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mother who finally had enough of having it all now trying to have a life instead wednesday 18 april 2012 why part timer isn t an insult it s one of those jolly office jokes that for some of us never quite manages to be funny yelling part timer at anyone leaving before midnight taking a holiday nipping out of the office for five minutes ho ho very droll unless of course you actually do work less than the standard 40 hours a week so perhaps this is merely me being over sensitive but hearing ed miliband taunt george osborne this lunchtime for being a part time chancellor i admit i winced political insults are rarely subtle but this one deserves a little unpicking the gag revolves around the fact that since downing street relies on osborne for all sorts of stuff beyond his official treasury duties some feel he s not giving enough time to the day job but what really gives it zing is the inference that being part time is equivalent to being frankly a bit rubbish not trying hard enough rather semi detached not quite up to it liable to drop the ball niiice i don t of course think this is how ed miliband really sees all part timers but the point is that dumb prejudice is already widespread enough in corporate life thanks without being unthinkingly fuelled by those who know better over half of mothers of small children work part time so do a growing proportion of men as luck would have it today s employment figures show yet another rise especially among people who wanted a full time job but can t get one too many of them already have to put up with snide remarks about their days off 24 hours with small children being natch a rest cure or weird reluctance to work until midnight or cram five days work into three lest anyone say they can t hack it or mumble apologetically that they re only part time in the same way you might say only junior or only temporary or only hanging onto this job by my fingernails damnit it s not like they need reminding of what some people in the teeth of all the evidence about flexible working still think of them and besides using part timer as an insult in this case isn t just mildly offensive but inaccurate the reasons the budget has unravelled are many and various and mostly nothing to do with osborne s hours but if he symbolises anything at all it s not the perils of part time but its opposite the downside of overwork he s doing not too little but too much he s a walking advert for the benefits of tackling work intensification taking those people who are spinning far too many plates not all of them well and redesigning their work to spread it between several people some of whom might even shock horror then be able to work less than the 80 hour week typical for a cabinet minister that s hard to turn into a witty parliamentary one liner i grant you but for millions of people the part timer gag isn t that funny either posted by usedtobesomebody at 05 29 33 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday 1 march 2012 beauty and the brain i hope it isn t true i really do and there are reasons to suspect it might not be entirely true or not irreversibly true that as this story today claims nearly half of young women would rather have big breasts than a high iq and 40 would rather be thin than clever the caveats are 1 it often pays to be wary of online surveys carried out by a brand desperate to get its name in the papers as opposed to scientifically weighted proper polls 2 it s about women aged 18 to 25 a time when you re still discovering the whole giddy power of being attractive to men and thus naturally absorbed by it plus women this age mostly know men of this age who have yet to discover there is life beyond cleavages you d get different answers at 40 i hope 3 it s easy to imagine what big boobs would look like they re all around you after all but less easy to imagine how it would feel or what difference it would make to be very clever as was swiftly pointed out when a similar american poll found women would rather win america s next top model than a nobel prize that s partly because the model contest is more accessible many people have a very hazy idea of what nobel prizewinning involves and it s not constantly on telly nonetheless what worries me is that there are two reasons it might be true the first is the blindingly obvious one when popular culture teems with women lauded mostly for what they look like it sends young women a very strong message about what counts but the second is that we re not just overselling physical attractiveness but making intellectual ability seem actively undesirable smart is made to look not just unsexy but potentially unhappy because the one widely agreed perk of a good brain a good career is so often portrayed as a double edged sword for women the dilemma for professional women is that being honest about how difficult it can be either to succeed in male dominated industries or as a working mother risks frightening younger women off the whole thing but keeping quiet means you can t argue for change which is the greater betrayal it s a tricky one but i think part of the answer must be to balance the misery with the joy for women in public life to feel comfortable talking about and actually to be reported when they talk about the rewards of work and by inference of being bright not just the cost a couple of weeks ago i read a magazine interview with the screenwriter jane goldman which left me feeling mysteriously re energised about work it s behind the times paywall so i m afraid this link only works for subscribers i eventually realised it was because it s so rare now to hear a successful woman who makes no bones about relishing her job being ridiculously wellpaid for it and looking forward to doing more of it now her kids are nearly grown up and who is described by her interviewer as being really really good at her work and clearly very bright without any suggestion that she must somehow have suffered as a consequence more please image salvatore vuono freedigitalphotos net posted by usedtobesomebody at 04 28 8 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday 29 january 2012 sons and daughters i felt they were both drowning but i could only save one that line is from a r ather haunting piece last weekend by the times writer janice turner describing her feelings about coping with both her increasingly frail father and a mother worn out by looking after him and it s stayed with me for days i realise because it s still so rare to see good writing lavished on a subject most editors instinctively avoid while working parents dramas are at least played out noisily in public an uneasy silence lies over those of working sons and daughters torn between work and a home they thought they had left long behind it isn t hard to see why we prefer not to talk or think about what happens in families towards the end the story of parenthood is essentially uplifting a long slow climb towards the light being the child of fading parents is a darker and more uncertain journey into things of which we would rather not know but squeamishness blinds us to the growing challenge eldercare just like childcare poses for working life i say just like but they re not the same as i quickly realised when i started writing half a wife while originally i thought i d be able to deal with both challenges affecting working families in the same book it quickly became clear that eldercare deserved a book of its own which i very much hope someone else now writes the demands of looking after elderly parents are perhaps less intensive day to day than those of looking after babies but also less predictable since you don t know how long illness may last or what path it will take and you may be hundreds of miles away in a crisis they re also arguably less well supported by state and employers you can get tax breaks to pay for childcare that keeps you working but not for home helps as turner puts it in that piece what helps in old age even more than money is a clear eyed but loving advocate to fight for you to fill in paperwork plead for home helps or respite care in an era of cutbacks when help is ever more fiercely rationed keep a beady eye on hospital or nursing home when the time comes most of us will want to be that advocate for the parents we love but it all takes time and energy away from the day job i do wonder how many of my generation will cling triumphantly to their careers through the baby years only to crash and burn unexpectedly when it s the other end of the family that needs them posted by usedtobesomebody at 13 00 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday 22 january 2012 should childcare be tax deductible highlighter pens architects fees room service dinners on overnight trips bear with me this gets more interesting bank overdraft charges fax running costs but not strictly not fax machines yup these are just a few of the thrilling things that as a self employed person i can in the unlikely event that i haven t lost the receipts legally offset against tax these are the things considered so essential to my work mailshots and free samples car breakdown service membership that i m basically allowed to have them for free the one thing missing from the list of course is the one thing without which millions of people can t actually do any work childcare and that s why the holy grail of tax deductible childcare which as the sunday times reported yesterday a some conservative backbenchers are pushing david cameron to introduce looks initially like a no brainer it would be unbelievably expensive of course which is why the conservative treasury team backed off hurriedly when they looked at it before the election but the argument is that it could be limited initially to the self employed as a kind of reward for entrepreneurship or an incentive for parents frustrated at the lack of flexible conventional jobs to create their own were we starting from scratch now it would of course seem crazy not to include childcare alongside renewals of small tools and items of equipment to quote that fascinating hmrc publication self employment full notes under the heading of stuff without which the working world would grind to a halt and which we therefore subsidise but the snag is we re not starting from scratch we re starting from a decision to cut the amount that lower income parents who get working tax credit can claim for childcare from a maximum 80 of the nursery or childminder bill to 70 last spring and yes it sounds very boring and technical but it probably doesn t feel that way to parents who were only just breaking even at work after shelling out for childcare and now find work quite literally doesn t pay should nannies for entrepreneurs be the priority or should it be keeping these parents in work not just for their own sanity but for the sake of the taxes they ll pay for the rest of their working lives if they manage to hang on in there now after all if you have to wait until the end of the tax year to claim back your childcare costs it isn t going to be much use to those struggling to make ends meet the other hitch with tax deductible childcare is that money isn t always the problem and perhaps especially for the self employed as well as for people working shifts and antisocial hours work is often unpredictable for start ups sometimes you re madly busy sometimes worryingly slow and projects may come up at short notice what that requires is flexible childcare where you can chop and change days rather than committing a term ahead to a nursery place you re not sure you will use but this kind of free range childcare spells more hassle and less profit for providers so it s hard to find even if you can afford it the idea being kicked around the tory backbenches is to deregulate childminding so that less rigorously trained and inspected and presumably cheaper minders can set up on a more casual basis perhaps filling this gap but not everyone will fancy leaving their precious firstborn in no frills childcare which lacks the same emphasis on early education as a fully trained childminder that said these ideas at least show there s fresh thinking in politics about childcare and they should generate rival ideas from other parties too here s hoping image arvind balaraman freedigitalphotos net posted by usedtobesomebody at 13 51 29 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday 19 january 2012 the work workless balance what happens to the idea of work life balance when it s too little work and not too much that s the problem after a week in which unemployment has hit 2 68 million with scary talk of three million by spring the question is getting pressing it s all too easy to look at those figures and shiver to see the desire for more time as suddenly self indulgent faintly old hat which is why an interview given by the virgin tycoon richard branson a few days ago is so interesting he argued that one answer to unemployment was making it less expensive to allow job sharing or flexitime sharing what work there is around or in other words some parents desire for more time is part of the solution not the problem it s not a new idea one of the reasons job sharing is relatively widespread in the netherlands is that it was actively promoted in the wake of the 1980s recession to help keep unemployment down and going even further back the great depression in the thirties arguably helped shift us finally from a six day working week common at the turn of the century to the five day week we now regard as traditional i don t really buy the argument made recently by think tank the new economic foundation for a universal 21 hour working week not everybody wants to shorten their hours and thousands of people couldn t afford to even if they did but promoting job sharing for those who want it branson reckoned about 5 000 of virgin s 60 000 staff might does look like a neat way of killing two birds with one stone going part time after having children works out fine for some but not every job can physically be done in three days a week which is how too many parents end up parked in jobs which are too junior for them but offer the right hours job sharing on the other hand can be a way of reducing one s hours while hanging onto seniority and salary and in the current crisis its potential to create new openings either as the other half of a share or in full time roles created when two existing staffers start sharing a job is suddenly not to be sniffed at branson didn t explain in that interview how job sharing might be made more appealing but one obvious answer is some kind of temporary national insurance relief the idea of a national insurance holiday for employers willing to hire new people during the slump is already being kicked around westminster the more cheapskate option could be an advi...