The CBB :: View topic - Families: The Rosomons

Marie Pfeifen has a husband and 4 children and still runs the Russells' house!

Marriage and Motherhood is a Higher Calling than Careers - a position which, if followed logically, would require a girl still at school to decide in advance on marriage or a career, and not bother training for anything time-consuming if she thinks she can pull off a marriage by twenty...

Married women Civil Servants had to give up work in the first half of the twentieth century; but I am not sure when that stopped.

I hope Daisy returned to work after the kids get older; perhaps someone should write it....

evelyn38 wrote:

Married women Civil Servants had to give up work in the first half of the twentieth century; but I am not sure when that stopped.

In Ireland, it ended sometime in the 1970s (The Marriage Bar).

It was 1973, I think. My mind never ceases to be boggled that this nonsense extended into my lifetime.

Only of course EBD doesn't actually appear to think of it as a waste, as Marriage and Motherhood is a Higher Calling than Careers - a position which, if followed logically, would require a girl still at school to decide in advance on marriage or a career, and not bother training for anything time-consuming if she thinks she can pull off a marriage by twenty...

wish this was entirely an issue from the past, but that kind of institutionalised sexism, though rather less supported by the law, is alive and well

To play Devil's advocate for a moment, a single friend of mine works in a team of three. The other two are women with children. She says there have been times when both the other two are away because their children are unwell and she has to put in extra hours to cover their work as well as her own. How do you balance the needs and rights of all employees?

I suppose resistance to employing married women dates back to the time when methods of birth control weren't widely known/available, or considered respectable. Marriage nearly always did mean babies almost immediately, and at frequent intervals thereafter, as in EBD and EJO land.

To play Devil's advocate for a moment, a single friend of mine works in a team of three. The other two are women with children. She says there have been times when both the other two are away because their children are unwell and she has to put in extra hours to cover their work as well as her own. How do you balance the needs and rights of all employees?

That's disgusting CBW - did you do anything about it?

I don't disagree with that - after all, the reality is that if a couple start a family, it's the woman who has to take time off to have the baby, not the man!

Even so far pre-pill, didn't Marie Stopes set up in the 1920s in London?

I realise some of the main characters are limited in this by their devout Catholicism, but what would have been the attitudes to and availability of birth control among middle-class C of E women? I can't remember whether Daisy is a Catholic but am assuming not - but as a medic married to a medic, she would presumably have had the knowledge to be able to postpone children if she wanted to?

Quote:

That's disgusting CBW - did you do anything about it?

I had to stay because of supporting my daughter but I collected evidence all over the time that I couldn't afford to give up the job and then started a company with the payoff they were obliged to offer when I was in a position to change. (Its amazing what 7 years of very detailed notes including dates/times/copies of emails etc can do)

But even if the father takes time off for childcare, rather than the mother, someone still has to do his work in his absence. It's not just a matter of gender roles.

And it does seem that the mother is expected to take time off to look after sick children, not the father. (I don't know too many men who've taken sick leave to stay home with the children, although it isn't totally unheard of.)

...a workplace that defaulted to the notion that all staff members with children, whether male or female, were liable to need flexibility, adequate parental leave, and emergency measures to deal with child-related illness or emergencies, would be a very different environment, even if the total amount of child-related leave taken and work undertaken didn't change.

it's the fact that the professional world has yet to wake up to the fact that having children isn 't some kind of minority hobby, because so many woman have either been forced out, or have felt that had to opt out of the working world at times up to and including the present. The workplace has been able to continue on a male default model, and on

I've often wondered what would happen if all women suddenly said "Okay, if you're going to punish us collectively for having children, then we're going on strike. No more babies."

So it still goes on!
Applying for a senior local government job in the early 80s, I was asked when I was going to start a family. The HR member of the panel nearly burst a blood vessel and told me not to answer - but I enjoyed doing so. It was along the lines of
"In the hypothetical case of an applicant being asked an illegal question by a member of the interviewing panel about children or anticipation of them, I would reply that surely the fact that one was applying for the job would imply that
a) one was not intending to get pregnant immediately
b) If and when one did, one would make appropriate arrangements and
c) Would the member of the panel care to provide assurances that the same question had been asked of all applicants, irrespective of gender?
For the record, I got the job.

This is a tad off-topic, but in Luxembourg, they ask you at your interview if you are in a relationship, or if not, do you intend to start one? Then, are you pregnant? Do you intend to get pregnant in X number of years, etc, etc. No information is private!

roversgirl wrote:

But isn't it subject to EU employment and discrimination law?

I once wrote a drabble involving Madge somehow sleeping with most of the men who appeared in the CS, and that's why I know this :oops:

More importantly, would you trust easygoing Lawrie Rosomon with coitus interruptus? Oh, wipe my mind.

I also think one of the reasons why Daisy gave up work and not just because of the era in which she lived in was cos of her own childhood. She was orphaned at 12 and shunted between relatives and seperated from Primula at times.

... Jo, a devout Catholic married to another, is still breast-feeding Stephen (mostly) at this point, so is probably only really relying on suppressed ovulation, rather than family planning as such - though of course she and Jack are living separately during this summer. But she implies an ability to choose to conceive in the near future...?

She implies an ability to pick the sex of her next child, too!

Aren't there wives tale about what position you use can determine the sex of the baby and how passionate you are in the process.

Re contraception in the 40's, there is an interesting passage in The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley.

Lolly wrote:

Re contraception in the 40's, there is an interesting passage in The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley.

Yes, but that was not a contemporary reference - The Camomile Lawn was written in the 1980s or 90s.

Mrs Redboots wrote:

Lolly wrote:

Re contraception in the 40's, there is an interesting passage in The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley.

Yes, but that was not a contemporary reference - The Camomile Lawn was written in the 1980s or 90s.

...by a woman who was born in 1912. So there could be some merit is using it as part of the discussion here?

Absolutely, especially given how much Mary Wesley draws on her own fairly rackety existence before the war! (Her biography by Patrick Marnham is scandal-filled in the extreme and great fun...)

Mrs Redboots wrote:

Lolly wrote:

Re contraception in the 40's, there is an interesting passage in The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley.

Yes, but that was not a contemporary reference - The Camomile Lawn was written in the 1980s or 90s.

...by a woman who was born in 1912. So there could be some merit is using it as part of the discussion here?

as one woman pointed out 'if you put it in ready and then he didn't want it you felt so embarrassed'

Author:	jennifer [ Wed May 07, 2008 4:45 am ]
Post subject:	Families: The Rosomons
The Rosomons consist of Daisy Venables, Laurie Rosomon and their three children; Peter, Tony and Mary. Daisy and Laurie meet when they are both working as doctors. They marry in Joey Goes to the Oberland, and settle in England, where Laurie works in general practice. A few years later they relocate to the Platz, where Laurie gets a job at the San, and Daisy occasionally helps out with the children at the hospital. What do you think of Daisy's family life and the path they take? Is the move to the San a good idea? What about Daisy giving up her medical work after qualifying as a doctor?

Author:	liberty [ Wed May 07, 2008 6:52 am ]
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I always liked Daisy and she seems to be allowed to grow up quite naturally. I also never had a problem with her giving up her work. It was still very common then for the mother to stay at home. Perhaps, if the series had continued, we might have seen her go back to work once her children got a bit older. It has to be said, I don't really remember anything about Laurie, although I think it was nice the way he was willing to take on Primula

Author:	Alison H [ Wed May 07, 2008 8:12 am ]
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Laurie seemed lovely - his comments in Joey Goes about wanting Primula to regard their home as hers are very sweet, and the impression of him and Daisy generally is that they're a happy, easy-going couple. And although they only appear sporadically - first they turn out to be related to the Richardsons, then they actually move to the Platz but then EBD seems to forget about them - it's nice that Daisy doesn't just disappear into the sunset after getting married (as Peggy, Bride, Primula, Sybil and Josette all do). I appreciate that by the standards of the time it would have been normal for Daisy to give up work and become a housewife, but I wish that EBD had made a bit more of it. When Julie Lucy abandons her plans to become a barrister, all we get is "Oh, that's all off," as if she's just cancelled a day at the seaside or an evening at the pictures, and with Daisy no-one even mentions the fact that she's giving up the career she's spent a long time training for and won awards for. I'd like to have seen her discussing it with someone - maybe Madge, who had to give up running the school she'd founded - and perhaps expressing some regrets about the fact that she had to make a choice.

Author:	Maeve [ Wed May 07, 2008 9:18 am ]
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Daisy's lovely. Wish she could have figured more in the later books as much as some of the long standing staff do. It does seem a bit strange to me that EBD makes a bit of a fuss about how clever the girls are -- don't both Juliet and Daisy win medals or awards for their papers or something? -- and then just lets their careers totally go. Especially with Daisy who had such connections with the San -- couldn't someone have taken a leap and employed her to work with all those kiddy TB patients? I know it was the common thing when EBD was writing to have married women put their careers aside, but she seems a little bit conflicted about it. Are Joey and Madge the only two married career women in the series? There's Lady Carew, I suppose, and Katherine Gordon's mother worked as a nurse alongside her husband, IIRC. Any others?

Author:	JayB [ Wed May 07, 2008 9:34 am ]
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Isn't Melanie Lucas's mother a singer?

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Families: The Rosomons http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4496

Author:	Alison H [ Wed May 07, 2008 9:35 am ]
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Marie Pfeifen has a husband and 4 children and still runs the Russells' house!

Author:	JS [ Wed May 07, 2008 9:58 am ]
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I like Daisy too and think it quite possible that EBD simply forgot she was an award-winning doctor. There's a line in one of the later books about it being ok to leave kids with the Rosomons because Laurie was a doctor but no mention of Daisy's own qualifications in that line. Maybe, of course, she and Julie Lucy were both delighted to get shot of what must have been pretty pressured careers?? I agree it would have been nice to see any agonising but wouldn't it have been quite anachronistic?

Author:	Sunglass [ Wed May 07, 2008 10:04 am ]
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Alison H wrote: Marie Pfeifen has a husband and 4 children and still runs the Russells' house! Clearly it's different for the working classes! (Though do we know how they arrange it - do the Pfeiffens live out?) To be honest, I'm not sure we can even really count Madge as working as such after her marriage - it comes down to a very small amount of teaching and an increasingly non- day-to-day interest in the School. And while I appreciate Joey's smart response in Jo to the Rescue to Jack's teasing about why she doesn't do embroidery in her spare moments like his mother used to do (honestly, Jack, men who want to marry their mothers have serious issues!), and says that as long as her publishers want another book, she'll keep writing, nonetheless writing can be done at home, doesn't require higher education, and doesn't usurp male prerogatives, as Daisy's medical career does. (Notice that in the same conversation, Joey's still careful to point out that although Anna does most of the children's mending, she herself always does all of Jack's! I suppose you could rationalise that as Anna being the children's nurse, but I've always thought it was Joey Being a Wife, Though also an Author!) Which is to say that though I'm inclined to like Laurie Rosomon, who is easygoing and less bossy and patriarchal than the other CS doctors (does he ever dose Daisy?) I do lament Daisy's post-marital departure from the workplace. As other people have said, it's EBD being realistic, but I'd have liked the narrative to at least sound slightly regretful about the waste of talent and training, as with Julie Lucy! Only of course EBD doesn't actually appear to think of it as a waste, as Marriage and Motherhood is a Higher Calling than Careers - a position which, if followed logically, would require a girl still at school to decide in advance on marriage or a career, and not bother training for anything time-consuming if she thinks she can pull off a marriage by twenty...

Author:	Alison H [ Wed May 07, 2008 10:15 am ]
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Miss Carthew and Grizel have a conversation in Head Girl about Madge, in which Miss Carthew says that although Madge probably misses her work at the school she's happier with Jem and David than she would have been had she remained single and the CS headmistress. I'd just have liked to see something similar with Daisy - some sort of recognition that she had to make a choice and an acknowledgement that she's lost something as well as gaining something ... if that makes sense. Especially as her work was something for which she had a vocation and did a lot of difficult training, not just something that she was only doing to earn a living.

Author:	JayB [ Wed May 07, 2008 11:10 am ]
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Quote: Marriage and Motherhood is a Higher Calling than Careers - a position which, if followed logically, would require a girl still at school to decide in advance on marriage or a career, and not bother training for anything time-consuming if she thinks she can pull off a marriage by twenty... Isn't that Samantha van der Byl's plan? Not necesarily marriage by twenty, but her ambition is to get married, so she doesn't see any need to plan for a career. Daisy's children are still quite young by the end of the series, so I think it's reasonable for her to be taking a career break until she and Laurie decide their family is complete. I don't think it's suggested that she's packed it in completely, as Julie Lucy has.

Author:	Caroline [ Wed May 07, 2008 11:42 am ]
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If you think about it, EBD ties herself in knots about the issue of working women. 1) As appropriate for the time in which she's writing, most of the girls and mistresses give up their careers on marriage (query: weren't married women actually barred / forced to quit some careers back in those days, rather than just expected to give up by their peers / society?). 2) I would think (from the books) that EBD herself believed at least moderately strongly in marriage and children as the ultimate fulfillment for a women.... 3) ... but she also knew that many women of her generation and later generations wouldn't marry for whatever reason (the war, for instance), and would therefore have to work to support themselves. As she did. 4) And also she was writing school-based books for girls where there's plenty of plot and story to be made from the aspirations / hopes / dreams of the girl characters - think of the school story world without a cheating-in-exams plotline or a family-has-lost-money-must-win-a-scholarship-to-art-school / music college / Uni plotline - every series has it. Remove aspirations / future careers from the story and you are losing something huge. Where EBD complicates matters is that she follows her girls into the adult world, where the aspirations she wants to write about when they are at school don't necessarily fit with the real world of work around her. Other writers of her era don't need to confront this - EB stops with Darrell and Co. leaving Mallory Towers for university, for instance - we never find out What Happens After They Graduate.... This thread was about Daisy and Laurie, you say....? Oops. Erm, I really like them - they come across as a proper partnership, and seem to have nicely relaxed relationships with each other, their children and the rest of the CS community. Wish we'd seen more of them later on.

Author:	evelyn38 [ Wed May 07, 2008 4:24 pm ]
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Married women Civil Servants had to give up work in the first half of the twentieth century; but I am not sure when that stopped. I hope Daisy returned to work after the kids get older; perhaps someone should write it.... I too always liked her; both as a child/teenager and as a young mother, she seemed realistic and genuine, in a way that some of the more central characters don't always manage.

Author:	Róisín [ Wed May 07, 2008 4:47 pm ]
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evelyn38 wrote: Married women Civil Servants had to give up work in the first half of the twentieth century; but I am not sure when that stopped. In Ireland, it ended sometime in the 1970s (The Marriage Bar).

Author:	Lottie [ Wed May 07, 2008 4:48 pm ]
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evelyn38 wrote: I hope Daisy returned to work after the kids get older; perhaps someone should write it.... AlisonH already has - it's here and here.

Author:	Travellers Joy [ Sat May 10, 2008 8:49 am ]
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You're right, things haven't changed that much. When I, as a sole parent, applied for a mortgage (around 12 years ago), the most anyone would lend me was 20,000. I ended up buying a house jointly with my mother, using the proceeds of her house as a substantial (ie 60-70%) deposit, and even then they wouldn't look just at my income but insisted on taking my mother's into account as well. I was still only able to borrow 65k. My ex, who was not earning much more than I was, had no trouble getting 120k on his income alone (his new wife wasn't earning) and with a deposit of only 10k! It may not be legal, but it was still happening ten years ago and I haven't seen anything to suggest it is greatly different now.

Author:	evelyn38 [ Wed May 07, 2008 7:56 pm ]
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thank you !

Author:	Sunglass [ Wed May 07, 2008 8:04 pm ]
Post subject:
Róisín wrote: evelyn38 wrote: Married women Civil Servants had to give up work in the first half of the twentieth century; but I am not sure when that stopped. In Ireland, it ended sometime in the 1970s (The Marriage Bar). It was 1973, I think. My mind never ceases to be boggled that this nonsense extended into my lifetime.

Author:	evelyn38 [ Wed May 07, 2008 8:09 pm ]
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Sunglass wrote Quote: It was 1973, I think. My mind never ceases to be boggled that this nonsense extended into my lifetime. Its funny you say that; I had a feeling it was n't that long before I joined (in 1985) but then I also could not believe it would have survived so long

Author:	Kate [ Wed May 07, 2008 8:15 pm ]
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It was a good bit earlier in the UK - 1946. And 1966 in Australia. I did lots of research for an essay I did a few years ago titled "Feminism in Ireland has had to contend with a set of issues that are specific to the Irish experience" which I have just rediscoverd and am enthralled by. It is very strange reading my own essay with interest!!

Author:	evelyn38 [ Wed May 07, 2008 8:39 pm ]
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Interesting that it was so late in Australia, though. Ireland I can understand more easily.

Author:	Mrs Redboots [ Fri May 09, 2008 7:21 pm ]
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Sunglass wrote: Only of course EBD doesn't actually appear to think of it as a waste, as Marriage and Motherhood is a Higher Calling than Careers - a position which, if followed logically, would require a girl still at school to decide in advance on marriage or a career, and not bother training for anything time-consuming if she thinks she can pull off a marriage by twenty... Which, in fact, was very much the case right up until the 1960s - hence the prevalence of finishing-schools. My generation, who left school in the 1960s, expected to work for our livings, but few of us realistically expected to have to after we married and had kids - it came as rather a shock to the system to find it was suddenly expected! It was notable that few of my contemporaries wanted to do any kind of training that lasted more than two or three years - we wanted to go to university (although I didn't, in the end), but few of us planned to be doctors or even accountants as the training was so long. We never said it in words, but I think most of us expected to meet our future husbands at university and not actually to have to work.

Author:	jennifer [ Sat May 10, 2008 12:51 am ]
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Hence the habit of referring to a university degree as getting your Mrs It was a two way thing - employers were less likely to hire women for professional jobs (doctor, lawyer etc) because of course they were going to get married, and all the time and effort that went in to them would be wasted. So if you went into a job like that, even unmarried, you wouldn't get the same professional consideration as a man.

Author:	Sunglass [ Sat May 10, 2008 7:09 am ]
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I wish this was entirely an issue from the past, but that kind of institutionalised sexism, though rather less supported by the law, is alive and well - note the research, which made headlines after a woman was quizzed about her childcare arrangements in 'he Apprentice', on 'maternal profiling', through which mothers, pregnant women and women 'likely to become pregnant' are discriminated against at interviews. A woman can still be asked about her marital status and whether she has children in (some states of?) the US, though it's technically illegal in the UK - but many firms do it surreptitiously, and according to this recent report, and hire/don't hire accordingly. Also, something like 70% of companies reportedly wished they were able to do so legally. An article in Forbes magazine recently claimed there were too many female doctors in the US, because they typically put in fewer hours than their male equivalents. The ends of feminism still have a long way to go to be met, with women still viewed as professional encumbrances in this way. But to get back to the CS - I realise that were relatively few women in the professions in the 1940s/50s, so surely it's even more poignant that EBD, who has, after all, the imagination and drive to create a fictional an all-female space which values female achievement, should write a successful woman doctor like Daisy Venables Rosomon, with her medal-winning medical achievements, and then take her out of the workplace as a matter of course after her marriage? I realise it's realism, but I for one would certainly have welcomed even one phrase of regret.

Author:	CBW [ Sat May 10, 2008 7:30 am ]
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Quote: wish this was entirely an issue from the past, but that kind of institutionalised sexism, though rather less supported by the law, is alive and well When I was a single parent with a small child I ended up not admitting to her on application forms. The only interviews I got were from the forms that said I was single. Having got the job I was then told that I wasn't eligible for an internal transfer because "they didn't want someone who was going to screw them up having babies", was refused certain job opportunities because "the country you'd be handling with won't deal with a woman" and finally I found that the male colleague Id trained earned more than I did. All of this took place in the last 10 years in a prominent city company.

Author:	Lesley [ Sat May 10, 2008 7:42 am ]
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That's disgusting CBW - did you do anything about it?

Author:	Alison H [ Sat May 10, 2008 9:22 am ]
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A male colleague in his late 50s left the firm I work for in December, and I actually heard my boss saying that he wasn't going to consider an application he'd received from a married woman in her 20s as she woukd probably be going on maternity leave at some point. Although I wouldn't wish a job there on anyone anyway, so I guess she had a lucky escape!

Author:	JayB [ Sat May 10, 2008 10:12 am ]
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I suppose resistance to employing married women dates back to the time when methods of birth control weren't widely known/available, or considered respectable. Marriage nearly always did mean babies almost immediately, and at frequent intervals thereafter, as in EBD and EJO land. To play Devil's advocate for a moment, a single friend of mine works in a team of three. The other two are women with children. She says there have been times when both the other two are away because their children are unwell and she has to put in extra hours to cover their work as well as her own. How do you balance the needs and rights of all employees?

Author:	Travellers Joy [ Sat May 10, 2008 10:21 am ]
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JayB wrote: To play Devil's advocate for a moment, a single friend of mine works in a team of three. The other two are women with children. She says there have been times when both the other two are away because their children are unwell and she has to put in extra hours to cover their work as well as her own. How do you balance the needs and rights of all employees? I don't disagree with that - after all, the reality is that if a couple start a family, it's the woman who has to take time off to have the baby, not the man! And it does seem that the mother is expected to take time off to look after sick children, not the father. (I don't know too many men who've taken sick leave to stay home with the children, although it isn't totally unheard of.) And it was for this reason that I've worked freelance most of my life: with a child constantly ill with asthma and off school an average of 40 days a year for most of his primary school years, taking regular employment wasn't an option; no employer was going to allow me that many sick days!! I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think discriminating against women in the workplace, just because they are women, is it.

Author:	Aishwarya [ Sat May 10, 2008 11:41 am ]
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When I was two or three my mother applied for her first job in the UK. One of her interviewers asked her how she planned to balance work and a toddler. The others shut him up and told her she didn't have to answer. Afterwards they apologised to mum privately and told her (since we'd just moved and she didn't know what the laws around this sort of thing were) that it had been illegal. This was the mid-eighties, and I've always found the story encouraging. My parents are doctors too, and there've always been a few friends and family who are horrified at the neglect I have suffered. Strangely, it's always mum who has been expected to quit her job and hold my hand. I wonder why that is? Dad would actually be a far better homemaker. Mum's the career-driven one in the family.

Author:	Lesley [ Sat May 10, 2008 12:24 pm ]
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That's interesting Aishwarya - because a cousin of mine was spoken of very disapprovingly by almost all in the family. Her crime? To go back to work after having children while her husband stayed at home. The fact that she was earning more than him, he was a far better home maker than her and that both of them were happy with the arrangement didn't seem to matter to many - only that she, as the mother, should have stayed home. Unfortunately we still have a long way to go until there is complete equality - whereby men and women have an equal right to chose what they do - and are not frowned upon for their choice - be it wage earner or home maker.

Author:	Sunglass [ Sat May 10, 2008 1:05 pm ]
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JayB wrote: I suppose resistance to employing married women dates back to the time when methods of birth control weren't widely known/available, or considered respectable. Marriage nearly always did mean babies almost immediately, and at frequent intervals thereafter, as in EBD and EJO land. To play Devil's advocate for a moment, a single friend of mine works in a team of three. The other two are women with children. She says there have been times when both the other two are away because their children are unwell and she has to put in extra hours to cover their work as well as her own. How do you balance the needs and rights of all employees? Well, I am in the same position - a childless professional woman who has, I imagine like a lot of other people, at times been put under huge pressure because of maternity leave glitches, and childcare problems. But the problem is not working mothers, it's the fact that the professional world has yet to wake up to the fact that having children isn 't some kind of minority hobby, because so many woman have either been forced out, or have felt that had to opt out of the working world at times up to and including the present. The workplace has been able to continue on a male default model, and on the sexist assumption that the burden of childcare will always fall on the woman. (It needs to realise that there will be no one to educate, practice law or medicine on, entertain, or sell things to if the human race dies out!) It would be completely unfair of me to blame my female colleagues for the fact that I have to shoulder more than my fair share of work at times, but it's likely to stay that way until childcare stops being regarded as a 'women's issue'. To get back to the CS and Daisy Rosomon, in relation to the other point here - not being British, I know very little about what kind of access to birth control knowledge and actual contraceptive devices/methods the young middle-class married women of the 40s and 50s would have had. Even so far pre-pill, didn't Marie Stopes set up in the 1920s in London? I realise some of the main characters are limited in this by their devout Catholicism, but what would have been the attitudes to and availability of birth control among middle-class C of E women? I can't remember whether Daisy is a Catholic but am assuming not - but as a medic married to a medic, she would presumably have had the knowledge to be able to postpone children if she wanted to?

Author:	CBW [ Sat May 10, 2008 1:08 pm ]
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Quote: That's disgusting CBW - did you do anything about it? I had to stay because of supporting my daughter but I collected evidence all over the time that I couldn't afford to give up the job and then started a company with the payoff they were obliged to offer when I was in a position to change. (Its amazing what 7 years of very detailed notes including dates/times/copies of emails etc can do)

Author:	kramerkaren [ Sat May 10, 2008 1:51 pm ]
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Travellers Joy wrote: I don't disagree with that - after all, the reality is that if a couple start a family, it's the woman who has to take time off to have the baby, not the man! the reason that I, as a mother, am the one taking time off from work, and not my husband is because he earns much more then I do, so we can afford to lose my pay, we cant afford to lose his pay. I am much more educated then him, I work harder during the hours i am at work, I take work home so as to finish whatever needs to be done. My job includes responsibility for human well-being and lives. And yet - he earns more then 3 (closer to 4) times what I do on an hourly basis. And a good lot of that is based on the fact that he is a man. The whole system is screwed up.

Author:	JayB [ Sat May 10, 2008 2:21 pm ]
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But even if the father takes time off for childcare, rather than the mother, someone still has to do his work in his absence. It's not just a matter of gender roles. Quote: Even so far pre-pill, didn't Marie Stopes set up in the 1920s in London? I realise some of the main characters are limited in this by their devout Catholicism, but what would have been the attitudes to and availability of birth control among middle-class C of E women? I can't remember whether Daisy is a Catholic but am assuming not - but as a medic married to a medic, she would presumably have had the knowledge to be able to postpone children if she wanted to? Dear Dr Stopes is well worth reading. It's a collection of letters to Marie Stopes from women of all backgrounds asking for advice on contraception and sexual health. The letters demonstrate how difficult even fairly well educated women found it to get information on these subjects, and how the idea of artificially limiting families was often frowned upon even by non-Catholics. And these are the women who'd actually heard of Marie Stopes and knew how to contact her. By the '40s and '50s attitudes had changed of course, but I imagine in the fairly conservative CS world, the assumption still was that marriage meant babies, and no-one got married with the intention of not having children. The only (implied) references to birth control I can recall in a GO book are in the Abbey books. The other characters at one point tell Jen Marchwood she should delay having another child because she's worn out with looking after her husband, who was seriously injured in a car accident (but now recovered). Another time it's stated that Rosamund has decided to have her children close together because she fears her husband won't live very long - the implication being that she could have chosen to space them out.

Author:	Lesley [ Sat May 10, 2008 2:31 pm ]
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CBW wrote: Quote: That's disgusting CBW - did you do anything about it? I had to stay because of supporting my daughter but I collected evidence all over the time that I couldn't afford to give up the job and then started a company with the payoff they were obliged to offer when I was in a position to change. (Its amazing what 7 years of very detailed notes including dates/times/copies of emails etc can do) Good for you!!!! Stick them in the wallet - where it hurts.