Working mums are being sold an impossible dream about work/life balance - and how to set the record straight

Glossy portrayals of super-organised working mothers do not reflect Christine Armstrong's experience, nor that of other mums she meets. Families are damaged by these big little lies, she argues

The feminist push to get women into the workforce was sold as liberating them.  It did nothing of the sort.  It enslaved them to work. 

My mother was a traditional wife. She never worked.  She brought up four children mostly on her own as my father was a manual worker who always came home tired. But she had time to chat with the neighbors over the fence of a morning. And of an afternoon she would read a book and doze off into a refreshing nap.  She had nothing like the stresses in her life described below.  We lived a rather humble life but better that than impossible ambitions. 

Society today is much richer than it was back in the '40s and 50's so it should be even easier to live on one income now than it was back then. Sticking to the essentials is all that is needed.  Keep up with the Smiths instead of the Joneses.  The Smiths are probably much more relaxed and have more time for friendship. 

And if you can't afford to send your kid to a private school, why does that matter?  As a stay-at-home mother, you can homeschool him/her and they will get a better education than they would in most government schools -- JR.




My friend had called at 7.40am to say she couldn't cope. "I got up at 3.30am, my mind was on fire, I couldn't stop worrying, so I got out of bed and cleared my email backlog for the first time in months. Then the kids got up and I chased and shouted to get them ready and now I'm charging into a long day of meetings that run into each other and I feel like I never see my kids and I never get through the work and when I get home tonight my email will be full of more stuff I need to do. I'm at full capacity. Beyond full capacity. I can't do anything more than I do. And yet people keep telling me I should do yoga. Of course I should bloody do yoga. But when? Oh God, when will this end, what do I do?" She had dropped her kids at nursery and was walking ("Got to get some steps in") to the station to get the train to her sales job in town.

If history is told by the winning men, I worry that the story of equality at work is too often being told by the winning women, the ones with the board seats and big pay packets, most notably Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, whose 2013 book advised ambitious women to Lean In. Sometimes they have a nanny (or two), and sometimes an at-home husband as well. Either way, they are the exceptions. I remember reading an interview with Karren Brady in which she said she split her time between her kids in the country and her job in town, and that it worked really well for her. Which I'm sure it did; it just didn't much help me - or my friend in sales, who has a full-time working husband and is currently confronting the bitter reality that modern working life doesn't combine very well at all with having a family.

This mother, like most of us, doesn't have her sights on a board-level job and is just working to get to the end of the month and pay the bills. She says her children are "the love and light" of her life and yet sometimes she feels they don't even respond to her because she's away from them too much and is ready to cry with tiredness when she finally gets back home.

When I was working full-time with two small children, I also tried hard to make it work, but couldn't. There were some memorable lows. Like a work trip to America when my breast pump broke and, after seeking help from the concierge, I had to take a taxi in the middle of the night around Austin, Texas, to buy a new one, before spending the dawn hours crying and pumping milk down the drain of the hotel shower. Feeling desolate, I started to seek advice. I read a lot and went to talks and events about what women need to do to "get ahead". High-profile female business leaders spoke at many of these. They inspired. But very often I found that the advice boiled down to "you have to work really hard, get great childcare and be super-well-organised". This all made sense, but didn't seem to help.

Some of these superwomen talked about "flexibility". It took me a while to realise that what they often meant was the flexibility to leave at the end of their contracted hours - say 5pm - to pick up, feed, bath, read to and settle their kids before working online again later to catch up. One mum-of-three, describing this in practical terms, told me: "I start eating my dinner and catching up on work at 10pm, just as everyone else is going to bed. It's completely normal for me to finish at 1am or later." The underlying message seemed to be that modern jobs are fine - as long as you're willing to work all the waking and non-waking hours of the day.

Which means that it mostly doesn't work well. Not only does it not work, it's getting worse. Twenty years ago, the average working day was about seven hours and many mothers didn't have a job outside the home. In the years since, the working day has grown by an average of about two hours and a million more mums have jobs. This is partly because house prices have quadrupled in that time (a change attributed, ironically, to the rise in women's incomes). Most households now need to have two parents out of the house working for long periods of the day. But, in that time, the needs of our children and the structure of childcare and the school day haven't changed at all - as every parent of a school-age child is finding out right now, with more than two weeks of the summer holidays still left to go, their own leave used up, their finances spent and the kids going bananas with the need for our involvement, our undivided attention.

We've all got so used to accepting that it has to be this way that we keep at it. But my mum and my mother-in-law seemed so perplexed by my experience that I started to ask their friends and women of previous generations about their experiences, so I could shed some light on how we got here, trying to be superhuman and feeling like we're failing ourselves and our kids.

I found that women in their fifties and sixties are often highly conscious of how working life has changed for the worse. There was a time, they explain, when you left work - probably frantic - at about 5pm and went home to your kids. But then came the laptops, mobiles and BlackBerrys that mean you still leave work frantic at about the same time, but then are expected to answer a call later or edit a document. Now, even when we are home, we aren't really able to be present with our children and partners. Now, all over the country, we have parents wrestling their kids away from TVs and iPads to get them into bed without for one second letting go of their own mobile phones as they continue to field messages from work or dial into a conference call hoping no one can hear the kids splashing in the bath.

I realised we needed better answers to these questions on a freezing January night when I met a friend in a pub. Between us, we had four children under three and two full-time jobs and, as the wine flowed, we let rip about how hopeless we were. Our lives were shit. She was leaving work by the fire escape in the desperate hope of seeing her kids awake once a day without annoying her colleagues. I was crying before work because I didn't want to go in. We felt remote from our kids and our partners. We both wondered how we'd screwed up so badly and become such disasters. But then we began to question whether the world of work was set up for both parents to be in it full-time. Maybe there was a different story to tell where, however hard you work, there are very tough choices along the way and just being well organised doesn't fix it.

Hungry for better advice, I set out to find it myself. I persuaded the magazine Management Today to let me interview women, and some men, who were managing to combine work and family life to see what they had found out. We had great conversations. People read their words diligently and responded.

As the interviews went on, though, I was increasingly niggled by gaps in the stories I was telling. I would, for example, interview a wonderful, witty, smart woman and she would tell me about her family's life. She would describe some manageable challenges and how she was tackling them. But then there were the things they told me but begged me not to write up, like the woman who'd put on a vast amount of weight immediately after giving birth and suffered terrible depression but didn't want her colleagues to know. Other times, I was asked to tone down a light joke about their partner not doing their fair share of the household jobs, or an admission that sometimes they ended up screaming blue murder at their kids, or maybe to take out one too many references to needing a few glasses (or bottles) of wine to get through the week.

It didn't bother me too much and I would still finish the interviews thinking we had got somewhere. But then a week, a month, six months later, I might run into some of these women and something more complex might emerge. Perhaps she was no longer with "the rock" partner who made it all work. Or her boss was a bully. Or her daughter was anorexic. Or her son was struggling at school. Maybe she'd been signed off work with stress or depression. Or she expressed regret at not being around enough during her children's early years. Others said they didn't have time for many friends. Another revealed she was saving for a hayloft in the Hebrides so she could escape her life.

A psychologist explained to me that the couples who have spent years being in control of their decisions - living in a nice place, choosing everything they do - can find the shift to parenting especially hard. A nanny told me the mums she worries most about are those who are desperate to keep up appearances. It matters to them that they drive a decent car and that the house looks neat. But they are, she says, often also the parents who come through the door glued to their phones and wave hello before hiding somewhere to work more.

The airbrushing hit me hardest when I was asked to interview a senior woman onstage at a corporate event so she could inspire her colleagues with her progression. I called her in advance and we had a brilliant chat about some difficult "time vampire" bosses she'd had when her children were young and how she had to change jobs to escape them. We talked about the battle to find the right nanny in the early years - which at the time she could barely afford - and the total crisis when the nanny left. We talked about the pressure her job put on her relationship. So far, so familiar. But on stage, fearful of being judged by the audience for being a bad or lazy mum or too negative, she said none of this. She sat up straight, smiled and told me a completely different story. All her bosses had been on side. She'd never had a nanny, let alone one upon whom she wholly depended to keep the household working. Her husband was her biggest supporter. I left the stage furious with myself for not cutting through it.

I started to wonder why this clean-up routine was happening. She, like many others, didn't want to conceal these things one-to-one; she wanted the catharsis of talking about it. But in public she feared everyone would judge her harshly if she was honest. As my articles about work/life were published, I could see the judgment pouring in and realised her instincts were right. In response to one piece I wrote about a high-powered woman with four children who said that the nanny cooked the family dinner, someone commented: "She might be powerful, but she is no mother." Ouch.

I was starting to understand that social expectations of mothers have not moved much in the past few decades. We still tend to see mothers as linked to homes, small children and domesticity. Despite the fact that 80% of all mothers now work outside the home - and 25% of those in professional jobs - expectations about maternal roles have not changed. However much we might fight it, being found wanting as a mother, being judged by other parents in this way, really hurts. Especially when your boss, team, competitors, partner and older kids will read what you say. And the wound is even deeper if those critical comments compound your own sense of unease about decisions you have made or are making.

More HERE






Chicago Mayor's Rare Candidness Assailed

Rahm Emanuel made a point well worth repeating throughout the country's urban corridors.

Chicago is notorious for the number of homicides tallied there every year. For example, on the weekend of August 3-5, the number of people gunned down in Chicago totaled 74, a dozen of whom died. This past weekend, six people were murdered out of nearly 60 shot. Minorities are responsible for most of the hundreds of homicides that occur in Chicago on an annual basis. Obviously, longstanding leftist policies aren’t working. More importantly, a dearth of morality and spiritual conviction is the underlying catalyst, which even Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel at least peripherally seems to understand. He recently admonished:

"This may not be politically correct, but I know the power of what faith and family can do. … Our kids need that structure. … I am asking … that we also don’t shy away from a full discussion about the importance of family and faith helping to develop and nurture character, self-respect, a value system and a moral compass that allows kids to know good from bad, and right from wrong.

If we’re going to solve this … we’ve got to have a real discussion. … Parts of the conversation cannot be off-limits because it’s not politically comfortable. … We are going to discuss issues that have been taboo in years past because they are part of the solution. … We also have a responsibility to help nurture character. It plays a role. Our kids need that moral structure in their lives. And we cannot be scared to have this conversation."

Emanuel’s message is the point — and conservative columnist Walter Williams would surely agree — yet it’s been largely ignored by leftists for decades. In truth, a message of faith and morality needs to be repeated throughout the country’s urban corridors. After all, Chicago is hardly alone when it comes to high homicide rates. Nevertheless, Fox News reports that “Emanuel is once again coming under fire for blaming a lack of morals in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods for the recent spate of violent crime.” The report adds, “Critics quickly called him out for what they dubbed tone-deaf comments, in which he seemed to be blaming the victims.” These critics are simply condoning the status quo — and worse.

As Williams says, “What’s needed most is to get poor people to change their behavior. … If we wait for Washington to solve our problems, we’ll be waiting for a long time.”

It’s rare that we can agree with Mayor Rahm “Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste” Emanuel, but alas, his remarks on Chicago violence are appropriate and long overdue. His message is great, but will he stick to it? Depends on whether he has character.

SOURCE





Protesters take down 'Silent Sam' Confederate statue on UNC campus

Attacking a war memorial is gross

A group of protesters toppled the “Silent Sam” statue dedicated to Confederate soldiers on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus Monday evening.

In a statement, the university said it is be investigating the "vandalism" incident that took down the monument that was erected in 1913.

"Tonight’s actions were dangerous, and we are very fortunate that no one was injured,” the university said in a statement. “We are investigating the vandalism and are assessing the full extent of the damage.”

The university said that approximately 250 protesters gathered to remove the statue, following request by students, faculty, and alumni to school officials to have the monument removed from campus, according to the Associated Press.

The Daily Tar Heel covered the event, sharing photos and videos on Twitter, including an image where, before the statue was toppled, it was covered with a cloth that said “For a World Without White Supremacy.”

In a pair of tweets, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said he has been in contact with local law enforcement and UNC officials about the rally. "The Governor understands that many people are frustrated by the pace of change and he shares their frustration, but violent destruction of public property has no place in our communities," he said.

The episode comes after the one-year anniversary of the Aug. 12, 2017, Unite the Right rally, which was organized to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and sparked a national conversation about what to do with Confederate monuments around the country.

SOURCE






San Francisco introduces ‘Poop Patrol’ to clean up after its own crappy liberal policies

The city of San Francisco just can’t seem to do anything right.

The city’s liberal policies designed to welcome the homeless and encourage illegal drug use is turning the city from a high-tech haven of beauty and cleanliness, to what UC Berkeley professor Lee Riley described as unsanitary conditions “much greater than communities in Brazil or Kenya or India.”

Congratulations lefties, the former crown jewel of the West Coast is now being compared to some of the dirtiest slums in the world.

Since the beginning of 2018, the city has received over 14,000 calls to the 311 service about feces on the sidewalks and in the streets. It has gotten so bad the city has lost conventions because of the filth.

It appears the city is tired of being the butt of national jokes and has decided to fight back. Local officials have announced yet another program to fix the problems the other programs caused in the first place. The “poop patrol” is expected to cost about $750,000 and employs six people with two trucks. No word if the trucks are hybrid.

“What we are trying to do is be proactive,” said Director of Public Works Mohammed Nuru. ”So we’ll have a crew that will roam around looking for locations. We actually have data for neighborhoods where we get frequent calls.”

Nuru added that “what happens is we’re going to take one of those crews out and try to get ahead of those calls and look for these locations so that hopefully we can get less numbers of calls coming in.”

Two things are disturbing about the city’s latest move. Judging from Nuru’s comments, it appears the city is more worried about having to answer phone calls, which is their job, than the actual danger posed by the feces.

The second problem is the health danger the fecal matter poses. Pictures of workers cleaning up the problem seem to have one thing in common; they are wearing protective gear. This begs the question, where is the protective gear for the thousands of citizens walking on the streets every day?

It may seem like a joke, and making fun of San Francisco is all the rage, but there is a real health threat to the people of the city. Ask anyone that was deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq.

As a former contractor with the State Department in Kabul, Afghanistan, I can attest to the danger dried airborne fecal matter poses. The “Kabul Crud” hits just about every westerner that goes to the country usually within two weeks of arrival. The air in Kabul is not only filthy with dust, but it is also contaminated with dried fecal matter. This is what happens when you have an open sewer system, as San Francisco now appears to have.

Dr. Lee Riley has warned about the dangers the conditions in San Francisco are posing to the residents warning about rotavirus stating, “If you happen to inhale that, it can also go into your intestine.” The virus can be fatal.

San Francisco officials need to quit coming up with programs to fix its previously flawed programs. The city needs to get to the root of the problem, and that is its policies that encourage illegal drug use, which in turn attracts homelessness and its horrendous building regulations that cause homelessness.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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