Volume 1: Things to read before going back to work

REPORTS

The NetMums survey of working mums: Highlights: 88% of mums working full time would rather work part time or stay at home with their children, and the great division between ‘housewives’ and ‘working mums’ is a media-created myth.

Department for Education and Skills reports: Highlights: Children who have care outside the home are intellectually ahead of those who don't, although they can have worse behaviour. Preschool has a positive impact on test scores up to the age of 16.

Daycare Trust Survey on childcare costs Highlights: In 2006, they found that full-time childcare costs between £7,000 amd £21,000 per year. Their hotline offers free information and advice.

The Impact of Working Mums on Children's Early Learning (PDF Link) Highlights: Paul Gregg's research found "Employment begun later than eighteen months and part-time work undertaken at any time has no negative effects." There's a BBC Q&A with Paul Gregg here.

USEFUL INFORMATION AND ORGANISATIONS

Childcare Link: Government-backed website points you in the direction of the different types of childcare and early education in your area. The site is a bit clunky and not fully comprehensive, but it's probably a good place to start.

Working Families: Useful site with factsheets about flexible working, maternity rights and childcare options.

COMMENT

Turbo Mums Don't Work: 'Perfect stay-at-home mothers are producing a generation of useless monsters', says Daisy Waugh.

Are working mums as bad as junk food? Rachel Johnson, (now at The Times) wonders why mums who work are branded the chief well-poisoners of modern society.

The government has killed family life argues Lifelong Labour supporter Maureen Freely. "I feared that the people at the top were interested in families only because they saw in them a source of cheap labour. No, let me correct that. A source of unpaid labour. Slave labour."

And finally... Here is a rant from the Daily Mail, arguing, among other things, that housework helps your children's grades: "The study of 3,400 volunteers over 25 years found that the length of time a child stayed in education and their future earnings was directly linked to the hygiene in their homes."

If you've seen better research, found handy links or read more interesting comment, please post the links in the comments.

Comments

[Nicki]

I have 3 children 12-nearly 20 yrs old. I have worked Part time throughout, except for a small Gap of three yeaars when the youngest was born, which I loved. Unfortunately financial needs (and food on the table) forced me back into the workplace. There has to be balance, mothers, undoubtedly, need to be on hand, and just as much, if not more, when they are teenagers. That shouldn't, however, mean becoming a helicopter parent. Kids need to learn self sufficiency, good manners and how to do without. Although I would have preferr3d to be at home, part time work suited us all, including my employers, who never had unreal expectations of there staff, and knew that we worked to live and didn't live to work. NB at the age of 44 my career is just taking off!

[Diana Ovits]

Does anyone have any recommended websites or companies that could help a mother find part time work ? Thanks.

[Ingrid]

...And anyway, I do not understand either that silly concept of yummy mummy or super mum. I believe everybody can do their best without being trapped in the world of negative competition with the neighbour , or the celebrity, or the woman at the toddlers group, blah, blah. Please, be happy with your own decisions and with what you are, then work hard on that. That is the best way you can make your children proud, by being you.

[Ingrid]

I do not understand why the big deal between mothers at home and full time mums! This is an issue that carries many different and difficult choices. That is it : it is a choice where some mothers have to decide. There is not good or wrong in staying at home or in going back to work. It is a matter of what suits each one better.

[Moyra Costello]

Re: Daily Mail on working mothers

I find it disturbing that there seems to be so little effort to provide any kind of cause and effect relationship between these studies and their conclusions.
How is a clean home be linked to life success? I can think of many distinct correlations that could be behind this, but the Mail doesn't seem interested in them.

[L A Hammond]

I started my au pair & nanny agency so that I didnt run myself ragged & could provide support to all of us in the family, whilst still getting precious personal & quiet times. I spent lots of great days with my daughters in school holidays & though money wasnt great I didnt have so many worries. Plus I got one of my own au pairs to help when I had a baby - she took some of the weight around the place but I never had to leave the baby.

I am also working as a doula myself as another option provide that crucial early weeks & months help that new Mums from all walks of life could do with.

Best of luck Mums, there are ways !!

[Anne]

I feel a growing need to express that common sense and balance is needed in this debate. I feel that our children have far more attention lavished on them than I remember having, yet have more problems. We are all trying too hard. Relax, kids survive, and just do what you feel is right. Hopefully our kids will grow up being balanced individuals.... One issue which really unrelaxes me is parents who do not discipline their children. I frequently see intelligent, educated mothers outside my children's school allowing their children to behave in an unacceptable way. Do parents allow their children to jump on tables at home? Is allowing a child to climb onto a car bonnet a way to show respect for property earnt through hard work? Being rude or even hitting mother? Throwing a tennis racket or bag onto the ground in temper, without being made to pick it up and being removed from the situation? These are things I see, and which make me feel uncomfortable. I see professional parents (teachers, healthcare workers and full time mothers) who appear not to deal with a situation adequately, and appear to attach more importance to chatting at the school gate than bringing their children up to be accountable and responsible. Strange. I wonder if basics are being forgotten in pursuit of perfection?

[Barbara Coultas]

When my children were 8 and 10, I decided to start a business at home. This was the only way I felt I could manage bringing them up and keeping my sanity; going out to work full-time would have done for my health, my marriage and the children's welfare.

[Claire]

In the five short years since giving birth to my first child I have experienced full time employment, part time employment and full time parenting.

Each situation carries its own stresses and guilt, the full time employee worries about leaving her babies in nursery for ten hours a day.

The part time worker struggles to prove to employers that she can be just as productive and effective in three days as five, whilst only receiving two thirds pay and still having to complete all the household chores.

The stay at home mum is faced with performing a job for which she has received no formal training or education, and yet is still expected, by society, to excell at.

Some people are lucky enough to be able to choose whether to work full time , part time or not at all but an equal number are driven by financial or family obligations to choose the option which is best for the whole family and not just for them.

The comments of Daisy Waugh are just as unhelpful as the comments of smug stay at home mothers who criticise working mums.

Surely the most helpful thing that all mums (and dads!) can do is to support each other in our parenting choices.

Claire

[Jen Hamilton]

Please excuse the awful mis-spelling of there (not their!!)! Not so educated after all! My only excuse is juggling a 3 year old and a seven month old on each knee whilst hurriedly typing....

[Jen Hamilton]

Yes Nirpal Dhaliwal's articles got my hackles up but it also made me feel slightly uneasy. In amongst his facile sexist insults their lay an uncomfortable truth. Our generation of mums are experiencing a unique dilemma. We are educated. We have careers. We have financial independence and clout at home. We have choices. Hence when we exercise our right to choose by choosing to stay at home with our children or to downscale our careers we feel we have to excel at our new profession. Triple A types, used to doing what we do with bells on we have to improve upon our mothers' generation: we have to be dedicated, selfless, well dressed, never tired, uncomplaining, fun - a mum to make our children proud. In short, we have replaced the pressures of work with the pressures of being a Super Mum or Yummy Mummy and we have done this to ourselves. Liberation can be found in a slap free, crumpled day in our most comfortable joggers, battening down the hatches and having fun with our children.