lynehamrose I most certainly don?t want to reduce being a parent to hours spent directly interacting with children, but I do think that hours spent in the presence of your children makes a qualitative difference to their raising, particularly in the early years when some of the more abstract benefits of working out of the home don?t hold much currency with the young, wilful egotistical toddler.
I don?t believe for one second that a WOHP can do?as much? interacting with a young child or toddler in the evening as a parent who has been with them all day, even if all day they have hung about in their pyjamas and that mum has been online or doing the vacuuming or whatever. Interacting, if you think about it, is just about how two things act in relationship to eachother. A parent sitting in the same room as a child or even cooking dinner in another room while ?keeping an ear out? for their child is still in an interaction with that child: the child will behave differently when their parent is there; even if it?s so much nods and glances, even if everything is silent. If you are not in the same house as your child, or responsible for their care, you are not interacting with them at that point in time. It doesn?t mean that what you are doing isn?t valuable, but the value of what you are doing at work can?t change the fact that interaction is not something you can condense into a shorter time frame: it?s either happening or it isn?t. You can come home and read books and bounce them in the air and kiss them and engage them and they can get all sorts of wonderfulness from that, but it doesn?t change the fact that when you are there you are in some sort of interaction and when you are not, you are not. However, the difference between a and b does not have to be about whose way is ?better? or ?right?: it can be seen just as difference on an experiential level, which can be more or less good or bad depending on individual circumstance.
What my point really is, and where these arguments go wrong time and time again is that appreciating that there is a qualitative, fundamental difference between parenting as a SAHP, or a WOHP or even a part-time WOHP or a Working at home parent does not have to be about placing a moral or value judgement on that difference. It is possible to see differences without bringing in judgements like which is ?easier? or more ?beneficial? to a child as though it were about industriousness or product, or something quantifiable. The difference can be examined descriptively rather than inferentially, if that makes sense?
For me, I don?t see why it has to be about ?judging? or about saying one path is right while another is not. They are just different. I can see that if I was at home with my son, he would have different experiences to those he has while spending three days a week at nursery.
I?m going to try to give an example of what I mean. When I am out at work, my 18 month old son is in nursery. Recently, he?s been ?in trouble? a number of times because he has ?hit? people with objects in the face. At nursery, this means he gets put into time out. I have seen him do this in our local library and to me, there?s a clear cause for it: he?s trying to interact with the child so he hovers around them for a bit, not really sure what to do, then he goes to get a toy/book, comes back and brings the book/toy up close to them. Because he can?t hold up the book very well, it tends to come crashing down in their face.
I see this differently to nursery for a number of reasons. I am his mum, so when I am watching a group of children I am exclusively focused on him mostly and as a mum of one, I have the luxury of being attuned to him in a very intense, specific way. I also have spent most of my adult life reading about how young children learn how to socially interact so I know that what he is doing is a common strategy for initiating interaction at his age and stage of development. So my response is different to the nursery?s response, who just see that a child has been hit and need to deal with it in a fairly fast and efficient manner. My response would be to try to get in there and prevent it by modelling either how to show the book more effectively or getting attention a different way. I would have to do this lots and lots to get this across to him, no doubt. It might take months, let?s face it.
This is not something everyone would do, but it is something I would like to be able to do. Not because nursery are ?wrong? because they?re not, or because I?m ?right? because I?m not.. but because as my son?s mother I just wish I could be there to do it our way while he is little. If I could be a SAHM, I could feel more assured that the values and behaviours modelled to my son matched my own values and those of my family (both immediate with dh, and wider) and community and culture. This doesn?t mean that they would necessarily be better - I came from quite a dysfunctional home and very probably a lot of that would be repeated. However, there is an instinct there, on an almost primeval level, to want to be the one with my son caring for him in moments like this, shaping this sort of behaviour.
I think a great many women have a strong biological desire to want to shape the behaviour of their young children in ways that match their own emotional, instintive reactions to things.. I hear many women say that they feel terrible longing that they can?t do it, even if they decide that they really couldn?t stay at home all week and they really, truly want to return to their careers for very many valid reasons. Even if they do that full time.
None of that means that if you stay home that you have a life of luxury or that if you go out to work you are deprived of something that?s fundamental or necessary. I love my work. I am obsessed with it. I get huge amounts out of it.#
It?s hugely ambivalent for many of us.
What I want is to be able to work at full-throttle all week long and also, simultaneously, be with my son all week long. I want one of those magic thingamajiggies that Hermione Grainger has in Harry Potter. To bilocate.
Everything else invoves trade-off. Everything. So I was not being judgey. I can just see that there is a difference between one and the other and pros and cons to whatever choice we make.