It’s with interest I read the Netmums Great Work Debate Survey as it’s confirmed much of what I suspected about how mothers feel about work and how the government really seem to have missed the point. You should read it for yourself, but the key summary is:

• Mothers do not, in general, make a choice about whether to go back to work or stay at home as a full time mum. Choice has been virtually eradicated.

• The ‘playground politics’, often portrayed by the media, of working versus staying at home does not exist.
• There are a large number of women who feel they would rather stay at home to look after their own children, but are not able to do so as there is insufficient support available.
• The most popular work pattern was part time work, yet there are substantive concerns about the quality and availability of part time jobs. Part time jobs that don’t pay enough, are generally low grade and are too few in number
• Full time jobs are not flexible enough and the benefits of legislation for the rights to flexible working hasn’t filtered through to working mums.
• Action is needed on the part of Government and employers to reform the workplace if true choice and flexibility are to be achieved.

I’ve also recently found an excellent article by Boris Johnson with beautiful self-depreciating humour – What if mums don’t actually want to go out to work? While I don’t agree with all his conclusions, he does make some excellent points.

While discussing the issues on Mumsnet, someone came up with an excellent suggestion to not only support families with young children (particularly if one partner chooses to stay at home) but also those people who are carers: why not move towards the idea of a family tax return, where each person’s 0% and 10% allowances are pooled into the family pot. This would not only boost many families finances, but also send a clear signal that carers of all descriptions are valued in society for the work that they do.

What do you think? Worth lobbying the MP for?

Could all you bloggers and photo bloggers be a little less prolific, please?! Desperately need an early night tonight (Akra Jr was up twice with a nightmare and I reckon I had a total of 3 hours fragmented sleep) and it’s taking me ages to get through my bookmarks today!

Except you, Ms BW. In fact you are under strict orders to write a HUUUUUGE post. I’ll even give you a “BW made me laugh” award. Honey not included.

While I’m in the mood for dishing out interesting links, take a look at Pledgebank, a new and very useful tool for campaigners or just individuals who’d like to change a little bit of their world, but only if some other people will help them do it. The idea is simple, you set up a pledge, the minimum number of people you need to do it with you as motivation and a deadline. It’s not just limited to internet users either – you can sign up to a pledge with a text message, bringing it into the wider non-wired community.

So, can you think of something you’d really like to be able to do, but only if some other people do it with you? What are you waiting for – go pledge! As for me, I’ve signed up for “I will have 10 trees planted to offset my total carbon dioxide emissions for 2005 but only if 99 other people will too.” and worked out that for our household we would need to plant 14 trees to offset our carbon dioxide emissions for this year alone. Quite scary when you think of it. Only 32 more people needed at time of typing, so looks like I need to save up for some trees…

Dom Ramsey (the man who brought you Fotothing) has come up with a new toy to play with – Going Local. It’s still in beta, but uses Google Maps, News, Weather, traffic reports etc to give you more geographic data than you can shake a stick at. Go play – it’s really nifty!

I’m not quite sure which was worse, the huge media hoohah that was the verdict of the Michael Jackson trial last night, or the fact that I ended up glued to the telly watching it. Yes, I was particularly sad and flipped between the Beeb and Sky to try and determine who had the least worst commentary. It really was very amusing to hear the Beeb deride the media spectacle it had become, without feeling any sort of irony in their involvement, and bizarrely fascinating to see how a bunch of commentators with nothing to say could fill hours of time with complete drivel. I still watched anyway. Double irony.

Which was just as well, because otherwise I would have missed THE best quote of the evening from a former prosecutor speaking of Janet Arvizo (quote from memory): “there’s the circus outside the courtroom, there’s the circus inside the courtroom and there’s the circus in her head”.

It’s with quite a lot of unease that I read of plans to extend the school day to 8am to 6pm proposed by Ruth Kelly. It’s certainly a shocking headline, but reading into it properly on the surface it seems quite a good idea: teachers aren’t expected to do more, rather there is to be funding to help cheaper, more consistent and accessible wrap around childcare for working families. For many families, it won’t change the time away from home, but it will prevent quite so much to-ing and fro-ing and anxiety that many working parents feel.

While I’m glad that this provision will be available, the unease still hasn’t gone away. I’ll confess, most of this is coloured by memories of begging my mother to be a latch key kid at the age of ten on the one day a week she was away from the house until 5pm. While she’d arranged for me to be looked by a friend’s mother, I still needed my own space, my own home, to not be on display for those extra hours. The thought of being away from home all those extra hours frankly fills me with horror. It will be interesting to see the finer details of these plans – what the arranged activities will be, will there be time for children to get help with their homework, how much will they be left to their own devices.

But mostly (selfish I know) I feel for the parents. We are more and more being pushed into a full time employment, two working parent society. Now that’s great if you want to resume a career, and I think it’s fantastic that there’s opportunities for you to do so, but more and more I hear mums (and I’m sure some dads feel this way too) that they feel pressured into going back to work, that they “have” to go back to work rather than want to and are struggling to find some sort of work/life balance. Stay at home parents are becoming less and less the norm – if you do choose to stay at home, vast swathes of the day are left on your own (either with or without young children, depending on age) as none of your peers are at home as well, leaving many people very isolated.

Will these new proposals really help working parents? Or will they give employers yet another excuse not to provide more flexible, more family friendly working policies? Having two working parents if they’re passionate about what they do (I feel) is a real bonus for a family. Having two working parents where there is stress and a feeling of being trapped cannot be good for the wellbeing of that family. Would it be better for society if we looked at finding more real choices for families and carers rather than pushing the same “one size fits all” approach on everyone?

The problem with children is, they take everything you say literally. Ask Akra Jr to collect toys from his room “as quietly as a mouse” and he’ll scurry up the stairs squeaking…

Today has been a non-day: you know the type, where you have done lots of little odds and sods but when you look back you think “what did I do with the day?” Part of me feels like we should have done something with the time, the other part of me likes these kinds of days best of all.

You see, I have this rather large character flaw – I feel I have to fill up every moment of spare time with something “productive”. Being a stay at home mum hasn’t really cured me of this, I just end up scheduling lots of activities instead. Not just in my kids lives, but my own: would you believe that, until recently, I had a list of activities of things to do each evening of the week? They were fun stuff, not chores, but it was silly because half the time I would get there and not feel like watching a film, or playing that particular computer game – they became a chore by the very act of scheduling them.

I’d like to be able to permit myself not to “achieve” with my leisure time. The activities list has gone. I’m not there yet – I’ve oscillated to the other extreme the last few days and I have no idea what I shall do with my evening. I’ll probably just potter around on the internet, but not really enjoy it, then the time will feel wasted. There’s a balance out there somewhere. All I need to do is find it.

You know, one of the things I worried about when drastically cutting down on our processed food intake was all the extra time it would take for preparation and cooking. And you know what? I was right! (*gasp* – bet you thought I was going to tell you it was all rosy and didn’t take any extra time at all, didn’t you?).

But I’m going with the flow. Have just “budgeted” the extra time into the day – and as my expectations of the time needed has changed, I no longer feel rushed or stressed about it. The kids cope fine with me starting dinner a little earlier (well, they get more TV time out of the deal, don’t they *grin*), and I’m actually starting to enjoy cooking again.

Look at the benefits. I get completely guilt-free “me” time while preparing the evening meal. I can daydream, plan, review the day with the kids safely blocked out of the kitchen with a stairgate (so within hearing range, but pretty much out from under my feet). I get to really appreciate the food that I’m cooking – I’m getting better at understanding how “food” works and my smell and taste senses are getting a proper workout. Mostly it’s not stuff you can leave (although some is), so I don’t feel like I have to go out and rejoin the kids, so I clear up as I go instead – empty the dishwasher ready, put all the cooking utensils straight in there when I’ve used them, have the table laid ready, all so there’s more time for me later. I can even throw open the backdoor and have a quick wander outside if I like. If I’m really lucky, I can get quite a large chunk of a book read in between chopping, stirring, waiting for things to simmer. Today I even planned this blog post.

And best of all, I can make double quantities and freeze for when I feel like a “convenience” day again…

Just finished reading Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde last night and can thoroughly recommend it.

I thought the premise was slightly trite when I read the back of the book (about a boy who, in an assignment, comes up with the idea of doing big good deeds for three people then each of those people have to “pay it forward” to three more people and so on) but thought I’d try it anyway and I’m so glad I did. The writing is simple but stunningly effective, involving characterisation, just enough pace and twists to keep you guessing and turning the pages. There’s supposed to have been a film made, but I’m not sure I should see it as it’s sure to clash with how I see the characters in my head.

Anyone seen the film? Worth renting?