To think life is very different now?

[CockerMum]

Just for context we have no children but are planning to start a family (as in trying now) hence I may be more sensitive than usual to these kinds of comments.
MiL has DH and his brother. She has always made comments about how children (but in particular boys) need their mum until the age of 5. Yesterday she made this comment again over dinner, and I said that life is different now to how it was when she was raising her children and the reality is for many families both parents need to work to pay the bills. I went on to say that DH and I both need to work to pay our bills. Mil said she thinks the government should pay for mothers to stay home with children until the age of 6. I said that is a totally unrealistic policy.
AIBU to be irked at her implication that
a) mothers should stay home, as opposed to fathers (she never mentions fathers staying home although tbh in our case it is more likely DH would cut working hours as I earn more)
b) it is cruel to put children into childcare settings pre school
and
c) boys need their mothers more than girls (obviously she is biased having had two boys in whom she can see no wrong)

How to handle these conversations? I worry that when we have kids she will go on and on about it.

How many stay at home dads do you know in order to compare who is the better SAHP?

There's often an idyllic notion that children were always with mothers until 5 or 6 and that its only a recent idea that anything else might happen. Its utter rubbish and not really borne out by what we see in the archaeological or historic record.

In reality, for millennia toddlers have often been left with older siblings or grandparents and children have played independently/unsupervised from much younger ages, relying on children of 8 & 9 to watch those as young as 3/4.

If anything girls were more likely to be around their mothers as they would have been expected to learn domestic skills and help with agricultural work, housekeeping, cooking, washing and clothes making.

The human race has never been able to spare half its healthiest, most productive young adult workers solely for childrearing. Women have always worked.

I do think however that the notion of children under 2/3 can be adequately cared for in large nurseries is a problem. Babies & young toddlers need to form a bond with with a consistent caregiver. Most nurseries do not provide this. Imo its more effective for a childcarer to look after mixed age groups with differing needs (mirroring what you might see in a normal nuclear family) than for 1 adult to attempt to care for 3 babies at once who all want holding etc.

Just smile and nod at MIL

Let her have her opinions......you don't have to agree

Well, why don’t we force 50% all fathers to be SAHPs for five years and see where that leaves us in terms of ‘bonding’ for comparative purposes?

I’m a MiL and here’s my two penn’orth.
She can think but not utter this outdated, unrealistic tosh. Point out to her she might like to look after the baby one day a week as a benefit of you both working. That might change her tune.

A cheery “oh I agree with you, MIL! Sadly, you. Didn’t raise DH to be earn enough to be able to afford a SAHM so I’ll have to work when we have kids. It’ll be interesting to see if this will encourage them to be more ambitious and they might be in a position to have my grandkids raised by a SAHM as we’d like”.

(and yes, I know this is full of sexist tropes and not very kind to OP’s husband, but sometimes the best way to deal with unreasonable people is to meet them at their level).

Just tell her that she was privileged to be wealthy enough to have a choice. Most women, past and present have needed to work and their children have turned out fine. Keep the message short and consistent and just keep repeating it like a dripping tap.

Same as Deag,only I'm 74, maternity leave in the 70s and 80s was 6 weeks after the birth, and you had to work several years equivalent of full time to accrue it. I got silly comments from mil,on a similar vein. I didn't pay for childcare,in the main,ex H and current DH worked nights I worked days, and visa Versa. We got round it that way. You do what works for you.

You have to do what you and your DH think is best for yourselves. So you only need to consider her views to the extent that you intend to take them onboard

But personally I do agree that women should have the CHOICE which they currently do not have anymore unless they have a) Money b) A wealthy (or struggling but willing to bear the burden) provider husband who appreciates the benefits of his children's mother being the primary care giver - to remain home with their children. I personally would - and did - move heaven and earth to avoid putting my children in nursery at months old. That I passionately disagree with.

The family is serving , predominantly male-centered (and male derived) capitalism instead of capitalism serving the family. See low birth rates as the inevitable end-stage of an ever increasingly annihilistic, individualist, materialist capitalist world order.

Well you might not like it but I think it's true what she's saying.

But opinions are like arseholes — everyone’s got one, but it’s usually considered good form to keep it to yourself in social situations.

Times have certainly changed. I also believe 'most' children are better off at home with their primary carer until around 3. When my children were young they all went to pre school part time from around 3 and built up sessions before full time school. It worked well if you had a good local pre school. The children learnt social skills, mixed with others and learnt to share. In my area the majority of mums were all sahp. We then went to the increase in day nurseries so people could work full time. From there we next got breakfast and after school clubs. When a breakfast club was started at our primary school, probably 20 years ago now, the leader was surprised that nearly all those attending, which was only about 10 children at the time, all seemed to be problem children. Maybe opinions differ but it seemed at the time those were the children who had spent all their early years in childcare and not had the consistent love and care at home with a parent. Fast forward another 20 years and day nursery and breakfast/ after school clubs are common place, 3 new nurseries have just opened near me in the last 3 months. I personally feel like probably Ops MIL does, that this is a sad state of affairs. Whereas I think people expect more these days and so need money to do it, it is also so so hard for young people to get a property these days. It didn't used to be a necessity to have two wages coming in to afford to live. I am fully aware my DIL would have to work and may be want to, if they have children and would never question it.

I don’t disagree that a parent at home would be optimal however I do not think childcare is cruel, plenty of kids go into childcare and are not “damaged” by it.
What I take issue with is her labouring the point which does feel personal but PP is right I should not take it so personally really.
I will also say that when we got married she told me she would never do any childcare for us, she just wanted to make me aware of that so we could take it into consideration (fair enough I wouldn’t have assumed they would) but we really are not left with alternatives to some formal childcare if we do have children so I don’t think her bringing it up over and over again is helpful!

You're right that historically, children have very often been looked after by someone who is not their mother. A grandmother/older sibling/neighbour is very different to an ever-changing roster of (under)paid employees at a nursery though.

I think I've read some research somewhere that calculated that in hunter-gather societies, each child would on average have 4 adults to look after it. That is very different to the modern nursery setting.

Fair enough. Have you tried telling her this directly? E.g. "I'm glad you were able to stay home with your children, MIL. I agree that your kids really benefited. I won't be able to do the same though, so my plan is to be very careful when choosing a nursery and to do my best with the cards I've been dealt. It would be helpful if you stopped mentioning childcare, because it's a sensitive topic for me and it's starting to come across as criticism. Thanks for understanding".

Ignore her.

For what it's worth I found the early secondary school ages the time they need a parent at home more.

Yes, I know it's culturally accepted to put adults' feelings before children's.

https://criticalscience.medium.com/on-the-science-of-daycare-4d1ab4c2efb4

Unfortunately, it's not true that kids aren't damaged by it.

Depending on how many children you have, what you'll discover is that whether it is 'cruel' or not is determined to a large degree by the child.

One child develops attachment confidence early, and another doesn't or develops it later. The maturing autonomic nervous system is highly respondent to parental engagement.

I myself had one child that skipped excitedly to preschool nursery and actually resented my presence if I lingered even to say goodbye and another who was clingy, thumb sucked and chewed his nails due to the stress of the environment. That's without the complication of Neurodiversity. In fact second child never took to school either despite being actually more academically able than my first.

In the end we arrived at a solution, but I was surprised at the difference and think my prior attempts to force him to detach before he was ready and put him in a chaotic (from his pov) environment was probably cruel.

I not as clued up on child development or theories of attachment as I am now and was mostly guided by culture and what everyone else seemed to be doing.

Aside from cases of blatant abuse, the child's emotional psychology comes at the very bottom of social and community legislative policy concern, which, in a country that is so child positive is anachronistic and is, again, increasingly about capitalism.

@TightlyLacedCorset 👌

Nod and smile, nod and smile. 😁

I had my kids in the 90s everyone went back to work between 3 months and 6 as you needed two incomes for mortgages then too..some of our parents thought it wrong.

Agree with PP that mother's working is not new, but would add:

Very wealthy families have always farmed their kids out to others. Nannies from birth, governesses, boarding schools. Most of the mothers did not actually work, but it was socially acceptable for them to see their children for only an hour or two a day, and to have little contact for entire terms.

We accept it when the very rich do it, despite not needing to for financial reasons.

In an ideal world, for sure, all children would benefit from early years with a lot of exposure to being at home cared directly by loving family members. As opposed to paid for care, such as nursery or a nanny. They would also benefit from mixing with children of similar ages in a more formal setting on a regular basis.
That ideal world is not a reality for most working parents or where regular family support for child care does not exist.
I am also of the opinion that it is good for children to observe their parents having the discipline and energy for going out to work, it sets a good example.
I'd reference to your MIL a theory about women being the only mammals to go through menopause, which stops reproduction after a certain age but they continue to live for many active decades afterwards with the purpose of supporting their own offsprings to raise more children. From an evolutionary perspective. It's an unproven theory but just throw it out there to keep her quiet for a while.

Just ignore her. I'm 50 and my mum worked full time. It's nothing new. There are still SAHM too now, just like when I was little.