Something that is readily forgotten in any debate about the so called ‘working mother’? It takes a lot of support for a mother to work outside the home.
I initially thought this little post was going to be about community. About how much I have come to cherish the school community particularly, that we are now a part of, and how some mothers at my daughter’s preschool have been saving my arse lately, over and over again, and for pretty much nothing in return. But the big fat gender factor tells me that this post isn’t actually about ‘community’.
Discounting the teachers at the Montessori preschool and the kids’ father, it takes the efforts of five other people caring for our two children to allow me to be at work three days a week. Pick-ups and drop-offs and naps and cuddles and dinners and baths. Only one of those five are paid for it, and all of them are women.
It is still very much the support of other women – your own mother, your mother-in-law, your neighbour, mothers at your child’s school, your friends etc – believing in your right to be at work that allows you to be there.
(Of course it takes a lot of support for men to be at work too, but isn’t that a very different story?)
blue milk 
Yes indeed, this is so true. When I look back over the years of raising my boy, I can count on one hand the amount of males that helped me go to work, and then go to uni (in fact I don’t think I would need all the fingers 🙂
I was asked to comment on a blog last week where a reader had sought advice as she felt as a stay at home mum she was being “taken advantaged of” by women in her life who were in the paid workforce. I quoted to words of Jan Murray who shared in her book Sheer Madness “behind every successful woman there is a woman who is taken advantage of”. How she articulated this in her book was very honest and worth consideration. Spare a thought also for the many women who work in one way or another that don’t have the support networks and contacts.
Great post.
I’m not sure it is “another story” that it takes a lot of support for men to be at work too. It should really be the same story. It takes a lot of work to raise children. Some of that work is the twenty-four-hours-a-day work of caring for children. Some of it is the work of gathering enough material resources for the children. We all think that the first work is the job of a mother, which is why mothers have the “choice” to go to work and access that other support to take do that hands-on-caretaking work. Most fathers don’t ever face that choice because the mother of their child(ren) do.
I know that in our enlightened society men still aren’t really seen as responsible for caring for their children, but don’t we need to start giving them that responsibility?
Hear, hear!
The old “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” thing is even more absurd if you are a parent- particularly a mother. It would not be possible for me to work, and since I’m a single mother that’s, um, kind of non-negotiable, without a long list of fantastic women. Which leads my thoughts off down winding alleys about the many ways women were (and to a lesser extent still are) kept dependent. But then I’ve been frequenting those alleys quite a bit since I became a mother.
Great post.
Faroop, I think the ‘nother story that Bluemilk meant was the way paid work is considered sacrosanct for men and a personal indulgence for women. So when a child is sick and can’t go to school, the story told to mothers is “You’ll just have to stay home. So what if your boss fires you? Don’t you realize that your child is your most important responsibility?” But the story told to
menfathers is “Your most important obligation is to your employer; nothing else can be allowed to interfere with that. Taking care of a sick child is unskilled, menial work that any interchangeable drudge can do. Somewomanbody must be available to do it with no notice and no pay; just harangue the women you know until someone gives in.”@kathmandu — I totally agree, but I think we have to stop believing in this other story! Both parents are responsible to both their children and their employers and that means we need to take the job of childcare seriously.
Interestingly the support I get from other people than enables me to go to work actually comes from two men. My mother died long ago and my MIL lives in another town and works full time herself. The only other women involved in my kids care are the carers at my daughter’s daycare. Otherwise it is my father and my husband that contribute to my being able to work. Admittedly there are often ‘negotiations’ with the husband re his support (not always but sometimes mainly because he works 50 mins away and brings more money than I do) but yeah, no other women involved. That isn’t to say I don’t agree with the premise of your post because I certainly do, it’s just that my personal situation differs.
Very interesting, thanks for adding your experience to the story here.
Hi,
Just wanted to mention a couple of writers who I have found extremely helpful in understanding this conundrum. These are Eva Kittay in Loves Labor essays on women, equality and dependency (you can have a squiz online) and Martha Fineman in The Autonomy Myth – both classics I think in terms of frameing these issues.
Essentially the state and the market rely on the privatization of care through the family that has been historically gendered. Changes to the social structuring of care are only going to come about through concerted effort and vision. Nancy Fraser talks about this as an opportunity – in Justice Interruptus – she is another wonderful modern feminist thinker.
best, Joannie
Joannie – I love this analysis, thanks.
Yeah, when I was down for the count — hospital stay followed by a month of convalesence — it took three adults working almost full-time to take care of my children, even though I was doing a lot of cuddling and nursing and story-reading and all the kinds of mothering you can do from a bed — which is a lot! Just sayin.
Overwhelmingly the care for my children involves a finely tuned juggle between my partner and I. We have no family around, so free childcare is very sparse. Together we have constructed this house of cards that involves at times odd work hours, juggling while standing on tiptoes and doing the limbo all at once. Failing that it is, for the most part, women that cover any other times.
Joannie, thanks for those reading suggestions.
At a time when both sides of politics are ramping up the fear of the Other coming into the country, and the focus is on the difference between the (paid work) “skilled” and the “unskilled”, it seems to me that there is a sub-economy whereby the elderly parents of young parents are doing $millions of dollars worth of work (if you were to value it at child care centre prices) caring for young children so that the parents can work. Seems to me a lot of our worshipped economy would fall apart if these patronised old women were to go on strike.
Although it would be pretty good if we could all go on strike for just a week! Imagine it!
I am similar to pissweakparent & fat academic – the only people who assist my husband & I care for our children are paid to do so. It’s nice that some people have additional backup, but not all of us do. What lets me work is access to good childcare & outside of school hours care.
A few others have mentioned that it is deemed the female’s responsibility to care for a sick child. In our family it mainly is, but only because I work in the public service & have better family care leave than my husband (works for a very small business). My male manager commented once that he was the one who took the leave to look after his 3 children when they were sick for the same reason. Sometimes the way things work in a family are not because of societal expectations but just because that is what fits the circumstances of the family better.
There is an interesting study I saw once where they looked at couples where one partner was working academia and the other was working in another profession and in the cases where the female partner was working in academia they said that her profession was more suited to flexibility so she was the one who had taken the career breaks, worked part-time, or took time off for sick kids etc. But, where the male partner was the one working in academia they said that academia was not suited to flexibility and it was the female working in some other profession who was deemed more able to take time off for sick kids, do the school pick-ups etc.
I am not saying it is this way for everybody, but there is a clear gender component here. And, paid care and community back-up with your family responsibilities is also predominantly female.
The fear of doing it “alone” is tangible for those who moved away from their extended families prior to having children. A lot of people I know are now moving back for that additional support.
And I do feel like it becomes a cycle. A parent wants to work for the love/stimulation/interaction. But paid childcare is expensive… so you end up working longer/harder than you were planning to initially (eg one parent full time and the other part time rather than both part-time).
Also, I think it is important to remember that societal expectations impact on lives way before a child is born. How many women choose to work in the public service precisely because it is seen as being more flexible and child friendly? It is something a lot of women consider when they apply for jobs which male partners may not. So when it comes to taking the time off the obvious choice seems the more flexible workplace.
Howdy,
It can be on the sad to read snippits from lives that could be so much better but then I’m trying not to get sad but to get MAD – in a happy kind of way – is that possible?
All THAT UNPAID WORK OF CARE needs to be recognised and accounted. What is going to happen with the next generation of women/families trying to ‘have a life’? Will their mums (us) be still doing the caring for them? Is this what we want? I think not …
It seems to me that we are coming to the end of an era in which care has been gendered – with mothers/women doing much of this work. Therefore we need to value and cherish the women who have gone before. But, I think, we need to think about care in non-gendered ways.
After all we ALL need, give and receive CARE.
I am trying to think of slogans – maybe this one should come first:
We ALL need, give and receive CARE
Mothers on the Move
Mothers and fathers moving on – together
MUMS – its not a role its a relationship
The extent to which a society accounts for the care of dependents is an indication of its civility.
A truly civil society CARES for its DEPENDENTS and those who care for them.
whatdoyareckon – in order of preference – or other suggestions?? JJ
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