Whether or not you ‘have it all’ as a new mother, the chances are that you’re negotiating ‘the majority of it all’.
Indeed, as academic Dr Sheree Gregory writes at The Conversation today (republished on Women’s Agenda here) the challenge for women returning to paid work is really in the “multiple layers of negotiation” she must get through in order to arrive at the office in the first place.
It’s not just a matter of dealing with your employer — negotiating flexible work, a leave replacement and the date you’ll return — but also everything else required to transition into a whole new way of working that can accommodate the new baby.
There is negotiating with carers, family members, nannies and babysitters. There’s negotiating with child care centres — getting your child on multiple lists, making yourself known and memorable at the centres you like, continually getting on the phone to see if you’re any closer to being offered the days you need.
There’s the negotiating that comes with considering how much you’ll actually take home once the caring expenses are paid. Balancing your own pay against the per-day child care fee and how far the childcare rebate can go in helping you out.
And when you finally get your complex weekly equation of care arrangements in place (grandma on Monday, childcare on Wednesday, the nanny on Thursday etc), the never-ending daily negotiating begins. Managing the drop offs and pick ups, and who’s going to get and cook what for dinner. Managing work with doctor appointments, unplanned sick days and holidays.
Later, new mothers might start to re-negotiate their personal time and whether ‘wellbeing’ efforts are actually worth it. Gyms are called to re-negotiate memberships. Convenient food choices take the place of healthy ones.
As Gregory finds, these negotiating experiences new mothers face are often characterised as individual choices — although just how much ‘choice’ is involved is questionable when the system such negotiation occurs in is one that still fundamentally supports the notion of the male breadwinner.
Gregory’s research is based on 82 interviews with pregnant women and mothers in Victoria. Some of those interviewed spoke about the challenge of “managing it all”, and described how they re-negogiated their life and career plans in order to survive: e.g. they dropped work, went part-time, or chose lower-paying jobs to secure a more flexible culture.
It seems all those “multiple layers of negotiating” leave women exhausted and questioning if returning to their careers is worth all the fuss. If women are still expected to “manage it all” and assumptions regarding which gender should and shouldn’t be the breadwinner continue, then both men and women may not have the choices we like to think we have.
The plus for new mothers is that at least they can practice those negotiating skills. Giving birth could just be the best means to learning how to ask for what you really need.