Helen Gurley Brown had been the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine for two decades when she wrote the book ‘Having it all: Love, Success, Sex, Money’ in 1982. Amongst other topics, her book offered advice on how women should successfully navigate relationships, sex, marriage, career and making money. The book was an instant bestseller. The term ‘having it all’ became a feminist mantra synonymous with holding down a successful career whilst simultaneously raising a brood of happy children AND having a spotless home.
I was a child of the Thatcher era. Women were marching in their shoulder-padded blazers into traditionally male occupations in their thousands. My generation grew up being told we could do anything. That gender was no barrier to success. We had a female prime minister, for god’s sake! Not striving for career success feels like a betrayal of the feminists who have fought so hard for our equal rights. Why, then, nearly 40 years after the book’s publication, are mothers still dropping out of the workplace? Can we really have it all? Do we even want to?
The reality….
I am a member of many parenting groups on Facebook and the like. Every day, without fail, someone posts something like, ‘My baby is almost eight months old. I am DREADING returning to work’. This blog will explore why.
My first maternity leave with my daughter was absolute bliss. I threw myself into my new role as a mother. We (like most couples in the UK) decided that I should take the year of maternity leave, rather than split it with my husband. We did this primarily for financial reasons – my husband is the higher earner. We couldn’t afford to take a cut in his salary. Still, after over four years of trying to have a baby, my daughter was finally here. I didn’t want to miss a second of her. I loved being a mum, but people are not wrong when describing parenting as ‘the hardest job in the world’.
According to Inc., a year of breastfeeding equates to a conservative estimate of 1,800 hours of a mother’s time. This isn’t far off from a full-time job, considering that a 40-hour workweek with three weeks of vacation comes in at 1,960 hours of work time a year. My daughters were still breastfeeding at regular intervals, only a couple of weeks before my return to work. Neither child accepted pumped milk from a bottle. I remember the stress of trying to wean them off their daytime feeds, knowing I was back at work the following week. This was all whilst seeing Facebook updates from the World Health Organisation, advocating continued breastfeeding until age 2. The mum guilt was building, and we haven’t even discussed childcare yet…
The World Economic Forum states that access to affordable, high-quality childcare can be one of the main things determining whether working mothers continue their careers. They continue that in all but a few countries, women are far more likely to stay at home, work part-time or put their careers on hold, and this is just one factor that feeds into the gender equality gap.
In 2018, World Economic Forum data showed that New Zealand had the world’s highest childcare costs based on a percentage of a couple’s annual earnings at 37.3%. The UK was a close second at 35.7%. The US is in third place at 33.2%.
My second daughter was the loveliest surprise I have ever had. She was born only 19 months after my first daughter. Having struggled to conceive my first child, I knew how lucky I was to have conceived my second so quickly, but having two under two is not just challenging in all the usual ways you can imagine. It is also twice as expensive to return to work.
For full disclosure, my last salary when I had my second daughter was just shy of £26,500 p/a for a 3-day week. Great – I hear you say. What is she complaining about? And I agree with you – before children, my salary was good. I’m aware many people are much worse off. My husband and I had lovely holidays, nice meals out, etc. Then, children come along. A lot of that salary starts getting swallowed up by all the baby paraphernalia you buy. Most, however, (and then some) get taken up by childcare fees.
My local nursery (like many in London and the Home Counties) charges £92.40 per child per day! For 2 children under 3 to attend 3 days a week, I would have to fork out £2,402.40 per month. This was more than our mortgage. It was way more than the £1,650 I received each month after tax. Therefore, I would have to pay for the privilege of going to work to the tune of £800 per month – more if I worked additional days thanks to my fixed daily costs but increased tax bill. That is before factoring in my train fare of circa £15 per day. If you want to know why some women drop out of the workplace, there is your answer right there!!!
I can hear some of you shouting that childcare costs should be a joint burden shared equally between parents. I agree with you. My husband and I have had a joint bank account for all our incomings and outgoings since we got married. We managed to just about survive on his salary alone at the end of my maternity leave, which was unpaid. To be out of pocket by £800 per month on a return to work is unaffordable for most families. Work should always pay. To expect families to be out of pocket if both parents work is unfair and unrealistic. Like many of our friends, we don’t have family close by whom we can rely on to help with childcare. For many women on low to average wages, having family support with childcare is the only way to make work pay. So many of my friends worked for a loss when their children were small. Many subsequently decided they couldn’t afford more children or a small age gap.
I don’t believe childcare costs are the sole reason some women step back from their careers after having children. I think the long hours culture in the UK is also not conducive to positive family life. Before Covid, I was expected to be in the office for eight and a half hours per day. Like most families, we couldn’t afford to live anywhere near said office, so in addition to my working hours, I had a two-and-a-half-hour round commute. That equates to 11 hours per day. This is a long day out of the house for anyone, but especially for young babies and children. The baby books tell us that 1-year-old babies (when many women return to work) need about 12 hours of sleep per night. Therefore, I had a precious hour with my children on my working days. The hour was spent rushing to get them fed, bathed and to bed. It was not quality time – but the worst hour when everyone was tired after a busy day apart.
The Solution
In the article ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All’, written by Anne-Marie Slaughter and published in the Atlantic in 2012, Slaughter wrote I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do. Still, men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job.
I confess – the maternal instinct has been strong for me. Since having children, I’m a woman who has wanted to put my family first. I have probably given my husband a comparatively easy ride because of this. He has been able to focus more on his career, knowing that I am in the background dealing with a lot of day-to-day drudgery, such as childcare. This doesn’t mean I want to be ‘just a housewife’. Although I appreciate some women love being ‘stay-at-home mums’ and that society should place more value on women’s unpaid work. Personally, though, I would like a career that flexes around my family’s needs as much as possible. The dream to ‘have it all’ is still there. I, however, don’t feel this should translate to ‘doing it all’.
How, therefore, can we prevent women with strong maternal instincts from dropping out of the workplace entirely? A loss not only to them and their families from an economic standpoint but also to employers who have invested time and money in them? It is also a loss to society that loses out on tax receipts in the long run.
The first step should surely be to look at the childcare funding model that is in place in the UK. I confess I am only commenting from a parent’s perspective rather than as a childcare funding expert. Still, at present, most parents only receive financial support for childcare costs after their child reaches 3. With maternity leave finishing when the child reaches 1, this leaves a 2-year shortfall. Many parents are then out of pocket returning to work. I remember Jeremy Corbyn proposed free childcare for all children from the age of 2 in his 2017 general election manifesto. He got mauled by Emma Barnett on the radio because he couldn’t say precisely how much this would cost. I am by no means a Jeremy Corbyn fan, but I think some of this criticism may have been unfair.
As mentioned, many of my friends have been out of pocket by choosing to return to work. By returning, they play what is known as ‘the long game’. In taking a hit to their finances now, they hope they will be better off in the long run because they will have maintained their position on the career ladder. Once their children start school, they hope to spend more time at work with fewer childcare costs.
I feel the government (and many employers) should take a leaf out of their book. Although there will be an initial cost to the government for subsidising childcare from a younger age, women will be less likely to drop out of the workplace. This will result in increased tax receipts paid to the treasury over time.
According to Coram Family and Childcare, new findings from the ongoing Study of Childcare and Development (SEED) suggest that more frequent use of formal childcare leads to better outcomes for children…. The researchers saw beneficial outcomes for children associated with higher amounts of childcare for both advantaged and disadvantaged children. This suggests that regardless of a child’s household income, childcare benefits their development.
The government also receives a good return on investment if better funding for our childcare sector results in children being less likely to need additional (and costly) support at school, performing better academically, and subsequently securing themselves a better-paid (and higher taxed) position in the future. Only looking at the initial costs is a short-sighted view.
Returning to work flexibly would also take a lot of pressure off new parents. I know why some of my fellow mothers write that they dread returning to work. After being with your baby every day for a year, the end of maternity leave can loom like a cliff-edge deadline. To return to the office and suddenly be apart from your baby for 10-11 hours per day, 4-5 days a week, can feel like losing a limb. At a year old, many babies are still breastfeeding and not sleeping through the night. It is a tiring and emotional time for all involved. To leave a sobbing baby at nursery as you dash off to catch your train is heartbreaking. Some of my friend’s babies cried every day for a year. The level of guilt you feel is immense.
If, as a society (in those jobs that allow), we lose the focus on presenteeism and offer more flexibility in terms of working patterns, parents would be better able to work more effectively around their family’s needs. To be away from your child for 10 hours a day, 4 to 5 days a week, is tough. It is even tougher for a baby to spend that much time away from their parents. Referring to the Coram Family and Childcare article, the SEED study also showed that children who received more than 35 hours per week of childcare in nursery or childminder settings were more likely to lose their temper and act aggressively.
As parents, we all know there has to be a balance between how much time children spend away from home and childcare settings for their own well-being and development. That is why many parents choose to drop out of the workplace entirely if their flexible working request is denied. Working for a shorter but more focused shift during the day, with the flexibility to catch up on emails in the evening, would undoubtedly be an attractive proposition to many mothers. I know I would feel less daunted putting my child into a childcare setting for a 6 instead of 10-hour day.
In my last blog post, The Elephants in the Room, I wrote that ‘Pregnancy, maternity leave and children should not be dirty words’. I discussed how children are rarely acknowledged in the corporate world. I would have loved to have spoken to a mum who had come through the other side about how hard it would be to return to work but that the initial struggle would be worthwhile in the end. This would have motivated me to stick with it – even when the drop-offs were tough. This is why I advocate for all parents-to-be (male and female) to be given a workplace mentor. In an ideal world, this mentor would occasionally check in with the employee during their paternity leave, be around for an informal coffee during Keeping in Touch (KIT) days and act as a sounding board when the employee returned to work. This connection would reduce the number of parents who drop out of the workplace after children. It would help employees settle back into the workplace more quickly and efficiently.
In 2013, Madeleine Albright, the first female US Secretary of State, was quoted as saying, “I do think women can have it all,” she said, “but not all at the same time”. Erica Komisar, author of Being There: Why Prioritising Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters, has a similar view to Albright. She also states that life is not linear, and the most interesting adventures happen when you get off the beaten track. I can personally attest that this is true. The work I have been doing with Investing in Women since my redundancy has been the most exciting and fulfilling work I have done in a long time.
My view is this: how work is currently structured – nobody can have it all. You get to the end of your maternity leave and must make a choice. Do you want to return to work full-throttle and continue climbing up the career ladder – in which case, sacrifice time with your children? Or do you want to take the ‘mummy track’, which means more time with your family but less opportunity to progress at work?
Dee Dee Myers, the first female White House Press Secretary, explained that her career had consisted of chapters. Maybe recognising that the period of time when children are small is a short chapter in the story of their parent’s career will encourage employers to offer more flexible (yet rewarding) work during this life stage – knowing their employees can come back full throttle when their child is older and more independent? I would love to see more employers offering higher profile part-time AND progressive positions so that women wouldn’t need to make this choice. This would help retain women and their skills in the workplace. It would, in turn, contribute to more senior women at the board level down the line. This is key to reducing the gender pay gap and improving equality in the workplace.
I hope you have enjoyed this week’s post. If you have enjoyed (or even hated) this blog post, please share it with your friends and networks.
And if you are a mum about to return to work after maternity leave or an extended career break, read the blog post – The secrets to a successful return to work after maternity leave for a smooth and stress-free return. I wrote this post with Return to Work Coach Extraordinaire – Lizzie Martin (aka Work Life Mother). This blog post covers Lizzie’s top 5 steps to consider when planning your return to work, ensuring you return more successfully and with less stress after maternity leave.
And don’t forget to check out all the family-friendly part-time, flexible and work-from-home jobs listed on our jobs board – Investing in Women.