to wonder who Oliver James is? working mothers look away!

[Chulita]

Here Sorry if there's a thread on it already, I just read this and was a bit

Agree with you WidowWadman Felt awful when I put my dd1 into a wonderful nursery at the age of a year, until my mum pointed out that in the old days when families had 10 or 12 children, the children certainly didn't get one to one attention all the time!!!!

No, forever, he says that children should be glued to their mothers for the first 5 years.

According to Oliver James "the more time the child was in non-maternal care of any sort during its first five years, the greater their difficulties...extended or repeated seperation from the mother in itself causes longterm emotional problems in adulthood, in particular, borderline personality disorder...Daycare entails repeated and more or less prolongued separation from mother. It would not be surprising if it had similar, albeit less severe, long term effects."

That load of guilt-inducing sexist generalisation comes from The Times today.

Do you think he would pay my mortgage?????

I wonder what effect he thinks poverty has on children. I can tell him actually. It's shite!!!!

foreverastudent - my daughter has around 4 nursery nurses iin her group and one of them is her key nurse. There's also one nurse who keeps "pinching" her to come over into her group, because she just likes her so much.

I can't see how a setting with several adults who look after a buch of children fantqastically well should be less good than one with only one adult who has to share his/her attention with several children.

I read this and was that he presents psychological theories as fact and sees no problem in blithely accepting the ones that fit with his rather conservative point if view with no attempt to go into it in any depth. It isn't as cut and dried as he makes out.

i think he has a problem with women in general not only working mums. He states in his book that if a woman suffers from post natel depression it can have a serious affect on her child. Yeah, well maybe . . sometimes . .BUT isn't that statement going to make anyone who has suffered depression feel even worse?

He is a knob.

And please excuse crap typing

'Wouldn't most working mothers agree with this? I mean if we could all afford nannies for our under 1's or maybe under 2's wouldn't we use them instead of a busy day nursery?'

No.

Lots of reasons, perhaps personal to us, too hot to list them

On another note aren't day nurseries on one level like childcare was 50 years ago (or whenever) - lots of typically women together with lots of children?

And my DS is just about to leave nursery after being there 3.5 years ish. I would say 80% of the staff who were there when he started are still there now.

Not everything that happens in childhood has these horrendous effects in adulthood. Yes, early years are important but there are SO MANY factors that determine whether a person develops a 'borderline personality disorder- which in itself is filled with value judgements.

He is a cock. Read Penelop Leach.

Marvellous. I had PND with my first dd. Should I book a psychoanalyst for her now?? She's fine by the way, nearly 3 and bright as a button, very sociable, and totally adorable. Despite PND and nursery...

I like OJ, he writes in the Guardian every week and is v sensible and incisive. Perhaps tis the Telegraphs interpretation that is off the mark?

There is always ongoing debate about theories of attachment and development. One thing is certain. It isn't as simple as saying a+b=c

don't let him worry you

It's just sexist and the suggestion women not men should be responsibel for children is may be what you get from someone who lived with his parents until he was over 30 and never did a day's childcare in his life with his own (sadly because he has MS... but even so he cannot really know what being a normal parent is with 24/7 care of a child as he's never done it).

Newspapers know that misogynists get working women going and sell newspapers. More papers are sold by the peddling of sexism. But it is water off a duck's back for those of us who are good working parents of either gender.

I work as a psychiatric nurse with young people who have had a psychotic episode and may be developing schizophrenia. Their parents are usually distraught with worry and part of our rolr is to work with patienta' families to help them cope better. He wrote this totally shite article in The Guardian saying that Schizophrenia is caused by bad parenting which is an opinion that was widespread in the sixties and has now been proven to be utter shite with precisely zero evidence to back it up. Twelve of the psychologists in our trust wrote a letter tot he Guardian saying how damaging his views were. He has a daughter called Olive which is extremely weird for someone called Oliver. I think he's seriously fucked up and a complete tosser.

James had an exceptionally chaotic childhood by the sounds of it - if the article I read in the Times is accurate - which fair enough he may well be traumatised by. His whole armageddon style tone - if you do this then X terrible thing will befall your children- is probably an outgrowth of that in some way.

And yes, if you have kids at 48 when you're well established in your career fucking loaded with no reason to worry about keeping your family financially afloat as opposed to twenty nine, etc then all oof his stuff about not working etc makes perfect sense. I just bet you he'd find some research to support the opposite argument when it suited him. He seems clever like that.

His parents were psycho-analysts so may be he just remmebers older theories. I hope the sexism doesn't come from having gone to Eton but I know a good few non -sexist old Etonians so one hopes not.

The bottom line is as I am sure he would agree - that how we are treated as young children has a big impact on how we are and most parents provide good care either themselves or if they are too ill or don't want to care for them themselves or they have to work they find someone else - a grandmother wife nanny or whatever.

I worked from choice because if benefits children and worked for our family.

My main bugbear about the fuckyouup book is the sexism of it. H einterviewed 50 mothers. In 2010 there are hundreds of thousands of full time househusbands. Men as much as women are responsible for the care of their children. Woman as whipping boy has to stop. It was foisted on us by misgynists from the time Eve was blamed for tempting Adam in the garden of Eden.

Children have two parents.

Childcare is not a female issue.

Upsylazy - have you read his stuff on homosexuality too? Along the lines of his views on schizophrenia.

Hmm.. that explains why after spending our first 3 week long holiday with our nearly 2 year old son since going to nursery, he advanced remarkably with speech, became very loving and was extremely co-operative. Only 2 days back at nursery later and we've noticed he's become the slightly disobedient monkey he always was. Probably co-incidence.

Still, what a horrible article.

I don't mind Oliver James, at least he has views he defends and evidences. I never finished 'Affluenza' but my memory is that he is concerned about sexism and societies that create situations where there isn't a genuine choice about child care or adequate alternatives.

I'm happy for him to stick his neck out and make
me think about what I believe about how people work. I have more sympathy for what he's doing than so called child care gurus who have no evidence for their practices and in some cases the scientific evidence stacks heavily against them.

Affluenza is a silly and shallow book, rather than anything else, I'd say. He simply lists some conversations he had with different people around the world. The problem is that it leaves him with a very superficial understnading of any life or society he tries to describe, so even when it seems he's saying something interetsing (e.g. about self esteem in contempoary Chinese society), in fact it's clear he knows so little about it that it would be unwise to trust any of his conclusions.

I heard him on the radio and I did get the impression he was somewhat traumatised by an unhappy childhood...

at OJ - what a plonker!!

I pity anyone silly enough to waste money on this unsubstantiated bollox!

The Oliver James article in The Guardian really gets on my tits every week, not least because it varies very little from week to week. Each time I say to my DH, haven't we read this one before? And now he has got a new book coming out, I 'spect we'll hear his views about needing to stay at home till they are 2, no wait... 3, no wait... 5, again and again.

Last week he said that toddlers did not need "stimulation" or "friends". WTF? Has he met a toddler recently? Mine (2.5) has spent a good deal of the weekend asking when she is going to nursery so she can play with x friend and see the baby chicks which hatched last week.

I also remember reading him announce one week that, of course, anti-depressants could not be prescribed to breast-feeding mothers. It's deeply annoying that he gets very basic stuff like this wrong .