One for the dads:
Studies on work-life balance have usually focused on women, helping to create a stereotype of the guilt-ridden mother, who professes to be cutting corners in every segment of her life. The Fathers, Family and Work report published tomorrow attempts to redress this emphasis on women, looking at men's attitudes to work and family life, and finding fathers equally under pressure.
More in The Guardian.
It is strange to see in London kids sporting stylish designer outfits while the parents accompanying them are wearing tracksuits. Then again, everyone in London seems to be the same "dressing age" these days - anything fgoes, no matter how old you are.
Parents are ignoring the threat of fines or even jail by taking their children on cut-price holidays during term time, a survey reveals today.
A quarter admit to having taken their children out of school already this year, with nearly a third considering doing so before the end of term.
Rising numbers are risking fines of up to £100 as the recession deepens and the plunging pound raises the cost of foreign travel, according to a poll of 4,022 families
Daily Mail Wednesday 13th 2009
Comment: this happens in our school all the time (although I don't think the parents get fined). The other day I heard someone say that they took their two boys out of school for the day because the youngest (not at school) was one years old and she had organised a family lunch. What sort of message is this sort of behaviour giving the children I wonder?!
Nearly two-thirds of married women hold down a job while bringing up a toddler, official figures revealed yesterday.
It means the proportion of working mothers with children under the age of five has doubled in the past 25 years.
Critics of the Government said state benefits lavished on single parents at the expense of married and co-habiting couples are to blame for the trend.
The figures were published by the Office for National Statistics, based on findings from a detailed survey of 160,000 homes.
They showed that 62 per cent of married or co-habiting mothers with a child under five had either a full or part-time job in 2007.
Earlier estimates have suggested the proportion of mothers with young children who go out to work was around 31 per cent in the early 1980s.
This figure passed the 50 per cent mark in the late 1990s and hit 55 per cent in 2003.
The latest figures also show that around three-quarters of married mothers with one or two children under 16 go out to work - 76.8 per cent of those with one child and 73 per cent of those with two.
Mothers with larger families are less likely to have a job.
Fifty-eight per cent of mothers with three children and 40 per cent of those with four are in employment.
Surveys have repeatedly shown that many working mothers with young children would prefer to stay at home.
But economic pressures, they say, mean they have little choice but to take a job.
The extent of the need for mothers to work was underlined by Government poverty figures last week.
They showed that more than half of children living below the poverty line come from two-parent families in which only one parent is in work.
Typically, these are families in which the mother has chosen to stay at home to bring up her children.
Some rather scary statistics from the Daily Mail:
According to the Avon Mum economics survey, seven in ten mums feel they must return to work sooner than planned to plug the hole in their family finances.
Daily Mail, Career Mail, Thursday April 30th 2009, Rosanna Spero
DrDonzo