Are you a female breadwinner in your family?

Errata

Just want to give you all three cheers :T:T:T

Tropez

RadoJo wrote: »

I also have a slight problem with the way this is being portrayed - I am 30, and as far as I am concerned 'traditional' roles (throughout my lifetime) have been that both partners work.

In fairness, I'm 27, and have experienced the opposite. I have found, at least in family units, that there is usually one partner, most commonly the wife, that does not work but instead looks after the children while the other partner/husband acts as the breadwinner. Virtually all of my friends throughout school had one parent working and one parent staying home and the same existed in my own home. Perhaps it is due to where I was raised, or other factors, but I don't think that things have moved forward so much as to discount the "traditional" role that I am sure many others still experience.

As an adult, I have also seen that in the relationships of my friends that have started families that generally one partner, once again, usually the wife, has chosen to at least temporarily cease work in order to look after the kids.

I am, however, reasonably confident that it is the women that generally cease work due to the continuing disparity between the average wages of men and women more so than it is due to traditional gender roles.

AnnaLicious_2

I work full-time, and my husband is a full-time Dad to our young child. But appear in the Daily Mail? I have some reservations. What message would I be sending my daughter if I accepted a fee from the Daily Mail?

Firstly, I am an immigrant. One of the hords of foreigners sweeping the shores of the UK and ruining it for everyone else. Okay yes, I am from America and white so they don't really mean people like me most of the time.

Secondly, I am raising my child to be open and accepting of people regardless of race, religion, gender, country of origin, and sexual orientation. How would that fit with a paper that published this article, calling for parents to abort their children if they may turn out gay? "On 16 July 1993 the Mail ran the headline "Abortion hope after 'gay genes' finding"'

Thirdly, my father quite proudly fought in WW2. How could I take money from people that supported the blackshirts, facists and nazis? From wikipedia: On 10 July 1933, Rothermere wrote an editorial titled "Youth Triumphant" in support of Adolf Hitler, which was subsequently used as propaganda by the Nazis.[26] In early 1934, ceasing after a meeting at Kensington Olympia in June, Rothermere and the Mail were editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.[27] Rothermere wrote an article entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine".[28]

I don't care if they are offering a million pounds for the article.

Person_one

RadoJo wrote: »

I also have a slight problem with the way this is being portrayed - I am 30, and as far as I am concerned 'traditional' roles (throughout my lifetime) have been that both partners work. .

What I've seen throughout my lifetime is an assumption that it will be the female parent who stops work either permanently or short term to care for children and will probably never catch up to her male partner or male co-workers in terms of progression or earnings.

Every employer she's had or wanted to have since the age of 20 has made this assumption and some of them will even have avoided employing her because of it.

She may have had a career of equal standing and earnings as her male partner prior to having children but becoming a parent will change that, perhaps permanently. She will have a gap in her career that he won't have, she will be more likely to go back part time, she will most likely be the one who takes time off if the child is sick, or the school or childminder calls, and she will be the one passed over for promotions or opportunities because her bosses and colleagues think "Oh well her kids are her priority now, her mind's not on work anymore" or "She's bound to have another within the next couple of years."

This is a massive generalisation of course and there are lots of exceptions, but the numbers back it up. Women without children earn on average 95% of what men do, whereas women with children earn 75%. Having children seems to have no impact on what (most) men earn!

So if the Daily Mail want to publish an article claiming that evil feminism has turned women into cold workaholics (who obviously would secretly prefer to be good 50s housewives) and left the poor emasculated husbands (who wish for the good old days of coming to tea on the table and smartly turned out clone children fetching him a brandy) stuck changing nappies, well I suppose they're welcome to and their readers will probably lap it up. I just hope they include a few actual statistics for balance and, you know, truth.

Nixer

I'm probably an oddity in that not only do I earn more than my partner (he works as well though, earns abour 75% what I do, so I wouldn't call myself a breadwinner) but most, I think probably all, of my female friends earn more than their partners. This might well be because my female friends are of a similar background and education to me and they all happen to have done extremely well. My male friends are all gay or single so can't compare them. Btw I don't discuss wages with friends, but the female friends all do much higher paying jobs than their partners so it's easy enough to guess.

I disagree (sort of) with Tropez who says that some women give up work to look after the child because women are generally paid less. I think it's more complicated than that, possibly it's a bit chicken and egg. Because of all this guff that women are better able to look after children than men, "natural maternal instincts" and various other cobblers (some of which is to be found in papers like the Daily Fail), it's still expected that women (even working ones) will end up doing more childrearing than the man, which in turn probably changes employers' expectations of women, and probably affects their wages. Certainly in many cases it makes more economic sense, if anyone's giving up work, for it to be the woman, since she's more often the lower paid of the two, but I suspect the massive societal pressure/guilt tripping that women still face regarding their life choices plays a part. I'll probably get flamed but I don't see men getting so much grief about how they bring up their children because the popular view seems to be that it's "good" when a bloke changes his child's nappy/does anything at all for his child - the subtext being that it's women's work.

I think we can all agree that the Daily Fail is crap though. "Oooh look a woman earning more than a man, hasn't she done well despite the misogynistic rubbish we churn out every day".

Nixer

And now I've just seen Person_one's post above me which says pretty much what I was trying to in the second part of mine.

Tropez

Nixer wrote: »

I disagree (sort of) with Tropez who says that some women give up work to look after the child because women are generally paid less. I think it's more complicated than that, possibly it's a bit chicken and egg. Because of all this guff that women are better able to look after children than men, "natural maternal instincts" and various other cobblers (some of which is to be found in papers like the Daily Fail), it's still expected that women (even working ones) will end up doing more childrearing than the man, which in turn probably changes employers' expectations of women, and probably affects their wages. Certainly in many cases it makes more economic sense, if anyone's giving up work, for it to be the woman, since she's more often the lower paid of the two, but I suspect the massive societal pressure/guilt tripping that women still face regarding their life choices plays a part. I'll probably get flamed but I don't see men getting so much grief about how they bring up their children because the popular view seems to be that it's "good" when a bloke changes his child's nappy/does anything at all for his child - the subtext being that it's women's work.

I think we can all agree that the Daily Fail is crap though. "Oooh look a woman earning more than a man, hasn't she done well despite the misogynistic rubbish we churn out every day".

The more traditional societal roles of the housewife and working husband certainly do factor in when discussing why more women give up their careers to raise their children, which probably does have an effect on the wage disparity but were there no wage disparity then I would be willing to bet that the majority of couples would base child-rearing decisions and the subsequent career implications on who makes the most money and also, where necessary, who has the best career prospects overall and therefore not on the traditional concept of the mother staying at home to raise the children.

Perhaps because I am a man I see things differently but in my view men are treated fairly harshly by society when it comes to raising children. There seem to be certain consistent, negative stereotypes that are thrust upon them, which would include what you describe as the "popular view" - frankly, I think that many men feel that society has already branded them as useless at "hands on" parenting.

Of course, that said, I have no children of my own and have no intention on becoming a father for the simple reason that I don't believe I would be a very good one, so society would probably be correct if it cast is aspersions on me.

Emmzi

Seriously, people still think this is newsworthy?

Last 50 years of gender equality campaigning just flew by, didn't they...

JodyBPM

Tropez wrote: »

The more traditional societal roles of the housewife and working husband certainly do factor in when discussing why more women give up their careers to raise their children, which probably does have an effect on the wage disparity but were there no wage disparity then I would be willing to bet that the majority of couples would base child-rearing decisions and the subsequent career implications on who makes the most money and also, where necessary, who has the best career prospects overall and therefore not on the traditional concept of the mother staying at home to raise the children.

Like someone else earlier on this thread, the vast majority of my female friends earn more than their male partners. Again, I guess it might be because of my education and background, many of my female friends I met either during my private education or during my univesity degree - so well educated women.

BUT, in the majority of cases, after children, despite the male partner earning less, the male partner has gone back to work full time, whilst the female has gone back part-time. And this is because the female partner has WANTED to go part time and spend more time with the child/ren. The set up in our own household is like this,I only work 2 days a week, where as my DH works full time, despite me having a better income and earning potential than him, because I WANTED to stay at home. This is despite financially it being advantageous for the woman to work FT and the man to be a SAHP.

Its not all about glass ceilings, disparity in salaries and gender stereotypical roles - people are individuals regardless of gender, and some women, despite being academically and professionally successful actually WANT to stay home with their children, for a few years at least!

Tropez

JodyBPM wrote: »

Like someone else earlier on this thread, the vast majority of my female friends earn more than their male partners. Again, I guess it might be because of my education and background, many of my female friends I met either during my private education or during my univesity degree - so well educated women.

BUT, in the majority of cases, after children, despite the male partner earning less, the male partner has gone back to work full time, whilst the female has gone back part-time. And this is because the female partner has WANTED to go part time and spend more time with the child/ren. The set up in our own household is like this,I only work 2 days a week, where as my DH works full time, despite me having a better income and earning potential than him, because I WANTED to stay at home. This is despite financially it being advantageous for the woman to work FT and the man to be a SAHP.

Its not all about glass ceilings, disparity in salaries and gender stereotypical roles - people are individuals regardless of gender, and some women, despite being academically and professionally successful actually WANT to stay home with their children, for a few years at least!

And I'm sure that's the case for some people, which is why I never argued that it was all about traditional gender roles, wage disparity and the rest of it. However, I would also hazard a guess that in many of the cases you refer to, the wage of the male who continues to work isn't so much less that it presents a large reduction in household wages.

Ignoring the fact that I work from home, when my girlfriend worked as a nurse she earned quite a reasonable sum of money but it was still a good £14k per year shy of what I earn for not even doing half as much work. But if we had children, and the wages were reversed, I would expect to be the stay at home partner looking after the children because 14k a year is a significant amount. In fact, I would consider it irresponsible to our child to forgo such a sum of money.

Of course there are going to be people with different ideas and of course you cannot say that this, this and this will happen and nor have I ever suggested that you could but there are certain consistent patterns. Anyone can present a counter example - you for instance know a good number of women who earn more than men, someone else said that their view of "tradition" was both partners working etc. but it does not mean that all the evidence that argues the contrary is wrong, it simply shows that society has gradually grown into a more equal construction whereby people will have different experiences but even then there is still plenty of clear cut research stating that in many cases women do earn less, and women are more likely to stay at home for this reason, just as there is a rise in the number of stay at home dads because their wives earn that much more than they did because traditional gender roles do not play quite as big the part that they did 50 years ago.