Please stop assuming women with lower salaries are un- or under-educated

[Anonymous]

To 22:01

"personally I don't think yanking my kids out of bed at 6:00 am to get them to Lovin'KinderCare at 6:30 so I could get to work by 7 is really worth the $20K I'd net by working full time (after paying taxes and the cost of said daycare)."

Oh, I totally agree. But at least you're not blaming society for being inflexible, but saying it's not worth it to your family for you to work for $20K net No disagreement at all. I wouldn't work full time unless it changed my family's lives all for the better in a significant, game changing way.

[Anonymous]

To 19:11

"I would find it hard to believe that a man on this forum would attack a woman over her choice of flexibility in work life in return for a lower salary. "

No attack. I see why lots of mothers make that tradeoff.

[Anonymous]

To 21:14 - live in au pair for the school year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To 18:30

poster says it's society's fault for not giving her the option to work in her profession, other than beginning at 7 am. I say it's not society's fault. I'd like her to explain why it's society's fault, since I threw out three possible ways to make it work.

Are you the one referring to my post regarding start time and not being able to find childcare at the butt crack of dawn? If so, I never mentioned society.

[Anonymous]

What did you mention?

You said you couldn't work full time because all jobs in your field start at 7 am.

[Anonymous]

"personally I don't think yanking my kids out of bed at 6:00 am to get them to Lovin'KinderCare at 6:30 so I could get to work by 7 is really worth the $20K I'd net by working full time (after paying taxes and the cost of said daycare)."

Somes kids are at the school bus stop at 6:30 am. Is it worth it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To 21:14 - live in au pair for the school year?

While I probably shouldn't generalize, we had friends who went through 3 au pairs. One took the car for a weekend and put hundreds of miles on it w/o their permission - not to mention partying into the early morning hours on a work night. Another one got into a terrible car accident (with kids in the car), and a third ended up being diagnosed with some psychological disorder.

They found a nanny instead who was an older, local lady in her 50s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"personally I don't think yanking my kids out of bed at 6:00 am to get them to Lovin'KinderCare at 6:30 so I could get to work by 7 is really worth the $20K I'd net by working full time (after paying taxes and the cost of said daycare)."

Somes kids are at the school bus stop at 6:30 am. Is it worth it?

Yeah but school-age kids are older.

Further the nearest Kindercare is at least 45 minutes from my house (just looked it up) so definitely not an option for everyone if work is in the other direction. Waking a toddler at 5:00 to leave the house by 5:30 and get to Kindercare by 6:15 and thus work by 7 is not good common sense if you can avoid it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To 22:01

"personally I don't think yanking my kids out of bed at 6:00 am to get them to Lovin'KinderCare at 6:30 so I could get to work by 7 is really worth the $20K I'd net by working full time (after paying taxes and the cost of said daycare)."

Oh, I totally agree. But at least you're not blaming society for being inflexible, but saying it's not worth it to your family for you to work for $20K net No disagreement at all. I wouldn't work full time unless it changed my family's lives all for the better in a significant, game changing way.

PP, I have been a bit confused trying to follow what I assume is you and your argument on this thread. It's tough to know who is making whhich argument, because it's all just "anonymous".

But I haven't seen people blaming "society" for their part time work decisions or saying that they "can't " work full time very much. Maybe someone used the word "can't" (don't feel like coming therough all the posts" or wished jobs could be more flexible with regards to start time, but that's hardly blaming society for all life's ills.

I think a lot of us who could be working full time, but aren't, agree that we COULD find some way to work full time, and make sure our children were somewhere, in some kind of care, but that the tradeoff isn't worth it to us, for the salary we would earn. As the kids get older, enter full time school, the tradeoffs might seem more manageable. If my child were 4, I woud not want to have to wake her at 5:30 AM to take her to care by 6:30 If my child were 12, I might be more willing to do that if I had to.

I think most of us agree with your last statement -- bolded -- we wouldn'tt work full time unless the benefits were worth it to us and our family. For a lot of people, working full time is working out great for them. ESPECIALLY if they are earning a high salary, or have job flexiblity, or have a spouse with a flexible job. It seems the people who are making 2 full time jobs work best are those where one parents goes in early and the other parent stays late -- thus allowing them to share drop off/pick up duties.

For those of us in more low income fields, who have jobs with less flexibility, or have spouses with non-flexible jobs... the calculus is completely different. I don't see it as blaming society to wish that things could be different in these situations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"personally I don't think yanking my kids out of bed at 6:00 am to get them to Lovin'KinderCare at 6:30 so I could get to work by 7 is really worth the $20K I'd net by working full time (after paying taxes and the cost of said daycare)."

Somes kids are at the school bus stop at 6:30 am. Is it worth it?

Jeez, that's early! I hope it is worth it to them.

My elementary school child catches the bus at 7:45 and THAT seems early to me!

One thing though is that you really can't count of the school bus as part of your child care plan, so to speak. The bus can be late and sometimes very late, and you can't just drop your kid off by the bus stop and drive to work. A responsible adult needs to be there or be available to drive the kid to school (in our case it is very far away -- kid can't really walk himself there.)

[Anonymous]

To 5:54

I agree with your entire post.

"It seems the people who are making 2 full time jobs work best are those where one parents goes in early and the other parent stays late -- thus allowing them to share drop off/pick up duties."

...unless it's a family that can afford full time (50 hours a week) childcare. That's the norm among families I know, which are families with dual WOHPs with HHI of $300,000 +.

[Anonymous]

I've found a surprising amount of flexibility among employers since I became a mom. Of course, I don't make $100,000. I think for jobs in the five figures, employers are pretty flexible if the work is office work.