Do we not trust men with the kids?

A study today for the Telegraph with the title Most Young Women 'Want to Have it All' caught my eye

Now, I can't pretend that I am one of the young women interviewed, as I sadly no longer fall into the 18 to 35 year old age bracket (ahem), and I can only assume that most women interviewed were early on in their careers and did not yet have families. I have to say though, that a number of points in the following paragraph did get my back up:


"However, the poll of over 1,000 young people reveals fewer women than men are willing to have their partner stay at home to look after the kids while they went out to work, suggesting those that do want to run their own business also want to play the role of housewife and mother - "having it all".


(Firstly, the assumption that women "play" the role of mother. Parenting in any form is not a role you can play. It is something that becomes a part of your persona, whether you like it or not, whether you stay at home, or whether you go out to work, whether you are a mother or a father. OK, we'll let that one slide...)

I am mainly interested that the conclusion drawn from the fact that women are less likely to be willing to have men stay at home and look after the children is that somehow this means all women are aiming to be superwomen - "having it all". Again, I do not have access to the details of the study, but the most interesting question in my mind that wasn't asked, is why this might be the case?

I am of course purely speculating, but for me, it comes down to the fact that we still live in a society where a man staying at home to look after the children is a rarity. Is it therefore just an assumption that women make without much thought? How much did the responses come from a place of "oh, he won't want to anyway"? Or is it the fact that the phrase "having it all" is only ever mentioned in conjunction with women making us into control freaks who feel we somehow should be doing it all, without letting men get a look in?

I remember joking with my friends before I had children that I would not necessarily want my husband to stay at home with the children, not because I thought he would not be able to take care of them, but because I was worried that he would not understand my expectation that not only should he be taking care of the kids, but also taking care of the house. (With hindsight I can only laugh about my naivety in thinking it was possible to get ANYTHING else done when small children were around!)

After I went back to work in the first few months of my eldest daughter's life, we did share some of the childcare and both worked four days a week - he had Mondays off, I had Fridays off - so I came to eat my words. Because, guess what? It turned out that our daughter didn't perish - he managed to feed her, clothe her, change her perfectly adequately. On some occasions, he even managed a load or two of ironing. (Shock!).

I do know of some women who cannot bear to leave their children with the fathers for even an afternoon, at least without worrying massively. It then becomes a vicious circle - the kids never spend time alone with their dads, therefore dad has less clue about the practicalities, therefore mum is more convinced that he "can't take care of them".

Nobody is born a good parent. We all learn as we go along, muddling through as best we can. While it's true that making mistakes where kids are concerned can have more serious consequences than with other examples, we can only really get there with experience. Parenting is hard enough without one party not trusting the other with the kids. It helps if you are on the same page.

I hope, for the sake of the young women in the study, and the future fathers of any children they might have, that they will change their minds and see that the only way to truly "have it all" is with support from both parents involved. If that means conceding that it's ok for men to stay at home to look after the kids, maybe it's time for women to accept that fact.

Source

Review - Team Barbie

I'll be the first to admit that I have a love-hate relationship with Barbie. The feminist in me blames her for the pinkification of girls' toys that seems to have taken place over the last twenty years - a subject I could rant on about for hours, but which might have to wait for another post. The problem is, however, that there is an eight-year old girl inside me that comes out to play and gets very nostalgic about certain toys that I remember fondly from my childhood, of which Barbie is one (Lego and Playmobil being the other two).

Does every girl remember her first Barbie? My first - and only (they were expensive in those days!) - Barbie was "Superstar Barbie" complete with feather boa, long evening gown, necklace and earring, and star-shaped stand. My daughters are spoilt in that even at their young age, thanks to friends and relatives they own several dolls each. When the guys at Mattel therefore offered me a full set of the new Team Barbie dolls in exchange for a review, I hesitated slightly as to whether they would actually be appreciated or not!

It cannot have escaped anybody's notice that there is a large sporting event taking place in London over the summer, and just in time four new Barbie dolls with a sporting theme have been released (although not official O.l.y.m.p.i.c.s merchandise) - a swimmer,

a hurdler,

 a gymnast

and a tennis player.

The last three are similar in terms of construction , all having jointed limbs that bend at the arms and the legs for added movement (a vast improvement on the rubbery bendy legs that some Barbies have, I must say).

The swimmer doll differs slightly from the rest of the collection in that it not only comes with its own dog, but in that both dog and doll possess a clockwork windup mechanism that means they both actually swim. I have to say this was definitely a big hit - not only with my daughters at bathtime, but also for my husband, who took great delight in setting both figures up and racing them around the bath, exclaiming that they swam so much better than a lot of the wind-up toys we used to have at bath time. Whilst more expensive than the other three dolls, this little gimmick definitely made swimming Barbie the favourite of the four.

Even if she does have a pink swimming costume.

If Women Ruled the World

President Tarja Halonen

PM Mari Kiviniemi

If women ruled the world, things would all be different, right?

In June this year, Finland elected its second female Prime Minister. This came on top of already having the country's first female President. Hardly earth-shattering, you might say - we are not talking about a global superpower after all.

Don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with the details of Finland's political shenanigans (this lot have had more practice at coalition governments than the current UK coalition have had hot dinners and to be honest I don't understand the slightest bit about it). No, what really interested me is what having both a female head of government and a female head of state actually means for the day-to-day running of the country. Is it noticeable? 

Frankly, I don't really know. Having recently spent two weeks on holiday there doesn't really give me any sort of expertise on the subject. I would hardly say there was a significant "women are ruling this country" vibe, but then Finland is a pretty different sort of culture anyway. The truth of the matter is that Finland is one of the most gender-equal countries in the world (coming 3rd overall in the 2007 Global Gender Gap report by the World Economic Forum, and having recently been declared Best Country in the World by Newsweek, based on a number of factors, one of which was Gender Equality- the UK coming 14th overall).

Given all of that maybe we should not expect to see too much change in Finland with both a female head of state and head of government. 

Let's take a look back at Britain's first and only dalliance with a female Prime Minister. Love or hate her (and she certainly seems to polarise opinion), there is no doubt that Margaret Thatcher certainly made an impact on the country. Whether she made a positive impact on women in politics is another question. Just a simple google search for this article seems to point to disappointment that her ascension to power did little or nothing to encourage more women to enter politics.  At one point Thatcher said: "I owe nothing to Women's Lib."

Every now and then for the tiniest split second, I get the mad idea in my head that I would like to enter politics - to make a difference and somehow do "my bit". Of course, if I think about it for more than that split-second, I realise that what I really mean is that I feel I should do more in my community - "politics with small p". The thought of party politics is pretty abhorrent to me. I don't think I'm thick-skinned enough, and I'm too easily swayed by other people's arguments! From talking to my friends and acquaintances about it, I think a lot of women feel the same.  

It won't stop me wondering though - what would it really be like if women ruled the world? Yes, it probably would be different, but are we really so naive as to think that all the problems of the human race would be solved? I for one doubt it - after all, when we can get so caught up in what is the right or wrong way to have and bring up children (see here for Gappy's excellent recent post on a similar subject if you have not already done so), you do have to wonder how we are ever going to agree amongst ourselves what the answer to society's ills are.

I don't know the answer. The fatalist in me thinks that the human race would probably still bumble along in more or less the same way - always genetically inclined to argue, fight and generally make a mess of the planet. The optimist in me would like to think that things would be that little bit better - I just wonder whether we will ever find out.

Which side of the fence do you fall on?