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I doubt you can ever identify why your sons & your nephews are different (obviously you know this of course!) but I have a theory, as below.
Theory: if nurture (ie, children learning from messages given to them) is relevant to development at all, then the larger the arena from which the messages come, the more effective the messages are. Put simply: in a big family, a child gets messages about social interaction/what's annoying & what's not/independence vs. dependence options/role models as to how to entertain yourself & how not (& consequences of not doing so) - from all sides, siblings and parents alike. This must have a kind of intensifying/pincer movement effect. Put even more simply: your sons have, in this area, an advantage over your nephews.
(I was thinking about this because I was mulling over my own son's social difficulties (yet lovely relationship with his single sibling), & deciding someone like him would probably have really been best as a member of a great big Victorian-type family. Too late now, of course.)
I do think about this a lot. My sister every week asks me why mine play together (we both have non identical twin boys) and hers need her and it's not just that hers are 7 and mine 9. I think it's when mine interrupt me I try (don't always manage it) to break off smile, deal with them and then resume whereas she gets into a kind of awful state, shouts about how she never gets any peace etc and perhaps one of hers is just a higher need child and possibly part of it is in our house there are usually other people, older children, students etc so like any big household with grannies and uncles and even cleaners around the children may well be interacting with one of those others rather than just me all the time (and who wouldn't rather play vigorous garden games with 20 year old boys and girls when the alternative is a 40s mother... there is some method in my apparent madness in liking the older children around (free au pairs)
Xenia - maybe you've hit the nail on the head with breastfeeding! Mine would have been latched on 25/7, had they not been bottle fed - and then I would indeed never, ever have been able to do anything else!
I also have a slight cop-out in the form of my husband, who would read to our son after lunch when he was a toddler and our daughter was a baby, just so I could play the piano! Were it not for that, I don't think I'd have done anything other than see to their needs when they were that age.
That did seem to train them so that they now occupy themselves quietly and don't disturb me for 20 minutes. That said, it all goes very pear-shaped during a nine-week school summer holiday, when there's more scope for them to occupy themselves by squabbling very noisily!
But, yes, as Xenia says, they get older and easier, and then you can do more of the things you like doing because they are that bit less needy!
..also I remember when the youngest three were little and I commuted to the city to work how much more time for my own activities I got because I worked, that relief we both felt in handing three of them to our daily nanny at 8am knowing you had an hour to sit down and read a book on the train, chance to settle yourself at work, glance at the paper, have people in a sense serving you at work, then stroll out to get lunch even if it were a quick sandwich, ability to pace your day, no child asking for things all the time, time your breast milk expression sessions at your leisure (although I do prefer feeding to expressing), then take the train home with time to read that good book on the way and arrive at home having had that lovely break from children to their lovely welcome of you (or tantrum or whatever but much easier to handle because you've had a balanced day and life in having both work and children in it which is what most men want and indeed most women with under 5s achieve too as most of them work).
I have yet to have a toddler who would not come up to the piano and interfere if I played it. Same for my sister. Same for my brother. We might have particularly difficult children but I don't think so. On the other hand now if I want to play I just make sure I close the door (or else I'm accompanying them anyway) so it's always just a temporary problem whether you work or not. They get older and easier.
I am much more interested in the issue of time to do what you want when you have under 5s than I am about arguing over women working or not working.
We certainly found with 3 under four, baby, 1, 3 there really wasn't a second free not to be dealing with them if you had them alone (this would be days when we were home alone with them). I don't think that's because we were otherwise working parents and I am very non interventionist with the children. The now 9 year olds are very self sufficient even if I am in the house.
It was similar with the twins as babies except if they slept at the same time. It may depend on number of children. If you've got one at nursery school in the mornings and a baby who has a morning nap then you may get some time. If you haven't given birth to a baby whose ideal is to be latched your breast 24/7 (which seemed to be the preference of most of mine) then you might have more free time. I suspect it's an age of child and numbers of children you have issue.
But my sister's 7 year olds never seem to give her a second's peace and mine always did and she keeps asking me what is the difference. What has she done different from me that I can read the newspaper or even work on a Sunday morning and she can't even sit down for 2 minutes.
I used to tell her it changed at age 5 and they got easier.
Yes, it does get easier. When mine were one and three, the idea of being able to breathe for 30 seconds without someone needing something seemed laughably impossible. It was in the run-up to DS starting school (which I postponed until the end of Reception, glutton for punishment as I am) that light started to appear at the end of the proverbial tunnel!
Believe me, I do try very hard to leave them to their own devices for a while during the day... luckily I don't suffer from overcompensating guilty working mother syndrome
But mine are 4 and 10mths so there is absolutely no point in picking up a newspaper or starting to weed a bed because someone is guaranteed to kick off or need attneding to after 5 mins.
Happy, no delirious to believe that it will get easier though!
It also occurs to me, a propos of Pendulum's post, that it's arguably easier for SAHMs to be a bit more hands-off with the children than it is for working mothers, on the grounds that they see the children for a good 13 hours per day and it is therefore not unreasonable to spend some small amount of that time doing something other than actively looking after them!
Pendulum - I have them well trained with a kitchen timer. When it rings after 20 minutes, they are allowed to disturb my post-lunch piano playing .
DS was jealous of the piano for a number of years, but has now asked me to teach him (I think he has finally realised that this means extra attention!!)
Gardening is very easy with two toddler "helpers". For starters, they like pointing out which roses need dead-heading, and they love poking around with trowels. The can now tell the difference between flowers and weeds, which is a bonus. Writing does have to be done when they're asleep, but we do a lot of reading (my brain is so sleepy that Jake Cake is sophisticated enough for me during the day).
My children are a bit older now (4 and 6), but I have always sneaked some of my own interests into looking after them. I never mastered the "going to the loo without having to take two toddlers with me" thing, though...
yes one daughter's anecdotal opinion not transferable to everyone else situation
however working parents in particular women are subject to gross generalisations and stereotypes. so i don't think responses originate from insecurity. more having heard tired clichéd ole chunterrings does provoke a response to try redress the imbalance
Haven't read the thread (so shoot me - may skim it after posting) just the article and the OP but Bollocks is it WOHM bashing; unless you have a great big insecurity about your choices it is simply a personal statement about one families experiences.
I think alot depends on the childcare, some is awful, some is good. (Much of it will always be low paid and low status while mothering/parenting is undervalued). I think many people, though, believe that a small baby is better off with one of the parents/loving relative for the first couple of years than in an institution which may be better suited to older toddlers/children who actually interact.
Dottoressa, I have 2 under-fives and would genuinely like to know how much writing, reading, gardening and playing musical instruments you manage to fit into your day.
Part of the reason I WOH P/T is so that I can have a little independent time to think, reflect and just breathe. I can honestly say that every moment of my days at home with the children is accounted for by doing something with, or for, someone else. Am i unusual in this?
I guess it's the age-old each-to-their-own scenario. Personally, I find being at home extraordinarily interesting, partly because I find small children utterly fascinating, and partly because I have lots of interests at home (writing, reading, gardening, playing musical instruments and such like). I would prefer to spend my time on looking after the children and doing some fun things than staring at a spreadsheet or entertaining clients. To my mind, mine is the balanced life!
But this is my choice, just as it's Xenia's choice to do the opposite. I just don't see why one woman's preferences have to be used as a weapon against another woman with different views/needs/whatevers. Everyone muddles through in their own way!
I say no more than to balance out the bias in articles like the first on this thread and yet the press rarely makes the working mother's case, they just beat us over the head on a dailiy basis. Saying a few home truths about why most women with under 5s choose to work is a good thing even if people don't disagree with me.
I don't have a nanny because of the age of the children it's not needed and I've kind of bred the older children but I think there are a good few male role models around.
ALl I said was I couldn't understand how anyone finds it interesting to be home. Yes, I loved having small babies, toddlers, under 10s, teenagers, students. it's all wonderful but like most men I like it in the small dose that enables me to make it part of a balanced life rather than making it out to be some kind of career that it isn't.
xenia, i can't even be bothered to be drawn into this, so i'll just say my piece and leave. you are the biggest woman basher on MN for you. shame that you didn't value your nanny work. drade to think what your views are on the elderly or the ones that choose to retire early. its sad that you feel raising children is worthless. but its upto you.
some people need to work, fine
some people don't enjoy being with their kids all the time, fine
do what you want.
but childcare is 2nd best after the child under 3 being with either of his/her parent. but you know what, sometimes you just have to acceot you can't always offer the best of everything, and where good enough, is acceptable to you.
i am a professional woman[pharmacist] and enjoy being with dd, much more than i have ever enjoyed work. i grew up with a wohm and i did not enjoy it.
i find it odd how wohms {well some} find the need to make out its only woman with what you would class as lowly jobs, such as teachers etc. that enjoy being a SAHM, because what they did before was so low-grade or uninteresting
heyho
i will leave you to it. you sound like a very happy person, who has a really nice life
Good for you Quattro, having a male aupair and cleaner. (I mean that by the way - wasn't meant to be sarcastic).
I sometimes think that Xenia has no respect for men and very little for most women. I can't imagine her having male 'staff'.
I take your point about economic power but as with all things it isn't that simple. My DSs never see DH pay for anything. They are too young to understand the finer points of finance. They just see me pay for everything, even when DH is with us. He never has any money on him, he's a bit like the Queen in that respect - doesn't carry cash.
I don't have to ask to buy anything either - well, OK maybe something big like a new car but then I wouldn't expect DH to go off and buy a new car without asking me. Depends how equal your partnership is and whether your husband respects you as a grown up person with your own mind.
I know some men don't respect women in that way but I doubt very much it would make any difference whether their wives worked or not. As I said earlier my mother earnt more than my father but he would rather die than admit it and as far as he was concerned he paid for all the important stuff. He is a dinosaur but then he isn't alone in that.
Everything we own is half mine anyway. Without my contribution before the DC were born we wouldn't have a the house we have. If we are divorced it is half mine and I am no worse off than DH. Neither of us has much of a pension - don't believe in them really. More of the savings are in my name than his. Earning money myself would make me better off day to day but we don't want for anything so what would I do with the extra financial muscle anyway, other than add to the saving?
Spending time with my children is worth more than a few extra thousand a year.
And again this has become polarised - the OP started out that way so it isn't surprising. There seems to be the assumption that you either work full time all your life or you SAH until your children grow up.
Very very few people do either. Its a nonsense to say that working women or SAH women harm their children with unsatisfactory role models when in fact most women at some point in their lives, do both.
I understand that sahming may be liberating from low-grade or uninteresting jobs and I agree that it is simply not possible for every woman to be a chief in a world full of indians.
But apart from the issue of job satisfaction, one of the great things about wohming is being in possession of economic power. I can choose what I want to buy without reference to anyone else, I don't have to worry about pensioner poverty should we divorce or should my DH die before me.
I think women taking financial responsibility is being a good role model for children. FWIW we have had a male aupair and a male cleaner.
'No status, no money and very little job satisfaction' is very subjective. I have more satisfaction since SAH. I have always filled my time with study and volunteer at my kid's school often I love the feeling of freedom from drudgery that SAH brings for me (but realise everyone is different, some much prefer paid work) and the sense of liberation from the material and competetive world. I don't see myself as any more dependant on DH than he is on me.
Work can be very overrated. I don't see it as a step forward having both parents working 10 hours a day and bringing in a 3rd party to help with the kids, self sufficiency has alot to be said for it (parents sharing work/care or one at work one at home). Surely a step forward would be men AND women working part time and sharing care NOT both slaving away all hours. When labour saving devices freed people from domestic drudgery, surely it should have meant more time for family/leisure NOT lining someones pocket or working longer hours.
If cleaning and raising children is such a low existance why do so many people stay home and do that? A cleaner and a nanny are just doing the mothers job while the mother does something else.
Xenia does you cleaner realise you feel this way about what she does for you?
Because if I were her I wouldn't work for you. I would want a little more respect than that.
Does your nanny realise you don't value her work and consider it beneath you?
I might also have a bit more respect for you as well if you had a male cleaner and a male nanny and paid more than lip service to the idea of equality. A male nanny would be a good role model for your sons too since they don't have their father around much. Redress the balance a little.
You seem to think that the whole world would be better off if we were just like you. Quite apart from the fact that I can't think of anything worse than being a commercial lawyer (I have a law degree and I have worked with many commercial lawyers so I am not just saying that on the grounds it doesn't sound very interesting) we can't all have professions - no society can exist where everybody is the chief and nobody is the indian. Your view of the ideal society is impractical and frankly, impossible.
Besides which you continue on this track of claiming you couldn't stand domestic work all day. Many of us have said to you that our actual domestic work is a tiny part of the sum total of our week, unless you have a small baby. Quite apart from the fact that it is pointless hoovering on an hourly basis there are plenty of much more interesting things to do with our days.
You sound like some out of date extremist feminist of the 1970's bra burning variety.
And I find it hard how anyone can be fulfilled by low grade domestic work day after day for years and years, no career, no role in the wider world, it's like something out of rural Pakistan! No status, no money and very little job satisfaction.
Oh Xenia... how can we be in such profound agreement on private schools, and so vastly opposed on the all-women-must-work-or-be-shot front?! 'Tis a mystery to me.
Personally, I can't begin to understand why any woman who can afford to stay at home would want to do anything else. Ah well!
Xenia...Get a grip woman, not everyone wants to leave their kids to go to work, surely intelligent women are needed in the community, whether it is to wipe bottoms, run playgroups or teach children. In fact, some of the best bottom wipers I know are the most intelligent. You see you have a narrow view of society which values work more than other roles but what happens when the work is gone Xenia???
You and the DM, women bashers both, just different ends of the spectrum.
I totally agree with you the sooner the issue of women working becomes irrelevant the better.
However, I think it should be irrelevant because we should all be entitled to do the best for our families and ourselves. You on the other hand think it should be irrelevant because you think that every body should copy you.
Quite apart from the fact that it would be economically impossible for every woman to have a high powered, high paid job, we don't all want or need it.
My mother was a SAHM, a part timer and a full timer during the course of my childhood(earning more than my father too). Her working life has had little effect on the way I have lived my life. She did her best for us no matter what she chose to do for a living and I have no desire to replicate any particular stage of her life other than to have it serve as a reminder that I have the freedom of choice. There is more than one way to live a successful life and to be a good parent.
they are taking just one persons story and making out like that is how it always is.
there were times through my life where i hardly saw my mum. she worked long hours as a cleaner in a meat factory and supplemented her hours with looking after the factory owners children and ironing for them. she went to college on a night to do book keeping and managemnet courses so we didnt see her then either. she moved from cleaning to doing office work in the factory and is now an over qualified manager in a massive chain of retail stores and could be so much more if she wanted to be, but she is happy as store manager.
my mum is an ispriation to me. she did all of that with three kids and useless husband. im more proud of her than anyone else i know. i dont begrudge any of the time she spent away from us aas i know she working that hard to provide a better life for me and my sisters
I have older children of 20/21/23 and they don't have the same views as this particular student. She also seems a very sexist sort of child if she wanted her mother there and not her father. Her mother obviously hasn't done a very good job in terms of sexual politics.
Women are a whipping boy. They whip themselves and each other and they spew around in collective guilt because of their conditioning and genetics, guilt which gets them no where but which suits the agenda of many men and a good few women too. It is a control tool used against some women. Given most women work and increasing numbers earn more than their husbands the guilt doesn't seem to be holding them back.
High earning successful career women make by far the best mothers for a whole raft of reasons I won't go into here. Obviously this just some kind of low grade journalist who probably doesn't earn very much.
In the real world plenty of women and men run successful family lives and have children. It's how people live and always have both here and across the globe now and in the past and it will always be so. If women want to carry collective guilt with them then that's their stupid fault. Most parents of either gender do their best to bring up their children well. Few leave children with strangers and most work out childcare with which they are content.
But I don't agree our work choices do not affect anyone else. They do a lot. Every time some pathetic woman wimps out of a good career to stay home and wipe the bottoms of her children and in effect her husband she is stabbing me, her own daughters and most other women in the back. The sooner it becomes an irrelevance to discuss whether women should work the better.
We need non transferrable paternity leave. We need fewer women requesting flexible working. We need more women going into better careers. We need more women marrying men who earn less. We need more women to be showing work as huge huge fun over a 40 year period if you pick your work well.
Not that I seem to find many articles taking the opposite stance.
<Perhaps I should try writing one>
Just seems that the media likes to give women a tough time (of which these mummywars are just one example) and they don't seem to think that there is any value in celebrating any female achievments (unless there is a soft story - eg Rowling & her grinding poverty - to go with it). Nah, far easier to sell papers about drug-filled celebrity lifestyles and WAGS, and fill the pages with pictures of size zero's whilst lamenting lardy old mums and women with anorexia. Jeez, even the Indy covered the Britney story for a while.
Well, seeing as the usual research that is cited (rowntree foundation being one trotted out the most often) is itself questionable (read the detail of the rowntree one and you'll find that it reluctantly admits that higher career achievement of parents has a positive effect) and seeing as the research tends to either avoid addressing the rather unfashionable idea that the presence of fathers might also have just as much of an impact (again the rowntree report buries in the detail it's findings that the effect of longer hours culture is negative if the father does it as well if the mother does it), and seeing as some nations such as Sweden managed to stick virtually all their children in nursery from about 12 months with seemingly no ill effects (other than poor taste in soft rock), and seeing as most 'experts' seem to be 'authors' and psychologists, as opposed to psychiatrists, then yes, I do tend to think that many such articles are shoddy.
Not all articles, but many. Just as I would probably find fault with many articles that took the opposite stance.
Of course people can feel as they like about any article, and all the more so if it's poorly researched and shoddy. However, many (not all: many) working mothers seem to think that any article that says that their children would be better off at home than in nursery/with a childminder is both poorly researched and shoddy!
"People don't have to fall for it or get annoyed by it!" are you a journalist? Are you seriously suggesting that people shouldn't have any feelings about shoddy, poorly researched (sometimes) misogynistic articles - that our choices are either agree or shut up?
Thinking about this article, what annoys me is that it's so damned lazy. The author is a BBC jounalist, surely she could have attempted a bit of analysis, a teensy-eeensy bit of extrapolation, even, God help us, some research.
There are actually two or three interesting points in the story, but all of them are left unexplored. The first is the role of the father and why the daughter feels no anomisity about his absence. The second is the daughter's own bias towards a career. The third and perhaps the most interesting is the different perspective of the mother and the daughters on the period during which the mother worked from home. The mother felt that little had changed and she was still chained to her desk but her daughters both felt that she was much more present during that period. Is that because she really did have more time to devote to her second child or because small adjustments in the way in which a mother works can have a big impact on children? If so, which adjustments and how could one take practical steps to make them. And is there any research or evidence out there, even anecdotal evidence, to bear that out. Now that would be an interesting and helpful article.
Bink - LRB is fab (and I am not saying that just because I have written for it myself).
Squiffy - I didn't accuse everyone on this thread of reading Heat! All I said is that some (note: some) anti-DM-ers read rubbish of a different kind, and presumably also believe they are well informed, if only about "celebrity gossip".
Kew - ingerprint article is the only one I can comment on, as I read it on the newspaper stand in Somerfield (!) Though my mum does get the DM (having switched from the FT, of all things), so I get some of it second-hand.
Generally, emotive rhetoric is quite good fun to write as well as to read. People don't have to fall for it or get annoyed by it!
LOL at the Colleen Rooney comment, btw!
Generally, I'd say that 1.7 million people believe things far worse than whatever views the DM happens to print. Yet for some reason, those kinds of things don't provoke debate in the way mummy-bashing does...
Er, what about your excluded middle, there, Dotto? - anti-DMers who don't fall into your Heat etc. double-standards category?
I too thoroughly appreciate a strongly-made argument, but I like it to marshal its facts and its arguments and do intelligent anticipations of rebuttal without resorting to emotive (and, let's face it, jolly thin) rhetoric [viz. the use of "strangers", as analysed below]. (See London Review of Books, if you happen to be interested in proper writing.)
I have to say though, on the plus side, as I was looking for some rancid articles to back up my ranting, I did find this and it has cheered me up no end. Thanks to thedullwitch for pointing to it in another thread.
there have been about 28,600 copies of the Daily Mail published ovewr 110 years and all you can come up with is "but they did once run a good piece about fingerprinting children"
Even a shit newspaper ought to be able to come up with a better average than that surely?
I used to read my mums copy of the Daily Mail when I was younger and even before I grew a brain I could see that they were the worst kind of insidious misogynists.
Oooo, get you dotto. Have a go at people for sweeping generalisations, and then accuse us all of reading Heat?
If you don't read it yourself, how do you feel placed to judge if it is shit or not? Personally, I know it is shit because I have a dippy mother who clips out about a dozen let's pretend-to-support-women-whilst-putting-the-knife-in articles a week to keep for me
Daily Mail articles don't make me feel bad or guilty, but they do mightily piss me off because at least the redtops don't pretend to be serious. People like my mum really do think their grandhcildren are going to be snatched by peodophiles at any second, that we are all going to be knifed every time we go the shops (if we don't die of birdflu first), and even better, all of this is the fault of (a) the sneaky left wing politicians or (b) the immigrants that are taking over the whole of society and filling up our hospital beds or (c) Cherie Blair and all other 'opinionated' and 'self-obsessed' career mums who at heart are some kind of alien species put on Earth to destroy society.
But they do quite like Colleen Rooney, so they obviously support some, ahem, 'working' women
And 1.7m people not only believe the shite they peddle, but also believe that as a result of reading this paper they are well-informed from a proper, high quality and impartial source.
Daily Mail readers: I fart in your general direction.
As another aside (sort of): what's so bad about the Daily Mail? I don't read it myself, but they did once run a good piece about fingerprinting children. And, I wonder, how many of the people who slag off the Daily Mail buy vacuous dross like Heat or Hello? (Ohhhh, so buying Heat and Hello is ironic, right?)
Personally, I think that any paper offering a strong view is a good thing. If every article in every paper were a woolly mish-mash, it wouldn't be worth reading, and it certainly wouldn't provoke 271 posts on MN.
To my mind, it makes quite a pleasant change for a newspaper article not to peddle the usual conscience-clearing PC line of "your child will be damaged morally, educationally, and socially by staying at home with Mum until s/he's five"!
I just don't get the guilt thing, though. If you have to work because you have no choice, then why feel guilty? You should be proud of doing something to help your family. If you work because you find small children boring, why feel guilty? Accept that's the way you are. No article in the DM should make anyone feel bad if they are really sure about what they are doing, and their reasons for doing it. Presumably the guilt really comes about when people aren't honest with themselves about why they want to work and have children at the same time?
As another aside (sort of): what's so bad about the Daily Mail? I don't read it myself, but they did once run a good piece about fingerprinting children. And, I wonder, how many of the people who slag off the Daily Mail buy vacuous dross like Heat or Hello? (Ohhhh, so buying Heat and Hello is ironic, right?)
Personally, I think that any paper offering a strong view is a good thing. If every article in every paper were a woolly mish-mash, it wouldn't be worth reading, and it certainly wouldn't provoke 271 posts on MN.
To my mind, it makes quite a pleasant change for a newspaper article not to peddle the usual conscience-clearing PC line of "your child will be damaged morally, educationally, and socially by staying at home with Mum until s/he's five"!
I just don't get the guilt thing, though. If you have to work because you have no choice, then why feel guilty? You should be proud of doing something to help your family. If you work because you find small children boring, why feel guilty? Accept that's the way you are. No article in the DM should make anyone feel bad if they are really sure about what they are doing, and their reasons for doing it. Presumably the guilt really comes about when people aren't honest with themselves about why they want to work and have children at the same time?
As an about-to-return-to-work mother, this article is filling me with dread ! Though- on balance, both the mother & daughter need to gain some perspective, mother was doing her best at the time for goodness sake & nobody has a memory of childhood without the "you could have done better" parental accusations. More balance needed, Daily Mail & people in general ! Let's hope my son feels the same....
Just read this article after getting home from too long day at work and horribly missing my ds and dd and have to say what about those of us who would love to stay at home but can't. I don't worship at the god of work. I have to work to keep the family. That's why it's horrible Daily Mail propoganda and working mother bashing because it's so simplistic about why we do what we do.
I don't if it comes accross differently, but I definately see 'not feeling guilty' as a very postive thing, that we should all aspire to as parents.
I do also not at all subscribe to referring to men as "single-cell organisms " or anything else equally patronising. Simply another way to block equally engaged parenting in my book..
Just found Home Front and this thread, which I had thought had been deleted. Squiffy, Quannoi.. my sentiments exactly.
It is really time we start thinking about joint parenting with regard to our parenting responsibilities and how we manage our work life balance. The SAHM vs WOHM discussion/argument needs move on and we need to start getting rid of our guilt..because whatever our situations, the Dad's are not feeling guilty.
Squiffy: "Parenting can be sliced and diced a thousand different ways, and last time I checked the psychologists (the ones who have undertaken 7+ years of medical-training; not the authors of parenting books) all seemed to be pretty agreed that kids are pretty resilient and unless you parent on the 'extremes' you end up having far less impact on their personailities and traits than you might like to give yourself credit for. Give them a happy environment and loving care (however you want to define that) and stop beating yourselves and each other up about it."
Amen, Squiffy - yet again. I have said that before about your posts on a similar subject.
Quannoi you have nailed my biggest gripe. The problem we have in society is not that mums neglect their children to go to work, it is that our culture does not yet place equal emphasis on the responsibilities of both parents, to the careers that their educations have given them and to the children they are jointly resopnsible for.
I don't give a stuff about women are gentically programmed differently from men; Religion may not be the opium for the masses any more but this persistent belief that mother is best in the home and dad is best in the boardroom certainly is. A woman is more empathetic? Great. Let's get some of that in corporate life as it certainly won't do any harm. Men are less nurturing? Great. Don;t smother them, take them to climb trees and teach them to stand on their feet.
Parenting can be sliced and diced a thousand different ways, and last time I checked the psychologists (the ones who have undertaken 7+ years of medical-training; not the authors of parenting books) all seemed to be pretty agreed that kids are pretty resilient and unless you parent on the 'extremes' you end up having far less impact on their personailities and traits than you might like to give yourself credit for. Give them a happy environment and loving care (however you want to define that) and stop beating yourselves and each other up about it.
The feminist battle will be won when just as many men work flexi hours as women and when companies are unable to predict whether mum or dad will take primary responsibility for the kids. Then the playing field will be level and parents will be able to determine what suits them and their situation best. I hope to Christ we get there by the time my kids graduate because anyhting less is an insult to both my daughter and my son.
Seriously - where is the Daddy bashing for working all day/long hours? Nowhere, equality my eye.
I'm the working party in my family, and much as I hate it and would love to swap with DH, I do recognise that I'm not actually the Devil for bringing home the bacon, and there's more than one way to look after your children.
What I do need is more help fending off aggressive employers who seem to think they can command my evenings and weekends too when they know the damage that can do to a family.
I know I'm going off at a bit of tangent here but I have read a few more of the posts. as i have said good childcaare is the key. I deliberately choose a nursery rather than a childminder/nanny (although could never have afforded one).
My issue was I didn't want to be reliant one one person. Like all relationships in life we 'click' with soem people and not others. I was concerned that my child wouldn't 'click' with a particular childminder and maybe I wouldn't find out until it was too late. I wanted my kids to be cared for rather than just looked after and I feel there is a bit difference.
I think the poitn has been proved to me ove the years. My two boys have gone to the same nursery and in each room they've been in there has been a group of nursery nurses in charge of that group. Each time my boys have ended up having a 'favorite' nurse and this favorite nurse has invariably had an obvious 'soft spot' for my child. In fact if you ask my three year old who his best friend is he invariably names his pre school nursery nurse. She is brilliant with him and always knows all about his latest crazes and is consequently an expert on transformers, Power Rangers Dr Who etc etc. He leaves there next week in preparation for knider garten and she already gets weepy just talking about his leaving.
Childcare is not a second class option by any stretch of the imagination. Both my boys are confident sociable children. In fact when my eldest first went to kindergarten it was the one child in his class who has a SAHM who had the most trouble settling in. At the end of the first term he was still crying and screaming for his Mum as she dropped him off at school much to the bemusement of the other children.
I have read the whole thread and as usual no-one can agree on whats best WOHM or SAHM, thats probably beacause we go through the same qestion in our heads everyday-some days I yearn to stay at home with my angelic girl, other days I cant stand it cause she is being devil child and am glad I am at work.Yes I coudl probably downsize, get lees stuff etc, etc, but how boring! My grandparents worked hard to give my parents their preferred choice of careers./professions, they never wanted them to be poor as they were-they lived in India,and both my parnts worked left me with childminder, as as 1 post said earlier those days were diferrent, it was just about playing and enjoying till you went to school! I am a doctor and there is no way I could give up my profession-would you as society like the fact that you train professionals-likely 2/3rd of them women at a cost of almost £200,000 for five years and they all stay at home?I dont think so.I work part time because I have the luxury of doing so, others have to work full time, and the time we spend with our children we make as fun as possible.
Thats it- you can choose either way and some of us will choose both ways and your child can still end up F**d up as thats life! We are humans with a tendency to be unpredictable.
My mother was a SAHM but once we kids left home I think she did feel frustrated and resentful at certain points because she went from completing her nursing training to getting married and giving up work to have children. However in those days that's what women did. By the same token I don't actually remember my mother spending 'quality time' with us (I don't think the phrase had been invented then).I remember that she always seemed to be doing household chores. Certainly when my first was born she seemd more concerned about the state of the house remaining pristine rather than ensuring my welbeing or my son's. She pooh poohed the idea from the health visitor that I should nap when my baby did. As far as she was concerned I should be doing housework when not attending to the baby.
It's all about balance. I LOVE my job but I also LOVE speninding time with my children and I probably love spending time with my children because I don't do it all the time. however I have never missed a school play parents evening, school play etc etc through work. i know how much it means to my sons for someone to be there (strangely their Dad doesn't seem to have the same concers). I just book leave and certainly all the working Mum's I know do the same.
Good childcare is also vital. My sons both went to an excellent nursery which was a safe stimulating and fun enviroment. They did things there that I would never have thought of doing (at two doing a project on Australia for example. My son loved hearing about kangaroos and boomerangs). In my job I see lots of SAHMs who's idea of being a SAHM is sitting in front of TV all day watching Jermeny Kyle whilst their kids are completely ignored other than to be shouted at when they start causing trouble (yes I know this is the minority rather than the majority). But unfortunately the simplistic view always seesm to be SAHM-good, Working Mum-bad. I see a lot of families where I just want to pack up the kids and take them to the nearest Childcare facility becuase the worst will be better than what is at home.
However as I say it is all down to balance. My son's enjoy afterschool club because all their friends go. A friend of mine used to work 7-3 shifts so she could pick her son up after school but that stopped when her son started asking if he could go to after schoolas all his friends did and he wanted to play football with them.
A happy working Mum is surely better than a depressed resentful SAHM. However my partner (the boys father)certainly doesn't have any of these worries.
I haven't read the whole thread (yet), but I agree wholeheartedly with kewcumber. Very well said post and very well balanced. I am currently a SAHM, my dds are (DSD) 15, dd1 5, and dd2 22 months. I am about to become a full time student and then will become a full time WOHM. My DH will look after dd2 during the day and pick dd1 up from school atm as he's not working. Then we he finds work my mum will take over the everyday childcare. I know I am very lucky, in having my mum to help with (unpaid) childcare. As without her I wouldn't be able to afford childcare and couldn't go back to studying, which will enable me to get a much better paid job.
I've not read the article, because the DM gives me a nose bleed at the best of times. I've read through most of the posts, and don't have much new to say that hasn't already been said... I remember my mum as being a WOHM, and my parents were also separated/divorced for a period when I was about 10 - 14 years old. I (and my siblings) remember being left with CMs, and also looking after ourselves for a lot of our childhood. I didn't really think much of it at the time, although I would say our lifestyle then meant that I always knew I would not have 4 children (who in this day can afford it...but that's a whole different thread...) Interestingly, my mum now refers to herself as a SAHM!! I think this is in contrast to me...she worked in 'jobs' rather than have a 'career' (her distinction) I don't feel bad about being back at work (FT - although I 'downsized' from being in central London to close to home) - we need the money. I also like being at work - I didn't spend 6 years in higher education to leave it all behind. However, I am bloody knackered. And I even have a DH who does his fair share (probably more, if I am being totally honest) So I guess my overall thought on this topic is ultimately: don't pretend you can have it all, you just have to learn to be happy with the best you can do in each area. Add ignore the DM - that way madness lies
I saw my Ds with his Cm's mum today and it was really quite touching as they obviously really really like each other, there was lots of hugging and kissing bye bye and laughing. He only has one grandparent and although I don't think in anyway she is a pseudo grandparent, I do think that as many people in your life as possible who think you are marvellous when you are a child is fantastic for your confidence.
Much as I love my mother (who's never done paid work, though as we got older she did masses of voluntary things), I do think the very specific closeness I (in particular) had with her was not ideal for either of us - she is a strong personality, and I definitely absorbed a fairly rigid model, absolutely conditioned & defined by how she was, of what to do and what to be.
As a simple example, I remember chanting to myself (as a young adult) the phrase "There isn't just one way of things being perfect" - because I had to put effort into growing away from those very defining early experiences.
Hence, without doubt, my eagerness to have my children have lots of role models, see lots of different ways of doing things, experience lots of variables - and not grow up thinking there's only one way of things being perfect.
Lisalisa - am regretting my former supportive words about your situation after reading your comment:
" Paid childcare is always going to be second best to mother's care ( extenuating circumstances apart) . Why should the child get second best?"
Lovely! Thanks very much. Please don't pass on your guilt at finding terrible childcare for your children onto the rest of us who bothered to find first-class loving care for our kids. Perhaps you should have thought about all of this before hiring those dreadful nannies?
And maybe someone else will come along and tell you off for working until 3pm. How could you be so selfish when you don't need the money? (those wonderful extenuating circumstances that mean it is alright for mothers to work obviously didn't apply to you. And, guess what? Those words might hurt.
Never seen the need to write this before, but FFS.
"I envied my friends who had glamorous working mothers."
Interesting how one's childhood perceptions colour one's view of the world. The relatively few working mothers I came across in my early childhood were invariably much less fun and glamorous than the SAHMs and were always working through necessity, not choice, to make ends meet. So it didn't seem very aspirational from a young child's perspective.
lisalisa - I'm popping in too just to say don't ever worry about falling out with me! - I don't think that's possible, really, given our history on here. And as to how my post comes across - well, as lawyers, we both know thoroughly how one side's careful marshalling of the concrete evidence [ie, what I think I'm doing, ever so rationally] can look to the other side just like the shoring up of a desperate case with circumstantials . And obviously this just isn't taken personally!
The big thing perhaps not recognised so far between your situation and mine is that I've only got 2, and you have 5. There is always a finite amount of slack in anyone's life - and among my colleagues I have noticed (this is anecdotal NB) that the full-time working pattern tends not to go on past no.2.
and if I feel it would be nice for DS to have me on a school trip occasionally then I'll take the day off. Its not beyond the wit of man you know! (or woman)
lisalisa - you are obviously struggling with some form of guilt over your childcare choices. I'm not. Guilt is a pointless and wasteful emotion and I'll be honest - I have generally very little time for it. You recognised that your nannies were not treating your DD1 very well and you chose to rearrange your working to be able to remove the need for a nanny. You are fortunate that you have that choice and you were unfortuante in your choice of nannies (I don't know enough about nannies to know whether they are in fact a strange breed of women who take exception to looking after 4 yr olds).
However in your example I would have to say that any mother who routinely leaves bedtime stories to the nanny is a fairly extreme use of childcare which most of us wouldn't recognise. As is the case for the original article, no I'm not surprised that the girl in question hardly saw her mother, she was in boarding school, I can't imagine your average working mother choosing that option if only because its so expensive.
My mother didn't pick me up from school after the age of about 7 and I genuinely don't see the need for any great anguish over that.
The problem is that extreme circumstances like the original article aren't representative of many peoples lives and trying to draw general conclusions from them just pisses people off.
But perhaps it is just that I have little patience with navel gazing as I don't have the luxury of doing anything but work and therefore fall into the rather patronising category of "its not the best thing for your child but thats OK because you can't afford the best thing".
Our family is a mixture of SAHM and WOHM (all rather touchy feely, which rather blows Anna's neat people who use paid childcare aren't touchy feely theory out of the water) and I can't tell any discernable differnce between the teenage children of the WOHM and the SAHM in out family. All have a close and caring relationship with their parents and seem a mixture of confident and shy fairly evenly spread cross the families.
IMVHO, people who are sensible parents and raise their children the best they can (and don't rely on a nanny to do bedtime stories every day or send their children to boarding school) without too much analysis, seem to produce fairly normal well attached children regardless of whether one, both or neither of their parents worked.
lisalisa, I feel sad about your posts. It sounds like something is very raw about your use of childcare. It is the worst thing to feel we have not done the right thing by our dcs.
I find it interesting that you loved your mother being there for you when you were growing up. And that it contributed to your confidence.
In my case, my SAHM mother was there for me all the time, but I did not value that aspect of things. I felt she could have encouraged us to have more outside friendships when we were younger - and looking back, I feel it did hold me back socially when I started kindergarten and school. I envied my friends who had glamorous working mothers.
I suppose it says a lot about the person I am and the person you are.
I do feel it is about balance. You seem to have got the balance right now, perhaps not before.
Believe me, as a working mother who is only at the schoolgates once a week, I miss out on spontaneous playdates. It does worry me sometimes, but then I just pick up the phone and call the mother of my daughter's friend and arrange one. I've got a few lined up these school holidays. It has taken me longer to get here, but you can compensate despite working.
And when my aupair mentions off-hand that so-and-so's mother suggested anything remotely like a playdate, I am doing that email to her to firm it up. And I attend as many birthday parties on weekends as I possibly can to form friendships.
But I am home by 4 pm everyday, so I do feel I am supporting my dd adequately. I am sure she could be the deflated one at school trips when I am not there to volunteer. But I prime my dd and am eternally grateful to the mother who held her hand on the last one. And then it's playdate city.
I do feel my aupair prefers the ds 1.10 to my dd, but then I ask my dd 4.10 about her day at school in front of the aupair, so I can get the details reinforced in stereo.
It is not perfect, but adequate for my conscience. You are doing what you can to redress your situation. I hope you find the right balance.
That's fine, anna, I am ok not to think too deeply about what you say.
Just to add to your musings, why do you think you followed your mother's side into SAHM-dom in your dd's early childhood, rather than your father's side? I am sorry if I am wrong, and I could well be, but I don't see you as particularly touchy or feely.
Don't read too much into what are little more than my online musings as to why some families feel that their children are not missing out (indeed, may be gaining much) from paid childcare whereas other families feel strongly that their children are/would be missing out by spending a lot of time in paid childcare.
Since it is a perennial issue here on MN and in RL, I'm just trying to delve down and get to the root of why some families feel so strongly in both directions .
In my own family and generation, I find it noteworthy that on my mother's side (very close, intimate, deep relationships - this extends to cousins/aunts etc despite the fact that we all live scattered across the globe) we have all been SAHMs (and one SAHD currently) with our little children, evolving into part-time and/or entrepreneurial jobs that work around the family; on my father's side (much less touchy-feely), many more of my cousins have used nursery/nannies than not. No difference at all in level of education or social class between the two families.
anna, I would agree that our families are different - which is natural and perfectly understandable. Though I am not sure what you mean when you say to me: "your "family culture" is at one with paid childcare".
If you brought up family culture in relation to the 'intimacy differential' point, I don't see how having a big intimacy differential necessarily results in whether the family culture is at one or not with paid childcare.
Although I do not sleep naked under the sheets with my dcs, we co-sleep and both dd and ds are extremely cuddly and tactile with me, enjoyed extended bf-ing, something which they would not get from a single carer at nursery. Yet they still love their nursery and in dd's case, school because they expect and get a different experience from it.
However, I would agree with your other point - it is more whether a parent feels whether the child is missing out from getting a less intimate care from paid childcare. The same child might be perfectly happy to get less intimate care from paid childcare with little or no adverse psychological effects, but one parent would feel the child is missing out (you maybe), whereas another does not (me).
This discussion has moved on and is very interesting. I think you can distill all I wanted to say in one sentence: " Paid childcare is always going to be second best to mother's care ( extenuating circumstances apart) . Why should the child get second best?"
I knwo there are different reasons why a million differnt mums go to work and there are as many justifications for it too ( bink - whilst not wishing to fall out with you - I have a huge amount of respect for you and always value your responses to my posts and threads - your mention of nanny teaching your kids to walk miles is in my very humble opinion another justification. As Diana Appleyard's daughter said ( in her own words) " I didnt want to go riding, ballet etc - I just wanted to spend time with my mum~~~". In other words it matters little what extra skills children acquire as a result of more money being around or a nanny being able to offer or teach different skills - the kids still prefer their mum. Simple as that really.
When I was young I treasured the fact that my mum was at the school gates and even at HIgh SChool that she was there for me when I returned. The amount of chats we had about the minutae of school life and who had upset me/didn't want to be my freined etc made a lasitn g im[pression on me which translated as a huge amount of confidence in later life - it gave me the invaluable message that my mother wanted to be with me ( as she indeed did). She did hoswever work so that this is not intended as smugdom from someone brought up wtih a silver spoon....Oh no. My dad worked in a factory all his life standing all day and earning a pittance. My mum worked but from 10-3 so as far as I was concnered i didnt' ahve a working mother at all. When I was below primary age she didn't work. And it was hard.
Let me tell you how hard. Mum and dad ate out of tins in the early years whilst giving me the meat, chicken and fish I needed. The fruit and veg which were expensive in those days I had whilst they had apples and pears and other home grown veg from teh garden. There was never any spare moneyh around and mum made all my clothes. Dad moonlighted as a mini cab driver. We never went abroad . I went for the first time as an adult.
But I am what I am today - confident, self assured and succesful due to my parents and specifically my mother being there for me.
And I haven't given that to my kids. Out of some stupid misguided principle of having it all and giving my girls a good role model blah di blah and increasing standard of living togive them ballet and bloody riding ( yes my kids do these) I left them every day for years with nannines
for you.
