Working Mums - Are you made to attend social work functions?

[Nai]

We really only have 2 functions a year - end of fin year and Christmas functions. I love attending them - I love the people I work with and the events are always a lot of fun. I rarely get to let go and twice a year isn't much so I really do look forward to it. I don't feel pressured to go but people are happy that I do make the effort.

[Cherished]

Could you suggest that the social functions that your work has are family functions?

[Starfish]

Could you suggest that the social functions that your work has are family functions?

I think that this is my main issue. These things are strictly no partners, etc...

Well, I just spoke to my boss about not going to this afternoon's event and he was fine with it. He's not going either and although he didn't say it outright, I got the impression that he thinks the whole thing is a bad idea and that hardly anyone is going anyway (apparently I was one of the first people to put apologies and others followed suit). So I suppose that's good.

I think this may be the next issue working mums have to fight - we have the right to breastfeed and lactation breaks, now we need to be recognised as being exempt from work drinks because we are primarily mothers, and employees second...

Or maybe it's just me - as I don't usually drink I get drunk really fast and when the drinks are free, well, let's not go there.... I have no desire to get messily drunk in front of people who I need to be taken seriously by the next day.

Teresa - I know what you mean about being ignored. I had one workmate giving me cr@p for not wanting to go today and it was all I could do to stop myself saying sarcastically "so if I go, then you'll acutally talk to me or something??"

[Cranky Kitten]

Ugh, I hate work functions out of hours too. I generally try to avoid them, and most of my co-workers understand that if it's a weekend I have DD I'm not going to sacrifice my time with her for their benefit - after all, I see them 5 days a week, I see DD 2 days a fortnight.

I do make the effort to go to the odd one or two, usually if someone I work closely with is celebrating something or is leaving and it's a goodbye dinner or so on. I don't think I've ever gone to the whole of company Christmas party yet, and I've been there 5 years! The main thing for me is that they are all "no partners/family" events, and I've raised it several times with the work social club to say could we have some family friendly events but to no avail. So meh, they can live without me

[briggsy's girl]

our work do's are generally out of hours and really expensive (not to mention not local!) - so i don't go. i know a lot of people do go (or they wouldn't keep doing them) but when all the "selling" power is related to drunken exploits, it just puts me off big time (and i have better things i can spend $300 plus on that would be for ALL of us). at my last job, the number of "incidents" that came out of events was just appalling - pregnancies, people forced to resign - not my thing

when we have on-site, work hours things, then i'll go. but night times are my times for my family!

[Cally]

I am in a very small office and generally anything we do is during work hours. My boss will have parties at his place that we are all invited to (including partners/kids), but they have other people there as well.

A couple of times a year there are larger functions which are generally incorporated with a training session or AGM during the day, followed by a work people only dinner. I tend to go to them because they are held in various areas and I am away from home anyway. There was one in our area last month which I didn't attend, although I was suffering from a 2 day headache so felt fairly justified. They are usually fairly tame, lots of older people at my work.