Sunday Times article about working women by India Knight.........

[ssd]

Did you read it and if you did what did you think?

FWIW I agree with her, will probably be stoned now.

But you are right it is. Real Emperors new duds wear.

great minds

I agree about after school clubs

but not nurseries for 3 and ups

comes to them all once they stop the chang and start having kids

BK...Calling BK!

She reads like woman on the verge of screeching hysteria. Her comparison between a kennel and a nursery is outrageous. At least she manages to withold that old chestnut, that crazed career women blithley 'dump their children with strangers'.

MN is clogged with threads by highly conscientious mothers doing there utmost to achieve loving, high-quality childcare for their children.

And very many of those are turning somersaults to work jobs (careers) around making sure they can spend good time with their children whilst also paying the mortgage. An ordinary mortgage for an ordinary - very modest - house or flat in London demands considerable 'sacrifice' even to get through maternity leave. We can't all flee London, downsize into an even smaller house or condemn our DPs to a huge commute which means that HE ses nothing of the kids.

Good for Ms Fashions Designer, I am glad she has the savings and success to be able to concentrate on her family, and has made the chpoice she has - good for her. And good for India - can make a career with a well-paid freelance job, slagging off women who can't.

Like me, India Knight is in the enormously fortunate position of being a freelance journalist, who is able to be a SAHM and also have interesting stimulating work and earn her own money. She is especially fortunate in earning a great deal more than me for even less work. And unlike me, she has had two high-earning partners to father her children. I've just had the one, low earning husband. I do have to work to maintain anything like the way of life I enjoy (and by that I mean a normal London house in a cheap part of the city and a cappuccino & wine habit) but I am so lucky that I can do so at home, and send my older child to nursery very part time and hire a nanny to look after the baby 2 short days a week (actually this is quite a sacrifice financially and there was no holiday last year and it will be a very cheap UK one this year too). I also work evenings and weekends to make up for the limited childcare. As I am in this fortunate position I feel that I should count my blessings.
However, I do think being at school 8-6, 5 days a week, would have made me feel pretty desperate as a kid and I am concerned about this.

In person, Caitlin is a lovely, bouncy, kind, generous brilliant funny person. And India is a spiteful snob. And from someone who went on holiday with her, I hear she is vile to her au pairs. TRUE FACT

Sorry - slow-typist, x posted - Dullwitch, you have made the point about India much better than me.

LOL over Chloe woman being sacked!

"Would you leave your dog in a kennel for 10 hours a day, every day? No, you?d feel sorry for it and besides somebody would (quite rightly) call the RSPCA.

There was a report published last September... "

This is true!

I feel sorry for all children who are away from their mother and home 10 hours a day, five days a week.

Especially babies who start nursery from 3 months - that is really sad.

No mortgage repayments, debts etc can justify this!

And Pheobe Filopastry will have a hugely overpaid consultancy or lustrous new UK-based job sooner than you can say nappy-change.

she was an aquaintance of mine when she was at Cambridge and was always rather sweet and motherly, and rather glamorous

Dullwitch are you WWW?

Aloha, the answer seems to be to have just the one column that you repeat ad infinitum- highly recommended

The DullWitch, thank you so much for confirming all my prejudices, that's wonderful (who are you by the way? Not in RL I don't mean, but have you just changed your name?)

Can I just say, when I said that about valid views, I take it back. I just re-read it and most of it is shite.

Who was Enid? Phoebe?

no India

to be fair I think I agree with Aloha that 10 hours of school could be grim if you didn't like school/were bullied etc.

agree about the school thing

but agonising if you have no choice

I would have killed for afterschool clubs when I was a kid- I had to do it all on my own, waiting around school for my dad to finish being headmaster

I much preferred coming home on my own, getting myself a ryvita and cheese sandwich and watching the telly (Tarot was my favourite and NOBODY remembers it nowadays) for an hour until my mum came home! Totally unacceptable nowadays but so relaxing!

Lovecloud, some of them really would have to live in a kennel, then!!

Of course v few parents think it is ideal to put a child in care of that kind non-stop - but they may well NOT have a choice, and it's nice, approved nurseries these children are in, not Rumanian Orphanages in the Ceasecu era.

Just because wraparound care is provided doesn't mean that every child attends it's full extent every day.

my best friend had her own key and let herself in (she was about 10) it was brilliant we used to go round and eat sweets

aloha I loved Tarot

spooky music

OMG! You remember it! I often feel as if I hallucinated the whole thing. It was so wonderful and glamorous and groovy and the one where the aliens had taken over the WI was one of the scariest things I have ever seen. I am now extremely over-excited. Ah, all this and Clever Polly And The Stupid Wolf. I think I love you.

Didn't like Ryvita much though - not when I was a kid.

I like it. You could fill the holes on the bumpy side with butter!

Noooo, Clever Polly was meeeee!