Precipices and canyons

Since I last posted in early December over 7ft of snow has fallen in Campusville; one American President has come back from the precipice; two Middle Eastern Heads of State have been pushed over the precipice; and a little person I know has started skating a little too close to the edge for my liking.  

Little Teadrinker has officially reached the ‘pre-toddler’ phase. In many ways its been a magical whirlwind.  Where there were gurgles there are now genuine giggles; where arms reached out there are now heartfelt cuddles; where there were indiscriminate smiles, well remembered friendships are now formed.  Every day a new word. From the fragile helpless little baby, a multi-faceted human being is emerging and I feel myself falling deeper in love by the hour.   

Yet in spite of this, the idea of continuing as a stay-at-home mom is losing its appeal. In my naivety I’d imagined that bumptiousness, bossiness and bloodcurdling tantrums were reserved for the ‘terrible twos’.  The reality of mealtimes with a just turned one-year-old evolving into forty minute food fights, and attempts to put snowsuits and mittens on being met with a head butt has taken me by surprise. In peacetime the job is only marginally less demanding - the library visits and toy-shop sing-alongs that used to pleasantly break up the days now involve complex negotiations, chasing up and down isles and frantic efforts to put things back on shelves. To top it off, the nanny who we have been sharing with another family for a few hours a week has quit, citing artistic differences...  

So, where do we go from here?  Mr TD and I have concluded that the best scenario would be for one or both of us to go part-time and combine this with part-time nursery care. This would allow me my sanity, not to mention the chance to reclaim salary and career, and give LTd more of the social stimulation she craves whilst maintaining the one-to-one time she still seems to rely on.  

But if I’m looking for a decent part-time position anywhere round here, my luck is likely to be out.  In contrast to the UK, where workers have a legal right to request flexible work (albeit limited) and the most common pattern in two-parent families with children under-14 is that one parent works part-time, most American moms - and dads - face a stark all or nothing choice when it comes to combining work and family life. 

Other than for a few high income occupations such as pediatric medicine, most part-time opportunities offer vastly inferior pay and conditions. There is no requirement for parity of pay for part-time work and it has been proven that, for the lip service corporate America pays to ‘family friendly working’, even those women who take-up offers to take more flexilble or shorter hours find themselves discriminated against and overlooked for promotions.  Under these conditions, it is little surprise that most  moms feel they have little option than to bite the bullet, going back to work full-time and accepting the long hours (often 50+pw), limited holiday and family sacrifice that entails.  Meanwhile, the minority of educated professional moms who choose to stay at home have long been fetishized in the American media as self-sacrificial ‘opt outs’ - a trend started in 2003 with a NYTimes article by Lisa Belkin  which ignited major feminist debate. 

In well-to-do Campusville, the cultural divide between stay-at-home moms and worker moms is plain to see. I have a vague memory of this dynamic from when my own mum used to complain about the ‘worker mums’ who’d patronise her at North London dinner parties in the early 80s.  But I’ve not encountered anything like it at home yet since reaching the motherhood age, and can only think that its disappearance must be down to the rise of part-time working as a life-style choice in the UK.  Here, by contrast, it can be hard to escape the group politics (small ‘p’).  Feminist stand-points aside, each camp has their own set of support groups, their children often don’t mix until they reach school age and if you raise the subject of the ‘other’ with either it won’t be long before disparaging or perplexed comments are muttered.

Of course, the stay-at-home/worker-mom chasm is not the only division that is made wider by the poor prospects for part-time workers.  New analysis from UMass shows that low income women face the greatest ‘motherhood penalty’ in terms of earnings - and largely this is down to dropping their hours.  The authors speculate that low paid women who overcome the initial childcare conundrum and stick it out at work often quit altogether later on to accommodate family crises, lacking sufficient paid time off. Interestingly, the same study finds that there is a fatherhood income premium which is also linked to hours worked - in other words, as women drop out of the labour market, or accept poorly paid part-time work, dads are having to work longer.  It's the traditional breadwinner model plus.

Improved part-time work opportunities would help our family out, but I don't pretend they offer a panacea for gender equality - just look at the state of the remaining gender pay-gap in the UK.  Yet if US employers and regulators could get to grips with the issue they'd be swiping a significant blow at gender, class and cultural divisions all in one shot.

New York, New York

Hello from a sunny Union Square, Manhattan. We’ve come here for a couple of days as Mr TD has a conference on. Its the first time I’ve visited New York as a mum and I’ve found the city surprisingly family friendly. There’s an astonishing amount of stuff on for kids, crossing the road with a pram has proved far easier than doing so without one and a number of locals have even found time to stop and coo at Little Teadrinker. They are also positively brimming with parenting advice. So far this morning I’ve had: “Your baby needs to get oudda da sun”, “You awda cover her feet”, “Dat’s bread ain’t sowft enough for her”... Its at least reassuring to know that, despite American aversion to nanny statism, Hilary Clinton’s favourite African proverb has some currency round here: “It takes a village city to raise a child”.

Sadly, my enthusiasm for the city appears to shared by ever smaller proportions of those living here. Two million New Yorkers have left the State over the past decade and census data shows that New York leads the nation with net out-migration of 20 to 35 year olds. In other words, many are going at about the time they start to think about becoming parents.

What’s driving the exodus? The picture those I've spoken to paint feels familiar enough to me as a Londoner. People with kids leave Manhattan, and then New York looking for more space. They leave because childcare is expensive and they’re nervous about the public school system. And they leave because they want to be able to afford to spend less time with their nose to the grind stone, and more with their children.

A quick look at home economics suggests that the pressures on New York families could well be more accute than for their counterparts in London. The University of Washington, who calculate the New York “Self-Sufficiency Standard” every year, find that to get by with a basic standard of living a Brooklyn family with two adults, a school-aged child, and a preschooler, for example, needs to earn $68,288 a year ($5,691 a month).  That works out as $16.17 (£10.13) per hour for each adult and is more than what half the workers in the city earn.  The Greater London Authority’s London Living Wage, which is the London equivalent, is by contrast pegged at a mere £7.85 ($12.53) per hour. And of course, Londoners on low wages are likely to be able to access a far greater range of benefits and tax breaks. In the US, financial support for a family of this size doesn't generally kick in until they have an income of less than around $22k - less than one-third of the Self-Sufficiency Standard.

In the aftermath of "The Great Recession", prospects for turning this round don't look heartening. Job creation is a major New York Mid-term election issue, but from a glance at the campaign literature low wages and the high cost of living don’t even figure. Lets hope the political masters turn their attention to the issue before the rush out of New York becomes a stampeed...

Motherhood & Apple Pie

Little Teadrinker has just made it successfully through her first full week in daycare.  After 8 months at home together it feels like a wrench, but looking at the moms around Campusville I'm reminded of how lucky we've been. The UK maternity deal may be average by European standards but it wipes the floor with the measly twelve weeks of unpaid job protected leave on offer to American women (and that’s thanks only to the relatively recent efforts of the Clinton Administration).  The US is the only Western country where women have no statutory right to paid maternity leave.  

You'd be forgiven for assuming that America's less appealing national traits are rooted in this epic failure to support parent/baby bonding in the critical first year of life.  But it doesn't seem so. According to the Professor teaching the sophomore psychology course I’ve been auditing, around 2/3 of children are “securely attached” – i.e. when stressed they go to their primary care giver for reassurance - and this is consistent across Europe and the US.    

So how come US children seem unaffected by such early separation?  A recent US study suggests that going back to work brings benefits to income, relationships and mental health that outweigh the negative effects *. That sounds like apple pie, but I can't help thinking there must be more to it.  A couple of features of family life on Campusville give pause for thought...

First, the moms here hug their babies tight.  Baby-sling wearing is such big business that the European designer pram fetish seems to have passed many by. I've not seen a single Bugaboo, or for that matter a single newborn in a pram. According to the New York Times there are now at least 30 companies promoting designer baby carriers in the US, and between 2006 and 2008 sales of carriers rose 43% . 

Second, the women here pump like daemons.  By the time they go back to work many have produced enough breastmilk to fill all the teacups in New England.  But it doesn't stop there. As of this year, women's rights to pump are protected by Federal law and increasing numbers of employers have “mothers' rooms” specifically designed for the purpose.

Third, the ready supply of low-wage migrant labour here seems to mean that better off families have their pick of talented and dedicated nannies. Latinos are unsurprisingly the most common - hiring someone who speaks Spanish to your children all day is seen as a bonus - but recently Tibetans have been gaining popularity.  And crucially, its not uncommon amongst the nanny hiring class to appoint a nanny before the child’s been born, allowing the baby to get familiar and  form attachment from day one.

So women here, like women in adverse circumstances around the world, do find a way to make it work for them and their children. And there are no doubt things that early returners in Europe could learn from their US counterparts. But personally speaking, I'd take nine months maternity pay over office pumping any day.

*Note that this study looks at the effects of going back to work in the first year for American Moms - i.e. Moms who do not have an alternative of paid maternity leave available.  It does not offer any rationale for cutting UK maternity benefits in case you were wondering Mr Osbourne...