business like manner and saw my domestic responsibilities as being my contribution to the family business as it enabled DH to do his job, without domestic worries and to earn more. Therefore I had contributed to the family income and therfore what he earned was earned by us both.

My mother was trotting around in heels in the 1950s, but at Heathrow Airport working for BOAC. She had her children, always born in February/March so as not to coincide with tennis season and continued working until she was 68. She'd have hated being at home.

I actually took time out when my children were small. I had about 7 years at home whilst DH worked. We were lucky that we could afford this. Not everyone could.

All my children are married now and the females all work. One of my sons was actually a stay at home dad when their girls were very young.

Every family works out what is best for them.

Agreed on all counts, M0nica, but many of the posts on this thread have been addressed to the mothers, not the fathers.

Zoejory

My mother was trotting around in heels in the 1950s, but at Heathrow Airport working for BOAC. She had her children, always born in February/March so as not to coincide with tennis season and continued working until she was 68. She'd have hated being at home.

I actually took time out when my children were small. I had about 7 years at home whilst DH worked. We were lucky that we could afford this. Not everyone could.

All my children are married now and the females all work. One of my sons was actually a stay at home dad when their girls were very young.

Every family works out what is best for them.

But that's the point. A lot of families can no longer do that. Regardless of whether they would prefer to have one parent at home or just working part time, that's often not an option any more.
It is good that women who would be unhappy giving up their job no longer have to do so. But it should not be at the expense of those who want to stay at home with the children.
But we still don't have a balance.