Child guru says nurseries harm small children

[flashingnose]

oh dear

This all depresses me so much. I can't believe that before i had dd I was completely unaware there was this whole "other world" out there, of families and child care and employment complications etc etc, I had no idea how complicated it all is and how unfair. Does anyone else experience it like this? I feel like I am living in a completely different world to that of my childless friends. I found myself saying today to a friend when we were talking about when she plans to have children, "Yes, have babies! Come into my world!" It has also subtly changed my relationships with my childless friends a bit, because of that. again, different world, different understandings... It's also so hard not to feel a bit superior, I think as mothers and fathers we are doing the most important occuption in the universe (I mean, as a whole we parents are responsible for the next generation and there can't be anything more important than that, I don't mean the most important thing everyone should do in their life is have kids, i never intended to have any!...), but society does not support it or value parenting as someone said (perhaps that's what puts one on the defensive). I feel almost as if I'm watching my childless friends getting on with their happy carefree lives (most of them would choke if they knew i'd said that!!), as if they're children of mine - "one day you'll realise..." kind of thing.
weird...

hear hear on the most important job in the world

"And I see quite a few braindead mums who are only staying at home because they don't like their jobs, and their husbands earn enough to keep the family, whose kids would be much better off having a few days at nursery"

Ah, realisation dawns! - now I can see why Ermintrude named herself after a dozy cow from The Magic Roundabout....

HMC -

"Women who enjoy their work and don't want to spend 24/7 with their young children are constantly being made to feel guilty, largely by women who haven't found fulfilling careers, and therefore for whom full-time childcare is comparatively pleasant."

Goodness! How insulting. So women only choose to leave their jobs and look after their children because they don't have a better job to do?!

fsmail ~ I agree. I lived in Hong Kong as a child and we knew a number of Chinese families whose very young children were in boarding nurseries. They only spent one day a week at home with their parents. Surely this would be a better set of children to study the emotional effects of long hours childcare in a nursery.

Further to FSmail's point about businesses and childbearing women, there was an interesting piece in yesterday's Observer. It talks about the problems of women not having kids at all, not because they don't want to but becuase society makes it hard to keep your job going and have kids. A think tank has done a study on this and advocates some great measures like free childcare places for 2 year olds and more and better paid parternity leave. For SAHMs this is less relevant I guess but for working women it sounds great if it ever happens! (I'm actually the family breadwinner which I don't think makes me in anyway superior or inferior to a SAHM - I have many friends who are SAHMs - it's just the way our lives have worked out).
childless_women

hmc ...!!

Ermitrude : "but it's not a 'natural' or 'normal' state and those of us who don't share it do well to give our kids other nurturing environments to enjoy. "

Why have children if you don't share the nurturing side..?? Or if you don't find it natural or normal..?? I take it you may have them just to "tick boxes"..?

I am a sahm..I had a brilliant job before I had dd BUT I decided to become a sahm becuase I felt it was what is best for my dd. I want to be the one to give her values,manners,love,affection,time,a relaxed daytime routine etc etc etc. We are all entitled to do what we wish with our children during the day but please don't think us SAHM's only do it because we have nothing better else to do or because we couldn't be bothered with our careers etc. Bollocks.

There is an interesting article in the Sunday mag of the Torygraph about how todays female role model is Jools Oliver, the ultimate sahm. Certainly can't descibe her as braindead and I bet she breastfed too.

yeah but i wish i had her money!

In fact that is so misleading. The article is about the new housewife and how droves of uni educated, intelligent, articulate etc women are making a choice not to have a career but to have a family. Jools Oliver is our new role model as opposed to good old Germaine Greer who was our role model twenty years ago.

But Ruty, would you want her husband?

i wish i'd had children earlier. But put it off off for - you guessed it - my career. No wonder the population is diminishing.

well kittyfish, you have to make some sacrifices to have that sort of lifestyle!

Yuck. Jools is NOT my role model. I think she's a bit dippy.

Bloody hell, Jools Oliver is my role model??? FFS! I'm going back to work right now!

That book she wrote-I can't believe she charged people to read her grammatical errors!

Plus I resent how she has 2 kids and is not verging on the morbidly obese, that is wrong and unfair IMO

I think Jools Oliver is rather sweet but not a role model. I think it's quite curious as a concept - I thought children needed role models, not grown women. When I decided to "waste my degree and throw my life down the toilet" as a SAHM I wasn't thinking about role models, or anything other than my children (although I was daunted by the idea of being treated like a worthless irelevant bovine, which turned out to be well-founded)

correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think she has ever had a job, [did she go to university?] so her dilemma may be a little different to ours...

Plus she has married to a rich guy who works all hours - hardly the state of play for most normal women.

Another point. If she writes books no matter how good she has a career and therefore is not technically a SAHM.

Uh, yeah, is she a SAHM. I mean surely there is a nanny in tow. Does that really count as SAHM? That's more like an unemployed WOHM.

Did she actually write the book? I sort of assumed it was ghosted.

ooh interesting question uwila (and a big assumption too?).

I know a couple (well, friends of my parents who had kids when older) who are millionnaires who always had live in au pairs, even though the mother doesn't work. I could never help myself looking down my nose a bit about it, esp when i was looking at their holiday photos and most of the ones of the kids were taken of them playing with the au pair! Hardly any family photos. (Used to wonder how the hell she thought me as a full time single SAHM coped!

But hey, if i won the lottery I wouldn't hesitate to probably hire a full time nanny at least, to be on call to babysit whenever I needed a lie in/night out etc! . And I'd still call myself a SAHM. And, I have to admit too that I don't actually know how many hours their au pairs worked! I'm just being a cow really.

very popular round here to be a SAHM and have a nanny/au pair

I think it is bloody lazy tbh

Jools Oliver??? why exactly?? she always looks like a miserable knackered old cow on tv

an old-style au pair (not untrained nanny) isn't that bad is it? An extra pair of hands to help with kids, ironing etc. Not that I would ever be likely to have a house big enough to put one in .