Child guru says nurseries harm small children

[flashingnose]

oh dear

I think I'm just emotional as it's getting close to my "return to work" time.

sorry Elf.

elf are you looking at fulltime nursery or are there any other options available to you? sorry you're feeling sh8tty about it all, it really is rock and hard place....

I agree with Colditz, and I also think he?s right. And I don?t think he does it to make the working mother feel guilty, what would he achieve by doing that, if his research was wrong, then there would be counter studies out by now, saying that children who are put into nursery from the age of 6 months are far better off than those who are with SAHP?s. And yet to date no such evidence has been published.

I think though that there are a lot of different types of working parents. I absolutely agree that some parents just can?t afford not to work, however there is a difference between working part-time and using a childcare facility to look after your child for a few hours a week, and someone who is out of the house between 8:00 in the morning and 6:00 at night from Monday to Friday, and I think it is the latter type of situation that is being referred to when he talks about institutionalisation. No-one will ever convince me that putting a 6 month old baby in a full-time nursery setting for 60 hours a week is healthy. Such a young baby needs to be with its mother, maybe not full-time if the mother needs to work, but it certainly doesn?t need to be cared for full-time by someone who it doesn?t even know, and passed through class to class as it grows up.

I also think that there are financial implications in putting a child into full-time care. Nurseries that care for children from birth to 3 years are not cheap, my sister has her son in full-time nursery and it costs her £190 a week, and she pays out 3 quarters of her salary a month in childcare, for the amount of money she brings home, she could get an evenings/weekend job and have the best of both world, and yet she still prefers to work full-time. And her son is very much institutionalised imo. He is a very happy, sociable child at nursery, among his friends there, but take him out of the nursery environment and he loses all his confidence, even in his own house.

I do think it's unfortunate that this debate just makes people like you feel guilty Elf. As Issymum syas there are so many variables around the quality of the childcare and the child and family in question that a simple 'nursery is bad' message is woefully inadequate.

Bear in mid too that the article is focusing on very small children left in nursery 8-6 five days a week. I know very few people who would do this or think it was a good idea, other than if they were in a situation where they would absolutely HAVE to.

As an aside, I know a few parents whose children would statistically be counted as 8-6 babies five days a week as that's the nursery opening hours and they are registered there everyday - all all cases the parents probably use 3.5 days but it works out cheaper to pay weekly rather than daily rates. So I wonder if this 100,000 children SB refers to is a correct figure anyway.

F/T nursery. Have managed to rearrange my hours to do 8-4 so that I get 2 1/2 hours with her at home in the evening before we get her ready for bed, rather than an hour if I did my usual hours. the nursery is near my work so I can be with her in five minutes. I work 32 hours a week.
My dad is due to retire in 18 months, my mum is also hoping to take v early retirement and would have my DD at the drop of a hat. But at the moment, nobody I would trust. A friend of mine offered, but she smokes and swears a lot, plus she's given her granddaughter dummies against her DIL's wishes, and I dont want to put my trust in her.
I dont like the idea of doing it, especially as my daughter tends to settle best with me. But financially at the moment I have to. My DH offered to get a 2nd job, but it's not fair on him to never see his child.

Puddle my sister is such a parent. cheaper for her to pay for full-time than go for 3.5 days a week. Also once when I asked about her DS getting breakfast at nursery rather than at home she said "Well we pay for it".

Had similar conversation with a neighbour of mine about 4 years ago, she was telling me that her DS (then aged 4 months) was going into nursery from 8 in the morning till 6 at night and then added "I think it will be so good for him, he's such a sociable child". WTF? at 4 months, a baby doesn't socialize with other babies, and I genuinely think she was trying to justify it to herself. She actually paid out more in childcare than she earned, but felt she had to go back full-time because "that's the kind of job I do".

Fascinating thread!

I am a sahm with 2 ds and whenever I read articles like the one in the Times I start feeling really smug and thinking "wow, I am GREAT".

Then I start to realise how lucky I am to have a choice to stay home and how amazingly difficult it must be if staying at home means scrimping and saving on everything and/or going insane with boredom.

Let's face it, whether you are a sahm, work pt or ft someone is going to think you have made the wrong choice. Every parent/couple needs to decide what is best for their family and TRY NOT to feel guilty about it. Kids are more resilient than we think......

What a boring world we would live in if everyone made the same choices about everything!!!

it's hard when parents are still working. sounds as if you're doing the best you can in terms of your hours, and if things don't work out perhaps you will be able to use the support of your parents soon....think it's great that your baby will have you in the afternoons....

wannabe1974 - I had a friend say this to me too
the day before her 3 month old went into full time 8-6 nubsery and she went back to work I asked how she was feeling about going back
she said, oh I am excited for him (her ds) he is going to make lots of friends and have such a good time! he's going to love it.
It really struck me at the time as a distinctly odd thing to say

Sorry wannabe wasn't clear - what I meant was that children will show up as full time attendees at nursery 8-6 when in fact what can happen is that they are not there all week, but it's cheaper to pay a weekly rate than three individual days (for example). This certainly happened to me when I had my son at nursery - we paid for him to be there all week (therefore he would be statistically counted as a child of a slammer) but in reality he did three days 9.30 until 4.

our nursery classes my dd's attendance as being full time, as part time is 9.30-1.30 or 2.30 til 6.00

It's the childcare professionals who call these parents the slammers, not Stephen Biddulph. He is just quoting them. Presumably the childcare professionals know who uses their facilty 8-6, and who just pays for it.

Penelope Leach appears to have a similar opinion, BTW.

one thing I found a bit sad was when my workplace (which is the largest employer in my town) decided to offer childcare vouchers rather than onsite childcare. They had the room, but felt that more people would prefer the vouchers, but IMO most people would feel far comfortable having their child at an on-site childcare facility. I know I would have preferred that.

I agree wholeheartedly with Biddulph, and Spidermama and Colditz. I think mothers are the centre of small children's universes and if care is provided much of the time by someone else (or a group of others) then it must be confusing and disorientating for the child. An aquaintance of mine is dreading going back to work and putting her 5 month old baby into nursery but says that she must in order to pay the mortgage - but she and her husband live in a big, smart house with two new cars. My dh and I live in a small house that needs lots doing to it and drive a dreadful old heap, so I can stay at home with my kids. I've got many years ahead of me to work and feel fulfilled in a career, but right now my kids are the most important thing.

yes we have old cars and live with MIL, one of the reasons being that I can stay at home with ds2 as long as I did with ds1.

But this time I will be putting ds2 into the University creche when I go back to part time study, but then this article is about full time 10 hour a day care isn't it?

I find that line hard Satine. I live in a two bedroom house, it needs work doing to it. My car is an 02 reg but I brought it second hand years ago and it's a bit of a wreck. I have to work to pay my mortgage and a loan I have. My daughter is the most important thing in my life. I am not working to have a good career.

mothers need more support, whether they work or stay at home, the last thing anyone needs is to be made to feel guilty. We are all trying to do the best for our children.

But there are plenty of people who feel that they ought to work, either for the sake of their careers, or to maintain a certain lifestyle, or just because to stay at home with children is to be looked down on (Pesme?). And that's what I think is very sad.

satine, I (and most of the researchers at least the ones that i have read up on) would strongly disagree with you.

a good empathic consistent caregiver certainly does not have the be the mother....a father would do equally well for starters....but beyond that grandparents etc can also be excellent primary caregivers...of course it will be them that have the strongest bond with the child, and the parents may suffer for that, but the children shouldn't do....

excuse my appalling grammar

But I would hate to feel that my baby had formed a stronger bond with someone else than they had with me. And that they were learning so many vital skills and ways from someone else. I'm not an idealistic fool, and I'm very well aware of the bloody awful financial situations that lots of people live with but I think there are those who have other interests than the child's at the centre of how they live their lives.

that's my point satine, it might bother/hurt you....but not actually your child

Wasn't there a study recently that said that children were actually better off in a professional childcare environment than being looked after full-time by grandparents? I can't remember the ins and outs of it, but I think it went along the lines that a lot of grandparents are more elderly and therefore unable to do a lot of physical things with babies, also from my own perspective I think that, had I been in a position where I needed to work, my DS would have been better off in a nursery, as I know that with my mother he woud have got no discipline (she looked after my sister's DS for half a day a week for a while and claimed that discipline was not up to her), also she treats my DS (now 3) like a baby and also did the same with my sister's DS, and I therefore genuinely believe that to have her care full-time for my DS would have been detrimental to his development.

I can see that obviously fathers, grandparents or other close family members would be the best choice as childcarers but choosing a nanny or au pair or a nursery must be very hard, as their values and approach to life will be what your child learns.

One of the reasons soooo many mums get depresses as SAHMs is because there is so little 'community' in our society today. If a mother decides to stay at home, then she doesn't have that circle of relatives and friends around her, as would have been the case 100 years ago.

I remember when ds was a baby, taking him to walk around the city shopping mall 2 or 3 times a week, just to get out of the house in the winter. I hadn't attended ante-natal classes, so hadn't made new friends that way, my mum lived 100 miles away. Any other friends I had were also at work. Now women work as routine, so many grannies are now in full-time employment, whereas in previous generations they would have been around to give support to their daughter/daughter-in-law.

And I do agree that many families (not all) have 2 working parents so that they can have a dvd player, playstation2, holidays abroad, change the car every 3 years. Giving up one salary would leave them a long way ahead of the bailiff, but maybe behind the Jones's. Personally, I think my time with my son is more important than him having a PlayStation, and we didn't have a 'proper' holiday until he was 6.

A friend of mine had 3 children. She had a very high powered career, employed a nanny, worked 7 a.m. to 8 or 9 p.m. often. After maternity leave with her 3rd child she suddenly realised that she hadn't seen her children growing up. They have a beautiful house, very posh car, 2 or 3 holidays a year but ........
She has given up her career. O.K. her dh is well placed, and they won't starve by any means, but this lady (who hold a 1st from Oxford, and lived on the edge of many an exciting corporate crisis) now gets much more satisfaction from seeing her children growing up.