Should you do a Ruth Kelly?

Every working mum has had a Ruth Kelly moment: you know, when you hate your job and can't remember why you endure the reproachful looks of your darling children to go off to an office where you are miserable. (What we always forget at such times is that when work is fun, somehow the reproachful looks can be forgotten - or rather the fact that the kids are fine once you aren't there to be manipulated any more is remembered).

Everyone has bad days, and when you do it is easy to think that everything would be alright if you were just at home with your kids instead - and there is a big school of thought that argues your kids need you more as they get bigger: any nice nanny can cuddle them and feed them mush when they are babies, it's when they start doing homework that they need you there.

That was certainly the call that Ruth Kelly made this week when she resigned from the Cabinet to spend more time with her four children. But stepping down just when the kids are going to secondary school may not be such a great plan - after all it is just when they are deciding they'd like to be independent and the last thing they need is mum directing all her multitudinous energies into their teenage souls.

What do you think? Did you quit? Do you want to? Did you stop when your kids were little?

Click here to read Saturday's Body and Soul article: Should women give up work for their kids?

Comments

[supermother]

You are right that mixing genes is best and indeed that clever plus thick means a child in the middle and clever plus clever can mean a child a bit less clever but on the whole if you're both clever then the children will be brighter than if one is bright and one isn't. I know someone who married his secretary and despite his prominence and brains the children are not at all clever, nothing like the children of his colleagues who tended to marry in the same or equivalent professions.

Anyway enough of that - I am very unhappy about Ms Kelly's comments in today's Times. She should be called to account for them.

We will never get equality for women when leading women come out with sexist comments like this.... " Derek is incredible, astonishing. I . He has made great sacrifices.. he does all the cooking and food shopping".

Why in 2008 is it remoltely incredible that a man does food shopping. For many of us in 20008 marriages not circa 1880 it is as likely a man as a woman shop. Does having a penis means he's some kind of hero because he buys food for his children. She needs to be sent to a feminist education camp run by Supermother for a weekend of deprogramming. We will not get anywhere near equality until women don't regard it as at all praise worthy that a man does what women do domestically.

Also it does really let women down when people like her give interviews like that. By all means hold a private view to that effect of wanting more time with children but don't publicise it. We need more women saying how much fun it is to work in interesting jobs, how much our children get out of it and how good it is for families and children and women; not these tales after tales which give out message that women want to work much less and cannot play a proper role in proper jobs.

And why feel upset if a father goes to a school thing and a mother doesn't? As long as you get to some school events and the other parent is at others why need that presenteeism? Children are just happy a parent is there.

I am going to Vienna on business now. The children will be fine. I'm pleased to be going, night in a hotel etc. Women enjoying their work and status, power and money - we need many more articles on that topic than all this awful female whingeing about how hard life is and how every woman on the planet want to work 3 hours a day and cannot cope with proper jobs.

[Delilah]

I just wanted to pick up on Supermother's comments about dolly bird secretaries being awful genetic material for motherhood. Breeding two creatures of the same type to each other does not guarantee a wonderful outcome - genetics does not work like that. Complementary strengths can work better - a male bimbo with common sense and a great social touch often does better for a clever but inarticulate woman than a man who competes on all his strenghts. Look at Hillary and Bill.
And apparently ADHD is rife in Silicon Valley, possibly as a result of too many engineers marrying each other rather than their landlady's son/daughter.

[supermother]

Part time is too much of a compromise. If anyone has to go part time make it your husband and you'll gain all the services of a wife in the process too! Then if either of you have to do errands it must be him as he earns less and has all this free time part timers are supposed to have!

[mumoftwo]

Thanks, LM, I also do the school run a couple of mornings (and get them ready every single morning) and am there from 3.30 a couple of days a week when I work from home as I also like to do that and work late/on weekends if necessary. However, it is conditional on your employer being trusting enough that you do get your hours done, and many employers aren't like that. That's why I agree with SM, it's all about chosing a career which allows flexibility (or doesn't if you don't want that). I despair how we are ever going to see women well-represented in government or the workplace in senior roles when most women are working part-time having been made to choose between their children and being a complete slave to an unsympathetic boss and long working hours. How come many Scandanavian countries manage it? (apart from their egalitarian sharing of chores which evens up the need for women to stay home to keep the household ticking over)

[LM]

Well said, Mo2, and I wholly agree with you about the effect of going part-time; I've seen that with the few women I know who've done so and have always thought (so far, anyway) that it's better in the long run to work full-time and just be flexible with my hours. So I end up with a couple of evenings a week where I'm catching up on things after the child's in bed, but I do get to leave at 3:30 a couple of days a week to pick her up from school & spend time with her, which (whatever SM's opinions) is important to me as the mother of a new pre-schooler.

[mumoftwo]

I also find the idea that people working (or 'career mothers' as Whimsey calls them) aren't around for their teenagers a bit funny. We (men and women, I don't distinguish) can't all stay home 24/7 and stare at our children, it's not economically or even psychologically desirable (the exception being the need for a one-on-one bond in the early years, of course). Working very long hours does impact childcare, for both men and women, which is why many men and women like to work in jobs with a family friendly focus (if they can find one), or one to work part-time, the other full-time. But once school-age, the children aren't even there in the day, they are at school, so this stereotype that working parents aren't 'there' for their teenagers is a strange one, given that they have the same mornings and evenings and weekends to share with them as everyone else. Research shows that people (yes, even the working ones) spend more one-to-one leisure time with their children now than in the past, which, if you have ever had 14 children and washed with a mangle, you will know why.

[mumoftwo]

I work full-time and not in a City job, but I am the only one out of my friends who does this, most either don't work, work part-time, or work five days hours into four. However, I've deliberately kept my hours full-time as I want full-time presence, full-time pay, and full-time acknowledgement for my work. I'm sure if I dropped down to say four, or three days, the expectations and targets would remain the same, I'd just get paid less and have less time to do the work. For example, one of my friends negotiated to work five days work into four days in the office, which her boss reluctantly agreed when she was on maternity leave, but she only gets paid for the four days, which I'm sure is illegal. I'm lucky, though, I work in a place where I have flexible hours, so as long as the hours are done, no-one minds when. So I still get my children ready for school and put them to bed. I think part-time can make sense when you are say a consultant (as my husband is) but it can also massively disadvantage women, not least in terms of pay and future prospects as Supermother says.

[supermother]

Most women earn such a pittance it's hardly worth them stepping out the door as they aren't alpha or not clever enough or made bad career choices.

[ZOE]

With regard to the body & soul article comment 'the reality is that most parents can't choose to be at home and even working part-time is possible for a lucky few'... I know of no mother who is working full time. Everyone of my friends, family and acquaintances, who may have degrees, professional qualifications or school qualifications works part time. Many work 2 days a week, or just in school hours or from home. How can you make this statement?!

Or are we just talking about city highflyers and/or journalists with mighty mortgages?

[supermother]

Loaded with sexism there... are you saying fathers who work "aren't around for their children". Of course they are. Most parents work and most are around for their children. For 20 years in the City I've seen men leave meetings because a child is ill or needs them. We all put children first when it's necessary. Just because you work doesn't mean you aren't there for your children. And why just pick on mothers and not fathers?

24/7 child care of under 5s is something most men and women contract out either to a spouse of either gender if they can find one dull enough to be prepared to tolerate the boredom of what is really just unpaid domestic work or ideally good alternatives - the most common is a grandparent in the UK and next most common a child minder. People like us us loved nannies - ours stayed 10 years etc longer than many men stick around for their children.

The fact you have others to help you with under 5s and older children isn't a negative thing. It's a huge gain for the children. As soon as they are 5 most parents give over their care from 9 - 3 to a school and that isn't criticised simply because it's our cultural norm but there is an argument if you believe these things that the child should be with the parent 24/7 - my sister slept wit hers until they were 5 and that even abandoning them to be alone from 7pm to 7am is the height of cruelty and unnatural. We all draw our own lines based on our own experiences and view of psychology but what is clear to me being up to child number 5 by now is that their genes are more important than we think (so parents ditch your guilt) and that as long as they have consistency, reliability, things happen when parents say and they are able to bond with those who love them and care for them they will do fine.

We also need to avoid them becoming little Gods in the home as if the world centres on them.. Good parents balance their own needs and the child's. It's good for children to realise mummy and daddy might prefer a night out together without them sometimes or that parents might work because they like it rather than some faux excuse that they need to work to feed the children but really they'd rather be with the children. If you think the latter draw state benefits. No one is really forced to work in the UK they choose it.

[whimsey]

Quick comment only as it's nearly midnight and I'm tooooooo snnooooozy to think straight, let alone type straight....

I think Supermother has a point, and I suspect that today's career mothers are simply yesterday's society mothers - the common point is that neither of them thought it important to be around for their children.

And who knows, maybe it isn't? But speaking personally, I wouldn't take the risk.

That said, you can have a lousy stay at home parent and a lousy career mother, and vice versa, so I don't think working or not-working is the deciding factor as to whether or not your kids end up basket cases. I think if you, the mother (or father) is screwed up with the 'wrong' emotional set up, then your kids will be screwed up as well. It's very hard to break the chain. Unto the seventh generation, in fact.

[supermother]

Studies are finding more and more that it's our genes that will out, not whether mummy and daddy made silly career sacrifices, martyrs to a cause without benefits, sacrificed on the altar of sexist childcare theories designed to keep women down and out of the work place and certainly the cabinet. Marry the ex-Westminster Ms Kelly and you will have great children. Marry the rather thick pretty office girl and you'l have both the wrong genes for your children plus probablynot very intelligent parenting either - the double whammy. Marry the clever Cambridge first but make her or condition her to stay home and you';ll have someone who feels dreadful and takes it out on the children . Both work as most parents today, here, abroad and in the past have always done and you will have a balanced lovely family.

But I agree with what I said below and with what someone else agreed with me.. that in the teenage years (and I have my Certificate of having got 3 children alive through teenage years and into university in one piece) they need to know you're there if they need you but also to have some benign neglect so they can develop their independence.

In other words the children of working parents gain, rather than lose. Now we're talking on here of course about alpha parents who probably each earn £100k and pretty bright and seek to ensure consistent long term reliable child/teenage care and excellent fee paying schools for their children. And good for Ms Kelly in paying school fees whilst in the Labour cabinet - not many have been prepared to do that except on the sly in a sense with Westminster school tutors for the older Blairs.

What was I talking about.... neglect - the secret advantage you give children if you work. I think one reason my older one and even the younger ones are happy and sorted is because they have had to do things on their own (a) because they're one of five and (b) because we both worked and (c) because I'm that sort of parent.

Anyway more interestingly did we ever find out if Ms Kelly is a member of Opus Dei and wears that leg iron thing that digs into your thigh for religious pain rather than sexual pleasure?

[LM]

Whimsey -

Don't you know that it's almost obligatory for poetry NOT to rhyme these days? Rhyming is so...Nineteenth Century (think of the ghastly Tennyson, darling). If you make your poetry rhyme these days, then obviously it's an ironic statement as the more disjointed and unrhyming/unrhythmical it is, the better. It's post-post-modern, you know.

[LM]

Oh dear, do I really have to post this information again?

Sassoon, darlin', you talk some sense, but on the subject of children of "career parents" who are "nurseried", you are completely, wholly, utterly wrong. A couple of very wide-ranging studies (in the US, by top child development specialists) have shown empirically that a child's communication skills & educational attainment - from infancy through teenage years - are directly correlated with the education level of the parents.

At all stages (starting with 6 month olds), children of highly educated parents (graduate-level education) were talked to 3 times as much as children of parents whose highest education level was high-school. And at all stages, the children of the highly educated parents were 3 times as skilled in their communication skills as the children of the low-education level parents (not very good grammar today but you get the gist of it). It's an NIH study which you can look up on the web only I don't really have time to do that right now; I've posted the links on AM previously, last year and earlier this year on similar discussions.

The other very significant finding was this: for the children of highly educated parents, there is no difference educationally between children whose primary caregiver until school age was their parent and children whose primary caregiver was *anyone else* (from grandparent to full-blown nursery/daycare). HOWEVER (and this is the significant bit) for children of the low-educated parents, there was a significant statistical difference for those who were in a nursery/daycare environment vs. being at home with a parent all day: those in nursery were more developed (communication skills/social skills) than those at home.

Why? It all came down to how much the children were talked to; in other words, what we all know already was proved: plonking your child in front of the TV all day without playing/interacting with them means they're not getting the development they need. And as babies are sponges, this starts from the earliest age & early advantages/disadvantages of this interactive play remain with the children.

Having said all that (& I've done both - worked and taken time at home while the child was a toddler), I do think that how a good parent wants to manage their time is really up to them & it makes little difference to the child in the long run whether the parent works full or part time. I think that really comes down to whether the parent wants the child in after school clubs every day or wants the child to have chill-out time at home. Frankly, flexible working hours and work from home options are the way to go and we should all be pushing for those more & more in all jobs where they're possible (not possible, for instance, for medics or teachers or policemen on the beat, but no reason why report writing/lesson planning can't be done at home the way I can write a project plan or an RFP or manage my inbox at home).

[Leeny]

I am gratified that the delightful Ms Kelly has left her ministerial post which was long overdue. What a pity the good people of Bolton are still saddled with the useless wench as an mp Please do the decent thing Ruthie baby and stand down completely and never enter politics again. !!!!!!!!

[sassoon]

Whether Ms kelly has resigned for her own reasons or not, it is absolutely the right thing for one parent to be at home up to school age and to be around after school time and as much as poss in teenage years. I think if you've spent the first 5 years at home with your children, it is you that know them pretty damn well.. they change of course, but by their teens those little quirks they had at 3 are still there at 13. Someone commented that its all about school runs and lunch boxes ...oh dear..its not about that at all. Its about talking and listening, respecting,learning and living together. Do career parents ever think about the effect on their children's education being 'nurseried' has? Don't believe the hype.. its the 'home' kids that know how to listen, learn and speak. I agree with the blogger who said teens need space and less parenting is more, but you still need to be around..a sort of 'parenting presence'. Oh and yes, its very hard work. Wouldn't have missed it though!

[Ann]

Put me in the "I don't buy that Ruth Kelly left the Cabinet to spend more time with the family" camp. As soon as I heard some junior Cabinet minister had been sacked for something she had said against Brown I knew an organised plot was afoot to unseat him. Someone far senior to this minion (can't remember her name) is pulling the strings (probably Miliband), and all the defections since then have just confirmed it for me. Ruth Kelly is simply the most senior one to go thus far. But she won't be the last.

From news accounts Ruth Kelly actually seemed to be making some headway in Transport and doing a much better job than she had in Education and Communities (wasn't that her pre-Transport post?). Politicians have a hugely inflated sense of their own importance -- there's no way she would give all that up to do school runs and pack lunchboxes -- she sees herself as headed for bigger and better things and she is clearing the way for that juicy new post. I do feel for her family though: to have your mother tell the world you are the most important thing to her and know it isn't really true must really suck.

[EB]

Can I just clarify (for those who are claiming that she'll be off getting lucrative corporate deals or out and about more) that Ruth Kelly has only stepped down from her Ministerial post.

She is still MP for Bolton and will (hopefully) still be working Parliamentary hours to cover her constituency workload.

[Lisa]

"David Cameron seems like a great bloke because he is an unknown". I agree. I read an interview in the FT when he was first voted in, and the interviewer's opinion was that, despite the veneer of being a "reformed" conservative, at heart he is the same as all other conservatives.

I think a major problem is the voting system in the UK, so you effectively only have two parties to choose from and it's only after the current government has messed up spectacularly (and lost most of their supporters) that a new government is voted in, like Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair ...

[Gipsy]

"I'm surprised this blog isn't running a thread on ADHD. Why not? It's a hot topic, contentious and, according to the article below, affects families with alpha career obsessed mummies..."

I do agree that prescribing Ritalin or any drug to treat ADHD isn't right. However, laying the blame, yet again, at the door of the working parent...

My step daughter was (and lets face it, is, they never really grow out of it) hyperactive. She had a stay at home mother, so I think we can safely say that the old 'its all the fault of these mothers who work, why do they have kids if they are just going to pay someone else to look after them' etc isn't the problem.

That isn't to say that two working parents aren't a part of the problem. Guilt can be a very corrosive thing. As a parent, one of the jobs that we have is to teach our children to be responsible for their own actions. A working mother might not be so quick to discipline a naughty child, and instead feel that their working is the reason that the child was playing up so they can't really punish them for something that wasn't their fault... It is a vicious circle and the message being received by the child is that they're not responsible for their own behaviour, someone else is. I can imagine that feels like a) a huge loss of control and b) takes away crucial boundaries that the child would otherwise be able to develop safely within. It also means that the parent doesn't act consistently, one minute they'll tell a child off but on another occasion they won't. Behavourial problems do arise where there's a lack of consistency in the parents behaviour.

[Carlos]

Whimsey: poetry doesn't have to rhyme per se... so don't put yourself down ;-)

Jos: "presenti-ism" (or however it is spelt) is around because employers don't trust employees to work. Not everyone is as committed to working hard as you are - the amount of time lost when people are in the office to personal emails, surfing the web, coffee breaks, posting on blogs *ahem* etc. is scary enough when people are in the office, let alone when they are not. PS: glad that you saw the light re EH...

Re: New Labour vs. Tory - they are all as bad as each other (the irony of course that New Labour is more blue than red). TB brought US-style political spin to our shores, which is now used by everyone to try and get the voting public's attention for more than the sound bite nanosecond. Voting is usually about choosing the lesser of two wrongs - I simply don't believe a politician when they claim to be "a nice honest bloke/lass". To get to where they are, they will have had to dole out their fair share of excrement. Likewise I don't believe that they "want to spend more time with the family" - it has been used too often as a cop out.

[Fred Kite]

Anyone like to open betting on how long it takes before she finds a moneygrubbing corporate committment - I give it six weeks.

[Gipsy]

It is interesting how different people see things differently. I remember a Tory government full of sleaze and corruption. Sure, TB's Labour has its faults, but so far I can't name a single Labour MP that's ended up in prison or been convicted of a crime (there were three Tories that I can think of). I've done really well under Labour, so I can't complain. I have plenty of friends and relatives in other countries, so I've got a lot of comparisons to make, and the lengthy stint of economic stability we've enjoyed here in the UK has not been the case in other parts of the (developed, white) world. As a homeowner I've seen the price of my house soar, as a parent I've enjoyed a lot of benefits (more maternity leave, some subsidies on childcare for example) that have made it possible for me to carry on working (which I doubt I could have otherwise). I have friends on lower incomes, single parent families, who likewise have been able to continue working thanks to the tax credits etc that this government has bought in. My father in law spent the last couple of decades suffering from a very rare illness. He had (apart from one occasion) excellent care under the Labour government, but while the Tories were in power he was stuck in a run down, dirty and under equipped hospital that the Tory government had slated for closure (and it was) as well as closing not just one but two other hospitals within a local distance. Since Labour came into power, the area has got a very nice, new hospital. I know for a fact that my stepson stayed in higher education because of the learning allowance the government hands out to teenagers - simply having that little bit of money that was his own made all the difference. I think he'd have just chucked it and ended up in a dead end job otherwise. Sure not all the policies are good. My stepdaughter ended up with a huge debt because she went to university, for example. But by and large, the comparison between the 80s under the Tories, and the 90s under Labour is a stark contrast.

David Cameron seems like a great bloke because he is an unknown. You have absolutely no idea how he will appear after three or four years in power. DC and the others who are the visible part of the Tory party are just a thin veneer. Scratch the surface and you'll find the old, sleazy, hypocritical, Tories underneath. They care nothing about a good, solid, economy. It might sound like I'm getting old, and heck lets face it, I am, but economic stability is what I want now at this point in my life. I do not believe that the Tories can give it to us. There is no evidence, from any of the previous Tory governments that they can do this for longer than a term. Whereas we got over a decade and a half from a Labour government.

[whimsey]

Susan - hmm. Is that a compliment or an insult?!! (smiling myself). But whatever I wrote, it can't be poetry, because it doesn't rhyme!

Gipsy - no, Thatcherites were not the 'old school' noblesse oblige type of Tory. They were the money-grubbing I'm all right Jack kind, the social darwinist kind. Despicable. New Tories - the DC type - seem different, though of course that could simply be to differentiate themselves from New Labour which has been, of course, the best Tory government this country has had.

DC, whatever his 'real' character, comes across in the media as a 'decent bloke' which TB never managed to do. I have spent the last umpteen years completely bewildered by how so many people seem to have been taken in by TB.

DC does seem to present as someone with a privileged background who has a sense of responsibility and compassion to those less privileged. My worry is that he is simply too 'nice' for politics....

But of course, that might all be just a front. Tricky to say. But it does seem that some politicians do seem to have widely differing impacts on different people. I can't stand most of NuLabour, though I quite liked woman who used to stand up to TB, can't remember who she was now, olh yes, Claire Short, but she cringed in the end to suck up to him like the rest of them. I liked Robin Cook, he seemed to have a mind of his own. I even don't mind Gloomy Gordon too much, simply because he so obviously bitterly resented shiny TB getting the glory after GB had bribed off the bankers.

But the age of NuLabour is over, and as, I think, Disraeli said of Gladstone's cabinet, they sit there on the front bench like a row of exhausted volcanoes. Get them out.

[whimsey]

I'm surprised this blog isn't running a thread on ADHD. Why not? It's a hot topic, contentious and, according to the article below, affects families with alpha career obsessed mummies...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/health/3102539/Why-drugs-arent-always-the-answer-to-ADHD.html