Motherhood - Career and Identity

Can be disruptive in class

2010-11-22T17:50:00.002+11:00

My article about over-diagnosing children, as well as teachers/parents that don't support kids being kids is out now in the summer 2010 issue of My Child magazine.

You can also view a low res copy on my Facebook.

Room to Grow TV

2010-11-17T11:39:00.004+11:00

For some down-to-earth parenting advice and fun, check out Room to Grow TV, featuring Karen Miles as co-host and presenter in the 'Back to Work Mummy Makeover!'.

In this episode, Karen and Stefani help new mum Sam (who has just gone back to work after her first baby) get ready for this new family/life stage. Like many mums in her situation, Sam has concerns about how to make the transition back into the workplace as smooth as possible.

As working mums themselves, Stef and Karen are here to share some tips they’ve learned along the way about how to stay sane and even enjoy being a working mum!

Check out - http://www.roomtogrow.tv/blog/?p=378

Inner West Sydney Work-at-Home Mum?

2010-09-29T19:21:00.000+10:00

If you're a work-at-home mum in the Inner West of Sydney eg: Leichhardt, Haberfield, Balmain, Rozelle, Petersham, Ciao magazine (local Sydney free press mag) wants to interview you!

The feature will focus on balancing family & work from home and will be a positive and inspiring piece for other mums.

Contact: Penny - e: penny@writehandgirl.com.au or ph: 1300 702 804

The Parenting Project

2010-09-22T09:47:00.003+10:00

A very interesting article in yesterday's SMH - we've become a generation of 'over-parent-ers'.

I ran a workshop last night for mums looking into the return-to-work debate and the biggest issue was not how well their industry or role supported working parents, but how they felt about themselves as parents who also wanted a career.

We are so caught up with wanting to get parenting right, that we're driving ourselves into the ground trying to do everything for our children, and worrying about our impact on them - from how many days we should work to feeling compelled to develop our offspring at every given moment.

It's time for a revolution - I call it 'good enough parenting'. Toss the so-called 'expert' books and research out the window and back your own instincts and needs as a mum by making choices that you know work best for you and your family.

Read on...

Parents may be going too far in their ambition to give their child the perfect upbringing, writes Andrew Stevenson.

A car pulls up in the front drive of a house in Sydney. From the back seat a squawk; in the front, two furrowed brows. ''My God,'' admit the new parents to each other, ''we know nothing about this.'' So begins yet another chapter in the Parenting Project.

Parenting has been elevated to an act of sublime importance. That parenting matters is the motherhood statement of our era. In modern Western society, parenting has come to be viewed - at least from the inside and from the researchers, activists and advocates who shepherd new parents through their child-rearing - as the most precious job in life.

But parents have been around forever and their children grew up and had children themselves. The idea that their role in life is ''to parent'' their offspring is remarkably new, with its arrival as a verb matched by the transformation in our thinking about how the time children spend in the family makes adults into the people they are.

The first few years of life are back in vogue as never before, a return to a form of infant determinism. We're not quite talking plasticine but the idea that parents shape and sculpt their children has taken root at a deep level in our society, placing an onerous burden of responsibility on parents to get it right.

In many ways we've brought it on ourselves. In the relentless pursuit of meaning and status, having children and looking after them as best one could is no longer enough. Nor is being a mum. We have to be engaged parents, finding time - of quality and in quantity - to devote to a socially esteemed task. A lazy hour is a wasted opportunity to fire a neuron, learn a new skill, make a better person of the toddler at your feet.

Parent as a verb, and parenting as a noun, made it into the Macquarie Dictionary only in 1997, yet so ubiquitous have they become it's virtually impossible to imagine a conversation about families, adults and children without them.

''The verb 'to parent' is ever so much more active than the noun, which simply describes the fact of having a child,'' says Susan Butler, the editor of the Macquarie. ''In the '80s and '90s you get this real focus on the parent-child relationship and the responsibility of parents to produce wonderful offspring who are going to be paragons of virtue and success - and the general anxiety that parents have felt ever since about their responsibility to do the right thing by their children.''

Of course, parents have always wanted the best for their children. The change has been to wrap all this up as a conscious task and give it a name. Robin Barker, whose commonsense guides to babies and toddlers have sold half a million copies, hates it.

But it's not only because it's sludgy grammar but because it accompanied a swing towards more obsessive parenting. Barker, a midwife and child and family health nurse, approved of the move away from a harsh, distant style of raising children - ''it's just that it all went mad''. She believes having children has become a form of project management, parents obsessing about the little details such as whether their baby should have one spoon of cereal or two and taking to extremes a vision of their children as extensions of themselves.

''There's this incredible competition about whose child is doing what first, right from when they're little babies,'' she says.

''But we can't discount the pressure they're under from external childcare people like me. Honestly, I'd ditch my books now, I'm over all this. I actually wrote them initially to help with some of this stuff but in some ways I think I've made it worse. I really wouldn't care if they disappeared off the face of the Earth.''

Search ''parenting'' and the internet throws up millions of options, with an entire information industry accompanying parents as they watch every step their child takes. Lyn Craig of the social policy research centre at the University of NSW says: ''Raising children became a job with skills, with experts telling parents - mothers - what was required''. Those mothers themselves were also markedly different from their mothers.

In 1970 women had their first baby in their early 20s, with very few having studied beyond high school. Now the average age of mothers is 30.

In this same period women's engagement in the workforce and at university has expanded exponentially. Women bring a completely different set of life experiences to the change table. Used to taking on complex tasks in the workplace, for many parenting became their next project. Simultaneously, men - who've always had that work focus - were drawn into the bosom of the family like never before.

Despite the constant complaints about time pressures both parents are spending more with their children than ever before, says Michael Bittman, a professor at the University of New England and the leading Australian authority on time-use data. ''There's also an education gradient. The higher your educational qualification, the more time you will spend with your children, and that holds for men and women,'' he says, noting that everyone is heading in the same direction.

''The more educated are doing more but everyone is on the escalator going up.''

The emergence of dads as active figures in modern parenting - as opposed to blokes who dragged their kids along to whatever it was they were doing on the weekend - has been part of the transformation.

''Some time between 1974 and the early '90s fathers got interested in their kids at a much earlier age,'' Bittman says. ''There was an older culture where males weren't allowed in the delivery room but they also stayed away from their kids until they were old enough to kick a football. But the more recent surveys show they're in there right from the start.''

Men took on a role and women, coming out of the workforce, wanted a role that didn't cast them forever in aprons.

''When women started to have a choice of working outside or working at home, working at home became a more active thing. You weren't just sitting there, you had to be doing something,'' Craig says.

That something was parenting, with the responsibility of parents growing throughout the past century from nutrition and hygiene, to physical health then mental and later emotional health, as well as cognitive development. The idea grew that ''you shouldn't just be hanging out with your children, that every waking moment is a learning opportunity and you should have a pleasant fun-filled relationship so it became emotional work as well''.

''Very interestingly, considering that women have moved into the workforce and full-time working hours have gone up, parenting time for both men and women has gone up,'' Craig says. ''It's become much more conscious, much more intensive, focused and active. It's not just family time. You have to be doing something.''

Some see Jean-Jacques Rousseau at the heart of this; others Sigmund Freud. ''The founding premise is that what matters in childhood really matters and that parents really matter in childhood. And that's Freud really,'' Craig says.

ACCOMPANYING the rise of project parenting has been the mushrooming of research into children's development and how best to understand it. We know, says Matt Sanders, the founder of the Triple P, the positive parenting program, that parenting is the single most important factor in children's lives that can be changed. ''What you're getting is a justifiable increase in attention on parenting because there's a very strong evidence base that parenting matters,'' he says.

''Parenting is related to everything - whether you're talking about children's language or their social skills, whether you're talking their peer relationships, whether you're talking about their capacity to regulate emotion, how well they do in school, their physical health and well-being, whether they have brain injuries as a result of child abuse - all of these things are related to family relationships and parenting.''

Although many who argue the case for better parenting producing a more wholesome society - with less road rage, says one advocate - much of the modern thinking is based on economic rationalism. Government investment is predicated on results. Children who go off the rails - or who grow into adults living on the margins of society - are expensive to look after, be it in foster care, hospital or jail. The idea of a big return on investment for every dollar spent supporting parents of babies and toddlers is based on the work of the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman.

Heckman has campaigned for investment in the educational and development resources of disadvantaged families to support the development of cognitive and social skills in the first five years as a way of transforming the US workforce and its society.

But Craig is concerned that work assessing marginalised families has been extrapolated to count for the whole of society and says that it has limited relevance among middle-class families where children are already well supported.

''They're not very robust studies and some of them are more about disadvantaged children having access to preschool and that being good for them. And who could argue with that? But you don't really know if there's any marginal gain for a middle-class child who might have had a Spanish lesson,'' she says.

Sanders counters that there is a return ''at every level of income'' and argues that his program of structured intervention - from mass communication, to parenting seminars and ultimately intense 12-session programs for complex cases - can make ''a massive difference to the number of children developing preventable emotional and behavioural problems''.

If parents are spending sleepless nights worrying about the choices they make, Sanders says that's because choices do matter.

But there are more choices than ever, with the breakdown of neighbourhood school enrolments opening a new world of agony for many adults who believe choosing the right school - and even the right time to begin - will be a key influence on how their child ''turns out''.

Barker can barely disguise her disdain. ''There's even this huge drama now about when children start school. When my kids were little, when they turned a certain age, they went to school. Now parents are agonising about it, running off to psychologists all about [when they should be] starting school,'' she says.

Craig says this is underpinned by the idea that our basic point of humanity is choices based on economic rationalism - surveying the options and choosing the best, ''which we're now doing on behalf of our children as well''. Choosing a school, and the growth of both private and selective schools, are symptomatic. Schools, too, are heavily engaged in manipulating children's lives, with selective classes beginning from the age of six and policies about separating children from their closest friends to force them to make new ones - examples of the conscious focus on shaping their development.

Along the way, parents are putting themselves under enormous pressure to get it right. Craig's question is: to what end? ''I don't know if it makes a lot of difference to the child - or even if it's actually good for the child. That's untested,'' she says.

More time with parents means less time for other relationships and a rising emotional intensity. ''Built into the idea that you spend all this time with your child is belief that the primary relationship is the parent and the child - not the siblings or the friendship group. The more time you spend with the children the better, the more intense you are the better - surely there is a limit.''

Making Career And Kids Work: Sydney Workshop

2010-09-14T14:29:00.000+10:00

On Tuesday 21st September, Karen Miles will be presenting a positive look at how to make career and kids work!

This is a vital opportunity for both working parents and those looking to make a return to work.

Working parents can feel burned out, overlooked, and frustrated realising their full potential.

There’s often a niggling feeling that your career post children no longer fits like it once did and you can’t put your finger on why.

Using ‘The Working Parents Model’, discover the four key questions every working parent needs to ask of their employer, and their current role, to assess your existing levels of engagement and identify opportunities for positive change.

In this interactive presentation, guest speaker Karen Miles, will help you to maintain your performance, learn when to cut your losses, and create a work / life mix that actually works.

Date: 21/09/2010
Time: 7pm - 9pm
Facilitator: Karen Miles
Venue: 11 Farran Street Lane Cove
Cost: $48.00 inc GST
Catering: Light Supper Provided

For more information and bookings click here or call (02) 9557 4843

Fathers also get the baby blues

2010-09-10T07:31:00.003+10:00

A great article in today's SMH about depression and dads. What they fail to mention, as they always do in any article on PND matters, is that beyond genetics and hormones, the bigger your life before babies, the more vulnerable you are to depression. Ask any A-type personality. Here's the article...

DEPRESSION among fathers is so common that one in five will experience it while their children are young, research shows.

A study of nearly 87,000 families in Britain has found 21 per cent of fathers and 39 per cent of mothers experienced a period of depression by the time their child was 12 years old.

Depression was most common among parents of babies, with 13 per cent of mothers and 3 per cent of fathers becoming depressed by the time their child reached its first birthday.

Postnatal depression is technically defined as depression that begins within four weeks of childbirth, although many support groups define it as beginning within one year of birth.

Healthcare workers should routinely screen for depression among both fathers and mothers, the study authors wrote in the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

The chief executive of the Post and Antenatal Depression Association, Belinda Horton, said postnatal depression among Australian men and women was more common than thought.

"People often don't seek help because there is a very ingrained stigma around mental illnesses - even more so when it occurs at a time that is supposed to be celebratory and joyous," she said.

Causes included genetic predisposition to depression, physical ill-health, sleep deprivation, and hormonal changes. Life circumstances such as lack of support or previous trauma could also contribute.

''I get really cranky when it is written off as a hormonal problem for women only,'' Ms Horton said. ''Men haven't given birth but they clearly experience it as well.''

Nicole Highet, the deputy chief executive of beyondblue, said while some small Australian studies had found higher rates of depression among men who had recently had children, there was no large-scale evidence of this.

But the stresses of raising a child could make depression harder to deal with. "When you have a child and you are depressed you have parental responsibilities that mean you have to keep going," she said. "That is one of the things that makes it so hard".

Post and Antenatal Depression support line 1300 726 306

September 10, 2010, SMH, Amy Corderoy HEALTH

Mumpreneurs Masterclass

2010-08-04T14:13:00.003+10:00

Three tables. Three Experts. Twenty-one Mumpreneurs. Join me at the Mumpreneurs Masterclass!

Have you been to seminars where you're just one in a crowd? Nodding along to what the presenter is saying but then not willing to tackle the rugby scrum that has appeared around the presenter after the speech?

This event takes that element away and gives you focused time with some seriously brainy experts.

Each table is hosted by a member of our Mumpreneur Brains Trust. After each course, they move on to the next table and you get more focused time with another of our fabulous experts. Musical Experts, if you will!

And who are these Experts?

Karen Miles is an author, business owner, speaker, TV presenter/producer and coach AND an expert on motherhood and its impact on identity and career.

Lara Solomon started the company LaRoo and launched the product Mocks. After huge success with the Mocks brand on Facebook (12,000 fans in 3 months!) she started SOCIAL RABBIT to advise businesses on the world of social media.

Julia Bickerstaff runs THE BUSINESS BAKERY and BUTTERFLY COACHING. She is all about having her cake and eating it too..in a financial sense, of course!

And they've all written books!

Date: Wednesday 25 August 2010
Time: 1200 - 2pm

Venue:
Hilton Sydney
Level 2 Room 2
488 George Street, Sydney

TICKETS:

The Mumpreneurs MASTERCLASS ticket gives you:

Focused time with experts

Opportunity to meet Mumpreneurs

Three course 5 Star lunch

Mum Organiser from Inner-b.

Compare the cost of engaging a business coach and consider this an investment in you and your business.

And remember, it's a tax deduction for your business.

EARLYBIRD SPECIAL $135
Valid until 5pm Friday 6 August 2010

REGULAR PRICE $155

Book your ticket or for more details visit http://www.hillstrainingstation.com.au/mumpreneursmasterclass.html

Do children make you happier?

2010-07-29T14:12:00.003+10:00

Lately I've been reading some research about whether motherhood makes you happier - I'm drawn to the question as it's something I struggle with myself, most often after a shopping centre tantrum or post the arm wrestle it is to get a 2 year old in the car.

The stats all seem to say 'no', mums aren't happier than our carefree, childless sisters. I however, couldn't seem to answer the question for myself until I read this smart article by Penny Marshall in the UK Daily Mail.

Where do you stand? Read on...

As I turn the pages of our family photo albums, I see countless pictures of our children growing up. Most of the shots capture moments of happiness or achievement: my daughters are laughing on care-free holidays under azure summer skies, or clutching a medal, holding a certificate, winning a race.

These albums, stored in a memory chest I have created for my family, are a record not just of my children's happiness and achievements, but my own as well.

I love to look at the pictures of us, it's a sort of proof that I'm living the 'parental dream'. Or that's what I thought.

Family joy: Penny with her daughters Georgia, Holly and Jessie, has many happy memories of motherhood

But now I'm being told that my parental happiness is a delusion and that my photo albums - like my parental memory bank - contain only the moments I have chosen to archive.

Mothers and fathers, according to the latest research by top scientists, simply choose to forget - or else don't admit to - all the other hideous stuff which makes us miserable on an almost daily basis; the tears, the tedium and the tantrums.

In fact, this research goes even further than that. It suggests that there's a good chance having children actually makes people unhappy - or at least a lot less happy than those who are childless.

It has long been instilled in us that the key to ultimate joy and fulfilment lies with having a family - in fact, it is even detailed in the Bible. Can it really be that this is no longer true?

When I was growing up, there was a couple living on our street called the Harrisons and everyone felt pity for them because they were childless. It never even occurred to anyone that they might have remained child-free through choice.

As young as seven years old, I remember feeling sad for them and deliberately popping in to see them - as if my presence could somehow bring some childlike joy to their colourless, childless world.

Back then, couples like the Harrisons were to be pitied. Now, apparently, according to the experts, they should be envied.

'If any parent admitted it, they would hurt the ones they love. But some parents might - in some ways - actually have regrets'

Which is quite possibly why the numbers of them are increasing year on year. According to statistics collected by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, among UK women born in 1946, only nine per cent remain childless.

Of those born in 1952, 16 per cent are childless; of those born 20 years later, in 1972, that figure has grown to 20 per cent.

Women like the international editor of Channel 4 news Lindsey Hilsum, 51, who is currently on assignment in Afghanistan.

'I wanted to travel the world,' she told me from Kabul. 'Being able to jump on an aeroplane at the drop of a hat isn't really compatible with being a mother.'

Those like Hilsum - who describe themselves as child-free through choice - used to suffer the stigma of a society that judged them to be selfish, or even labelled them as unnatural.

Perhaps, if this new research is right, they were just jealous, bogged down by the stress, emotionally and financially, of raising a family.

'I don't see why people assume non-parents like me may come to regret not having children,' Hilsum says.

'The same people would never suggest that a parent could come to regret having children. That's taboo because if any parent admitted it, they would hurt the ones they love. But some parents might - in some ways - actually have regrets.'

Professor Andrew Oswald, from Warwick University, agrees. He has studied happiness levels in both parents and non-parents and says the non-parents simply have many more sources of happiness available to them - work choices, spontaneity, disposal income, skiing in the Alps, sports cars and so on.

'Parents really don't like hearing this,' he says. 'But our evidence shows that having children has no positive effect on happiness.

'On the contrary, it shows that parents are at their most happy six months before the baby is born, when they are thrilled with the idea of having a baby. They also appear happy in the first year after the child is born. But that's the end of the good news. The finding is that after that it's downhill all the way.'

His views are very much in keeping with the latest, rather shocking, research from the U.S.

Professor Robin Simon, a sociology professor from Florida State University, has collected data from 13,000 Americans and concludes: 'No group of parents - married, single, step or even empty nest - reported significantly greater emotional wellbeing than the people who had never had children.'

Professor Simon describes her findings as 'counter-intuitive' because we all have such strong cultural beliefs that children mean happiness and a healthy life.

Quite simply, she writes, 'they do not'.

Jacqui Marson, a psychologist specialising in female happiness, says that it is often high-achieving professional women who find parenting the most disappointing because they approach mothering with the same controlling determination they have in the boardroom - and then discover a baby is the one thing they cannot control.

She also believes that modern parenting has been simplified, re-packaged and is now being mis-sold as a one-stop shop to happiness - which is adding to a sense of unhappiness among parents, mothers in particular, when reality hits home.

'Motherhood is being airbrushed,' she says. 'From baby lotion commercials that make mothers look happy and well-rested through to commercials for organic yoghurt, the message is always that you too can make motherhood blissful, you too can raise a perfect child. It's when women find motherhood doesn't live up to their expectations that the problems start.'

Vicky MacIntyre, a working mother from Manchester, certainly didn't anticipate how difficult motherhood would be for her and her husband Dave when she had her son James four years ago.

'Of course, I don't regret having him - but I feel much more guilty and paranoid on a daily basis than I ever did before he came along,' says the 34-year-old.

'His arrival has given my life more meaning, but on a moment-to-moment basis I'm definitely less happy than I was before he arrived.'

'My son has given my life more meaning, but on a moment-to-moment basis I'm definitely less happy than I was before he arrived'

It's rare to find someone like Vicky who will actually admit that mothering isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Psychologist Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling On Happiness, says people don't like to admit parenting is causing stress and unhappiness in case it's somehow interpreted as them not loving their child enough.

Vicky, too, is worried about being misunderstood: 'I love James totally,' she says.

'That's not what this is about. My happiness is not James's responsibility - his happiness is my responsibility.

That's why bringing him up is so stressful.'

The reasons why we have children has also radically changed in the past 100 years.

Many people in modern Britain have children because they think it will increase their happiness quotient.

But this, according to Professor Oswald, is a relatively new idea - and a false one.

Under pressure: Vicky MacIntyre, pictured with son James, admits being a mother has made her life more stressful

Before contraception, having children was inevitable. Before that, it was also economically advantageous.

We needed children to help us plough our fields and look after us in our dotage, and in parts of the world this is still the case.

But in a developed society like ours, where children are usually more of an economic burden than an advantage, those reasons no longer hold true.

The pursuit of our own happiness has now become our primary justification for procreation. As one U.S. sociologist puts it, our children have become 'economically worthless, but emotionally priceless.'

And with so much happiness promised, is it any wonder that parents feel unhappy when the reality of parenthood dawns: nappies, exhaustion, sacrifice, smell.

And I've got news for any new mothers reading this - that's just the opening chapter of an 18-year (at least) struggle.

Vicky McIntyre says it's the confusing choices that's the cause of much of her unhappiness.

'I know having choices is a privilege, but with so many and with so much at stake I just end up worrying the whole time that I'm making the wrong one,' she says.

Of course, there are a host of businesses waiting to cash in on each choice - in a quick search on book-selling website Amazon, I found 1,779 different parenting and childcare manuals.

And then, of course, there are also more than 3,000 'educational' toys to help each one of us perfect our priceless child's development. But are these choices just making us more unhappy?

When my mother gave birth to me and my brother, she did so without so much as a glance at a birth manual.

She trusted herself and Mother Nature. She brought us up pretty well, too, I think, by trusting her own judgement. I went to the only local school, had piano lessons and joined the Brownies. By the time I was having children, the parenting stakes were higher.

It was no longer about raising balanced, healthy children to the best of our abilities.

Parenting was now about perfecting projects: producing children so great they would justify the decision - the sacrifice even - that had been involved in having them. Even before my daughters were born, there was pressure from the doctors, maternity nurses and other mothers to read the right birth manuals, attend the right birth classes - and even play the right music to the baby through my womb wall.

Then there were development targets to be met, sleeping and dietary habits to get right and even finding allergen-free clothes to wear.

All of which baffled my late father-in-law, who ruefully observed one Christmas that the children appeared to prefer playing with the boxes that the educational toys had come in, rather than the toys themselves.

Is it any wonder when we invest so much emotional energy into parenting and agonise so much about our own performance as parents that some people find the whole business miserable?

So is it any wonder when we promote perfection in our children, we risk unhappiness in the parents?

I may edit out my parental bad times now, but I didn't fear them when they arrived because I had a mother who warned me they were coming - and she didn't learn that from a book.

My memory may be like my photo albums; only full of the good times, but I don't think that's parental delusion, I'd call that parental celebration of the moments that made all the drudgery, stress and, yes, sometimes unhappiness worthwhile - although cynics might suggest my ability to self-edit is nature's way of ensuring the survival of the species.

Either way, just as I can no longer remember how much it hurt to give birth to my children, I can no longer remember how much it hurt to raise them. Time has erased all memory of those sleepless nights.

Nor do I choose to recall any of the tantrums which sent me reaching for a stiff drink more often perhaps than I should have.

I'm sure in time, too, my memory will expunge my current parenting reality, which seems to involve endless nagging about GCSE coursework and mind-numbing arguments about Facebook, skirt lengths and curfews.

Time is also diminishing the intensity and frequency of my secret fantasy: the one where I close my eyes and dare to dream I'm in Kabul alongside Lindsey Hilsum.

It's the 'what I could have and would have been if I hadn't had children' fantasy.

But it's losing its power to thrill. That's because what I could have been is now who I have become, and like other women who choose to put children above themselves, I'm rattled by the research that suggests I've opted for the losing side.

But, perhaps, that's only because our happiness as parents is so fragile - linked forever to the happiness of others, our children.

But then, that's just the price of love.

'Parents do not have a right to happiness,' says the psychologist Jacqui Marson. 'There is no such attainable state, only fleeting moments of joy we must learn to recognise.' My photo albums are full of them.

Media Source: UK Daily Mail

StepFood Wives!

2010-07-19T16:38:00.003+10:00

I love the mum's club... I recently reconnected with a girl I went to high school with. Like many mumpreneurs, Vic Bowring has started her own business and it's brilliant, so I feel compelled to spread the word as it's a real time saver for mums - The StepFood Wives - home delivered, nutritious dinners just like grandma used to make (only better). The prices are just right, the menu home-cooked, and they offer genuine family-friendly service.

Here's how they describe themselves...

We know how tough it can be working, looking after a family, keeping the home running - basically trying to keep it all going and still find time for you.

Our aim is to help you juggle being a successful career person, energised parent and domestic goddess (or SNAG as the case may be)! The Stepfood Wives help you put delicious, healthy meals on the table without the angst of what to cook, when to shop and who’s going to clean up.

We use whole food sourced from local producers, with our menu changing with the seasons. Good old-fashioned food, just like it used to be. You simply order, we deliver, you thaw, heat and serve - then sit back and enjoy all the credit!

For once you can have your cake and eat it too.

www.stepfoodwives.com.au

NEW Paid Parental Leave - in Summary

2010-07-14T14:19:00.002+10:00

Expecting your baby sometime in the New Year? Then here’s your at-a-glance guide to the new paid parental leave scheme.

On the 17th June, Parliament made history by passing Australia’s first-ever paid parental leave scheme – hooray! It’s designed to encourage parents to take at least 18 weeks off work after the birth of their child and it is an action that finally brings Australia into line with every other western country in the world (bar the United States). The when, what, who and how of the new scheme is as follows:

When?
The paid parental leave scheme will begin on the 1st January 2011 and will apply to eligible parents of children born or adopted on or after this date. If you give birth prior to the New Year then you will fall under the current Baby Bonus arrangements.

After 1st January, the current Baby Bonus will continue for those who either aren’t eligible or choose not to receive the paid parental leave.

What?
Eligible parents will receive up to 18 weeks paid parental leave, paid at the National Minimum Wage (which is currently $570 a week before tax). You can elect to take it at any time in the first year after birth and you can take it before, during or after any other employer benefits you might have, such as paid maternity leave, annual leave or long service leave.

If you are expecting twins – or more! – then you will receive the parental leave for the first child and the baby bonus for second and subsequent children. So twins, for example, could attract the 18 weeks of paid leave plus one $5,000 Baby Bonus payment. You’ll need it!

Who?
To receive the paid parental leave you must be “eligible”. To be eligible you need to be an Australian resident and be the primary carer of your baby. You must also have personally earned less than $150,000 in the previous financial year (your partner’s income won’t be taken into account).
Finally, you must meet a “work test”. To meet this test, you must have:
• been in paid work for at least 10 of the 13 months prior to the birth/ adoption of your child, and
• worked at least 330 hours in that 10 month period (just over one day per week), and had no more than an eight week unpaid break between working days. A working day is a day on which you worked for at least one hour.

“Working parents” include full-time, part-time, seasonal and casual workers, contractors, the self employed, and people who have had multiple employers.

How?
Initially for most parents, the payment will be received from the Family Assistance Office (FAO) in fortnightly instalments. From 1st July next year employers will take over the payment responsibility for their long-term employees and you will receive your parental leave pay in the same way as they pay your wages or salary (for example, if they normally pay you weekly, you will receive your Parental Leave pay weekly; if you are paid fortnightly you will receive your Parental Leave fortnightly).

If you are not a long-term employee (casual, seasonal, recently commenced) then the Family Assistance Office will continue to make your payments. Irrespective of who makes the payment, you lodge your claim through the FAO, in the same way as other family benefits are claimed.

For more information on the scheme, read our “Frequently Asked Questions” below, and for any queries contact the Family Assistance Office, either online www.familyassist.gov.au or by phoning 13 61 50. And in the meantime, have a great pregnancy!

FAQ’s

Will I be better off?
Probably. The Government estimates that more than 85 per cent of families will be better off receiving Paid Parental Leave. These families will, on average, receive around $2,000 more than if they chose the Baby Bonus. This is after tax has been paid and all interactions with other family assistance have been taken into account.

How can I work out whether to claim Paid Parental Leave or Baby Bonus?
The Family Assistance Office is going to provide an online estimator on their website (www.familyassist.gov.au) from September this year. Alternatively you can telephone the FAO on 13 61 50 to discuss your situation with them.

When can I claim?
You can lodge a Paid Parental Leave claim either online or in a paper form with the Family Assistance Office up to three months before the expected date of birth or adoption of your child.
Payments won’t start until after the birth and after you have applied to register your child’s birth, but completing and lodging the claim form in advance will help to ensure the payments start as early as possible.

Is it taxed?
Yes, paid parental leave is taxable income. The FAO will deduct 15% PAYG tax before crediting your bank account each fortnight; if the payment is being made by your employer they will also deduct PAYG tax before paying you.

Will it affect my other family benefits?
Yes, because it’s taxable income it can affect your Family Tax Benefit A & B and your child support assessment. You will be able to use the FAO’s online assessment calculator from September this year to work out how your situation might be affected, or alternatively, make an appointment to visit the FAO by calling 13 61 50.

What if I want to go back to work?
You can’t go back to work and continue to receive paid parental leave. If you return to work, the payments will stop. So if this is something which is likely, then have a chat with the FAO about whether you should apply for the baby bonus instead.

Alternatively, you and your partner can “share” the paid parental leave. For example, you might decide to take 10 weeks off, and your partner might take 8 weeks off after that. You can arrange through the FAO to change the nominated primary carer and thus share the paid leave.

Is it a cost to my employer?
No, the paid parental leave is being fully funded by the Australian Government.

Help –my baby’s overdue and I might not meet the work test because of it!
That’s okay – they’ll take that into account. You won’t miss our just because of that!

Media Source: Essential Baby www.essentialbaby.com.au

Career Mums Survey

2010-07-14T14:13:00.004+10:00

Career Mums regularly takes the pulse of the nation to find out where mums and dads are at with their parenting and working needs. Here's a link to the latest survey - it's a great opportunity for you to be heard and to have a voice in Career Mums' regular releases to the media - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MQ3BQJS

Motherhood: it's not a competition

2010-07-09T07:42:00.003+10:00

Fabulous article published in the UK Telegraph about the unfair stereotypes of working mums and the pressure on us to "have it all" by "doing it all".

Once again, the debate around whether or not mothers should work has raised its ugly head. Oliver James’ latest book How Not to F*** Them Up highlights the rather obvious fact that under-threes need high-quality nurturing from responsive carers if they are to flourish. This prompted a row on R4’s Woman’s Hour recently, for while James denies pointing the finger at working mothers, the sub-text to his new book implies that it would be better for the children if their mothers stayed at home and looked after them.

Would it really? Or does it depend on the mother herself, her circumstances, her ambitions and her needs – emotional and financial? What if she is frustrated, unfulfilled and financially compromised? But if James is right and the mother is the optimum carer – even when her circumstances, ambitions, and needs suggest otherwise – it’s hard to see the finger pointing anywhere save at the working mother.

Enough. It’s time to call a truce. There is far more that unites women as mothers than who works and who doesn’t. All mothers try to do their best for their children, whether they work, stay at home, or do a mixture of both. None earns top marks; it’s not a competition, remember? No choice is better than another. But given that the majority of women now have no choice but to work, it is time we moved the debate on.

The question is not: should mothers work, but how can we find constructive ways to support working families – yes, I mean the father, as well as the mother? As for full-time mothers, the issue is not whether full-time mothers are somehow opting out or selling themselves short, but how, as Oliver James has himself asked, can we enable them to feel valued, rather than, as is sometimes still the case, second best?

We won’t find the answers unless we let go of an air-brushed, wishful portrait of motherhood. Let’s not harp back to those few supposedly halcyon years in the 1950s when a woman stayed at home, pinny and lipstick on, smiling children in tow. In the real past, mothers worked, and those who could afford not to farmed out their young to wet nurses, nannies and governesses. Children of all classes were cared for by a wide variety of adults from an early age. And so they are today, as parents go out to work, as will their children in turn.

We educate girls for work, obviously, and most want to work, to earn their own living and fulfil personal ambitions. But if they become mothers, they have little choice within our current working culture but to devise ingenious ways of being more flexible, stretching 30 hours a day out of the standard 24, in order to meet all of their obligations, both at work and at home.

That’s where the guilt kicks in, and the frustration, and the fatigue. Literally labouring under the cultural misconception that the mother’s contributions to child-rearing is of greater value than that of the father, she is torn in two – between the desire (and the need) to work, and the desire (or pressure) to play a greater role in her child’s upbringing.

So she compromises her own needs. She takes career breaks, moves into part-time work or sets up her own business so she can work from home and at night after the children are asleep. She argues with the father of their child until, in time, he takes on not only more of the childcare, but more responsibility for their child’s upbringing. That’s a good thing: this way decisions are shared, domestic tasks re-distributed. Parenting, whether it’s deciding what to have for Sunday lunch, or where your child should go to secondary school, becomes a joint endeavour.

"I don’t know how she does it" is no longer the mother’s mantra, juggling is no longer a badge of honour. OK, I know we are not there yet, but that’s the breakthrough we need; that’s the sea change. When fathers invest more emotionally and practically in the family, its foundations are strengthened. Men are less likely to leave, and the children grow up with closer relationships with both parents.

But back to reality: guilt hangs over many working mothers like a storm cloud, fuelled by a wide range of (largely male) baby "experts" from Dr Spock to Oliver James, offering up new guidelines we always somehow fail to meet. James even goes as far as to divide mothers into patronising stereotypes: "Huggers", "Organisers" and "Fleximums". Every mother I know has to be all three.

Once, not so very long ago, it was enough for parents to keep their children fed, warm and healthy until they could support themselves. Now we talk about "good mothers" and "bad mothers", like they were characters in a fairy tale. To be a "good" mother is an intense, full-time activity with a host of additional responsibilities, from helping with homework and playing games to being an expert in psychology so that a child’s confidence is never undermined by negative parenting.

The "good mother" is there in the early years but, as many working mothers with older children recognise, it it isn’t just the early years that matter. "I think it’s when they’re older, when they start to roam more in their minds and bodies that they need you more," says Laura Dugdale, who has four children aged between 17 and 23, and runs High Spirits, an events consultancy. “Any loving person can change their nappy but it’s much more important to get the level of nurturing right later on. That’s when you want to be there to answer the difficult questions."

"We know that early conditioning is important for a child’s future mental health, but that has been turned into a challenge to the mother to be perfect," concurs Penny Bickerstaff, a management consultant with two teenage daughters. "But actually it’s being aware of your own psychological patterns so that you don’t pass them on, rather than whether or not you are also working."

My own daughters are now 21 and 17, and when I look back over our times together as a family – my working (OK, mostly at home) has been completely irrelevant to their state of being. For what matters most is the culture of love, security, trust and honesty they have had at home. Their (working) father has been so involved in their care that we are almost interchangeable. If I were to die tomorrow, life in our house would carry on much the same without me (although they would certainly eat less well). Though we have inevitably made mistakes, I feel confident that we have sown enough in the way of good seeds for their future working lives and relationships.

Few things undermine the fabric of marriage and family life more than guilt. Instead of looking to mothers to provide "good parenting", it is time for working mothers, as well as full-time mothers, to relinquish whole chunks of responsibility to their children’s father. Family life can then flourish. We need to put the needs of of our children at the heart of working culture, for they are the future.

UK Telegraph - 'Life After Birth' by Kate Figes is published by Virago, £9.99
Published: 7 Jul 2010

Mums on the Go!

2010-06-28T16:49:00.003+10:00

I always tell mums that you don't stop existing as a person once babies come along. Your needs and interests are still an important factor in your life. In motherhood, it's not a case of the best martyr wins.

On that note, two colleagues of mine have launched a fabulous new online directory to help mums find services that cater to their needs, that are also child-friendly.

Here's more info...

Mums on the Go™ www.mumsonthego.com.au was launched recently to support mums in valuing themselves.

At the heart of Mums on the Go is a directory of child-friendly businesses - allowing mums to take their children with them where ever they need to go. Be it a trip to the garden centre for some new plants, a meal out, or a visit to the gym or physio.

Mums on the Go is also a place where Mums come to be inspired, to connect with others, and be part of a community that supports, nurtures and empowers everyone. You'll find a couple of my career-related articles on their site.

Currently the directory services Sydney only; however, the call is now out to Mums across all capital cities to generate the next load of content - simply email your favourite child-friendly businesses so you can help other mums across Australia.

Go to www.mumsonthego.com.au

The CODE for Career Success

2010-06-21T16:43:00.004+10:00

Sydney Businesswomen's Breakfast: The CODE for Career Success
Thursday, 24th June, 7 for 7.30-9am

Join Network Central at their next breakfast at the Tearoom QVB this Thursday 24th June to hear Karen Adamedes, General Manager Sales for TrueLocal.com.au, share her code for career success. Karen was highlighted by Kate Southam at last month's breakfast when I interviewed on stage Kate (Career One), Catherine Fox (Fin Review Boss magazine) and Regina Fikkers (Partner - PwC).

Do you know the language of your organisation? Come along to find out and help raise money for OzHarvest, feeding Sydneysiders in need.

www.networkcentral.com.au for tickets.

Rebecca Gibney and other mums on juggling work after baby

2010-06-21T16:00:00.003+10:00

A great article just out in today's SMH. It's long but worth a read as it echoes many of the sentiments, workplace and career mums issues I explore in my presentations to working mums.

Great also to see my colleague and Working Parents Toolkit co-author, Emma Walsh from mums@work being quoted.

What's the best career option after you have a baby - full-time, part-time or no work at all? Jacinta Tynan investigates.

Without giving too much away, Julie Rafter has a slight chip on her shoulder about being a stay-at-home mum. In an upcoming episode of the drama Packed to the Rafters, Julie, a new mum again after a 20-year gap, has an argument with her 26-year-old daughter, Rachel, about priorities.

"It's not all about a husband and kids for me ... I want more than that," Rachel says pointedly.

"There's nothing wrong with being a wife and mum," Julie snaps back, a little too defensively after being up all night with her new baby.

Rebecca Gibney, who has played the likeable suburban mum for two years, can relate. Apart from bit parts, she did not work for four years after the birth of her son, Zac, in 2004. "I had waited so long to have a child that I didn't want to give up those precious hours with him," says Gibney, who gave birth at 39.

Then came the Rafter family. "It was synchronicity," says Gibney. "My agent called and said, 'It's a page turner,' and it was. It was perfect timing."

It was also family-friendly. Packed to the Rafters producer Jo Porter co-ordinates the production schedule around the parenting commitments of the cast and crew: weekends and school holidays off, and a break every 10 weeks. "To get the very best actors to commit to a long-running series, we need to help them juggle the demands of raising a family with those of the show," Porter says.

Gibney and I are standing on the lawn of the Rafters' house, sharing photos of our sons on our iPhones as she waits for her scene. Since I became a mum eight months ago, this whole work-life quandary has been of particular interest to me, and I am intrigued by how other mothers pull it off.

Gibney feels grateful for the benefits her position as an in-demand actor affords her, and says having a "great husband" also helps. Richard Bell, an artist, has a studio near Zac's school, handy for school pick-ups. However, like any mum, she finds it a constant juggle, and some things have to give. "Some days I'm gone before Zac wakes up and get home after he's gone to bed and that's very difficult," Gibney says. "The other day he said, 'I don't want you to be my mummy any more,' because I couldn't make it to his sports carnival. It's heartbreaking. But then I brought home some crickets for his praying mantis and all was forgiven. I explain to him, 'Mummy has to work. I am a working mum.' "

As are the majority of mothers in this country. Some 60 per cent return to work before their child is one, primarily for financial reasons. Career satisfaction is another one: making good use of the skills they have amassed. But not everyone has that luxury. Jobs are not easy to find for people trying to look after small children, and many mothers leave the workforce rather than stick it out full-time. It leaves Australia with one of the lowest rates of employed mothers with children under five in the OECD.

It is this exodus of talent that the government's new Fair Work laws, which took effect on January 1 this year, are meant to redress. Employees with children under school age now have the right to request flexible work arrangements, as well as the right to request an additional 12 months' parental leave on top of the standard 12 months' maternity leave. But six months since the Fair Work laws kicked in, have they made a difference?

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, herself a full-time working mother of two, admits that when the laws took effect she was expecting an influx of complaints to her department -the only recourse for parents who feel their requests for childcare-compliant work hours are being ignored.

But so far, she says, there has been nothing. As much as she'd like to think it's because employers around the country are embracing the flexible working-hours legislation, she says it's more likely because the laws "lack teeth". If employers do say no, it has to be for "good business reasons", she says. "It's ill-defined and you have no right of review. The government's view is, 'Let's use this standard as an educational tool for business.' We have made submissions that it should be strengthened."

Part of the problem, Broderick says, is that most Australians have a deeply held cultural belief that a good mother is someone who is always with her children. "When you bring that belief into the workplace, it's no wonder we are where we are."

When I returned to work, I was able to negotiate my hours as a news presenter around the availability of childcare, and was given the day shift instead of late nights. But working mothers are often regarded as a nuisance who must be tolerated, creating rostering nightmares for the boss. As one mother told me, "Make no mistake. We are being punished for having a baby."

Ilana Crawford, 31, had to leave her job because her boss insisted she work full-time after she'd had her baby. So when she was offered another job, as a sales assistant at an electronics retailer, she didn't take any chances, and read up on the Fair Work laws. "The boss knew I was up to scratch with what I'm entitled to and my rights," she says. "I told him I couldn't work a full day because daycare shuts at 6pm, so he offered me 10 till four, three days a week."

"There's fear around employing mums because of a false belief that they're too demanding," says Professor Marian Baird, head of Sydney University's Women & Work Research Group. "Yet [research shows] mothers are very committed at work, productive and dedicated. At work they work because they have to leave on time to get the kids. It's called 'precision parenting, precision working'. They're not slack."

While many mothers are rethinking their careers because working full-time is too difficult, there are a reassuring number who are doing it their way. Eloise Aschberger, 31, is mother to eight-month-old Zane, and works three days a week in her job as a sustainability manager at Lend Lease. She says the property group has "upped the ante" in recent years, offering 14 weeks' maternity leave on full pay in a deliberate move to attract and retain women. "I ended up swapping [my full-time role] to something I felt would be manageable within a three-day, nine-to-five time frame, but still be stimulating enough to justify leaving my little man."

What makes it even easier for Aschberger is that her baby boy is just metres away, in the on-site, company-sponsored childcare centre. "If I want a cuddle throughout the day I can just go and visit him," she says. Aschberger's partner runs his own business and so is able to manage his schedule around their child, too.

Mother-of-two Annie Mendelson, 35, also thinks she has it good. After leaving her role as a sales director for a hospitality company to have her second baby, she was rehired by the same company six months later with an offer that was too good to refuse. "I work from home when Holly sleeps and on weekends, so long as I do the equivalent of three days," she says. "I start work earlier than I wanted to but the role is as rare as hen's teeth so I had to grab it." Her husband works from home one day a week to enable her to make sales calls.

The dearth of quality part-time work is one of the biggest obstacles to mothers returning to work. Those who do often find themselves on the so-called "mummy track", accepting a dead-end job beneath their abilities because the jobs they used to have are full-time or non-existent. It's the reason Emma Walsh founded mums@work, an advisory service for parents and employers: "There's a skills shortage in this country. Yet there are skilled mums at home looking for employment, but who just want some flexibility."

"Mothers are de-skilling to get back into the labour market," says Broderick. "Women who used to be lawyers will sometimes do retail or hospitality because

of the family-friendly hours. That has a significant cost to society. It makes good business sense to redesign the job rather than allow your best talent to walk away."

Annie Mendelson accepted a lesser role - from director to sales manager -

but says it is worth it. "I lost a title and shot down the hierarchical chain but I'm delighted because I can do the job easily. I'll go back to being a career woman in a few years, but for now this is the right balance."

The other huge impediment is a lack of affordable childcare. For many parents, it is just not worth their while to work. Diana Asato, 33, who works full-time in IT, says if her mother didn't look after her eight-month-old daughter, she simply couldn't do it. Asato would have preferred part-time work, but when she returned to her job after five months she didn't feel it was an option: "There had been lots of retrenchments so I was grateful to have a job. I was not in a position to negotiate." Adding to the pressure, her husband, a contractor, wasn't working at the time.

As much as affordable childcare and flexibility might solve the dilemma for career mums, there will always be roles that simply can't be pulled off a few days a week. When Kelly Doust, 33, became pregnant with her now 21-month-old daughter, Olive, she saw the writing on the wall. Although the publishing company she worked for wanted her to stay on, she knew her full-time job (as a publicist) could not be squeezed into less time.

"I had watched colleagues struggle to manage and I didn't want to be checking my watch when I walked out the door," she says. "I didn't want to feel I wasn't good at both jobs. The thought of it exhausted me." Instead, Doust has forged a new career as a blogger and author, who has penned a craft book, The Crafty Minx. It helps that her husband works full-time and can support the family until her business takes off.

But what if your passion remains your original job? "Runaway mums", one friend calls them - mums who can't wait to bolt back to the office, far away from baby talk and changing nappies. Jacqui Vanzella, 38, is one of them. She was back at her investment banking desk within 14 weeks of each of her two children's births, working 11 hours a day, five days a week. And she wouldn't have it any other way.

"There was a degree of boredom when I was at home with the kids, but I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel because I was going back to work and could use my brain again," she says candidly. "I'm happy at work. I find it motivating and stimulating. I don't think I'd be reaching my full potential or contributing what I have to contribute if I was at home. It works for our family that I'm at work, my husband's at work and we have a great nanny."

While full-time working mothers have to dodge perceptions that there is something shameful about maintaining a career, no mum is immune from copping judgements. "Every working mum has the nagging question of, 'Is this working and is this worth it?' " says Emma Walsh. Mums become expert at cutting corners. A lawyer friend confesses to leaving her jacket on her chair so her colleagues won't notice she's left for the day to collect the kids from day care. Sunday Life columnist Mia Freedman writes in her memoir, Mama Mia, of doing The Afternoon Walk of Shame, past her mostly male Channel Nine colleagues still beavering away at 6pm. No wonder she bailed to blog.

But we working mums are yet to get the formula right. As Jacqui Vanzella puts it: "You just get used to that slightly out-of-control feeling."

Working dads

Men are also covered by the Fair Work laws: a major reform has just been introduced to the Sex Discrimination Act, giving men increased protection for family responsibilities. “It sends a strong signal that caring is everyone's business,” says Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.

But she says fathers are still up against it when it comes to shifting their work arrangements. “When he says, 'I'm coming in late on Wednesday because I'm dropping Tommy off,' he might be seen as a supportive dad but he's not [considered] a serious player. If you're serious about changing the corporate culture, don't focus on women, focus on men, because that leads to strong attitudinal change.”

Still, some men are bucking expectations.

Matthew Holland, 35, is a brand manager at BT Financial and father to 22-month-old Emily, with another baby on the way. He gets 60 days' parental leave over two years, which he uses to take one day off a week. “I want to spend time with my daughter while I can,” he says.

Tim Foster, 48, CFO at Stockland property group, gets two consecutive afternoons off a fortnight to collect his two daughters from school, and starts late the following days. “When I joined, I told the MD about my situation [Foster is separated] and that it was important for me to have quality time with the girls. He said, 'You'll be a terrific role model.' I believe work flexibility is critical … If your employees feel supported they pay you back in spades.”

The $ Value of Mums

2010-05-26T14:42:00.000+10:00

America’s Salary.com has released the results of its annual Mum Salary Survey.

The survey examines the types of jobs that mums perform and calculates the equivalent income that such work would attract in the paid employment market. More than 28,000 mums across the United States and Canada participated in the survey, each of them recording their specific duties and the number of hours they worked in a typical week.

This year’s equivalent compensation for a full-time mum is approximately AUD $132,000 (based on USD $117,800). The average working mum who balances a paid job with home duties would earn an extra $80,000 on top of their regular salary.

Why employ a parent?

2010-05-26T09:32:00.001+10:00

"If I had a role to fill I would definitely employ a parent. It would be like having a trained octopus on staff only better. Who else can answer the phone, put the kettle on, brush a toddler’s hair and de-worm the dog all at once." - Dr Mataji Kennedy, Clinical Psychologist www.gainingmomentum.com.au

Fundraising Breakfast Event - Sydney

2010-05-10T20:23:00.002+10:00

Tickets are now available for my Mrs Australia breakfast event!

Date: 27 May 2010 - 7-9am at QVB Tea Room in Sydney

I will be interviewing on stage:
Catherine Fox – Australian Financial Review BOSS, Deputy Editor
Regina Fikkers – Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Kate Southam – Editor, CareerOne

The will also be $12,000 worth of raffle prizes to win - giving away thousands of dollars worth of professional development products and services. All money raised supports the WIN (Women in Need) Foundation who provide domestic violence recovery programs for women, the charity of the Mrs Australia competition.

For more event details and tickets follow the link ... www.networkcentral.com.au

The mother of all jobs just got harder

2010-04-20T08:01:00.003+10:00

Fantastic article in today's SMH about the unnecessary criticism parents today receive for either being too complacent or helicopter parenting their kids.

We can too often feel sad as parents that we're not replicating the freedoms, Sunday roasts and cupcakes of our childhood, as though those days were carefree and high on happiness for kids and parents alike.

I call it 'the cupcake myth'. Why else would the baking business be experiencing such a boom - there's a new cupcake store on every cool street corner as Gen X parents try to recreate a happier time for themselves and their children.

But all may not be as it seems. Maybe something got muddled with the memories. Read on...

Who'd be a parent, eh? There are no perfect ones. In fact, they come in two mirror-image types. One lot loll around with a heroin needle in their arm while their kids run amok, while the other half overparent, robbing their kids of their selfhood.

The current attack on modern parents is one of the oddest things I've seen. For once, a generation has taken parenting seriously. In the Australian mainstream, both men and women throw themselves into it. Most spend large amounts of time with their children. They love and cherish them. They try really hard to do a good job.

And everyone older than 50 wants to tell them how they are doing it wrong. No, not just wrong. Ludicrously wrong. In fact “damaging their children” wrong.

Spending time with your children is suddenly defined as “helicopter parenting”, hovering so as to crush their spirit. Being cautious about risk is defined as “robbing them of their freedom”. And giving them love and support is “a damaging culture of unearned praise”.

There's a smugness about the attacks as if to say: “Don't they realise how easy parenting is? In my day ... ”

Pandering to this view, the publishing world is now full of rosy portraits of growing up in the 1950s or '60s where kids had their freedom, taking pot-shots with air rifles, whooshing down creeks on home-made rafts — the product of wise parents who understood risk and knew how to give kids the freedom to explore.

I'm sure that childhood existed for many but it's not my memory. I had the air rifle, that's true, and at age eight or nine I would cycle to a creek where some kids constructed a raft from old oil drums and tried to make it float. But I also remember the separateness of a '60s childhood. A lot of parents — not all — were quite disengaged. They didn't “give kids their freedom”; they just weren't that interested in their roles as parents.

Most, for example, would never turn up to watch the school football match; mine certainly didn't. You'd cycle there, play the game and cycle home. Music practice would happen once a week and would involve cycling to some strange house smelling of cabbage where one would be simultaneously felt up and taught Chopin.

The feeling up is an important part of the story, for as much as modern parents are mocked for their sense of caution, the truth is that things did go wrong for the children of the disengaged parents of the '50s and '60s.

There were paedophiles in the bushes and out-of-control priests in the churches and gangs in the schoolyard. And when things did go wrong, there was no culture of intimacy and trust between parent and child that allowed the child to tell and the parent to believe.

Of course, it's hard to get the right balance. Among today's parents, there are some who overdo the praise, greeting each art-class scrawl as the work of van Gogh. And there are misguided parents who always take their child's side, arguing the toss with school or police, even when the child is in the wrong.

What I don't understand is the delight people take in attacking young parents; and the overly rosy way they remember the parenting of the past — as if today is all bad and yesterday was all good. Sometimes there is so much passion in the attacks, I wonder if people are simply envious. Do they watch these modern children getting love and attention and wonder why they didn't deserve the same? Do they hear the unearned praise and remember the knee-jerk reaction to any child's achievement in the 1960s: “That's all very well but don't get too big for your boots.”

OK, maybe the psychological theory is a stretch. It's probably simpler: each generation believes its way is the only way.

If so, can I suggest a truce? If modern parents are to be routinely attacked for their failures, can we have some admissions on the other side? First up, many parents in the past took unacceptable risks with their children. In doing so, they weren't consciously “giving them their freedom”; they were just otherwise engaged.

Second, while the world of 2010 is not as dangerous as modern parents believe, the world of the '60s was not as benign as was supposed at the time. Things did go wrong and the price for a freewheeling childhood was paid unequally. If you had the freedom and never came unstuck — were never abused, never badly injured — thank your lucky stars but don't act as if the price was not paid by others who were not so charmed.

And, finally, let's admit that this generation of parents is attacked whatever it does.

Today's parents are either controlling their kids too much or controlling them not enough — the crowd of denouncers hardly drawing breath between their two modes of attack.

It's a strange world where you have to defend passionate, engaged motherhood and fatherhood.

richard@richardglover.com.au

Media Source: Richard Glover, Sydney Morning Herald 17 April 2010

Watch SBS Insight tonight 7.30pm!

2010-04-13T12:35:00.001+10:00

SBS Insight is running an interesting program tonight at 7.30pm entitled 'What Women Want' about babies and career. I'll be in the audience, not sure if I'll be called on to comment.

Stay in the Kitchen?

2010-02-15T10:59:00.002+11:00

The latest statistics say women with partners get less government return-to-work support than their 1950's counterparts. Get back in the kitchen? I don't think so. Time for the second feminist wave ladies. Read on.

WOMEN with working husbands are being tied to the sink under a welfare system that hampers them finding a job.

A new study that examined barriers to women entering the work force found they had more help from the Federal Government's job-seeking services in the 1950s.

And that was at a time when women were viewed largely as mothers and wives, not in today's society when both partners frequently needed to work to survive.

The new privatised government employment services give women advice on the local job market and training opportunities but they don't get the complete suite of employment services available to unemployed people on welfare, the report says.

"The sad thing is in 1947 they could," said National Foundation of Australian Women spokeswoman Marie Coleman, head of the Whitlam era Social Welfare Commission.

"The Commonwealth Employment Service, set up in 1947, allowed anyone to rock up to the CES - married women, single women, teenagers, anybody of age - and it was a national scheme and you would be entitled to assistance in being placed," she said.

"We are worse off than we were in the 1950s because it has been rejigged and all farmed out to private operators."

Government subsidies to fix unsightly dental problems, buy appropriate clothes, mentoring and help finding a childcare place are government employment services unavailable to women with a working partner.

And that lack of help made it difficult for women trying to return to the work force after years off caring for children or sick relatives, Ms Coleman said.

It is one of a range of issues, including inadequate after-school childcare, non-existent vacation care and lack of flexible working working hours keeping women out of the work force.

The study, Barriers to Women's Employment, Women and the Recession Project, interviewed women from all over Australia. A spokeswoman for Employment Participation Minister Mark Arbib said last night Job Services Australia was available to assist all unemployed jobseekers. But she confirmed higher levels of support were targeted on the basis of need, such as people who qualified for Centrelink income-support payments and their degree of labour-market disadvantage.

However, unemployed people not on income support because of their partner's earnings or assets could also receive help from Job Services Australia, including advice, training opportunities and assistance with completing a resume.

The report also found that men received more than women did from the government's $42 billion stimulus plan to combat the Global Financial Crisis, with most of the funded works in male-dominated job areas.

Media Source: Sue Dunlevy, The Daily Telegraph, February 10, 2010

Yin Yang

2010-02-01T10:31:00.002+11:00

Loved this ... it sums up my life & work, and my fascination with the impact motherhood has on our identity as women.

"The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and torturous." - Anna Quindlen, O Magazine, May 2003

The New DINK

2009-12-22T07:31:00.001+11:00

Social demographer Bernard Salt has coined the term Nettels (Not Enough Time To Enjoy Life) to describe the demographic of traditional nuclear families where both parents are working full time in well paying jobs with children under 15 who are forever shuttling between home, work and school. Nettels are basically DINKS (Double Income, No Kids Couples) who have become parents and are trying to uphold the same lifestyle they had before kids.

“The surefire way of discerning a Nettel is the fact that every evening they whip out their Blackberries and negotiate the next days activities,” says Salt. “High expectations of lifestyle drive Nettels. There is status in being busy. They need the money to keep up the pretence of a happy, successful and consumerist existence.”

Only 7% of Australian families can actually be classified as Nettels but many other families share similar traits – being time poor, having high stress levels and seeking financial stability to be able to afford everyday expenses and a mortgage but they also want to enjoy their money with travel, entertainment and gifts. However the difference is that they do not revel in being busy in the same way as Nettels and are willing to compromise on somethings to lessen the pressure, guilt and logistical complexities they face on a daily basis.

Consequently, young women who are yet to have children who see their co-workers and friends struggle are adopting a different mindset and pre-emptively entering into self employment in future preparation for motherhood, and so they have enough time for regular holidays, hobbies and quality time with family. This is often motivated by working in companies where there is little understanding from bosses and childless colleagues for their working parent counterparts.

Media Source: SMH

Top Baby Names in 2009

2009-12-14T14:11:00.003+11:00

Love them or hate them, the list is in ... here's the top 20 baby names for boys and girls in 2009...

20 most popular girls' names

1. Isabella
2. Olivia
3. Lily
4. Chloe
5. Emily
6. Charlotte
7. Ella
8. Ava
9. Amelia
10. Sophie
11. Sienna
12. Mia
13. Grace
14. Ruby
15. Zoe
16. Isabelle
17. Madison
18. Emma
19. Matilda
20. Georgia

20 most popular boys' names

1. Jack
2. Lachlan
3. Cooper
4. William
5. Joshua
6. Thomas
7. Oliver
8. Riley
9. Noah
10. Max
11. James
12. Ethan
13. Aiden
14. Liam
15. Jackson
16. Lucas
17. Alexander
18. Oscar
19. Charlie
20. Connor

Trends for girls

Isabella is the new number one on the girls’ name list for 2009. Isabella was fourth on last year’s list but this year it is even more popular, knocking Lily from the number one position.

It is very likely that the Twlight-phenomena is responsible for the rise of ‘Isabella’. The heroine of the books and films that have taken the world by storm is named Isabella (nicknamed ‘Bella’). Isabelle, without the A, is also in the top 20 names of this year, taking out the girls’ award for the most variations of spelling. There are seven different ways that BabyCenter members spell Isabelle!

Another name which has risen in popularity is the ever-popular Olivia, and we also see the rise of Grace, up from number 20 in 2008 to number 12.

New girls’ names to make the list are Matilda and Emma. Though they are traditional names there were not seen on the list last year. The rise of Matilda could possibly be related to the amount of publicity surrounding Heath Ledger’s daughter Matilda in the time since his death.

On the downward dip are the names Hannah and Caitlyn which have both slipped out of the Top 20 list in 2009.

Trends for boys

It’s no surprise that Jack takes the top spot in the most popular boys’ names list this year. The name has long been very popular, and last year it took the number two position after Lachlan. Lachlan this year is still in the number two position and neither name looks like losing its popularity soon.

Newcomers to this year’s list are the names Connor and Oscar, knocking out Jayden and Samuel, both of which left the list this year.

Climbing the list this year are Cooper, Thomas and Max. Could it be a coincidence that Max is gaining in popularity just as the film Where the Wild Things is released, with the character Max played by the super-cute actor Max Records?

Losing popularity from last year are the names Riley, Ethan, Lucas and Charlie. And the award for variety of spellings goes to Aiden, which has seven variations in use.

Source: http://www.babycenter.com.au

Lose the Guilt Aussie Mums!

2009-12-14T07:27:00.002+11:00

The employment of mothers with young children is lower in Australia than in many OECD countries. Just under half - about 48 per cent - of Australian mothers whose youngest child is aged between three and five are in the workforce. This is well below the OECD average of about two-thirds of mothers.

Source: Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations