During and since writing Mothers Work! I’ve been collecting positive stories about women’s work experiences since having children. This is a blog post about Catherine, a woman who works part time for the Home Office and whose husband works part time as a teacher.

I’m a civil servant working for the Home Office, in the Westminster HQ. My most recent post was working on counter-terrorism and aviation security, which doesn’t sound like it would be that family friendly! My grade is one below the senior civil service - middle management you’d call it. I think central government is actually pretty good for family friendly policies - there are always several people in any Unit / Department working some kind of flexible terms, including compressed hours, part-time, jobshare, flexihours (in fact almost everyone works flexi time in the Home Office - there’s no such thing as a requirement to be in 9 to 5), and flexible working isn’t the preserve of women, although is largely taken up by them rather than men. There is quite a bit of cultural acceptance in the office of flexible working - for example my male boss always left “early” twice a week to collect his children from school (although of course on flexitime he was still doing the required hours per week).

There are a few types of role which preclude this - the most obvious being working directly in a minister’s office (although you get extra financial compensation for the additional hours you are expected to do routinely), or working on a Bill going through Parliament, where the working timetable of Parliament requires civil servants to be more flexible. But this is explicitly known and you would never be required to take a job if you didn’t want to do it.

And the great majority of central govenment roles can be done by working flexibly. So it wasn’t difficult to convince my employer that the post I started after returning from mat leave (in fact not the post I left to go on mat leave - long story). I think this is because the government has in recent years had an agenda of promoting family friendly working practices in business and therefore needs to lead by example. After the General Election last year this has been given a greater boost in my department with the appoinment of an Equalities Minister located in the Home Office itself (see for example, this press releaset from last year: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/news/working-mum-employer). They have recently introduced a “job-share noticeboard” across all government deparments to help people interested in finding a jobshare partner track one down, which I think is a really good idea, although that’s not how I found my jobshare partner.

In terms of my husband - he was actually in the process of career changing whilst I was pregnant / on mat leave / returning - from university lecturer to doing a PGCE in order to be a secondary school teacher (for his own career satisfaction / stability / salary reasons, not because of the relevance or otherwise to working fatherhood). So at the point I was returning to work, he was looking for his first teaching post, and was able to only apply for part-time positions (of which there are quite a few, especially in his subject, music). So no need to convince his employer to change his hours or anything. And it was great that he relatively quickly found a part time postion in a nearby well-regarded state school.

And in terms of his keenness or otherwise - it was completely a joint decision to both work part-time, and we both strongly felt that we didn’t want our daughter to go into formal childcare at a young age. He sees parenting as completely a joint job (although we felt that parenting a under 1 was more for me, not least because of breast feeding) and he gives so much to our daughter that she doesn’t get from me. I don’t think either of us feel that I am any better placed to look after our daughter than he is. He is perfectly dedicated to his job, and keen to do it well, but it’s not his entire life. There is also the additional factor that I earn roughly twice as much as he does (as a career changer into teaching he started near the bottom of the teaching payscale for graduates), not that this was the primary driver for us in choosing this arrangement. But it does mean that for him to work full time and me not to work at all wasn’t ever on the cards.

I have just asked him why he wanted to have this arrangement and he says that he feels that it’s a really nice way of living our life as a family and seems the most fair arrangement for everyone - for each other professionally and as parents, and for our daughter.

I am very proud of him and I think he is a fantastic role model for our daughter. I think he is a natural father in a way and I admire his combination of huge amounts of fun and joy and patience in his parenting with boundaries, guidance and stability. I am baffled as to why more men we know don’t routinely take part in the daytime care for their children - some of them have so much to give their children in addition to after 5pm and at weekends. Our family is the only one I know where the man works part time, even though I know several couples where the mother earns more than the father.

I do find the whole issue really quite interesting, particularly men’s role in it all actually. It will also be interesting to see if I can keep up the happy balance at more senior levels in the civil service over the coming years - although within my own division there is a jobshare at a senior level, so it is possible. I hope this is all helpful and I’d be happy to tell you anything more about any aspect of it. I also hope I don’t sound desperately smug!

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