Several interviewers here in Israel noticed that my wife was religious, and asked her point-blank whether she intended to pop out more kids. Even though such questions are illegal here.

And yes, we also have government-mandated maternity laws that - while not as far-reaching as Australia - are definitely a burden. In Israeli hi-tech I have witnessed several cases where a company must basically limp along with a temp worker for as much as 1 year, because they must let a woman on maternity leave come back if she wants to.

I think that's the killer - telling businesses how to run their HR. I have no problem with the Israeli version of Social Security paying for maternity leave - after all, these women paid into the system while working.

But why should they have a guaranteed job as much as a year or more later? Why is this different from any other personal leave?

I got hired for my job because I have no kids. Boss indirectly asked and I directly answered.

I'm not allowed to ask applicants if they are married, let alone if they're planning to have kids.

But I'll tell you this:
I don't get a say in if there's going to be a baby. I don't get a say in WHEN there's going to be a baby. But I AM require to provide sick leave, maternity leave, nursing (or pumping) privacy provisions and child care allowances.

Never mind the giant whacking hole it leaves in the productivity of my team.

Whatever "fair" may be, I do not think that this is it.

I don't how fair it is, but I'm 16 weeks pregnant and informed I'll be losing my position I've held for 4-1/2 in January. I will be placed into a teansitional position with hours that make it impossible to make my perinatology appointments every one to two weeks without missing work. My feeling is that they are trying to force me to quit or that they will be able to fire me for missing work. Currently I work swing shift so don't have to miss work for my appointments but will when they put me on day shift. I also have a position now that can be done from home meaning minimal maternity leave (2 weeks) but going in everyday will require me to take more time off for recovery. I'm still pretty pissed about the whole thing despite hating my current job (at least it paid well).

Well DUH BunnyGirl.

You aren't owed a job. I don't know if that comes as a shock to you, but there is the plain simple truth. And given the choice, an employer always wants to hire someone who will be able to put in maximum effort to the job itself.

I just recently started my own business, that means I'm putting significant amounts of my own resources into developing my first product. I'm extremely confident about its prospects, but that aside, the cold hard truth is that thanks to the way things are now, I can't afford to take the chance on hiring a woman. There may be a woman who is the BEST marketing exec available, but I can't take a risk offering a stable position to that woman because of the chance she'll decide to have kids and take off 6 months into the job. How fubar is that?

A dedicated career woman in the 70s had a better chance of getting hired and progressing, than she does right now. And do you know why that is? Because it was mutually understood at the outset that the company was not hiring women to get pregnant. The only position that pays for that is that of a surrogate mother. A large company may be able to absorb the cost of a woman's pregnancy, but why the fuck should they? If you want to get paid to get knocked up, be a surrogate, otherwise, do a job or get the fuck out of the way for people who will.

Ask this fundamental question, of yourself if you must:

If you cannot work, why should you be paid?

And if you think you should, then you must, for consistency's sake, shut up completely about pension plans funded with tax dollars, etc., lest you endorse a double standard.

Because tax money comes from the same business you think has a duty to pay you - to sit at home.

I understand exactly what you are saying Robert and I wouldn't want to bother training someone that would take months and months off either. I'm just a bit miffed that they are putting me into an as yet undetermined position in the company (I still have a job, just not the same one) where I'll need to take significant time off work where with my current position I do not including for maternity leave. Really, since I have a sedentary desk job I can do from home I was going to work up to delivery and then take two weeks off (less than the amount of vacation time I get per year) before returning to work and they know this because it's on my filed FMLA forms. Also no missed work due to doctor appointments due to my current hours. I guess I'm not seeing the logic in shuffling me into a new position where I'll need to take a lot of time off when I currently don't need to. As long as I'm still employed I'm happy.

This has affected my GF. Maybe this is why she is finding it hard to get a good job in Queensland. But she has the added bonus/problem/curse of not being able to have children and a desire to not deal with them. I have told her to try and sort of tell that you do not want children or can not have children. But the question is HOW? "Oh by the way I am infertile, so you can trust me!" That sounds creepy or strange.

To me it seems like this is headed for a sex discrimination problem if it continues. Men also qualify for the same lenfth of family leave after birth that women do and I know many that take it. Wouldn't that also make it risky to hire a man? The tone the article reports and is being echoed in here by some of the comments is that women don't deserve a chance to be employed regardless of qualifications.

Men may technically qualify for family leave, but I've never heard of a man taking it. There is always the next RIF, and the first people on it are those who don't pull their own weight or cooperate with co-workers.

We need the next generation, or we are all doomed. We also need profitable employers, or we are doomed, sooner. Honestly, there is something off about a society that pays its least intelligent and ambitious to breed.

As a resident physician, I noticed that women with children were the least reliable, then men with kids. It was the childless that took up the slack and soldiered on. Now, I'm a doc. I understand that kids get sick. I understand that a day-care centre for sick kids would be one heck of a moneymaker, if you could work out the liability problems. But I hated, HATED the "you don't have kids, so we can pull you to cover for X, Y and Z."

I've decided that from now on any interview I go on, if my immediate manager or his/her manager is female, of child-bearing age and/or has kid's pictures on the desk I won't take the job. I've complained too many times about other people dumping their work on me and I've been told "But she has children, she had to go to a play/concert/PTA meeting/whatever." Then when the work is done (by me!) she gets SO much credit for getting all that work done while still caring for her children.

Frankly, I don't care if she has children, I didn't have relations with her, her children aren't my responsibility.

When I was pregnant, I planned on leaving my job to stay home with the baby from the beginning. I can't tell you how often people suggested to me that I tell my employers that I WAS coming back so they'd pay me through a full maternity leave... I think that plenty of women have no moral qualms with gaming the system.

Now that I'm starting to look for a job again (it's been a year), I don't feel like being a woman is an obstacle, but I do admin/office-manager-type stuff, which tends to be a "female" job anyway. Most of my good prospects are jobs with woman-owned small businesses, which helps.

I worked all through my first pregnancy, and my boss saved my job for a few weeks afterward because I produced the results he needed, even waddling around making sales calls pregnant. So, I was worth the leave time, which was minimal anyway. But I had to EARN that.

No employer should have to guarantee anyone a job. I have almost all male employees, and they often have their share of kid issues too. One guy is having major issues with his teen son, and has to take time away to deal with going to court, school, counseling appts, etc. I sympathize, as a parent, but, as an employer, I resent it. Yet, he still grumbled about not being paid enough, and he recently quit. Maybe he thought I'd beg him to stay and raise his salary, but, with all his kid drama, he just isn't worth it.

The drop in fathers' productivity is not as dramatic, but it's tangible. At my husband's job, all the parents (all men) work far fewer hours than those without children, and my husband's boss actually said, "Ssshhh, nobody's supposed to mention that."

I wrote about this for Mommy Tracked (Baby on Board) awhile back, about the time I applied for a job and got it when I was pregnant.

A lot of a woman's experience as a working mom depends on her employer. I'd only want to work for an employer who cares for people regardless of gender and who values people who do a good job, pregnant or not.

"A lot of a woman's experience as a working mom depends on her employer. I'd only want to work for an employer who cares for people regardless of gender and who values people who do a good job, pregnant or not."

But it's not about you or your preferences. Business is business. Most employers do value people who do a good job, so there doesn't need to be a legal obligation to retain them. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. These types of laws basically protect the bad employees, and punish the small businesses that can't afford to offer paid maternity leave.

The problem is, it doesn't stop with the pregnancy.

Kids get sick, have school plays, etc. and parents of course need to and want to attend these things. What the problem is is the entitled few who give all parents a bad name by insising they get everything handed to them in terms of paid leave and a flexible schedule, but do nothing in return. You get a few of those in your company and you tend to get a little bitter, and the coworkers picking up the slack are none too happy either.

You might be able to have it all, but you can't have it all at the same time, nor is your life choice my problem. If you can't do your job, you need to be replaced with someone who can, regardless of the reason.

I'm a department head at my job. The last time I hired, I very specifically avoided all women of child bearing age, no matter their qualifications. Every time I've had twenty- and thirty-something women in the department, they've gotten pregnant and disappeared. Every. Single. Time.

It's costly and time consuming to replace women when they get knocked up. It's cheaper and easier to just hire someone else. When I recently had an opening, I hired a woman in her forties who, in her interview, was very blunt about no longer being able to have children.

I'm covering two jobs today because my co-worker is home with a sick kid. His wife is here working in another department.

The only people around my office who have kids but never really have any family related absence are the guys with a stay at home wife. They're the engineers and top management. So unless we are willing to accept 1950's GDP or find a way to pay all the males six figs, we are going to have to find a way to absorb this cost.

Of course it does present a cost and O&M problem for the individual employers, and making them shoulder that cost provides incentive for discrimination. Maybe we should consider shouldering some of that cost at the state level to spread it over the economy as whole and remove some of the incentive to discriminate at the individual level. So instead of the government writing checks to mommys and daddys, they write checks to their employers. People should be paying for their own leave anyway. If you can't save up a couple of paychecks now, you sure won't be able to after the kid comes.

Well, I've already had my kids, and they're of an age where they are pretty much self-sufficient, so what about women like me? I have a lot of knowledge and time to devote to a job. But am I off-limits because I'm older? That doesn't seem fair either.

so it's easy to say and talk about the laws and how maybe they don't work as well, but is that really the question?

The question really stems from the move from a women work in the home/men work outside the home society, to one where everyone works outside the home. That is where society has gone, but due to the asymmetry of genders, it has some challenges.

the problem arises because we aren't addressing the family as a whole, only the female half. Men can take UNPAID paternity leave, and why would they, who is going to pay the bills? Many women get PAID maternity leave from their company, and in some countries this is by law. In the US it didn't used to be, but I haven't checked recently.

On the other hand in Sweden there is family leave, combined for both men and women. Companies and families both are finally adopting the attitude that the father should also take time off not at the same time as the mother. So the mom take the first few months off to heal up and be with the kid, and then the father takes a few off to be with the kid while the mom goes back to work.

Interestingly the divorce rate has gone down. I wonder if the rate of having children will go up.

The funny thing in this piece is that they can't decide if this is feminism or men's rights... they can't seem to describe this as generally something men would do, if given the chance, more that they have to be forced...
from NYT

So the downside to all this is that it DOES require a lot of invasive laws. It is easy to do this in a small place like Sweden where the laws are already kinda extensive and so is taxation.

No matter how you slice it, it COSTS money to do this, and that is one thing that the movement toward everyone working outside the home never want to count.

The asymmetry of gender biology lends itself WELL to the guy working outside, the woman working in the home. If we as a society wish to change that, there are consequences, and you can't really deny them. It just seems that all of these different ideas seem to be looked at in isolation. This is a feminist thing, that is a man's rights thing, something else is about healthy society. I've had a couple of interesting convo's with a group of women about birth control. when I suggested that it was actually "Child Control" they didn't know what to say about that. But my question to them was about planning for a family, and they were very cavalier about it. They had no problem planning for a career, but planning when to find a partner and have kids seemed to be too hard.

Which brings us back to the question which I also asked this same group:

Instead of "putting off" having kids to your 30's while you establish a career, then stop your career for a while, doesn't it make more sense to have your kids early? When you are most fertile, and then start your career and never stop it? From an employer's standpoint it seems like that would be more useful to have a more mature person who is on the uphill climb AFTER having kids, than someone who is going to stop later.

To which a number of the women in the group sorta looked at me like that had never occured to them. And then everyone started in to telling me how they were certainly not old enough to begin families sooner, and how would they find partners and suchlike.

None of it will ever be easy.

My company doesn't provide paid leave and to get pay I have to use sick time and vacation time. That seems perfectly fair to me. If I'm not at work I shouldn't be paid beyond the benefits I've earned. My field is woman dominated and most in my office have kids. Interestingly, because most of us telecommute there are very few absenses due to sick kids or other functions specifically because there is flexibility in the scheduling to allow for longer breaks during the day so long as you work your full hours that same day. The people that constantly miss work are the supervisors and the older employees near retirement age. They are also the least productive when they post our monthly production totals (I'm in the top 5 most productive consistently out of 75 employees).

It seems to me that since it's been reported that companies don't hire older workers because they are more likely to have health problems and/or retire soon and they don't want women because they might get pregnant, then the only thing left is hiring men. It seems absurb to me, especially considering there are a lot of single women that need to support themselves as well as a lot of married couples that need double incomes to get by.

"Men may technically qualify for family leave, but I've never heard of a man taking it. "

My brother took 3 months, my cousin's husband took 2, several of my friends took a month or more. Men do take it, it's very common down here. Who WOULDN"T take time off offered? Plus, it's their baby too, and the dads I know want to spend time with it.

the problem arises because we aren't addressing the family as a whole, only the female half.

Yes. Too many people gloss over this part. Women are not giving birth in a vacuum. Any attempt at fairness has to include fathers, and employers who are resisting giving women time off to have children will resist giving men the same amount of time off, thus the need for laws if we want to go that path.

Instead of "putting off" having kids to your 30's while you establish a career, then stop your career for a while, doesn't it make more sense to have your kids early?

Part of the problem with this is that the demands of childrearing don't stop as children get older. Ten-year-olds aren't as needy as toddlers, but they still have doctors' appointments and soccer practice and parent-teacher meetings, etc. Having kids early just means front-ending the productivity loss. You still wouldn't be as productive as a childless person until your late 30s, early 40s. And it takes so long to get an education that a woman with a master's degree might not be done until 24-25 years old. Never mind a PhD.

And men aren't eager to start families at 23, either, so women have to find men who feel settled enough to do that.

Who WOULDN"T take time off offered? Plus, it's their baby too, and the dads I know want to spend time with it.

Two men in my department alone will have taken family leave by the end of this year alone. I think there's something in the water.

Be glad for your friends, neighbors and co-workers who have children.

If you are the sociobiological loser who does not have kids, you should work longer hours, along with the eunuchs.

Lucky for us you will soon be out of the gene pool. Feel free to speed the process.

"No matter how you slice it, it COSTS money to do this, and that is one thing that the movement toward everyone working outside the home never want to count."

Nobody ever considers that the reason so many women must work outside the home is because familes can't cut it financially like they did decades ago. In the 1950s, the average family of 4 paid 10% of their income for taxes - local, state, and federal combined. That was what allowed for so many moms to stay home. So, it makes no sense to burden taxpayers more, so that more of us have to work just to make ends meet. It's a vicious cycle.

I think the vast majority of mothers would prefer stay at home, or work part-time, when their children are young, but they simply don't have that option.

because most of us telecommute there are very few absenses due to sick kids or other functions specifically because there is flexibility in the scheduling to allow for longer breaks during the day so long as you work your full hours that same day.

This seems to be an area where employers and employees could forge a win-win scenario. If a job can be done at home just as easily as in the office, employees could have the flexibility to work from home and employers would not have to suffer any losses for it.

In my job, we could easily work from home. We are able to connect to our work computers from outside the office, so it wouldn't be a problem, but my company has a very factory-minded approach to work. We all need to clock in at a certain time and clock out at a certain time. It makes no sense with our current work structure.

Oh I completely understand why you're miffed Bunnygirl. But look at it from the other pair of shoes, they can't just outright fire you. That would be "discrimination". But they also know they can't put you on any long term projects of significant importance...because they also know you won't be around for quite awhile, and might choose not to return at any point either during pregnancy or afterwards. They can't ask you even that much. So what are their choices? Fiddle with your schedule to encourage you to quit of your own accord.

The problem here BunnyGirl is that they have no legal way to make any plans around your circumstances because they are not allowed to ask about them. The laws meant to protect you, end up screwing you both.

------------

I don't know about your company BunnyGirl, but I've never worked at a company that offered the same length of time off for men and women, and I've never known a man to take advantage of it to any serious degree, most don't take more than a week or two off in the immediate aftermath.

Women do deserve the opportunity to be employed BunnyGirl, I'm all for that, but there is a big big difference in the level of reliable long term employment you can expect from either sex. Remember the Goldman-Sachs lawsuit? Female VP took a total of what was it...18 months, (something in that area) maternity leave over the course of 5 years? She ended up being shuffled out the door eventually, and complained that the company was discriminating against her.

Seriously? She lowered that glass ceiling by about 8 feet. They hired her to do a job, promoted her all the way up to the highest eschelons of power, responsibility, and pay within the company, only for her to take almost 2 years off and collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits out of the company coffers.

She had the chance for employment, but she decided family was more important. You can't have it both ways, and the employer has no moral obligation to provide them both.

Now in some jobs its fairly easy...relatively speaking, since a position can be filled by a temp for awhile, and the time and money invested in the employee is not overly large. But the higher up you go, and the more specialized the job, the more impossible that becomes.

It seems to me that some of these "examples" are very interesting, extreme circumstances that have nothing to do with US law. In the US you can take up to 12 weeks UNPAID maternity leave and your company has to hold your job. This is only true of a company that has, at least, 50 employees. The only way you get PAID maternity leave is if your employer offers Short term disability, which at most companies the employee has to pay for. Other then that, if you have vacation and/or sick time you can use that to cover more time, usually limited to a total of 12 weeks. Some employers have special circumstances with certain employees they want to come back to work but these are the exception, not the rule.

Also, good employees who are parents find a doctor/dentist who does evening/Saturday appts, signs up early for the 6pm conferences (instead of 2:30pm), have good, always reliable childcare (like a center vs a home daycare), and keep their kids healthly so they are, at most, missing one day of work a year because of their kids. I've taken 2 days off this year and, sadly, they were both for me.

"You still wouldn't be as productive as a childless person" MonicaP

this may be true, but isn't the business of humanity...making more humanity? Childlessness is an outlier, if you expect your society to continue, else it collapses. In order to make the change for everyone to work, family productivity will have to be priced into a company's production cycle. This would be a lot easier if it was a known quantity.

As far as marrying at 23... our grandparents did. And so did theirs, and so-on, and so-on. This marrying later thing is new. If you want to go for the PhD. you should be asking yourself WHY. I have some friends who are Doctors and such... and one with a Md. in comparative lit. heading towards the PhD. and she isn't sure what she will use it for because she hates to teach. But her plan is after she finishes, to get married, and have kids. She is the kind of organized driven person who will do it, but I still don't know WHY. Maybe it's just a guy point of view to see that as a waste of effort. She will likely spend one of her most productive decades [30's] ...producing children.

I suppose it's lucky to make that choice, but it seems better to me to not disrupt the flow of your life in this way, but rather to see it in steps. If you spend your 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's in a career after you have had the kids, that is uninteruppted time.

It doesn't really matter when you children are growing up, if you have them, they will take soem of your time... but by the time they are in school it will be a lot less time, and if you have a flexible schedule you can make it all up.

The REAL danger here has been pointed out, but bears repeating. Some women take maternity leave... and then never go back. In the meanwhile their job has been held, and they may have gotten benefits for that. And then they change their mind. If they didn't start working for you until after the kids were in school, that would be less likely.

this may be true, but isn't the business of humanity...making more humanity? Childlessness is an outlier, if you expect your society to continue, else it collapses. In order to make the change for everyone to work, family productivity will have to be priced into a company's production cycle.

Agreed, but according to the opinions of some people here, the business of business is making money, and the humanity part is a real roadblock. For as long as companies are hiring people, they're going to have to balance the needs of human lives (having babies, taking care of elderly relatives, dealing with illness, etc.).

I think the push toward higher education is driven in part by the realization that even a bachelor's degree isn't the guaranteed job it used to be. And then there's all the debt accumulated by going to school. I'm 32 and just finished paying off my undergrad loan last year. Still, it was worth it, because without it, I'd be working the register at McDonald's (honest work, but not work I want).

My father got married for the first time in his mid-20s, and only that late because he was serving overseas and didn't come home until 1945. He never even graduated from high school because, as he said, he wasn't that bright. When he and my mother bough their house in 1975, it cost them $60,000. They bought it on my father's salary alone. My husband and I make four times what he made, and we could never afford that same house today. People want to give their children the same or better standard of living they had, but it's much harder now, and not entirely as a result of higher taxes.

What complicated the shift to two parents working outside the home is the fragmentation of our social networks. Mom and Dad both having jobs isn't a big deal when Grandma and Grandpa and aunts and uncles are around to pick kids up from daycare and stay with them when they're sick.

"Instead of "putting off" having kids to your 30's while you establish a career, then stop your career for a while, doesn't it make more sense to have your kids early? When you are most fertile, and then start your career and never stop it? From an employer's standpoint it seems like that would be more useful to have a more mature person who is on the uphill climb AFTER having kids, than someone who is going to stop later."

1) Female fertility peaks at 28. That is generally too late to "start" a career, particularly if you add on 6-8 years to get the kids into school. Plus, as others have mentioned, child-related time demands don't drop significantly until the kids are out of the house.

2) Very few quality people are ready to settle down in their early 20's. Less than two centuries ago, you would have been able to make the "but it worked for our grandparents!" argument about slavery; just because human beings have followed a particular pattern of practice doesn't make it good or ideal. It seems like we keep learning more and more about how brain development continues throughout a person's twenties, though, which lends scientific credibility to the conventional wisdom that partnering up too early leads to bad outcomes.

I wish we had a good solution, but on this issue, it seems like we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.

> Childlessness is an outlier, if
> you expect your society to continue,
> else it collapses.

That's some magnificent grandiosity... 'You should for having kids, otherwise civilization would grind to a halt!!'

As if absence of humanity were ever the problem on this planet. As if we were understaffed.

"Agreed, but according to the opinions of some people here, the business of business is making money, and the humanity part is a real roadblock. For as long as companies are hiring people, they're going to have to balance the needs of human lives (having babies, taking care of elderly relatives, dealing with illness, etc.)."

Not when this interferes with making money. A business is not a charitable entity. It's not responsible for worrying about an employee's elderly parents or kids. Those are personal issues and good employees don't bring any of that to work if they can help it.

I think much of this shift has occured because of women bringing personal issues into the workplace. Men did not typically do that, or expect special considerations for family time. That was unheard of prior to feminism.

Yet, now, a business owner is labeled inhumane for expecting the same level of professionalism. That's unfair. A business has the right to expect its employees to work the hours they are hired to work, and accomplish the tasks they are assigned. It's up to the employee, not the business, to figure out how to balance personal demands in a way that doesn't interfere with the job.

Because I own a small business, I often have this problem with female employees, which is one reason I don't like hiring them. They almost all want some warm, fuzzy relationship with me - to view our work environment as being "like a family" - and they become offended when I try to keep things strictly professional. I don't need a friend or an additional family member. I need an employee. Women seem to have a harder time absorbing that, perhaps particularly with a female boss.

Some dumbass from the article: ''It is a right and not a privilege for women to work during pregnancy. Pregnancy is seen as a total inconvenience for some businesses.''

No one has a right to a job. And if you have one, it is your privilege.

If I had a right to have a job, I could sue any employer I liked for not hiring me.

The advice to have children young actually does make a lot of sense, but it contradicts most of the received wisdom regarding women in the workforce, and trips right over middle class status anxieties regarding age and marriage.

But the reality of the matter is that lots of people change or re-start careers in their thirties and later. Or become self employed. Self employment, through small business, is actually one of the primary sources of employment for women with children.

Realistically few women are fully engaged in their careers after having children in any case. That's a big reason behind the difficulty they have re-entering after a hiatus. Employers know that they're no longer as focused on their job. That's a good thing for children, but bad for business.

We should keep in mind that for most people, their 'careers' are just drudgery. There's a tendency to romanticize the significance of careers for women. As though everyone is jetting around, playing masters of the universe. When I look at the jobs the mothers I know have, and most are professionals, I'm amazed that they choose to pursue them in lieu of raising their children. They put their young children in a kiddy kennel and go off to sweat over a job that's of no consequence. Realistically most could quit the job and scale down their lifestyle a bit, and live quite happily on what their husbands make. But this again contradicts cultural expectations surround status and lifestyle.

SwissArmyD: "So the mom take the first few months off to heal up and be with the kid, and then the father takes a few off to be with the kid while the mom goes back to work."

This is what my husband & I intend to do. Btw, both of us are taking vacation time, not "paid maternity leave", which I believe CC mentioned that most in the US don't get. In both of our jobs, you accrue a certain number of vacation hours per paycheck, and we've saved up ours to take 9 weeks off (for me) and four weeks off (for him). If I wanted to do the full twelve weeks maternity leave, I could take the other three weeks unpaid. All my employer is REQUIRED to do is hold my job.

As for starting families early, I like the idea, but its financially impractical. If we had children five years ago when we were 23 or 24, we would've had to live with our parents, because when we first married, we could barely learn how to budget properly for two, let alone for a new baby and all its expenses! We had to have time to bank some cash. We had to go and learn how to buy insurance and learn how it worked in real life situations. And waiting has given Hubby some time to build a reputation at work for being reliable and responsible, so that now no one is going to give him a hard time about using the vacation time he's saved for years.

Personally, and I realize that this goes against all the modern thought out there, I think the way our grandparents did it was way smarter, and way better for the children. Where a woman stayed at home to raise the kids and the husband was the breadwinner. They had children young, and kicked 'em out when they came of age.

((Disclaimer: That's not to say that I think that women in the workplace are "bad"; it's just that I think having the wife staying at home definitely served a purpose.))

But the reality of today is that for a large chunk of the population, it's not possible. My husband and I aren't near the poverty level, but we couldn't afford to have either of us stay home. And, as the discussion of last week went, the job market has changed dramatically in the last two generations as well.

By the way, I think this discussion is really fascinating, and I'm enjoying all the different POV's.

Wow...crid, lovelysoul, and patrick are all on a role.

>> A business is not a charitable entity.

This is an attitude that a lot of women are guilty of, and mommies tend to be the worst. They'll want employers to be responsible for all kinds of things that are completely out of the scope of the business. But at the same time, they probably wouldn't be willing to take the pay cut that would be necessary if companies actually did provide paid maternity, and a guaranteed job, and day care, and flex time, and counseling, and classes, and all the rest.

Realistically most could quit the job and scale down their lifestyle a bit, and live quite happily on what their husbands make. But this again contradicts cultural expectations surround status and lifestyle.

A lot of men are resentful about being the only ones contributing financially, as has come up in other threads here. There's also the lack of desire to be financially dependent on someone else.

But at the same time, they probably wouldn't be willing to take the pay cut that would be necessary if companies actually did provide paid maternity, and a guaranteed job, and day care, and flex time, and counseling, and classes, and all the rest.

Not so sure about this. We have one guy here who is seriously overqualified for his job. He stays because the company is flexible enough to allow him to be a bigger part of his children's lives. I could make more elsewhere, but I stay because the same flexibility allows me to take care of my father. It's a big draw.

There's also the lack of desire to be financially dependent on someone else.

Get a dog then! WTF? would you have children if you're so self absorbed that you can't put these kinds of 'issues' aside for a few years.

and what kind of POS husband is going to force the mother of his young child to work full time out of resentment.

god I hate yuppies!

>>When I look at the jobs the mothers I know have, and most are professionals, I'm amazed that they choose to pursue them in lieu of raising their children. They put their young children in a kiddy kennel and go off to sweat over a job that's of no consequence.

Just curious, Rosa.

What sort of jobs are we talking about here - the ones you describe as being pursued professionally by these working mothers you know, but that you say are of "no consequence"?

Well one is an internal sales job with a local home builder, another is as a corporate attorney and she's the one who told me that her job was inconsequential. I have another friend who's also an attorney, but doesn't practice and works in some HR type administrative function for a pharmaceutical. Just your ordinary corporate jobs.

What sort of jobs are we talking about here - the ones you describe as being pursued professionally by these working mothers you know, but that you say are of "no consequence"?

I'm not Rosa, but I nodded when I saw what she wrote, so I'll chime in: I used to work for an insurance company, and what she wrote describes about half of the employees there. You couldn't seriously say that the job was "of no consequence," as it was important work to the people who filed claims, of course, but it was largely meaningless drudgery to the people working there- most people saw it as something that they had to do, rather than a "fulfilling career" of the "what do you want to be when you grow up" variety. Pay was around 30K/year. Yet, most moms came back to work.

Regarding the discussion as a whole, I just don't know. I'm a Dr. Laura adherent on the whole day care issue, and I've watched (and picked up the slack for) numerous moms who couldn't be relied on. But, right now I'm trying to plan to have my husband leave his job while I serve as the breadwinner (in a year or so- no kids yet), and it's daunting. I left that very insurance job to get a J.D., pretty much on the assumption that we could do things that way, but now that it's well into time that we need to get moving or call the whole thing off, and I'm still not sure how it's going to be possible. There's a lot of a nagging little voice saying that maybe this was a bad idea.

Just to sweeten the pot a little: we have, in government employ, a thoroughly self-centered engineer who is now a single mom. Yes, your tax dollars paid for her time off while she did no work.
Think she's the only one who does this?

Feel good now?

I didn't mean 'no consequence' as an insult, but in the grand scheme of things most corporate jobs are not sooo important that you should sacrifice your life for them.

and what kind of POS husband is going to force the mother of his young child to work full time out of resentment.

Perhaps one who knows (or fears) that if he gets divorced later and she claims that they both decided having her be a stay-at-home mother was better for the children, he'll be stuck paying the bills for that for a long time.

That's what happened to a friend of mine. She was an RN, but they decided she would stay home with their daughter while he worked. When they got divorced, he was ordered by the court to pay his ex-wife's living expenses until their daughter was 18.

"we have, in government employ, a thoroughly self-centered engineer who is now a single mom. Yes, your tax dollars paid for her time off while she did no work."

Yeah, it's the same problem as with all welfare programs: it rewards free riders and bad actors. And people today are really sick of it. That's a lot of what motivates the Tea Party.

Perhaps one who knows (or fears) that if he gets divorced later and ..

That's not resentment, that's paranoia.

If a couple is so distrustful of each other that they both have to work because they're afraid that the other is going to rip them off, then they probably shouldn't be having kids to begin with.

"the ones you describe as being pursued professionally by these working mothers you know, but that you say are of "no consequence"?"

Let's be honest, that's most of them. Any number of people could do your job, and most any other job out there. The world doesn't end if one particular person isn't doing it. While in theory, if you choose to have kids, no one is better suited to raising them than you. If you aren't the best person on the planet to raise YOUR kids, you probably should admit you aren't up for that job prior to having them. I like my Dr, but any number of other drs would do just as well.

Its true that the system is not longer set up to provide for stable partnerships, or to allow in most cases, for a single primary care giver and a single primary bread winner.

But these are systemic and cultural changes, and not beyond restoration.

I'm doubtful, Robert. The only way our governments tries to "restore" anything is to throw more tax dollars at it. Doesn't seem to matter that much which group is in, either.

>>I didn't mean 'no consequence' as an insult, but in the grand scheme of things most corporate jobs are not sooo important that you should sacrifice your life for them.

Rosa,
Thanks for your answer (though I take with a pinch of salt your claim that no insult was really intended! Since your original quote about the working mothers of small children wasn't exactly free of sneer: "They put their young children in a kiddy kennel and go off to sweat over a job that's of no consequence".)

I've actually come to agree it DOES take a special type of courage to go against cultural expectations and become a SAHM today.

And I've long believed feminism took a disastrous turn by casually denigrating baby boomer generation women who made the SAH choice.

On the other hand, I see very little difference between the grown children of kiddy kennel moms and SAHMs I know now that isn't a product of how committed & loving the parents were on the whole - whether the mother almost always worked outside the home or not.

"Some small businesses ''probably'' won't hire women of child-bearing age."

I run a small business and it is indeed a valid concern. It's not just I "won't" hire a women who seems like she is likely to soon take time off to have a baby, it's that we really just CANNOT afford to - times are tough for many small business owners, including ours, and being stuck in a position in which you're forced to either keep paying someone or even hold a position open in which you're getting no productive work done, would literally kill our business right now. I can't take that chance. Killing small businesses doesn't actually help anyone. Also it's morally wrong to force an employer to pay or retain an employee they can't or don't want to.

"Yeah, it's the same problem as with all welfare programs: it rewards free riders and bad actors. And people today are really sick of it. That's a lot of what motivates the Tea Party."

Yeah, when times are good you don't feel the pain caused by the free-riders on your back so badly. Now times are bad, we are literally feeling the pain of all the free-rider parasites on our backs, and times are genuinely tough, we cannot afford all this free-riding anymore.

It's a bit like gardening; a healthy plant can support a few parasites and still survive, but if the parasite population gets large enough, the plant's health suffers and it becomes unable to support the parasite population and dies.

The protests in Europe are basically because some of the free-riders are pissed off that some of their free stuff is getting taken away. These people don't understand the broader economics. They just know that yesterday they were getting something for free, today they're not, and they grew to feel entitled to receiving their free stuff (as always happens when you give people something for nothing, it's human nature). But governments are literally going broke. The money isn't there. You can only extract so much production from an economy. And the fiscal and monetary policies of the US are steering the economy in the exact same direction. This stuff used to seem to be the preserve of third-world economies, now Western politicans in most first-world economies have done the same.

Since your original quote about the working mothers of small children wasn't exactly free of sneer:

Believe what you like. Women have been conned into believing that they are sacrificing for a future in an exciting, well paying and fulfilling, career. Most are not. They are simply wasting their time and their youth, slaving for people who don't give a shit about them, for a job that anyone with any intelligence could do. It's all a big lie.

>>...It's all a big lie.

Forgive me, Rosa.
But you sound tipsy - and/or depressed.

Adulthood is not about railing helplessly at "big lies" and denigrating anyone who has made different choices to the ones you approve.

*****Adulthood is not about railing helplessly at "big lies" and denigrating anyone who has made different choices to the ones you approve.*****

Perhaps not, Jody, but then don't tell me raising your kids is the Most Important Job in the World as you walk out the door to go to the office.

Just sayin'.

heh, Rosa, that's true of men as well, but we don't exactly get the option to stay home with the kid very often, do we?

If you boil it down that far, almost no-one gets to do a world changing job, or something of consequence...

...except for their own family. I am the person in this world that works to provide for my children, and without me their lives would be more difficult. That makes what I do something of consequence to them, EVEN IF the particular thing I do isn't important. It is those small things that keep you going to a job every day, and giving up time you would rather spend with your children.

The fact that many women also make that same sacrifice, where they go outside to make money, isn't necessarily the worst possible outcome. There are lots of reasons to have both partners work, particularly once the children are in school.

It is TRUE, that some of those reasons aren't as pragmatic or important as others, but to dismiss them all is to miss the point.

Like Jody, I don't see a difference in kids of SAHMs and kids whose moms worked. I expected to, and bought into the whole breasfeeding, organic babyfood, natural motherhood silliness for awhile. I see no difference in those kids either. What I've learned as a parent for over 20 years now is that genetics and external factors, such as peers, play a far bigger role than most parents want to admit in how well, or poorly, their kids turn out. It's not all about staying home and making your own granola from scratch. If it were that easy, anybody could turn out a great kid.

There are many great working moms, and, sure, maybe they're not dramatically changing the world with their job, but, believe me, teens sure appreciate the things that extra income buys a lot more than having mom or dad hanging around with them. At a certain point, even if a parent wants to be with their kids all day, the kids don't want that, so the parent might as well be busy.

Here's my point, and I can assure you that I'm not drunk yet. Yes both men and women end up in unsatisfying careers. I'm not saying that women deserve good careers and men don't. But men aren't promoted the same fantasy of working life that young women are. Women are told that it's the only path to fulfillment and sophistication and a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Careers are a prerequisite to being a modern woman. You're a loser if you prefer to have kids and be a home maker. Move to new york and be like Ally McBeal, and you'll have crazy sexy adventures, and meet the best men and all that. This is the lie. Sure it's true for some women, maybe 5%? For everyone else it's a lot less than what they expected, and it's kind of a trap.

That's not to say that women shouldn't work, or that moms shouldn't ever work. All I'm saying is that the reality of the working world is nothing like what it's presented to be. If women were accurately informed, they'd be in a better position to set their priorities and choose accordingly. Right now, we've got a lot of women running into issues that wouldn't be a problem if they had anticipated them. That's what tells you that they're being deceived.

Just to repeat something from another thread (I've added to it):

I can think of THREE compelling reasons to return to a paid job and use day care even if you don't "have to":

1. Keeping up that job skills that pay WELL - some jobs just can't wait 3 years. As a letter to Ms. (from an abandoned housewife in 1987) said: "If you lose your husband you can't go down to the employment agency and apply for a new one!"

2. Building up a college fund - or even a trade school-type fund.

3. Building up emergency funds in general (see 1, above). Think of poor Dr. William Petit from Cheshire, CT. (The infamous murder case.) I'll bet his friends and family rescued him from bankruptcy at least once in the last three years, considering 1) how much he lost, 2) the amount of therapy he likely had to have, 3) his never-ending legal bills, and 4) his likely inability to do his job for quite some time.

You just never know what's going to hit you.

I WILL add that we don't need more babies in a world that has almost 7 billion, but that doesn't change the fact that the women AND the babies need the income.

>>Here's my point, and I can assure you that I'm not drunk yet.

Fabulous start, Rosa:)

>>But men aren't promoted the same fantasy of working life that young women are. Women are told that it's the only path to fulfillment and sophistication and a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Careers are a prerequisite to being a modern woman. You're a loser if you prefer to have kids and be a home maker.

..and then it all goes horribly downhill!

Look, I admit that one of the worst own-goals of the sort of feminism I grew up with was the scorn heaped on SAHMs. I don't entirely blame you for being defensive.

But motherhood as the path to female fulfillment is ALSO a powerfully promoted fantasy, which can be bitterly disappointing in reality...

...actually, I am boring myself.

Can we get past the bit where you - Rosa - selectively & ludicrously trivialize all the reasons women in the 21st century might want their own careers ("sophistication"!! - "Ally McBeal"!!)?

Or is that, in fact, all you've got to say?

Jody I'm not obliged to address all of the reasons that women of the 21st century might want a career. This isn't an essay contest.

What exactly do you disagree w/ me about?

this?

All I'm saying is that the reality of the working world is nothing like what it's presented to be. If women were accurately informed, they'd be in a better position to set their priorities and choose accordingly. Right now, we've got a lot of women running into issues that wouldn't be a problem if they had anticipated them.

Also for what it's worth I do have a career. I work in farm finance. When I was raising my kids, I shifted to consulting. Then I went back full time, but returned to consulting after a few years.

I think choosing to be a SAHM is a pretty stupid idea. Why? Because letting yourself and your children be 100% dependent on a man to take care of you is potentially shooting yourself in both feet. If he decides he wants a divorce, if he gets badly injured or ill or dies, then you're up shit creek with no money AND no job experience for the last however many years, which really screws you for job hunting.
At this point, the world is not designed money-wise for one parent to stay home with the kids, so y'all are just going to have to deal with parents at work.

I don't even want kids and yet this thread makes me feel sympathetic to them. Oy.

> But men aren't promoted the same fantasy
> of working life that young women are.

Know what I hate about that line?

It's implicit presumption that if we were, men and women would be feeling the same things in response.

(! %&#*^@ !!!!)

Dude! I know! Women think crazy things!

>>What exactly do you disagree w/ me about?

Rosa,
I disagree that women today only want careers for the silly, demeaning and superficial reasons you described before.

I also THINK I disagree with stuff like this quote from you below:

"Right now, we've got a lot of women running into issues that wouldn't be a problem if they had anticipated them. That's what tells you that they're being deceived."

By whom are these women being deceived?
Where is all this deceitful information coming from?
At least some of these women did have working mothers themselves, right? So they should know a little about working life, and how it's not 100% wonderfully exciting all the time, right?
Why are these women so peculiarly vulnerable?

Rosa, you are being really obnoxious. Please do tell us all what party you think is doing all the deception. (If some girl thinks Ally McBeal accurately depicts the life of a working lawyer, that girl won't get into law school.) I think most people figure out when they enter the workforce, that yeah, working all the time kinda sucks, but it's pretty much what ya gotta do.

I do know that since my father's cancer rendered him disabled and unable to work three years ago, my mom is even more grateful she has stellar health benefits and a steady income as a result of working throughout my childhood.

> By whom are these women being deceived?

Their own hearts... Certainly as regards the single mothers.

> They'll want employers to be responsible
> for all kinds of things that are completely
> out of the scope of the business.

Rosa is my new favorite blog commenter here. See also the nearby thread about illegal immigrant labor.

You can't win. If you're trying to win a popularity contest, you can't win.

If you stay at home with your kids you're a mooch who isn't pulling her own weight. You're a bad role model for your daughters. You're going to be in trouble when your husband dumps you or dies.

If you have kids and work, you're a bitch who leaves your kids to be raised by someone else. You're a drain on the work place, and a bother to other employees.

If you don't have kids and work, you're a cold hearted bitch too fixated on her career instead of people.

You're never gonna get everyone's approval. So just do what you want.

That's so true, NicoleK. No matter what you do as a parent, there will be someone who believes you're doing it wrong. Usually people with no experience raising kids themselves. They're the harshest critics.

You can win though. When your kids turn out well-mannered, self-sufficient, and happy, all the naysayers have to shut up.

And there are really so many different formulas for getting to that point. It isn't only one way.

Some SAHMs are distracted - on the phone or online all day, or too busy with housework or socializing - whereas many working moms are constantly connecting and communicationg with their kids. There's nothing inherently special about the place you're in that makes you a good or bad parent. Having effective communication and being emotionally available to your children are the key factors, just as in a marriage, or any other bonding relationship.