To think toddler group shouldn't be handing out such anti nursery literature?

[Ebb]

I have recently started going to a toddler group, run in a church, which is, in general, lovely but today we were all handing print outs of 'Raising Babies' by Steve Biddulph entitled 'Should under 3's go to nursery?'

It basically suggests that babies under 1 shouldn't go to nursery at all. "Organize for your baby to be with a parent or Grandparent all the time except for occassional breaks - days off or evenings out - when you have a trusted and familiar babysitter."

When your child is one "up to one short day per week eg. 9-3 with a trusted and familiar carer. Ideally 1:1 but in a 1:3 ratio at most."

Further quotes include "Some children are not ready (for nursery) until three or more and group care can be upsetting and harmful for these children." and "*Remember - nurseries have become big business. Many nurseries never engage emotionally with their children."

I am lucky in the fact I take my Dc to work with me but a lot of parents don't have a choice and nurseries are the feasible option. Surely a toddler group shouldn't be putting more pressure and guilt on parents by handing out such cr@p?!

Are you an Aquarian?

fabsmum - I think it was slightly more constructive than that but I'd rather leave Biddulph to one side. I suspect you and I are on the same page in a lot of ways but your early posts did rather get my back up. But I think you've talked a lot more sense in your more recent posts so can we agree to move on as I suspect there's a much more interesting discussion to be had.

Does anyone know if there's any analysis of the different types of childcare in different societies? I know that maternal leave is much shorter in a lot of other countries and there are places where nurseries are much more embedded into the culture than they are here. I don't think it's possible for any of us to divorce our POV from the cultural context in which we operate so not sure that any conclusions could be drawn but I'd be interested to see any research.

Institutional or non-family care has been common in some sectors of many societies, all the way through human history - BonsoirAnna, you are right but pre-rev France is only one example. The scandal of the French baby farming in which children died was 19th century, and there were similar incidences throughout Europe and the US (not so much in UK).

The idea of children as people deserving of love, care and nurturing is actually a fairly recent notion - probably became mainstream only in the past 100 years or so,though it began in Victorian times, and we are still living with older notions that babies can be spoilt, that children should be seen and not heard, that adults rights to dole out physical assault should take precedence over children's rights to stay safe from harm - insert your own examples of this thinking 'cos there are many.

Fuzzy "If you intend to hand your small baby or under 2 year old over to a nursery then why have them in the first place? If you don't have a family member or can't find a professional childminder to look after your baby 2 or 3 days a week then why not wait til you can before reproducing? I won't even begin to comment about people who place their babies in full time care."

I think you are very blinkered. Some people have to work full time because of the economy and the fact that they need 2 incomes to cover a mortgage and to live. Some people don't have parents who can care for small children and if you can't recognise that a nursery is a 'professional child-minding service' then you are being stubborn for the sake of argument. I have seen childminders who scream at their charges and have up to 4 kids to care for. They may take them to toddler groups but i have seen them spend more time having cups of tea and catching up with friends than care for their charges. I have seen nurseries keep to the strict 3 to 1 ratio, are always present with the children and have a strong bond with all their charges.

Choosing childcare is an emotive choice for every parent. To have such blinkered opinions doesn't help anyone in the end. Everyone does what is best for their child and i have seen children hindered by being kept at home with one-to-one attention from mum and very little interaction with other kids (slower development, can't eat independantly by age 2, fewer words, extreme social shyness etc etc) than i have by kids who interact with others.

You are lucky to have a set of parents who can help out. Not everyone still has their parents alive to help and not every child-minder is good. The last 2 yeras has seen the economy plummet - people need to pay the mortgage and food bills. Can't go back on deciding to have children once they are here and can't control amrket forces - just roll with the punches and do your damndest to make sure your children are happy and cared for in whatever environment whilst still keeping a roof and loving home over their head.

spicemonster: you ask for a good book that compares childcare in diff. societies:

www.amazon.co.uk/Parenting-Peaceful-World-Robin-Grille/dp/1903275547

The outsourcing of baby care, and the very high infant mortality that arose as a direct result of this, goes back a long way in France - it had been given a legal framework in pre-Revolutionary France, which suggests that the practice was common and widespread and just part of the culture for a long time before that. French infant mortality remained higher than that of other similarly developed nations well into the early 20th century because of the practice of outsourcing baby care.

However, Jean-Jacques Rousseau who greatly promoted the idea of the mother as nurturer and primary care was a French man whose ideas were adopted more widely in England than in his homeland at the time of his writing (18th century).

thanks tiktok - that looks very good

All true, BonsoirAnna....and old Jean-Jacques R. was terrible to his own children, and had them all sent to 'orphanages' shortly after birth.

Fuzzy,
"If you intend to hand your small baby or under 2 year old over to a nursery then why have them in the first place? If you don't have a family member or can't find a professional childminder to look after your baby 2 or 3 days a week then why not wait til you can before reproducing?"

There was a MASSIVE thread last week about women waiting to have children, and then it being too late.

So, if the choice is between having a child that you desperately want (but having to put it into nursery care for lack of alternatives) or waiting and possibly losing the small window that women have for being able to have children, which would you choose?

Stigaloid. I agree entirely re. childminders. I too have witnessed abhorent behaviour by a childminder directed to an 18 month old. They are indeed the types that sit round at playgroups drinking tea and caring not one jot for their charges. But that's not the type of childminder I was suggesting. I'd suggest getting to know them before leaving a child with one.

Re. nurseries, I'm sure some are better than others, yet none will ever be as good as the care from parents & grandparents - even if that care is not 'perfect'. Although I concede a family member who has exclusive care may find the child has problems interacting with others.

Don't agree re. economy. It makes me mad as hell! I work with women who work full time and men with wives who do the same. 'I'm skint!' they claim. Funny how they still manage AT LEAST one holiday per year.

Priorities - get them right before you have children. Mortgages - overstretch yourself and expect trouble. Why can't people live within their means?

Fuzzy - because not everyone is perfect! My friends have to rent as they are unable to buy at the moment. They got pregnant accidentaly but adore their little boy. In order to cover the rent they both have to work because not everyone earns high figure salaries. They have some care from grandparents, who are both 70 and can't offer the full time care that they need, and the only other option that works for them is nursery. Their sone is adorable and very well balanced. If they stayed at home they would have no house over his head and no food in his belly.

I think it is very easy to have a 'why can't everyone just think like me' attitude, but life has a funny way of throwin spanners in the works and you just do the best you can with the hand you have been dealt with and try not to judge too much.

Fuzzy, you are being judgemental and rigid.

Bleh, I wouldn't say 10 years was a 'small window', if for example you're referring to having kids over 30 and before 40. I'd say that was plenty of time to have a child, and ensure it had the best care from day one.

If I couldn't find that level of care within that sort of timescale then I think I'd be doing something wrong. Like being a little too selfish and waiting til late 30s early 40s when it can, as you say, be too late.

Stigaloid, you're absolutely right, not everyone's perfect and not everyone has high salaries. And yes there are a few exceptions to the rule. However would a low salary cover nursery care? Anyway in my experience it's those with the best jobs that palm their kids off full time, and the lower paid that work part time. That's me.

Tiktok, I'm not I'm being truthful and blunt.

I have a wonderful CD called The Invention of Childhood. It was a Radio 4 broadcast by Michael Morpugo.
Basically, it gives an abridged historical account of how the UK has viewed childhood since Anglo Saxon times.
And there doesn't seem to have been a halcyon time when children were attachment parented by their Mothers and extended families, loved and cherished until adulthood.
Until recently the very notion of childhood was non-existant. There was babyhood, then very quickly children were expetced to be independent and work. Even babyhood was purely functional. Most women had to do so much work to keep the home and family going, babies have always had to fit in.

Fuzzy - you presume everything is simple. Ok - so you did everything so perfectly . What would have happended if, when you were pregnant, something happened to your mum so she couldnt look after your children? What would happen if your DH was unable to work? You are extremely privileged in the support you have.

If this support changed and you had to work still would you then have your children adopted to a stay at home mum?

Litchick, that's true. There has never been a fully-documented 'golden age' of parenting where children were routinely cared for lovingly and responsively and for whom childhood was a halcyon time of freedom from work, material need and harshness.

Archeology has found evidence of societies like this where we can infer from what remains of them that life was pretty close to that - these societies tended to die out after a few hundred years, as more warrior like societies conquered them. You cannot 'breed' warriors very easily if you are child-centric in your parenting.

It's all in the book I linked to

Fuzzy - my friends salaries cover their rent and their nursery fees because their elderly, 70 year old parents, help out a few days a week. They are at an agee when anything could happen to them though and if that is the case then they don't know what they will do. As it is they live in a small 2 bedroom flat that they are quickly outgrowing but they need two mortgage to cover everything.

You seem quite bitter than people who work use childcare - i would certainly not view it as 'palming their kids off' to have someone else help care for a child whilst parents work to pay for cost of living.

I have the book of The Invention of Childhood, and listened to the radio series.

Children in the past generally received less individual attention to their development than do children in developed socities today. But of course, children today have a lot, lot more to learn to be fully functional members of our highly complex modern global society than did children in the past. Hence our parental worries about getting it all right and not letting our children miss the boat developmentally.

This book - A World of Babies - is fab too.
It looks at birth and childrearing across 7 societies (6 contemporary plus Puritan New England) and is written in the format of childcare guides for them.
Some very striking bits - eg an African group that give their babies enemas so they don't poo on the older child they get to carry their child around for them all day while the mother works in the fields.

I can asure you that given a choice between homelessness or nursery my dd would prefer the nursery option - needs must and I was on my own so what should I do ? Scrounge of the state lose my home, end up in b&b till a council place became available or work and keep the roof over my head.

I choose to work, earn, pay nursery and not scrounge from the state/tax payers money.

Peppa Pig has taken over my life too, it's mint.

No it wasn't perfect but I knew what I wanted and what was best for my family and for my child. And this is my opinion and my family, and perhaps someone else thinks it's OK to use nursery care however I really don't.

So had my mother become unavailable I would have searched for a childminder. If I couldn't find such a person then I would have left work and continued looking after him til I found her or waited til my son was 2 to find another part time job. If I couldn't find one I would stay at home and do without the luxuries. Though I've got to add at this point I don't agree with full time SAH parenting either. No offence intended on that one just my opinion.

Stigaloid, no I'm not bitter just very soft hearted and anti-nurserys! I live very close to a wonderful childminder and her rates are the same as a nursery. And I'll say it again, there are excpetions to the rule, perhaps your friends are that excepetion, it's just a shame they couldn't find a decent childminder.

In answer to the OP, YANBU to think the toddler group should not be handing out literature supporting one point of view. Strikes me as a very strange thing to do. Would have spiced things up round our way if somebody had done that!

There are, in fact, dozens of longditudinal studies on children. The oldest one I found was currently looking at 'children' who are now in their 50's which, you have to agree, is pretty longditudinal. Totally irrelevant, but definitely longditudinal - childcare today being totally different to that available in the 50's.

I had a look at several of these studies but I won't link of any of them because none of them agree with me 100%.

But on the other hand they don't agree with any other viewpoint 100% either.

Surely that is the point. There are good parents and bad parents, good nurseries and bad nurseries, children who thrive in childcare and children who don't. There is no 'one size fits all'.

I agree with those who say that the debate should not be whether or not we should be using childcare but how are we going to make sure that the childcare we have(including being looked after at home by your own parents) is the best possible care for the largest number of people.

That won't stop the guilt, or the fact that sometimes, unpalatable 'truths' will be thrown up - we just have to deal with them. There is an opportunity cost for every choice we make. So do what you think is best for your children, safe in the knowledge that somewhere out there, there is research to back up each and every one of you.

You don't agree with full time SAH parents and you don't agree with nurseries?
I know there are other forms of childcare but you're bloody hard to please aren't you?

Niecie, yes, there are many longitudinal studies on children, but they are observational, not interventionist and they do not/cannot randomise. They tend to look at measurable health outcomes, anyway.

Like you say, what they would find out about actual day care would not be of much use 50 years on to today's parents, anyway.

Yep I am! Yes there's family and childminders and part-time working parents. Of either sex.