In The Times today: Blind feminism has hurt our children

[twelveyeargap]

Blind feminism has hurt our children

This puzzles me. The countries where high ratios of children spend long periods in group childcare (sweden, the netherlands etc) score higher in the Unicef report...and have a startling absence of notoriety for the full range of anti-social behaviour and general fucked-upness that we do.
Something else has to be at work here.

Well I have had dealings with OJ in the past (which are not that relevant here) which is why I think he's a prat. But the phrase "men in skirts feminism" annoyed me because it smacks of that awful but still-extant attitude which is, 'of course you can have equality, ladies, just as long as you don't actually think you're entitled to as much equality as men...'
And I note that the researches mentioned about kids in daycare don't seem to take into account at all how kids get on if they are in daycare for, say, two to three days a week and looked after either by a parent or by a grandparent or close friend or nanny the rest of the time. Nearly all this sort of research is about as acutlally, practically, useful as trying to identify whether it's better to be eaten by werewolves or thrown off a cliff by time-travelling barbarians, as there are way too many variable factors and 'what ifs' going on anyway.

I'd be desperate to go to daycare from an extremely early age if I were the offspring of Oliver James. His hair alone is reason enough but I bet he has a vile fake fun thing going down too. Any child with sense would run a mile.

There are people on this very thread who are up in arms about the article who I happen to know have driven themselves loopy (I mean that in the nicest possible way btw) trying to create exact the kind of child-centred care that OJ is talking about - cutting back on hours at work (often to the detriment of their career), working from home some days, treating childcare as an equal responsibility, being very careful with the kind of childcare they have chosen for their children etc etc etc. As Caligula says, most mothers in particular say their ideal is good, interesting part time work, plus really high quality responsive childcare. I honestly don't see what is so controversial about OH saying it too, even if he has a somewhat verminacious appearance.

Oh, and I absolutely agree that there is something about England that is harsh and unlovely that has little to do with the stuff in this article. Living near Peckham has rather concentrated the mind on this, actually.

Dino - I agree, but it's become taboo to say so (a bit like saying that you don't want to be at the birth). I think it's quite complex though, a friend once expressed it to me thus: he was relieved to be able to have work as an excuse to be away from his kids, but he realised that the reason he liked being away from them, was because he was rubbish at knowing how to deal with them when he was with them, because he didn't spend enough time with them to know how to interact effectively with them, so therefore he wanted to spend less time with them, because the time he spent with them was torture... etc. etc. etc.!

madamez, that just shows how differently you can interpret a phrase, depending on where you're coming from. For me, the phrase "men in skirts" means the feminism that says women should act just like men and be treated just like men to be equal to them. Whereas for me, feminism has always meant having my femininity valued as highly as a man's masculinity and being allowed to be a woman - expecting the world to adapt to the fact that women want to be equal beings in it, not expecting women to adapt to a world geared towards men.

But as I say, I have no idea if OJ means this!

It fits his cultural determinist thesis Blu.

I think they are wiley words Aloha, perfectly reasonable on the surface..

absolutely agree witjh madamez re researches

Aloha - yes - but he is obnoxious and does undermine genuine feminism with his faux-knowing comments about 'men in skirts' etc, or indeed for linking it all to femisim or 'affluenza' at all (ref: custy below)...and SOMEONE on MN has a very very funny story about OJ and his wife and their hilarious prattishness in bringing up their child, but they can't tell it in case it outs them as being part of a particular social circle of the OJ family.....and it is maddening that he makes so much money out of pontificating unscientifically about people doing what he can afford not to.

And I am laughing at Scummy's post too much to concede any other pov

Oh Blu please get that person to name change and post the anecdote!

I am also indebted to this thread (and therefore by extension to OJ) for the introduction of the word 'verminaceous'.

Yes, he's playing to the crowd. Feminism is an easy target these days.

Verminaceous is indeed an excellent word. Thanks, aloha. Nice to see you posting again, blu. Have you returned from your exciting travels?

LOL at verminacious.

This puzzles me. The countries where high ratios of children spend long periods in group childcare (sweden, the netherlands etc) score higher in the Unicef report...and have a startling absence of notoriety for the full range of anti-social behaviour and general fucked-upness that we do.
I'm trying to guess here: because sending children to group daycare kind of implies more trust towards "institutions", therefore more community oooo I'm too tired I can't do this

I was trying to be polite!
I think it is very hard sometimes - and I don't just mean OJ here by any means - to write from the child's POV without sounding as if you are attacking mothers. Sue Gerhardt's Why Love Matters is an exceptional book IMO, but on reading it you feel AWFUL! It's quite scary. She admits herself that as a parent she did things that were wrong etc. It's very hard to say that in a study X and Y were shown to be detrimental to children, without sounding as if you are saying mothers who do X or Y are disgusting subhumans who should be put against a wall and shot, partly because we are v sensitive about our 'parenting' (the Nora Ephron piece I linked to earlier was v funny and reassuring on the subject of how being a parent got turned into 'parenting' btw). And it doesn't help when the person saying stuff is personally somewhat....um....verminacious

The countries with the greatest inequality between rich and poor are at the bottom of the table. Daycare is a complete red herring, imo.

And yes, it would a very good idea for OJ to find out why the childcare in scandinavian countries does not seem to have the kind of outcome that he would expect it to.
It must be the context. Maybe also there are shorter working hours or more p/t work? Longer maternity leaves? More gender neutral parental leave? I don't know, but would like to.

I pity the kids in the South London estates near me, tbh. No matter if their parents are doing their best, the environment is horrific.

I agree with scummy its not just daycare thats the issue. Infact for children that live in poverty, childcare doesn't come into it.

My mum, on visiting me when I first moved here and lived in one of the most deprived estates in town: 'These kids don't stand a chance. This is the saddest thing I've seen in my whole life.'

But then I had a trainee childcare student come to my house when I had dd for part of her training - an essential practical module. I felt awful sometimes because she had a two year old in the college nursery and it was, tbh, not a great place for him to be, and she hated that he was there all day every day, but she wanted to get some training and go to Canada and have a different sort of life with him.

I have recurrent horrors of the times I subjected Ds to things which were Not Good. Including the 6 weeks he spent in a nursery in which he was unhappy. But then he went to a nursery in which he was demonstrably - and expressedly - happy. For me the problem with OJ is that we spend so much time agonising about every minutiae and how it may contribute to our children's wellbeing or otherwise (after all - MN is mostly that!) that sweeping generalisations on top just add up to mass guilt-tripping. At our expense and on his expense account.

(is' expressedly' a word? I mean he expressed his happiness explicitly)

That says it all right there, Aloha. The goal of her training was to emigrate.

My FIL told me today, 'If I were young and had a trade, I'd be out of this place like a shot.'