This one’s about childcare. Yup, it’s a biggie. Nope, I won’t be solving it. And yes, I’ll be complaining. Even though no, I can’t even complain that much, because I did have choices (albeit limited). Nine months after the birth of Firstborn-son, after a decent spell of maternity leave (some of it paid, how lucky are we in this country!) I went back to work as a home-birth community midwife. Part-time, set days, because I had a wonderful boss who understood that no nursery in the world would accept a baby based on his mother’s random work schedule. Even though it was the hospital nursery, so all their kids’ mothers, by definition, would have had random work patterns including nights, week-ends and bank holidays. But that wasn’t their problem. I worked Mondays and Tuesdays and every other Sunday. Bank holidays were a proper headache for me as nursery was closed and I’d have to organise (thanks mum and dad) extra childcare each time. It was subsidised but still expensive, it didn’t work if he was sick, and it had rigid opening and closing times. They say it takes a village to bring up a child, and never is this more true than when you’re an on-call midwife who is regularly out for 24 hour stretches. I owe so many people for all the help I got, and my sickness record reflects how lucky I was. I did this for two years and only took a sickie when Firstborn-son got chicken pox. It helped that I was part time, for sure. And it worked while he wasn’t at school (8-6 childcare most days is doable, but 9-3 two thirds of the year is kinda problematic) and he didn’t have a brother. The brother came first. I couldn’t envisage going back to my lovely homebirth team with 2 small kids. We had to be able to trust each other to cover our own on-calls because even without taking on someone else’s cover, we spent many many hours covering that pager. And jumping to it when it went off, day or night. I dreaded letting the team down. Firstborn-son and I had miraculously managed to keep our sick days to my non-work days (there may have been the odd day he went in dosed up with paracetamol…) There was no way 3 of us would manage this impressive feat! I went back to Labour Ward. To their eternal credit, they gave me set days, but that could be partly because I agreed to do nights and week-ends. These were in fact my only option because neither drop off nor pick up times were going to be doable during a 12 hour day shift. And that did work, for a while, from a childcare point of view, that is. It wasn’t many hours but enough to keep the brain juice flowing. I only spent 60% of my earnings on childcare (because yes, I did need to sleep the day after my night shift, and yes, their dad could be trusted with their (basic) survival on the Sundays that I worked). And then school started. The biggest lie we keep telling mothers is that they’ll be able to rejoin the workforce when their children go to school. I beg to differ. School holidays, that’s why. Even if you can get decent wraparound care before 9am and after 3.30pm, good luck with the holidays my friend. Every 6 weeks. Different schools have different dates, so have fun dealing with that extra challenge. Oh, and did I mention inset days? Strikes? Sick days? You, my friend, have to cover all that with your measly 5 weeks of holidays! If there’s 2 of you, you’re still 5 weeks short, even assuming you never have a family holiday. By the time Only Daughter arrived, I’d been doing 2 (nine to five) days of Antenatal clinic (night shifts had defeated me) per week plus every other Sunday on Labour ward for a year, and I’d spend hours of my non working time sorting out childcare for the the school age first born. I spent my work days worrying about not being late for Middle-child’s pick up from nursery, who would fine me if I turned up late. The only way it worked was to cycle (dependable and fast). Middle child and I would tootle off bright and early to his local nursery, then I’d cycle across London to work. So far so good. Since I was supposed to finish at 5pm, I should have been able to cycle back safely, adhering to the rules of the highway code. But since I actually finished late most days, the reality was quite a lot dodgier! Somehow we survived! Childcare happened, brain juice continued to flow. Enter Only Daughter. No amount of juggling/magical thinking would allow me to do school, preschool and nursery drop off and pick up at the best of times, still less if I had to get myself to and from work. So I dropped the Antenatal clinic and just hung on to my 2 Sundays a month. Minimal brain juice, but enough to keep the midwifery registration active. And no childcare costs. Unless you count the cost of mandatory study days. Which you need to do to keep that registration alive. No more school holiday childcare horror. Sorted! Their dad, if you’re asking, was going to his full time job mostly unencumbered by any of this. He left before breakfast, generally returned after the kids’ bath-time. Now, that’s ok, sort of, I mean, midwifery doesn’t pay heaps so someone has to earn the big(ger) bucks. Plus, the measly midwifery bucks get spent on the childcare if you work, so either way, you need a second income. But hang on a second: why is that the norm? Why does a woman end up spending her hard earned cash on childcare for children that she co-parents? Now she has zero free time (she’s still in charge of the groceries, the chores, the bills, general household management. Sure, she can delegate if she has the energy to nag), and zero disposable income for her troubles. Apparently that’s the accepted cost of being allowed to work. If you complain about making a net loss; if you dare to moan about the mental load of organising the childcare; if begging work for sick days/flexible working/working from home is a waste of breath, you can, you lucky woman, always stay home. Look after your kids and, while you’re at it, their dad who is now the only breadwinner and, therefore, a VIP. Which is (according to too many people, both male and female, parents and non parents alike) what you ought to have chosen to do in the first place, obviously. You did choose to have those kids, and if you also chose to go back to work, you can suck it up or shut up.

Thing is, we can’t all be Cheryl Sandberg, leaning in all the way to the top. Not that we shouldn’t encourage our daughters to be like Cheryl, I do actually agree with a great deal of what she says. It’s just that for every Cheryl, you need midwives, doctors, nurseries, and all the rest of the female-supporting infrastructure. Lower-paying jobs that are often done by women. Who themselves have children. Cheryl’s salary will increase as she climbs up the corporate ladder, but her nanny’s salary will not. Cheryl will break even and eventually make a net profit. Her nanny will not. Cheryl can work from home, her nanny cannot. But Cheryl probably doesn’t work from home because she knows that if she is not in the office with her male colleagues, bantering by the water cooler, she will quickly cease to exist and her career will stagnate. Cheryl will lean right in and suffer the commute during which she will be thinking how much home-admin she could be getting on top of, rather than wasting time and money for the privilege of smelling someone’s armpit. She’ll leave before breakfast and get back after bath time. At least her kids will be proud of her. Firstborn son is not proud of me. In his usual brutally honest manner, he informed me (back when I was doing the smallest part time known to womankind, 2 Sundays a month) that I ought to work more. He genuinely could not understand why I didn’t. But obviously he wasn’t volunteering to take his little sister to and from school, offering to take responsibility for her safety, her homework and her nutrition (why would he, he was only around 16, still a child himself). Although he would happily accept a lift to school with said lil sis since I was offering! But his lack of perceptiveness about all the factors that influence such decisions, and all the valuable work that women do to keep the household from disintegrating, is not unique to him. That’s a societal problem which even manages to pit working mothers against the stay at home ones despite the fact we’re all in the same dodgy boat. Sink or swim, we can’t win, whatever we ‘choose’. And our kids will judge us (unfavourably) either way.

Only Daughter started secondary school in September 22 at which point I can proudly proclaim that I upped my hours. It wasn’t always easy at first. But at least it had remained an option over the years. I’m still a midwife. Still part time: let’s face it, I’m still the mother!