Liz Berman has worked since her two teenage daughters, Sophie, 16, and India,
13, were babies. In part it's because, as a single mother, she had to be
financially independent, but she also enjoyed her job and had access to good
childcare. For Liz, a property consultant and former associate manager of
Savills' Country House department, juggling long hours with the needs of her
two children was manageable, until last year, that is.
Her daughter Sophie was approaching GCSEs, and Liz realised that she needed to
be more involved with her daughter's education. “I was finding it
increasingly difficult; I had so little time with them,” Liz says. “I was
coming home at 7pm and cooking, by which time they would be on their
computers. I couldn't regiment it and the last thing you want to do when you
get home from work is argue with your child about what work she's done.”
So when Liz was offered redundancy in May last year she decided to take a
year's sabbatical, although she continued to work part-time during school
hours. It meant that the family income was halved: the cleaner, dog walker,
private tutors and taxis to school from their farmhouse in Surrey had to go.
“These exams were looming and I knew Sophie, who is not the most
conscientious of children, needed someone to crack the whip.” A revision
chart was drawn up and supper time was brought forward to give Sophie two
uninterrupted hours for study each evening. All homework was to be done at
the kitchen table with Liz present.
Ten months later, with Sophie's exams imminent, Liz's revision strategy has
paid off: Sophie's grades have improved significantly, transforming her
average marks for geography coursework from D to A+.
All three family members admit that it's taken time to adjust to Liz's
transition from full-time working mother to revision invigilator. For Liz,
the reality of having more time at home failed to live up to the rosy
existence she had pictured. She had dreamt of spending a lot of time on her
garden, yet found that she had to plan her days meticulously in order to get
everything done. And she admits that, in the beginning, Sophie and India
resented their mother being at home so much of the time. “There were
clashes: the girls were very independent because I'd worked for so many
years and suddenly I was moving in on their independence, which is
difficult.”
Anecdotal evidence suggests that parents are increasingly cutting back on
working hours or taking long periods of leave to help their children through
exams. The charity Working Families has been campaigning on behalf of
parents of older children to raise awareness that they, too, need access to
flexible working arrangements in the same way that parents of younger
children do.
“Many parents tell us that their need to be around their children is just as
important as their child gets older,” says Sarah Jackson, of the charity.
“Children need their parents around them at stressful times, such as during
exams.”
In fact, its lobbying has contributed to a change in the law that came into
effect yesterday. Parents of children up to the age of 16 now have the right
to ask their employers for more flexible working conditions, where
previously such an arrangement was only available to parents with children
under the age of 6.
“Children don't stop needing their parents' time when they reach their sixth
birthday,” said Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equality.
“As any parent knows, older children going through their teenage years need
just as much support and guidance.”
When Liz Berman first announced that she would be working part-time, Sophie's
first thought was “Oh my God, we're not going to have enough money for
clothes and things.” Her second was that, with all this free-time on her
hands her mother would become “naggy”.
In fact, money has not proven to be an issue for Sophie, especially now that
she has a Saturday job, but her fears about her mother becoming more
demanding proved to be justified. “Before, she was never there to check that
I was doing my work and, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't”, Sophie says.
“She had no idea if I was watching TV, or on the computer. Now she's on my
case all the time.”
However, it's clear that Sophie rather enjoys that her mother is “on her
case”. “It's brought subjects to life,” she says. “It's actually been
motivating.”
For Jill Leslie, lightening her workload to help her children was not
something she had planned. In fact, when her 13-year-old son Charlie started
at secondary school, Jill thought that she could resume her full-time
career. But when she discovered that her daughter, Katie, had failed to do
any of her coursework for one of her GCSE subjects it prompted a rethink.
“Although I was around in the evenings - it escaped my notice that she hadn't
done the required piece and I got a fright and thought something's got to
change.”
Jill, a training consultant for a local government organisation, handed in her
notice and took up a part-time role as a careers coach. She says that she
underestimated the “hovering role parents need to play” after school each
day. “That's when you find out the stuff your children don't want to talk
about and, as they get older, they get better about white lies and selecting
what they're going to tell you.”
By cutting back on her working hours Jill says that she now has the energy to
monitor her children's progress; to check that Katie isn't sitting around in
Starbucks after school, or that she's on a social networking site when she's
supposed to be doing homework. “To begin with, Katie was not happy because
she did enjoy the freedom, but now we've adjusted to a different regime and
she said herself she'd had a bit of a wake-up call.”
But not everyone thinks such intense parental involvement at exam time is a
good thing. Dr Angharad Rudkin, a clinical child psychologist for the NHS
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in Hampshire, urges parents to be
cautious about making sudden changes at such a delicate time. She says that,
on top of the stress of exams, the child will think her parent has stopped
work specifically to help her and, having always worked independently, may
now feel under pressure to include the parent.
All this causes friction, she explains, because teenagers can be critical of
their parents and may think they are just doing it for themselves. Dr Rudkin
believes they may have a point. “You have to ask the parents what their
purpose is for taking that sabbatical and, in all honesty, whose benefit is
it for? In the worst case, is it about the parents trying to appease their
guilt as opposed to doing it in order to support the child as much as they
can? It's very hard to know what parents think they'll be doing.”
While some parents take annual leave or work part-time to undertake an
academic salvage job, others do it to help their children to excel. Amanda
has worked in a city investment bank for the past 15 years, and the only
interruptions to her career have been maternity leave when her two children
were born, and six months' parental leave at the end of last year to help
her daughter, Isabelle, focus on her 11-plus exam in order to secure a place
at a top independent day school.
“My husband and I travel a lot for work and we thought one of us needed to be
there. The 11-plus process is all very, very emotional. If you have a nanny,
no matter how good they are, they're not going to be as focused about
getting your child through.”
So in September last year Amanda took time off work, and when she infiltrated
the mothers' network - something she had to work hard at as she estimated
that she'd picked up her children from school less than20 times - she was
shocked to discover that, despite their children being at an independent
school, many of the mothers had organised private tutoring. Amanda felt she
had left it too late to get a tutor, so she supervised up to three extra
maths papers a week with Isabelle, and her husband did at least an hour of
maths with her at weekends. It paid off. Isabelle got into the school of
their choice and Amanda is now back at work.
So is it pushy parenting gone mad or a necessary evil? Dr Rudkin says that if
the situation is handled in the right way, a parent's increased physical
presence can be helpful. She advises that, where possible, parents should
involve their child in any such decision by telling them exactly what they
hope to achieve and encourage them to buy into the idea.
The most important thing is to be there when children need emotional support -
for example by making them a hot chocolate in the evening, preparing
breakfast and picking them up from school. As Sophie Berman says: “I came
home from school one day and found she'd baked a cake - that was nice”.
