interesting article on women’s return to work in Germany

A colleague of mine, who works full time, recently said to me that she thinks she is more patient with her son than she would be if she stayed home. Because she sees him less, she values the time more and utilizes it better. She told me how she took her son to the doctor’s and the stay-at-home mothers she saw there seemed tired and frazzled, having to deal with their children’s antics constantly.

I think it’s probably a similar situation for me. If I was home all the time, I think I’d need to distract or diver River a lot, both to get things done and to have a little time for myself. When I have the time I need to work and to have some time for myself, I can spend more of the time I have with him on quality interactions. Of course, sometimes I have to cook dinner or get something else done, but I’m usually calm and patient. As long as I only have one tantrum per day max to deal with, I can handle it.

It seems in Germany too, more women are wanting this space for themselves and their professional achievements. I used to work in Germany. Women were given a lot of power and able to rise to high levels. But that was generally only if they didn’t have children. It was hard for women to have children and remain in the company. The expectation seemed to be that they would stay home for at least the first three years.

At the same time, Germany has great parental leave laws that allow either parent to stay home with pay for quite a long time (a year?). A good male German friend of mine stayed home with his daughter for the first 9 months while his wife went back to work. She liked her job better than he did. He took a professional break, becoming a full-time dad. Then he put her into daycare and started his own company.

It’s interesting how the Germans have so many more resources for choice at their disposal, yet struggle culturally with women balancing it all. And when there is that cultural struggle, that will be present in the hiring managers, which can affect a woman’s ability to find the job she wants.

I'm amazed by how many survived

Reading about the difficult living conditions (damp sod huts together with wind, snow and rain, a limited diet, disease, volcanic eruptions) in past centuries in Iceland, I’m not surprised to learn that the death rate was high. According the interesting book, A Ring of Seasons, 30% of children born in Iceland from 1750 to 1850 died within their first year. Between 1757 and 1845, 43% died before the age of 14. There was no doctor in the country until 1760.

One possible reason the author gives for the high death rate (among many others) is that the women rarely breastfed. This might have been due to the fact that the mothers worked hard and their milk therefore dried up quickly. Some babies died of malnutrition on watered-down cow’s milk.

Other sanitary conditions were also frightening. Women washed their hair in urine on the weekends, but otherwise, people almost never bathed. Sheets were washed once or twice a month, underwear less often. Trash was thrown into the central pond in Reykjavik and in other towns, collected behind the houses until dumped on the shore for the sea to take away. Lucky for Iceland, they didn’t have rats for a long time.

Children worked hard with little rest and Icelanders started to grow taller only after they were able to lessen their workload a bit.

Given these conditions, what surprises me is not the high death rate, but the fact that people survived and carried on to procreate. Living standards in Iceland have been good since World War II and now probably surpass the U.S. (yes, it can be cold and dark, but it seems the Icelanders have been genetically selected to tolerate the dark better than others). Still, when I look at people and think of what their descendants went through, from the Viking settlers to the women kidnapped from Ireland and brought over here, to the natural disasters and the poor conditions, I’m amazed by those who survived.