In our weekly series Christine Armstrong, the author of The Mother Of All Jobs: How To Have Children, A Career And Stay Sane, unpicks the myths around being a working mother and asks: is having a work/life balance an impossible dream?
When I start to talk about my book, someone will often quickly interrupt, sometimes in the chippy tone that suggests they are about to catch me snoozing, with ‘yeah, but what about the dads?’. The irony is that I am most often invited to companies to talk to women’s groups, rather than mixed or leadership groups, so few men ever get to hear my answer.
After years of interviewing parents, including many dads at different stages of their careers, what I have learnt from dads boil mostly down into two things. The first is that they don’t generally feel like the winners in the parenting and work conundrum - any more than the women do. The second is that the pressures they face are different both socially and at work.
Take Darcia and David who are in their late twenties as an example. She’s pregnant with their first child and they are both keen for David to take shared parental leave. He earns less than her so they think it makes sense for him to take least four months. He raised this with his fifty-something male boss who looked appalled and said “Mate, are you getting a lot of pressure from your Mrs or something? What you do, what I did, is take a few days and get back to work”. David had hoped that the fact his business had recently paid beyond statutory minimum to a woman in the team on parental leave might mean that he might get enhanced financial support. But his boss scoffed at the idea that a woman could set a precedent for a man in this situation.
The issue has yet to be resolved and they expect a compromise on the leave, though not the money, but David is really worried that his career has taken a hit from even expressing his desire to be a more equal parent. Darcia is also pissed off as, since this conversation, David has gone into a seasonal analysis of when the least-worst time professionally for him to take paternity leave will be. A luxury that she, as the pregnant one, cannot even imagine.
The problem for this couple, and many of us, is that we are caught in a shift between two generations and different ways of working. The old ‘male breadwinner’ model, when men like David’s boss needed to give little thought to caring or kids because their partners were at home to do it, and the younger generation, where dual income families are to be expected. Some of the older generation (and, let’s call it here, some younger men as well) have zero desire to get knee-deep in the dirty nappies or childcare. But most of the next generation understands that if both parents are going to need to work for them to survive financially then both will also have to parent. Even more importantly, many want to do more than their fathers did. But some find that when they try, they don’t get the support they hoped for.
Another male boss I interviewed said, “We had a colleague whose wife wouldn’t let him miss a single parents’ evening or nativity play. I think he got the balance wrong and his performance suffered as a result, but I’m sure others would think that’s a harsh judgement. He certainly caused a lot of resentment among his colleagues.” It’s notable that he, like David’s boss above, assumes that the only reason a father would choose to do these things is because his partner pressured him into it.
“Flexible work in my business is something mums do, it’s odd for men to even talk about it,” says one accountant dad ruefully, unsure how to break out of this without giving up on his career progression. Similarly, many dads report difficult experiences of being the main carer for their children, and feeling excluded by the ‘mum gang’ and finding themselves socially isolated and depressed.
But what’s also notable is that, among of this older generation of dads, are some who have come to rather resent the flexibility that women are allowed at work while they have been locked into the ‘provider’ role. One dad - who has divorced since we first spoke - said: “The pressure to pay for everything means I work long hours that leaves no space for me to do the things I want and there is absolutely no sense that this is a deal where my time will come. I’d happily cut back on our life to escape this – selling the family house, anything – but I know it’s not even a conversation my wife would have. “
Reflecting on these different strands, another dad explained how he sees the great missed opportunity of our working lives:
“My view is that in the attempt to establish equality for women, women felt (and society has come to demand in terms of the need for two incomes) women they needed to be more like men. Now both men and women have to have full-time jobs and men are doing more of the “home” work, but often not their fair share. This means there is now more pressure and more work and more stress in average families…. The point is, one income used to be enough for a family to live on. Men did all the work out of the home and got money and women did all the work in the home and got no money. So there was a chance for men and women to both work part time to get that single income (but getting half the money each) and have both enjoy the challenge of work and time spent with their children. That would have been a more progressive solution to the battle for equality. The tragedy is that most families I know would leap at this solution if they could today, but a single income is no longer enough to live on so men and women are both stuck.’
We might indeed feel stuck but it’s surely worth deeply thinking about what he says and exploring if we could find a better way of combining working, parenting (and all other kinds of caring) and relationships. It strikes me that better answers will be found if we all – not just the women in the women’s groups – start talking about it together
For more about Christine's work visit christinearmstrong.com