Anyone listened to this interesting diary of a ceo podcast, about how daycare is harming children ?

[GeorgiesCat]

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Just wondered your thoughts, I think what she's saying is very unpopular but also very true

That's guilt talking

There's a recent thread where someone said they saw bad treatment of a child in a new job and how to report it, many many posters came on to say they had similar experiences or issues with a nursery. I've always felt people are too trusting of them and need to be more vigilant etc

Yes @GeorgiesCat I found Komisar’s idea of allowing parents to be paid their social security early really intriguing too. I’d gladly draw a little early pension now when my children are tiny and then work a few extra years at the end.

I really doubt anyone thinks it is better for babies to be in nurseries unless the parents are abusive/neglectful.
Really what people want and hope for is that nurseries are a safe place for babies to be while parents work and they don't cause any harm.

I loved the early diary of a CEO podcast where he was talking to people who were entrepreneurs. The stories they told were so interesting. I don't listen to any of them now that he has got involved in the wellness industry. They just don't seem to have any gravitas or interesting experiences. I also have an issue with the way he advertises his programs where it looks like the person is on a rant. That would always put me off listening.

But I do actually really like Stephen Bartlett and really really rate him. I'm interested to see what he does with the rest of his working life.

God, you really want other women to feel guilty, don't you. How sad.

About 60, but since we co-slept until he was three and a half, he could feel & smell me, right beside him.

As I said, a happy confident secure child, and a happy fulfilled mum.

There is more than one way to raise a child well.

It's regulated by each state. There are minimum staffing standards and qualifications required, and hygiene, food storage, food prep, and garbage disposal regs.

You do find cowboy operators, usually in private homes. However, if anyone reports them or if drop off and pickup are observed by police, DCFS and police will pay a visit.

There is more than one way to raise a child well.

I wish that more people understood this and didn't feel the need to trash other people's choices in order to feel better about their own.

Her ideas may or may not be based on large studies (they're not, in general), but she certainly states them with confidence.

I don't think in the current religiously inspired political climate in the US that anyone speaking on the role of mothers wrt their children could be so disingenuous as to believe the personal isn't completely political.

The hint that she's fully on board with the whole tradwife thing is her comments on sacrifice. She apparently sacrificed designer clothes and a second home in order to achieve the necessary balance between work and child rearing (paid a nanny). The implication that women who put their children in childcare settings in order to work are just selfish people who are not willing to sacrifice is loud and clear as a bell. This is a message neatly packed and ready for consumption and broadcast by the right.

Tell me that isn't political, and I have a bridge you might like to check out.

I feel the same. I met Steven about a decade ago when he was at the Social Chain and he was really lovely too. More so than he needed to be to me.

Really hope he’s not turning into another sexist podcast bro for the clicks. I agree with many of the messages in the podcast minus the sexism and woman blaming and hate that it’s so challenging to have a conversation about this without it being intensely political. While I agree with Komisar that childcare has an effect depending on age/hours, I kept wondering what her agenda is.

Oh and I I saw Steven promote this on LinkedIn and was irked the way so many dinosaur men were wholeheartedly agreeing with Komisar. Easy to say when you don’t have to sacrifice your livelihood and financial independence since Komisar lets completely men off the hook.

They’re probably the same of men that say women who are SAHM are spongers, or think the only women that get pregnant do so to live on universal credit.

What irks me about the podcast is that next week he’ll probably have a woman on who will say there’s no reason that we can’t do it all and be career women, and he’ll agree with that as well.

We can’t win.

Clearly she hails from the religious right so it's not surprising if her solutions are framed in the lexicon of that sphere. I'm an atheist, I find it jarring but I don't think that gets in the way of distilling whether childcare is harmful.

The idea that childcare isn't harmful, or particularly that it is a force for good- socialising and educating children and making them independent in a way which isn't possible at home, can hardly be understood to be apolitical when we have built an economy in which it is a necessary tool and in which most families need childcare to stay afloat.

Children aren't becoming more mentally distressed at the hands of warring discourses about raising children though. The competing themes are a distraction but the questions are incredibly important and shouldn't be ignored because it invokes discomfort in parents.

The implication that women who put their children in childcare settings in order to work are just selfish people who are not willing to sacrifice is loud and clear as a bell.

This narrative is all over MN and has been for years.
I've lost count of the amount of posts which suggest women work for luxuries. There is this idea that men work to provide and women work for fancy shoes and handbags.

From Wikipedia about Bartlett's podcast:

"A 2024 analysis of 15 health-related episodes by the BBC found an average of 14 misleading health statements per episode, including unsupported treatments for cancer and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories"

Man's an idiot.

Sounds like I've touched a nerve @MrsBennetsPoorNerves

I really don't think so. It's just sad to see women judging other women in a world where many of us have no real choice about how we manage our lives. We all want to do right by our children, and it really doesn't help when the anti nursery brigade comes out and guilt trips us.

It's more interesting why you would think that, and why you would try to bat away someone else's perfectly valid questioning of both your motives and your sources, as kneejerk 'guilt' or 'touching a nerve'.

Maybe ask yourself who benefits from the idea of 'mum guilt' being normalised? Who benefits from the idea that a working mother is an anomalous thing, and her child an object of pity? Because the vast majority of women with children have always worked. The SAHM as default idea is a very time- and culture-specific one.

Yes, you have touched a nerve, absolutely. But not the one that you were aiming for.

I have gone through life carrying guilt about many things, but as I have already stated on this thread, my daughter isn't one of them. She is happy, she is thriving and she is brilliant. I am immensely proud of the young person that she has become and we are incredibly close. As far as my parenting is concerned, I genuinely don't have any regrets (other than wishing that that period of my life could have gone on for any longer). There is literally nothing that you can say to upset me in this regard, no matter how hard you might try. The only opinions that I care about on this subject are my own - am I happy with the type of person that she has become? - and my daughter's - how does she feel about her childhood and about our relationship? The opinions of random strangers on the Internet, who know nothing about my parenting or my daughter, are of no consequence to me. I am happy with the decisions that I made.

The nerve that you have touched is my intense anger at the guilt that society tries to heap on women if they dare to want more from life than motherhood. It was exactly this kind of pressure - piled on by people like you - that blighted my brilliant and talented mother's life by making her feel that she had to sacrifice her own needs and her own dreams in order to be a "good mother"; that made her give up a career that she loved in order to become a SAHP, leading to a loss of confidence and a life of regret from which she never recovered and which she bitterly regretted until the very end; and that infused my own childhood with an incredible sense of guilt about the fact that my sister and I had inadvertently denied our lovely mum the happiness and fulfilment that we believed she deserved.

You have touched a nerve because I don't want my beloved daughter to grow up in a society where women continue to be shamed for wanting to pursue their own ambitions and aspirations alongside motherhood, or where people think it's OK to make glib comments about other people's parenting based on ignorant assumptions when the reality is that they actually know fuck all about what they're talking about.

If you chose not to send your dc to nursery, that's fine. I didn't send mine either, but I will not stand by and say nothing while you deliberately seek to stick the knife into women who have chosen to do so, or indeed, those who may not have any choice.

So the question of whether childcare in a nursery setting can be said to be damaging the mental health of children- as a whole- should only be viewed through the lens of if it is beneficial to women, as a whole?

But whether it’s damaging to children’s mental health or not, what are we supposed to do if we have no choice but to use it, in order to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads? What realistic solutions are the anti-nursery brigade proposing?

Isn't it a societal issue to provide better care models then?

No, I can see your point, that it would be pragmatic to say that nursery setting childcare isn't damaging to children because mothers have no choice. And as an individual strategy that might be the best tactic.

But I don't think it is very helpful for society to pretend about things for the sake of convenience. If it is true that children are being harmed and it is linked to the mental health crisis in adolescence and young adults, then it is prudent to at least be able to talk about it and consider potential strategies to mitigate the fall out.