So, in my travels around the internet I stumbled across an interesting article from Yahoo finance UK here.
Turns out of the women surveyed 46% suffered from “severe” anxiety. WOW that’s very high. Now the sample size of the survey wasn’t huge, but it was enough to extrapolate out that many working mothers in the UK are extremely stressed out.
From the article: “Gerard Barnes, CEO of
Smart TMS, said: “The effort required to care for and bring up a son or
daughter is considerable; when you add the strain of a professional career to
this, it’s not hard to imagine how the mental health of working mothers could
be affected.”
He added: “I would encourage all mothers or mothers-to-be, who intend to
simultaneously achieve new career heights, to take the time to consider their
resources, desires and motivations. They must ensure they are aware of the
potential health consequences.
“It is also vital for working mothers to understand that they are just as prone to depression than anyone else, if not more so, and should ensure they have a strong support network and treatment options available if needed.”
So, what we have here is evidence, in my opinion of how social constructs affect people in different ways. First is the notion of family, this is the first line of a support network. These mum’s hopefully have partners in their lives that are helpful and supportive but that’s not always the case. Second, in most cases of child birth (exception being planned IVF with a host) there should be a father, ideally an engaged one who supports the family.
Then we have government. Now I don’t believe that government should be the catch all for our social ill’s, but we do pay taxes to the government. This should equate to certain services. What is more important than the health of children and the parents who care for them? You could argue the elderly and I wouldn’t protest but children are innocents, they simply don’t have the resources to fend for themselves.
These mum’s need to be supported ideally with the taxes they have already paid. My solution would be to provide a subsidy based to the families to enable them to financially be able to make the decision to stay home if desired. I think more positive outcomes for families happen when one or both parents can stay home with children for extended periods. Not months, years.
Of course, someone must pay the bills, and not all mothers (or fathers) have a partner or a family network to assist them. Therefore, I believe portions of your tax money should be available to use to supplement your income during this period. In the states we have social security tax, we pay it for our whole working lives and then collect it when we retire. Why can’t a portion of that be used earlier to help mothers and families with child care burdens?
In a perfect world, mothers would be stressed but we don’t live in a perfect world. This is alarming to say the least, stress leads to negative outcomes and an unhappy mother often leads to unhappy children.
