Overheard in the PLayground . . .

[sillywoman]

. . . at a local primary; a high profile PTA Mum stated that she thought it was more important to invest in her son's education than her daughters, as men are the main breadwinners! Lets face it women just do little jobs to fit in, as she does with her small, from home business. Is this really the prevailing attitude out there?

SW

POsted in concern and curiosity as I'm no longer in the playground enough to have a 'finger on the pulse'. Frankly I think it's a shockingly patriarchal & archaic viewpoint, but it might be me that's out of sync?

[KatDew]

oh dear God.... seriously?

I hate this kind of attitude.

Firstly what if the girls don't want to marry and have kids/ be 'kept' by a man?

Secondly it's certainly not true of our house, we would never of got our first mortgage if it hadn't been for my job. Yes I choose to work part time but I am actually still the bigger earner (no dis-respect to by husband) I just happen to work in a profession that is paid well.

I have no issues with women who want to be at home and raise children but lets not make those decisions for our girls from childhood. Let them make those choices later and in the mean time give them every oppurtunity in life that we would allow our sons.

[RenF]

Um, no.

That is all.

[Mrs TP]

Unfortunately, in the majority (but not all and well done those sisters) of cases men are the main breadwinners but with attitudes like hers this is never going to change ... too depressing.

Also, it seems that many companies are using the recession as an excuse to make working mothers redundant before working fathers and so really bumping up the numbers of male breadwinners compared with 5yrs ago.

However after juggling my full-time well paid office job when my first two children were little, I have been a stay at home mum since no 3 (and redundo) and enjoy it and don't actually want to go back to corporate employment. Do miss the money but would miss the kids more and ok it is hard work but it does have its dossy moments - Mr Breadwinner, as usual, currently making family evening meal = result!

Can I be feminist and a stay at home mum? If it is my choice to remain a stay at home mum then probably yes.

sillywoman - it's one thing dealing with male misogynists but female ones aka your PTA Mum ... words fail me.

[bishop]

Can I be feminist and a stay at home mum?

Ah, the million dollar question, and one that I have felt conflicted over since I was pregnant with my first! I haven't come up with an answer yet (for me).

The main breadwinner thing is a weird one in my house. My husband works full time, me part time. However, if I worked full time (40 hours a week), I would earn about three times a much as him.

However PTA Mum's attitude reeks.

[Monkey]

Blimey - did not think parents still saw things that way!

My mil said to me recently that she could not possibly have worked since her husband can't even find his pants. I now think of her as the Chief Pants Finder!

[sillywoman]

Mrs TP, I know I feel the same, & have a sense of desperation that not only is that attitude coming from a woman, but that she clearly felt confident enough in her view to voice it publicly, seemingly with the expectation of general agreement? Hence my confusion & this post.

It's an interesting question - the 'can I be a feminist and a stay at home Mum' one. For many years I considered myself to be both, but other people's attitudes could be very different, with some seeing me as some kind of 1950's throwback. The truth is that whilst I felt I needed to be at home for my children I made the worlds worst housewife, and actually often wasn't that great as a Mum, but I was lucky enough to have sufficient income (with me working part time from home), and a supportive partner to be free to make the choice for myself and I felt a huge debt of gratitude to feminism for enabling me to have that choice. I see no reason why choosing to stay home (if you can chose) means you have to subsume your feminist instincts? That's different to what playground lady is saying though.

I have sons and a daughter, they will have the same chances in education as each other & we'll do the best for each of them according to their talents and opportunities. When my daughter has her own children who's to say that she & her partner won't chose for her to be the breadwinner & the other to stay home? Or for them both to be equal breadwinners and to organise another caregiver for their child(ren)? As long as their choices are made with love and care I won't have a view either way, but the thought that I would prioritise her brothers education and life chances over hers is just downright anathema to me.

[BellendenBear]

Surely it's still worth investing in your daughters' education so that they go to the best schools and universities and increase their chances of meeting the most successful potential husbands?

That's supposed to be a joke.

[Mrs TP]

Bellenden Bear - v funny!

Sillywoman - yes to everything 100% agree.

BTW - My own father complains that he wasted his money sending me to uni as now I have lumbered myself with three kids and also said that he would not have employed a working mum like me as too much of a liability.

[Convex]

Shocker.

[Helen GV]

Worked for the middletons... ;0)

That a mum considers it more important to invest in her son's education than her daughter's breaks my heart

[KatsuQueen]

Wow, is this really the values that this PTA mother is passing onto her children?

when i was little my grandmother told me that it was more important for women to study hard and be able earn a living, whether it be through professional means, or a skill like cooking/sewing/sewing. She said that men are physically stronger and they basically "rule the world" and women had to be tough and bear hardship. Because men can walk away from their children but women can't. And the worst pain you will ever feel as a woman is if you see your children going without food, clothes, security. When you see other children having things that you would love to give your children, but you just can;t.

Probably not relevant in the UK, but it still resonates with me today. For women of her generation, and (for millions of women elsewhere now) women were at the mercy of their husbands/fathers etc. She had a hard life my grandmother!

[bishop]

BellendenBear Wrote:

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

> Surely it's still worth investing in your

> daughters' education so that they go to the best

> schools and universities and increase their

> chances of meeting the most successful potential

> husbands?

>

> That's supposed to be a joke.

There were a few girls on my course at Uni who freely admitted that they were at Uni for that exact reason! We did an education based degree. 45 girls, 3 boys. Not exactly a sausage fest.

[Pickle]

I've encountered this before too - someone that lives nearby and was paying to send her two older children (boys) through an independent school told me they were having second thoughts about whether to enrol their youngest (girl) in the same school as "it doesn't seem worth the money for her". Poor kid!

But yes, it worked for the Middletons, and I hope that Wills and Kate have a boy so that I can educationally stalk them with my daughter ;)

[bishop]

I disagree, Pickle. Kate didn't luck out. I would MUCH rather be married to Harry, because he is fit, than 'Good Ol' Wills. He seems boring. This is clearly very important. So glad we can have this kind of political/royalist debate on here.

[EDmummy]

I was bought up in a matriarchal household, mum and gran, one brother, and in Australia (no men, divorced or dead). There was absolutely no difference between the attitudes for our education, if anything I was encouraged to exceed the expectations for my brother. I now have 2 boys and am married to a feminist husband. The problem I have how to instil feminism in them I'm absolutely horrified by PTA mum's attitude but I have to say that I think it may be a class thing. Those in the upper middle class have an expectation that their daughters marry well. Albeit over 70 years ago, that was the upper middle class expectation for my grandmother. She disappointed her family by marrying down and pretty much forever lead the family.

[little h]

when i was at school, not sure how old i was but i think i was about 12, i discovered a good housekeeping mag in which my mum had completed a questionnaire. One of the questions was ' is your son's education more important than your daughter's?' . She had answered yes, and i was furious and heart broken and never ever forgot it. I just couldnt bring myself to ask her about it but I asked her about it years later and she said i'd misunderstood, that the man was usually the main bread winner and she felt it was important for both of us but more so for my brother. I was still too upset after all that time.

I dont think i ever did appreciate how hard it would be balancing a good career and kids though.

[????]

Time all this crap was stopped. My mum got into to grammar school and was the only one from her street and family who Did, she did well at school, but my grandad, who was a good and decent man by and large, told her she wasn't to go to University as that wasn,t for a girl. She became a nurse but I asked her not long ago was there anything she,d regretted in life and she said she,d wanted to be a Doctor but her dad wouldn't allow it - she really looked sad about it.i think their might have been a class dimension too. but I,m gobsmacked a woman in 2013 can be as blinkered as my grandad in 1952!

[shaunag]

Having had a child and gone back to work I've found it really hard to accept that despite my up upbringing to the contrary, it really is still a mans world. At least where I work, if you have had kids, you just aren't taken as seriously as a career oriented person. That said, my mums advice has always been to strive to be equal career wise and in a position to be able to walk away should I need to so as never to feel trapped. I have always thought this very good advice and will pass the same on to my daughter-whatever she does and if she ends up marrying a man I want her always to be able to be in situations through choice. I'm not convinced the world will ever be available to women that have kids unless the whole structure of what is expected changes. The insane hours and expectation to drop everything for work makes it impossible (unless you are fortunate enough to have a mammoth support team, which most of us don't). There will always be women who do not respect women as equals from their own lack of self belief which doesn't really help the cause!

[womanofdulwich]

This is a frightening attitude to bring your family up in. However I do think with the celeb culture we have today there are more teenage girls( or ones in their 20's) today who are openly saying they want to marry a rich man, have babies and stay at home.

I wonder if part of that is that they have seen us, their mums, often struggling to fulfil ourselves by often going to university- at a time when it was free- and enjoying fulfiling careers and then realising that we cannot have it all- ie family and full time rewarding career. It is dissatisfying to many , but there is no perfect solution women are continually beating themselves up about work/ children as we set ourselves up for both and most of us realise that its not going to be possible. As mothers we are much more willing to take time out to look after our children than our husbands are, particularly because most of us take materninty leave and already start to build up local support networks.I know a few women who swapped places with their husbands who stayed at home while the women went back full tome after 6 weeks as the main breadwinner, and that has ended in tears, divorce - father getting to be main carer- etc etc.

If I had a daughter I would treat her exactly the same as a son, I can't imagine doing anything else, otherwise she would not feel valued.

[LondonMix]

That PTA Mom comes from a very specific sub-culture (that is tragically behind the times) but I really don't think most people feel that way or that its even factually correct.

There was an article about this in the NY Times recently but I can't find the link. At least in the US, the financial crisis now means that women are the primary breadwinners. More job losses in manufacturing (dominated by men) than the service industry (dominated by women) combined apparently with a greater willingness for women to retrain is why. This article that I could find says 53% of women are the primary earners in the US now. I know lots and lots of couples where the woman is the primary bread winner. At least for my generation, those stats feel very accurate. In big US cities, educated young women out earn similarly educated young men according to the NYT. I can't believe that the UK is that far behind the US.

http://www.livescience.com/21549-women-primary-earners.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/nyregion/03women.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[Audrey]

On the feminist debate - I really think its the attitude you have, whatever choice you've made, wear it with pride. The fact that there is a choice (OK within reason, I know its not that clearcut when cost of living is factored in!) is, to me, the defining factor. Pass on to your children that anyone can do anything, how amazing for change would that be.

As an aside what do people thing of quotas for women on Boards? I think it stinks in principle, and I'd HATE to be seen as the 'token bird', but tbh I'd support it for my daughters generation as I think that if it were introduced the sight of women at exec level would then be normalised.

[womanofdulwich]

I was offered a job by the GLC years ago - everywoman that applied got an offer but no men did. I turned it down as I felt uncomfortable-I think I slightly regret it now, as those that took it were kind of "hot housed". :( - but they did have to work with some real neanderthals.

As to boards -I think it depends where you are in your career.If its early on and well managed maybe its not such a bad thing?

[Earl Aelfheah]

The problem is that feminism is narrowly focuseed on women's experience. The norms and acceptance around women's identities and their ability to take on (what where traditionally) men's roles have evolved, but in many cases expectations of men haven't. It's all good and well fighting for a woman's right to have equal status in the workplace, but if there is not just as much emphasis put on a man's right to nurture and be full time carer of children, then it's not going to work out. For most men, the idea of taking care of the house and being the primary chid carer are emasculating - and many women would see it this way too. The fact is that we need to address traditional gender roles from both sides of the spectrum. We need a movement that isn't focussed simply on the rights and roles of women, but on those of men as well.

[gillandjoe]

I find it upsetting that all these sorts of debates seem to centre unquestioningly around the idea that the only measure of success is how much money you earn or how high up the career ladder you are. No one ever seems to see it from the flipside that perhaps breadwinning men have the bum deal. I think discussions around gender equality should focus more on comparisons between quality of life rather than who earns the most money in the home.

Playground woman's comments are also disturbing because I earning an education is an end in itself, not just about how high a salary you can get at the end of it.