In The Times today: Blind feminism has hurt our children

[twelveyeargap]

Blind feminism has hurt our children

FIVE children, Xenia, you do know that Oliver James claims "large families of five or more ... tend to stretch resources ... making the children more likely to be emotionally deprived" don't you?

SureStart has made a lot of difference in Hackney. The resources available for DS3 (social communication disorder, suspected ASD) are awesome compared to what was available for DS1, five years ago. I get very annoyed by people knocking SureStart.

I do realise that a lot of you are working f/t just to meet basic bills - but to me, that is tantamount to living at the poverty level and I feel appalled at the thought of you having to do it. We live where we live so that one of us can work p/t. I couldn't live in London if that's what it takes. I yearn to come back to London, but from what you've all taught me on mnet, I think it would be a very bad idea.

(That's five or more offspring btw and tongue is firmly in cheek)

I agree Droile and I also strongly believe in education for education's sake.

Actually the evidence so far for Sure Start is very sadly not that it has 'released funding for loads of fantastic facilities which are really benefitting people.'
The studies have actually shown that any benefits are incredibly slight and marginal, and that children in areas waiting for Sure Start actually did better, despite more than £3billion being spent.
Things may change as a result of these findings - ie the money may now be targetted in more effective ways - and of course I very much hope it does, as the effect of disastrous parenting is all around me where I live (and on the news).

fox you raised some good points there...the problem for most working mums and their children however, is often that the childcare is not as "continouing" ( I think that is what I mean, lol) as it should be....you mention the large family etc...where older generations look after the children...and that is the ideal,I believe, but this is not the reality for most working parents, is it....and often children change childcare settings so often, due to circumstances, that for them the issue of attachment could be a problem...however if childcare is with teh same providor for a long time, then indeed those Kids will be able to form attachment and indeed that is a positive thing. It is healhty for children to form lots of attachemnts, really...read an interesting book about this, but can't remember the title nor the author....sigh!

Sure Start does provide a really good service in this area apparrently, I have not been myself, they pick up the mums from the estates with busses (for free) so that they are able to reach the centre and even offer a lil nursery on top of the m&t and BF groups, etc...and offer some educational programmes, etc...and Corby is pretty deprived, so, it is in the right area!

Xenia you really do sound like a nutter. My kids really don?t care that we have a low income. I?m absolutely sure they don?t see our low income as me failing them. In fact, I don?t think they even notice that we have a low income. I suspect they probably would notice and care if they saw me less though. Also, the idea that it is self-indulgent to have a low income is just utterly risible. Tell that to all those self-indulgent nurses, teachers and carers. And I?m sorry, but I am astounded that you can assert without irony that you don?t go in for SAHM bashing.

Also agree with TSaP, I think it?s a good thing for children to have attachments to others outside the immediate family, as long as those attachments are not continually being broken and new ones made and then broken again soon.

I?m amazed at the assertion that OJ believes poor people need therapy rather than an improvement in their material circumstances. Does he? I never got that impression from anything of his I?ve heard or read. I always got the impression he?s a bit of a lefty and believes material circumstances are very important for someone?s psychology.

Droile, why criticise your mother but not your father for working?
Isn't that just pue sexism?
Aren't all these articles sexism?
They are never saying dreadful men for abandoning babies and doing untold damage to them are they?

Yes, luck comes into things but research is important and I do believe how we treat our children and their genes probably about 50/50 determine how they turn out with some luck thrown in there too. Having non identical twins in my own family is useful in looking at what is made and what is born.

Some parents think that their children will do better if a mother is at home but not a father. Most however in the UK and much of Europe are happy that both parents work. Some prefer the father at home.

What always surprises me is non working mothres thinking they have some moral high ground. Instead I'd say you can make out a case that being home is good for children and you can make out a case that being home is bad for children and yet parents in both categories produce veryhappy children. But no one shoud be censored for making out that case. So let's have 50% headlines - Damage to chidlren if parents don't work and 50% Damage to children if parents work. And let's never see a sexist headline again.

C, low incomes affect children, often adversely. Money worries don't always make for happy homes.

But I think children most need love, even if they live in a sewer in Romania but with a loving parent. So I'd always put that first but without doubt children in better off families or even families just a bit above the average wage tend to do better. It's why most parents choose to work. Not because they want holidays in Spain or smarter clothes, but because they can provide for their children in ways they know are best.

Sure start services may be lovely, but they are supposed to be effective in improving the life chances of children from deprived backgrounds. That is what Sure Start is for. And so far, the evidence is that it isn't working. I hope that the evidence of failure so far will produce changes that will mean the programme does become effective, because it needs to be.

Actually talking of Xenia's point about men not being criticised, I don't know if anyone heard the news on R4 this morning, but the father of one of the men who killed Mary-Ann Lenahan was interviewed this morning, and the interviewer was quite probing with him. "But you weren't there... that's not a long time to spend with your child is it..." etc.

I think there is more of a questioning about men's responsibility for their children, and their choices nowadays. Not as much as there is of mother's, and not enough, but there's a start...

True. I think things are getting better and better for families and in getting women working, opportunities, policies etc. I hope Cameron doesn't have a hidden agenda to get women back chained to kitchen sinks but his wife and Blair's both work which has helped. We've had politicians with normal family lives with young children and both parents working.

about Mrs/s Blair and Cameron having "normally family lives". I wouldn't call earning over £300,000 a year "normal" LOL!!

Wish it were the norm for me

But they do work and whatever your income level if your wife works and you're working out who will be home first and how to keep the children happy and all that stuff however much you earn it's still similar issues to those other couples where both work face.

hm...Xenia...not sure if you can really say and compare it....I mean...htey are able to easily afford nannys etc...so, having to be home by a certain time before all your wages are eaten by the cost of childcare...not the same thing!

We had a daily nanny and still one of us had to get home before a certain time because nannies don't work 24 hours a day. It is certainly better than having a 60 year old batchelor who went to public school at no. 10 surely. Obviously I'd prefer the cabinet to be 100% women with stay at home fathers at home just for the next 5000 years to get the balance right again.

the big q coming up over and over seems to be why men WON'T generally do it (stay at home w. children/ accept flexible working) and why women let them.

In my case some of it WAS biological in that I really wanted to bf and dh couldn't do that, but most of it was our massive income differential.BTW I think he would make a far better stay at home parent than I did (I was desperate to start the phd after 6 months at home).

Xenia's situation i.e. being the obvious 'breadwinner' still seems to be rare for women. However the few women I personally know in that situation, although they do of course work, can almost never persuade their dh's to stop, so they end up with full time nannies while both work.

A lot of men seem to identify so completely with their work persona that they simply can't ever give up. Not that I'm saying certain women aren't like that also (well god knows I am, can't stop working even for no money whatever), but socially, male caring and domestic presence is simply not validated, and that goes right back to early experiences of boys at family and school.

Which is why I am all for boys being a bit demasculinised. Encouraged to push prams and play with dolls. Whatever biological impulses lie behind 'masculine' behaviour, we're conditioning them not to care, and that's a tragedy imho.

And some women don't want men to be at home. They want them out there earning lots of money.

ch, lots of reasons. The main one is most women marry someone who earns more. If you look at what women really look for the man's career matters. If you look at men's main things they aren't bothered what she does as long as she looks good, is kind etc. So is that innate or how they're brought up and how will it change now women get better A level results and jobs and have the skills me need today now brute force is redundant? We are getting to a position where women and men may end up earning the same. Women to age 25 now earn more than men - but only just and there are more women millionaires up to 45 than male.

So as you say what do they do? My teacher husband didn't give up work. We got a daily nanny. Of course he did loads at home because of the income differential, his much lower income than mine, his holidays and the money/power balance we then had but we still had the nanny. Ultimately, after about 16 years he did go part time but we still kept the full time nanny which is the same for many men in my profession with non working wives - the non working wives routinely get a nanny as it can be afforded.

It's much harder for men to accept the loss of status caring for children brings even if their full time salary on the minimum wage is less than the childcare bill.

Why women let men in effect ensure unfairness at home is another big subject that puzzles me. Some women like to whinge that men never help and yet they facilitate that.

g8d and I thought that there was bs being written about attachment before!!!!

edam....please remove the huge chip of defensiveness you have about this subject...I was absolutely NOT bitching at xenia, I was stating the fact that indeed her children may well be securely attached but that their primary attachment figure will have been their nanny.

attachment is actually fairly easy to predict. I agree that many many children cared for by SAHM are insecurely attached. if you pay attention this time you may see that there are three factors involved in creating secure attachment in children (I have said this, but evidently it is too complicated for some):

• one or two primary caregivers (these can be paid for, parents, grannies whoever)

• consistency (both in terms of who the primary caregivers are in terms of the care that they give. Unpredictability is not a precursor of secure attachment.

• responsiveness. A good enough level of responsiveness. So not swamping which would indeed be a good predictor of ambivalent attachment. Nor disallowing negative affect: i.e. not allowing children to express pain or fear. This results in avoidant attachment.

The worst kinds of neglect (at the far end of the continuum Romanian orphans) result in type D attachment: disorganised. These children are the most badly damaged and freeze, face the wall, walk backward when confronted with a caregiver who is also potentially a source of terror and abuse.

Bowlby did start by working on attachment and loss based around hospitalisations.

However, attachment studies have moved on from these roots (although his work provided the precedent for later studies).

It is really very simple: children need one or two consistent, responsive caregivers. No magic formula. No nebulous strange weird combination of factors. Money is not an issue except in terms of the levels of stress it may put caregivers under which might affect their ability to be responsive to the children in their care.

I agree that many women facilitate an unfair division of labour at home: I was nearly one of them. When you have a newborn it is very very easy to consider yourself to be the only person that can care adequately for that baby. It is a huge effort of will to let go and allow your partner or husband (or mother, or nanny or whoever) to get fully involved, including them making mistakes. Many many women do not do this. So the mystique surrounding caring for children starts. It's like anything: you have to do it and practise doing it to realise the pitfalls and to get it right.

xenia, have a rough idea that in no.10 it still isn't an issue though....

Also, I really don't think that it's just "conditioning" why women let men go out to work...it is somehow really how it's always been...I mean, in cavemen times, when surely it was all down to pure instinct and survival, men would be the hunter gahterers, and women would be staying at home, taking care of everything there, including the Kids...men and women are differently wired, have different instincts and so on! Human nature basically.

actually if you look at many of the cultures still in existence today that are closest to our ancestors...many are matriarchies, where women do the hunter/gathering, own the property, define the line of inheritance etc.

and in early societies men and women played important roles in the rearing of children.

for eg. in many socities women are not to touch their feet to the ground for 40 days after the birth of their children. this means that it falls to other women and their menfolk to do everything except the breastfeeding which is what the women in bed with their newborn concentrate on exclusively.

the nuclear family where daddy goes out to work and mummy stays (alone) at home looking after the sprogs is very very new. Nothing hardwired about it at all.