The Age of No Retirement-I hate this name!

Silverfish there are many on GN who have had ( & still do) very interesting, high powered, stressful and demanding paid employment. Through that we learned that it takes all sorts to make the world go round. I had the choice to stay at home or return to work when my babies were small and I made a choice to be an active home based parent for a few years until they went to school. In that time I learned a great deal. I became a gardener, cook, seamstress, decorator as well as having a huge amount of fun with my children. We are all different. I returned to paid work (having also done various voluntary or home based jobs when being a f/t parent) and had a successful career. Semi-retired now and able to choose how much work I do. A great luxury.
Women who had the choice, because partners earned sufficient for their needs, to be a full time house keeper and parent and did so probably had time to rad newspapers, books, listen to interesting debates on the radio, go toAdult Ed classes and learn new skills, walk in the park in the sun whist i was sweltering in work etc etc. Don't be jealous. It makes you bitter.

Unfortunately there are those of us Tegan who had no choice but to go to work when our babies were a month old and I was one of them. I had my son at 18 and sadly had no choice. There was no extended maternity pay and my job was kept open for me for 1 month in a huge office that processed the accounts for various supermarkets. It certainly wasn't a decision I made because I wanted to it was a simple case of work, go onto benefits, or starve. I didn't have anyone to "keep me" Likewise my DiL was back at work within 4 weeks albeit with slightly reduced hours.

I agree with Jane - this is a PR initiative by a company. They want to have a conference to publicise themselves and they want other people to pay.
Thrust of conference seems to be that society is losing out on skills and knowledge when people retire - which is a valid point. But younger people might, understandably, see this from the point of view of older people blocking jobs.
The title is silly for all kind of reasons.
I do not think GN should be supporting this.
Obviously difficult to discuss this issue as people's individual circumstances vary so very much, as do their attitudes to work and whether they would like to continue, or need to continue.

Silverfish - you seem to be extremely judgmental and I take exception to your description of SAHM. As you will have guessed, I am very proud of my SAH status and the contribution I have made to my family and also to the wider community.

Read Elegran's posts and think again! Not everyone can, or wants, to be a SAHM but I stayed at home as my contribution to our family 'team' and I'm fairly sure my brain still functions.

Now, you must excuse me while I go and sip tea and embroider tray cloths!

kitty you can take your tongue out of your cheek - I'm not getting at you either - my gran excelled with a needle and thread and she eventually made a career out of it, late in life. She was one of the first people in our area to perfect doing embroidery on a sewing machine - I still remember how my granddad adapted the embroidery frame so that she could fit it under the foot of her Elna by carving a chunk out of it by hand.

Because of her prowess and excellence (she would win prizes at the annual agricultural show), the local sewing machine shop appointed her as demonstrator (she used to sit in the window embroidering and her 'free style' approach was much admired) and she gave lessons in the shop. She was very proud of and happy in that part time job. She was also the town's most sought after "invisible mender".

Thank you jess

With regard to SAHMs, I seem to remember that circa 1987, Legal and General estimated that the financial contribution made by a SAHM, in terms of the domestic work which would have to be paid for in the event of the demise of a SAHM, at the time was about £19K.
Being an insurance company, they would tend to overestimate, but even so, it was more than my DH was then earning as a professional engineer.

Actually GK, I can't sew for toffee. But I am envious of people who can.

I remember something like that jane but that didn't take into account the voluntary work we SAHM did/do or the support we gave/give to our DHs and the other people around us both in our own family and the wider community.

I stayed at home for 8 years with our little ones- and I never regretted it. When youngest went to work, I went to Uni to become a teacher- and loved every minute of it. I was really ready for it- and although I loved my years at home- it was the making of me- then loved my teaching career and the contacts and stimulation it gave me. My daughter has chosen to go back to work after a year after each child- as she loves her work- and has everything so well organised that the kids do not suffer - she does in a way as her life is shared between kids and work- and she has very little or none time to herself.

But Silverfish- each to their own- and your posts are both rude and so judgemental. Who are you to say that a SAHM has no worth and no right to a valid and sensible opinion. Really !!! Out of order

I don't think it is often a case of making a decision to be a SAHM though. A lot of us didn't/don't have the luxury of choice. I hate it when people assume that mums go to work because they like it or because they are working for pocket money or extra money. Many of us simply had no choice.

Absolutely gilly- but it is also ok for some to make that choice too, when they do have it, isn't it?

Saying this, because women who choose to go back to work are often considered as 'bad or selfish' mothers but many SAHMs and others in the community- which is just as unfair.

There's a big difference between mothers having to go back to work for financial reasons and wanting to go back because they find being with their babies/children so mind numbingly tedious. I have a friend who never married or had children. When mine were young she said that a friend of hers had just gone back to work after having her second child. I commented that I didn't understand why people didn't want to spend more time with their children when they were young to which she turned to me and said 'because she doesn't want to turn into a cabbage'. You can imagine how that made me feel . Wanted to say that, if she found me so boring I'd better go home straight away. But I have to admit that there were times when I was desperate to get away for a couple of days and just be 'me' for a while. I was very active politically when the children were young and I had more spare time than friends who worked, so I didn't spend any spare time I had doing nothing.

Why the extremes Tegan- there are plenty of us somewhere in the middle- wanting to go back to work doesn't mean you find looking after children boring or not worthy- I loved my time with the children, but also needed outside stimulation of a different kind after some years. That's OK no? Doesn't mean at all I didn't enjoy being a mum.

What your friend said Tegan was incredibly unkind. I agree with GJ - it's not either/ or for some ( can't quantify it) people. I understand that the financial imperative is all important for some people but if we put that to one side, for others it was a choice. Some people( I did for the first few years) worked part time but then went full time because I simply couldn't get the sort of job I wanted as a part time post. It wasn't about being at home was boring but that I needed/wanted to do be more involved outside the home and build a career. Now I'm formally retired but have a portfolio of various posts which I absolutely thoroughly enjoy - mostly paid, some voluntary. I really don't make any judgements about the choices people made when they had children and then after formal retirement. You just have to sort out what's best for you and your family . I know I am easier to live with for having the work I do have but that's just me

We've discussed this many times with our daughters, when teenagers and now as adults- and they agree that me going back to Uni and to work was the best for them too. I was quite moved when they said how proud they were of their mum on Graduation day- and felt it was very special. And also that later throughout my career- even though I had to teach one of them- she pretended to be embarrassed, but now says she loved it, really.

When she was an adult I asked my daughter if she was pleased that I'd stayed at home when she was young, and she just said, no, not really because had I been a working mum it's all she would have known and that would have been ok. I didn't have a career to go back to and the office work I did wouldn't have covered childcare anyway. I'd always felt a bit of a failure and, even though I'd never really been very baby minded [I was quite happy with my cats] when I did have a child I suddenly realised that it was something I was good at. So it meant a great deal to me.[can I just say that this is a really difficult subject to get a point across without upsetting people cause there are so many grey areas ]...

Silverfish's comments have led to this thread getting completely de-railed from the original point which was the "Age of No Retirement" campaign.
Like janeainsworth, I am confused about what the proposed conference is expected to achieve.
If Trading Times is an employment agency which wants to offer its services to "older people" and promote the skills of "older people" to potential employers, that's great.
I don't see that it needs a conference about it, financed by donations from the "crowd".
Has GNHQ been bamboozled by a lot of flannel into thinking that this must be something they / we should support?

Quite right GrannyTwice.

I thoroughly enjoyed the voluntary roles I had while the children were at school and especially since. I have met people from all walks of life and with loads of different experiences and I hope I have helped them! Although I do admit that I have found it all rather taxing for my limited brain power! Had I worked, I doubt I would have had the same opportunity to mix with people so different from me!

I retired at 55 from a very interesting but stressful job, and the thing I missed most was the social contact with colleagues.
It's too late now, but if the OP is about limited return to work, I would certainly have taken up the offer. I did consider doing private practice at first, but setting up with all the equipment would have been too expensive. I wish I'd done that now.
In the last 10 years of working, I looked forward to going to work for a rest, living with 4 teenagers .

If the OP is part of a commercial set up then we need to be fully aware that this is what it is...otherwise it feels like cold calling / time shar and pyramid selling! Stop trying to pull the wool over my eyes..I may be older but I am nobody's fool!

I did ask if I could work for 2 days a week but it was refused. I was also prepared to do occasional work to cover for people, but that wasn't required. They've now taken on someone to do just that. D'you think someones trying to tell me something ? So I stopped altogether. They also said that, once someone has left, they never take them back on. [the people that made these rules, by the way, all worked part time ]...

The title of the conference "The Age of No Retirement" is dreadful and insensitive. For millions it will conjure up the spectre of an impoverished retirement. We hear a lot about the baby boomers and their cushy pensions and if you happen to be part of a couple who have had a successful career in the public sector with index linked pensions at the end of it, or if you happen to have been very successful in the business world (and stuck it out for many years) then this stereotype applies. But for many people, and in particular many women who are not part of a couple, the reverse applies and they face retirement on state pension or the prospect of having to find low-paid work in an ageist market to supplement it. Divorce, adult children who have problems with their lives and increasing numbers of the very old that need looking after exacerbate the problems experienced by this group.
The Age of No Retirement is the age that our great-grandparents lived in - where you had to work until you dropped or got the sack (unless you had family to look after you). The alternative was the workhouse.
In poor countries they still live in this age.
The idea behind the conference - that older people make useful part-time employees - is a valid but the employment agency need to just go out and sell it, one client at a time. Or pay for it themselves if they want to have a conference with a stupid name.
I hate their insensitive title and I don't think GN should be supporting it.

Very well put, Jess.

Is it correct that we have less holiday in this country than most [except America]? If so, if people are having to work longer surely they need more holidays throughout their working life.

Unless it's changed Australians and New Zealanders have less holiday than the UK.