to be saddened by a three week old baby in full time childcare?

[lilystyles]

At a local toddler group last week there was a childminder who I'm friendly with, she had with her a new child, a baby of 3 weeks who's mother had gone back to work full-time in teh pub she and her husband own. I am not judging this woman, it's her choice but I couldn't help but feel sad at the situation.

frakkinstein, I disagree. my siblings were put in childcare. I vowed then not to put my children in. BUt to be fair, that childminder was rubbish.

Headless, perhaps society should be set up in a way that makes paternity leave compulsory like they've done in Sweden, I think.

"this kind of thread is that it leads to creep about what is an acceptable age to leave a baby. And inevitably becomes an attack on all WOHMs. And meanwhile men go back to work three weeks after the birth and no one thinks anything of it."

exactly, HeadlessLadyBiscuit

titty, you shag your DH to cover his physical needs while you wish you didn't have to?

But that's exactly what I'm getting at, sakura. You felt your siblings were left with a rubbish CM, so you wouldn't. I feel I was left with someone fabulous, so I would (assuming I find someone fabulous!). It's all down to people's personal experiences colouring their feelings.

I understand bad childcare is going to be detrimental but not all child are is bad so it's impossible to extrapolate. Saying that no mother should leave her child until x age does noone any favours because it completely washes out women who want to work, who choose good childcare and everyone benefits. If you want to work, work and you choose the best childcare you can. If you want to stay at home be my guest. But both sides need to recig use the other isn't fundamentally wrong.

"Can we carry this premise over into our marriages too? I'm thinking of hiring someone out to iron DH's shirts, cook for him and shag him so I don't have to."

I know exactly what you mean, tittybangbang. The problem is that all the items we include under "care" (whether of DHs or of children) are not equivalent in degree of intimacy. I don't personally think it matters who irons my DP's shirts, as long as they are well ironed, because his presence and involvement are entirely superfluous to the ironing process. I have strong feelings about the whole family eating a home-cooked meal, because their is a bonding intimacy about sharing food that family members have prepared.

Breastfeeding and shagging are intimate acts and you subcontract them at your peril!

there

Both sides need to realise even!

I was looking up "recig"

You guys iron your DH's shirts???

It's still worth recognizing when situations are not ideal. That's the only way to lobby for change. Paternity leave, for example.

I iron DHs cos he can't get it right and grouches like nobody's business when the ExO pulls him up on it. Easier for me to do it!

frankkinsite I agree with you whole hearedly attachment to a care give does have to be a mother or father and infact infants will do far better if they are able to make attachments and internal systems created from more than one care giver.

and also most cm are not it primerily for the money if so im sure they would picking another carear

I completely agree with what those who've gone back to work while their young babies are in childcare have said, esp suzie.

But the thought of a 3 week old in fulltime childcare does make me a little sad, basically because I can only think of it from my perspective, we were very much of the attachment parenting school and DD was literally attached to me or DH almost constantly for months after she was born. I knew her every physical nuance, I fed her an awful lot of the time, I fell totally and irrationally in love with her. I went back to work when she was 5 weeks, but she came too, and being apart rom her felt like having my arm chopped off.

Now she's 3 though I can see that other people caring for her would've been fine, so long as they were emotionally invested in her. I'm now pg again and this baby simply won't be able to have my undivided attention in the same way, I have DD as well this time. putting this one in childcare at 3 weeks would really deeply upset me though.

Also, my mother was a SAHM until I was 12, and when she went back to work it was a HUGE upheaval and it really deeply upset me in a way that her having always worked I don't think would have.

As with every part of parenting there's no right answer, different types of parenting produce different types of children and adults, we need all sorts to make the world go around, it'd be a very boring place if everyone was brought up in the same way.

I mean, we can say as a society that there's no problem in a 3 week old being left with a non-relative, but maybe deep down we know it's not ideal. [I think 6 weeks is quite different to 3 weeks]
HOw can this situation be changed? Perhaps grandmothers could be given a stipend for their role in child-rearing, for example.

Why is the term 'neurotic mothers' banded around as if this was the ultimate curse? For me, this falls into that stock set of phrases like 'hysterical' and 'emotional' which are have been historically used to belittle and undermine women.

Its terrible to see and hear women banding it around against each other.

I too feel very sad when I see a tiny baby with a childminder/nanny - BUT I don't think its wrong. There's 1001 ways to parent and 1001 and one ways to feel about other peoples choices.

but some people just dont simply have that extended family. im a lone parent and have no parents alive, my dds paternal grandpaerants live in nz.

"I too feel very sad when I see a tiny baby with a childminder/nanny - BUT I don't think its wrong. There's 1001 ways to parent and 1001 and one ways to feel about other peoples choices."

Ne'er a truer word spoken

I think that's a really sad situation but probably the mother had no choice if she was self employed.
I find it very sad when women who don't have to work or don't have to return to work straight away choose to do so. I'm sure there are lots of lovely nannies/ childminders but they are never going to love and adore the baby in the same way that their mother and father would.
I have a London based friend who told me that a colleague of her husband's (a barrister) was putting her baby in a night nursery to be looked after all night. I never knew these places existed!

tittytittybb:

'I fell profoundly and intensely in love with my children over the first few weeks of their life. I felt completely obsessed with them, thought about them non-stop, yearned for them - their physical presence, the smell and feel of them. Felt anxious when I couldn't see them. I assumed this was what the 'bonding' process was and that it was a normal, instinctive mammalian response to becoming a mother.'

I felt the same. It IS a normal, instinctive feeling. I guess that some women override it because of necessity or because a small number of women seem to regard children as an accessory rather than a person with needs as important as their own.

But the grandparents have done their child-rearing! I would never ask my mum to commit to a regular childcare slot, it would be a bind and would totally restrict her. (This is apart from the fact that she still works and lives 150 miles away).

I thought that one of the benefits of having raised youe children and seen them leave home was that you got a different life, one without the ties and time constraints of having young children around.

Geographically, it is often not possible. Also, nearly all of my friends' parents still work themselves. Should we be asking great grandparents to do it?

auntloretta, I think mothers' lives should be made easier, and recognizing problems are one step towards solving them. In France, I think the state pays for a "helper" to go to a mothers' house to do the cleaning and odd jobs in the first year of a baby's life, for example

A machine irons my DP's shirts .

No Sakura - the state help post birth in France is dreadful!

I agree about that Serendippity, that's why I think grandmothers should be paid if they childcare regularly while the mother works. BUt perhaps in that case the state could help, because sometimes a grandparent is better than a childminder.
[actually, scrap that idea because then you'd get mothers feeling obliged to let the granmother look after the child when she'd prefer her baby to be in childcare. I'm just trying to throw ideas around, really]

OH, okay- I saw it on a MIchael Moore movie Bonsoir!! I think it was France. Anyway, I thought it was a marvellous idea.

You may be thinking of The Netherlands, but it's not a year!