I always thought of myself as a feminist. I went to an all girls’ school and my teenage years were filled with reminders of the struggle for suffrage (the right to vote) and demands for equality.
I often wonder if my teenage self would be disappointed that I have ended up a stay at home mum. Yes, I am working part-time but the reality is I am the primary carer looking after them for most of the week instead of working full-time and I know this is not exactly what I had planned.
Eighteen year old me would never have imagined me in this role. The ideas of equality made so much sense to me then. I could have children, and continue in my career and so could my partner. Of course we would split everything evenly, I wouldn’t accept anything less. Except it hasn’t worked out exactly that way and here is why.
My salary wasn’t enough to cover the cost of childcare.
There are two aspects to this. Childcare is astronomically expensive, especially with two children and my salary wasn’t good enough.
The cost of childcare is about to get better for some families with new government funding set to come in in April 2024, but until then, I worked out that even with my partner’s earnings taken into consideration, I would need to earn almost double for us to afford for me to work and pay for childcare and that was never going to happen. I would have been laughed out of the studio at the very suggestion of such a significant pay rise.
My salary wasn’t good enough because it had been the same since I was pregnant with my first son. It had stalled, I believe, because I had children. I have had two pregnancies while working at the same design agency, and two maternity leaves. Going on maternity leave at the wrong time, which apparently I did not once, but twice, meant I was not eligible for annual pay rises or bonuses for the years leading up to my maternity leaves despite working almost all of the calendar years to which they applied. This meant my salary dropped in relation to inflation because I chose to go on maternity leave; because I chose to have children.
This is not considering as well the implication of being pregnant (tired, nauseous, irritable, being absent with many appointments) and the affect this had on my status at work. I believe it affected my ability to get the design projects and get the attention in order to achieve promotion or praise. Throw a child in the mix with flexible working hours and a nursery pick up time which was non-negotiable and it meant I was deemed unreliable. I was never going to impress anyone. I may have done my job well but I didn’t work late, I couldn’t always be as flexible as I would have liked and I couldn’t always show up socially and whilst this may not be a problem on paper, I can tell you in the design industry it is. In fact it may have appeared that I have been quiet quitting since I became pregnant in early 2019, whether that had been my intention or not.
When people talk about equal pay I think of my situation and perhaps it is my biology that has betrayed me. If I hadn’t had children I wouldn’t have missed out on the pay rises, and I would have been able to progress within my career. My partner, who hasn’t been pregnant or taken a large paternity leave has thrived in his career and fast overtook me as the highest earner. In early 2019 before I became pregnant, we were in exactly the same job role and level with a very similar salary. The difference in our salaries when I gave birth to our second child, though, was a significant factor in our decision for me to be the stay at home parent. This could be much the case for many men and women in our industry, as the woman as the person who gave birth, tends to be the person who continues to stay and look after the child for the months after the birth and therefore becomes the person most affected with parental responsibility as the primary care giver.
According to Pregnant then Screwed, even with the gender pay gap as it is, men as the higher earners are much less likely to take paternity leave and lose important financial support for their family.
Starting a family can be an expensive affair, all that new kit plus the time off work required to look after your new family member, can leave many scrimping and scraping so it would make sense that the person who has the least pay would take parental leave. As the gender pay gap currently sits at approximately 19% it is highly unlikely that men will take paternity leave when they are more likely to have the highest income.
Joeli Brearley, Pregnant then Screwed
We never discussed splitting the maternity leave into equal instalments, which you can do in this country, because my company offered me, as the woman and mother, a better deal in terms of additional financial support for that year. This alongside my instinct to be there all the time with the baby that took over almost immediately after giving birth meant it was always going to be me who would become the primary carer.
The nurturing instinct, caused by a mix of hormonal and physical changes, was so intense, I could barely leave the baby’s side for the first few months and it is to be expected in new mothers.
“In new moms, there are changes in many of the brain areas,” Kim continued. “Growth in brain regions involved in emotion regulation, empathy-related regions, but also what we call maternal motivation—and I think this region could be largely related to obsessive-compulsive behaviors. In animals and humans during the postpartum period, there’s an enormous desire to take care of their own child.”
Pilyoung Kim quoted in The Atlantic, What Happens to a Woman’s Brain When She Becomes a Mother (2015)
In the same article Adrienne LaFrance explains that the mix of hormones and physical changes in the brain of the mother encourage her to be mothering and nurturing in a way that doesn’t happen as quickly in men. (Although importantly it does still happen.) It would seem as mothers we are wired to be the primary carer.
In a normal brain, activity in the amygdala grows in the weeks and months after giving birth. This growth, researchers believe, is correlated with how a new mother behaves—an enhanced amygdala makes her hypersensitive to her baby’s needs—while a cocktail of hormones, which find more receptors in a larger amygdala, help create a positive feedback loop to motivate mothering behaviors.
Adrienne LaFrance in The Atlantic, What Happens to a Woman’s Brain When She Becomes a Mother (2015)
Breastfeeding is another way the mother is intrinsically linked to looking after the child. Bottle-feeding is a possibility in order to create a more equal division of labour in the baby’s first year, but I’d be lying if I said it was something I thought was encouraged. The pressure on being able to successfully breastfeed, and better yet exclusively breastfeed falls to the mother early on and it can be very difficult to change things up with the baby once they are settled.
This natural drive to be near to our children along with the practical implications of breastfeeding, and company parental policies favouring mothers means that it is women who are more likely to be the ones who may choose not to go back to work properly, should the decision have to be made.
Joeli Brearley from Pregnant Then Screwed argues that it isn’t our biology that lets us down, but patriarchal values of our society. The government maternity leave scheme, along with private company schemes favour mothers over fathers, meaning that it is women who are much more likely to take the time off in the first few months of the baby’s life and then become the primary care giver.
Parenting is a skill, you learn from experience. Maternal instinct is nonsense and it re-enforces patriarchal values, fathers are just as equipped as mothers to be good parents. As mothers develop these skills whilst on maternity leave they are inevitably better at certain parenting tasks than fathers so the reliance on the mother as primary caregiver continues once she goes back to work.
Joeli Brearley, Pregnant Then Screwed
In my opinion, it is a shame that the company policies that favour mothers to take the maternity leave aren’t then followed by further support and flexibility on their development on returning to work.
The mother staying at home, and inevitably taking on the majority of the household management is something that is viewed and absorbed by our children, male or female, which further encourages it as the status quo for the future.
It makes me wonder then, how we can make it easier for women’s careers to not be so affected by pregnancy and birth, and then being the primary carer of the children. I have a few ideas and I would love to hear yours too:
Pay rises during maternity leave (are new mothers immune to the affects of inflation during their “year off”?)
Eligibility for bonuses and pay rises to be considered despite timing of maternity leave
Support on returning to work enabling flexibility without prejudice. And for the support to be equal for both parents so it is not always the mother that is relied on to be the primary carer.
Easier acceptance socially for fathers to take more of their paternity leave and for this to be reflected in company policies of parental leave which are equally weighted.
More than two weeks paternity leave as standard (here is a campaign for 6 weeks paternity leave from Pregnant the Screwed which I urge you to support.)
Less stigma placed on bottle-feeding as an alternative to breastfeeding. (I think this is getting better but recent rows on formula milk laws only highlight that it isn’t as accepted.)
What do you think? How was your career/work affected by maternity leave?
I’d love to hear your stories, let me know in the comments.
Totally get that 'I'm a feminist but'.. experience of then being the primary carer. It always drives me mad that schools, GP etc always phone me first even when I ask for them to call my husband. Breast feeding definitely makes it harder to share out looking after babies.
Thanks for this piece. It’s all really bloody hard, isn’t it? I never like to think (even rhetorically) about our own biology betraying us. It’s the system. Always the system. Which is so so so fucked right now. I am able to send my youngest to nursery, which is a huge privilege. And I honestly would struggle being a SAHM because it is so so hard. Harder than I ever thought. So I have huge respect for those that are. Because I know what a grind it can be. And don’t get me started on this govt. The maternity/paternity situation is insulting to all people. And to the future wellbeing on subsequent generations. The lack of investment in childcare and teaching reveals how little they want to understand the importance of these early years too. Anyway... I am ranting now. But I am sure there is a world where having children is not so complicated. And the problem is not my biology - it is patriarchy and the class system.
Anyway. Will stop now.