Archaic societal norms that need to change

[Autiebibliophile]

For me it's the 6 week holidays. It worked well in a time where the majority of families were one income families. Where village communities were much more present. Grandparents typically lived close by and could help with childcare. When we had typical seasons before global warming kicked in.

I grew up in the eighties, summers were playing out all day. If my mum needed to go somewhere I went to my grandparents or a friends house. It was simple. Now it's just 6 weeks of childcare hell. Spending a fortune on childcare, expensive holidays, activities. It costs a fortune and I'm not convinced children get much out of the break anymore.

I think it needs cutting down to three weeks, And give parents two weeks they can use at their choosing (at certain time periods in the year)

What societal norms do you think are outdated?

mmm, I'm not sure about this. I mean, absolutely if there is a genuine harm to physical and mental health. But if anything, I feel as a society we're sometimes going too far the other way... "oooh, it makes me uncomfortable and stressed to work to a deadline and it's bad for my mental health".

I definitely don't see a push to make people power through no matter what, but rather lots of bending over backwards to accommodate.

The idea that there can be people who are super-rich while a large percentage of the population live in poverty. That’s what seems archaic to me. Or, at least, it requires reform.

Communists countries have tried to address that, didn't seem to work out that well.

Quote anything I've said that holds teachers responsible for the length of school holidays. Of course teachers are not responsible, they don't chose the holidays.

Absolutely true

I'm pretty sure the job centre sees school as childcare

We have a society where school functions as childcare. You even acknowledge as much yourself, with your sentence about how parents organise their work in practice. You just sound ridiculous telling people they shouldn't have kids if they've observed this very clear fact about the world they live in.

This has nothing to do with 'me time'. It's about the fact that we rely on the labour of millions of parents of school age children to do all sorts of essential functions, and we don't have other options to look after all of those children whilst their parents work. We have arranged things so that school is indeed childcare, amongst the other things it also gives us. For those of you who needed proof of this, lockdown provided it. So this isn't even a question now.

Now that's not to say this is a good thing. But don't confuse you not liking something with it not being reality. I say all this as someone who doesn't want to cut the school holidays either.

I think equality has backfired on women. It used to be that you could have a career IF you wanted to, now women with children are expected to work as well as all the domestic stuff they used to do. Children don’t get that special time with their mothers before they start school that they used to. SAHM feel guilty that they don’t work, working mothers feel guilty about their children being in childcare. The only winners in this are men. The irony. I know that some men take equal responsibility but certainly not all, by a wide margin.

I’m not talking about coddled employees who are either too lazy or incompetent to meet deadlines.

Perhaps it’s just the cultures I’ve experienced throughout my career but powering through at the expense of your health and well-being (doing more than one persons job and working crazy hours for months because needs must, etc) is seen as a strength, or just something that you should or need to do. However, admitting that you’re not coping or need to take a step back is considered a failing.

Are you posting from your yacht?

But don't confuse you not liking something with it not being reality. I say all this as someone who doesn't want to cut the school holidays either.

it has nothing to do with what I like or not, it's has everything to do with schools not designed to fit around the parents choices.

Schools try to HELP with the childcare element, offering breakfast and after-school clubs, but they are not designed to be glorified child-minders.

I do maintain that when people refuse to take responsibility for their kids out of school, during holidays etc, then they really should not have them in the first place.

If I had enough money to be on my yacht somewhere right now, I really wouldn't be wasting my time on MN 😂

It clearly does. You devoted most of the post I quoted to explaining why you thought this was a bad thing.

As for design and glorified childminders, why do you think childcare and glorified childminder mean the same thing? What do you reckon the hub places for 'essential' workers during lockdown were for, if not childcare? And why are you so sure there's no connection between the way the school year is designed and the wider labour force concerns? One of the reasons we had the summer holiday in the first place is so kids could work at the harvest.

One of the reasons we had the summer holiday in the first place is so kids could work at the harvest.

was it?

I would suggest you read around a bit...

Doingmybest12
Why are we cramming children with random, often useless information for them to regurgitate when information is now at the finger tips of everyone and we need skills to research, analyse and for critical thinking.

I agree in theory, Doinmybest, but I remember in my teaching days there was a huge push in both English and history lessons (where my experience was) to teach students to analyse things critically. In English we'd look at advertising and the subliminal messages etc and in history there was lots of influence on bias, using historical sources (writing, pictures, film, photographs etc) and wartime propaganda.

Alas, I've been really disheartened in recent years to see just how little impact this seems to have had! I've been sad to see that many younger people (of the generation I taught) swallow stuff whole -especially advertising. Or, even more worrying, they seem to be hooked on conspiracy theories - indicating that they've lost all perspective in analysing news etc for authenticity. They think everyone is lying! Some of my son's very academic friends are convinced that the moon landings were faked....God help us.

I know this is a tiny sample, but you only have to look at the internet to see that there's craziness all around us. I'm sick to death of hearing from otherwise intelligent people that the McCanns killed Madeleine and Prince Philip had Diana murdered.

Ooooh I know, that damn calligraphy practice and copying out religious texts on vellum . Enough to make your hair fall out.

Op your idea wouldn't work. I only get paid for 46 weeks of the year. Where would they find the money for me to be paid 52 weeks and have standard holidays instead. Especially when multiplied over the 50 people in my school on a similar contract.

Teacher burnout would be even greater because they would be expected to set cover for their holidays. But they stagger in feeling awful because it's easier than setting cover so would never book holiday off.

You back up your position and answer the questions first.

Ultimately, school acts as childcare. It just does. The people who point this out aren't worse parents, they're simply better than you at noting how the society they live in works. And actually it's totally valid to argue that this is a bad thing, but that means admitting it's a thing first.

The majority of parents cannot work unless their child is in school. Therefore it fulfils a childcare function as well as an educational function. You can rant at me all you like; it doesn’t change the situation.

I was going to say this.

I'll also add a couple:

1. Women being expected to change their surnames on marriage. I know it isn't compulsory, and some do want to (which is fine), but there is still an expectation from many. Change and the acceptance of change is painfully slow.

2. Schools expecting women to always be the go to carer when a child becomes ill during the day and never even calling the Dad even if he is first contact on the list.

I think we have the sweet spot as a family currently, my husband works full time, I work part time in community NHS nursing doing 26 hours per week, it allows me to drop my children off and collect. During holidays they attend a childminder, yes it’s expensive but we budget for it and use the tax free childcare. If she goes off sick of the kids are off school sick I take parental leave or an AL day. There can be a bit of angst over the school holidays as only one of us can be off at a time but we usually can negotiate as I need to be off to facilitate my childminders holidays, If I can’t get a week my husband takes it off.

we share as much of the load as possible yes I go by Mrs yes I took his last name but that was my choice and I don’t see myself as any less equal to him or anyone else I’m certainly not sat at home waiting on him handing me my money for the week.

I am not ranting, you don't seem to handle people disagreeing with you very well 😂

I am not saying school hours are not being used, for parents to go to work or the gym or whatever they like, I am saying the school does not exist to give time to parents, it's not its purpose and it shouldn't be.

You would think parents care a bit about their children education, not just about the "free convenient childcare".

I care about my child’s education; however I also care about being able to work to pay my mortgage, which I could not do if my child wasn’t in school. Millions of others are in the same position. Therefore school performs a childcare role as well as an educational one for those people. Take it up with the government if you don’t like it.

So true! Parents are constantly moaning about what they have to do but it's parents who buy into anything they see in shops, Christmas Eve boxes seem to be almost compulsory and of course everything has to be Instagram perfect for the inevitable pictures! Are parents too simple to see that if they were to stop buying just because it's in the shops they would be better off and the shops would soon stop stocking the rubbish.

I will if the government decide to remove school holidays and give a 5.6 weeks off a year, including bank holidays, to children because "childcare".

I still push for longer holidays, the children don't have a long enough summer break as it is.