Yet another article re: why mothers should return to work

[boogiewoogie]

Just snatching a couple of minutes during a coffee break, will come back. What do you think of this?

Right - last post for the time being cos it's a lovely day, the sun is shining, and you SAHMs don't have a monopoly on picnics and playing in the park!!! I never thought I'd hear myself saying someone is more extreme than Xenia - but I think Anna's managed it!!!
Yes, no doubt there are lots of interesting ways to be a SAHM - probably more so if you belong to the teeny minority that can afford two homes,foreign travel several times a year and people to do the boring houseworky bits that you hate. But please don't think that the other 99.9% of the population isn't having an interesting time too!!

YR, do your friends know that you think their reasons for going back to work is that they dont actually like or enjoy their own babies and toddlers. What an hurtful thing to say. Do you think their children are suffering or you just assuming they must be. You sound to me like the typical spiteful SAHM who need to think that other peoples children are rotting away slowly in a dark and scary nursery in order for you to add value to your own life as a SAHM.

yr - I know it isn't about one versus the other. It's a just of way of illustrating to Xenia that her caricature of SAHMs is not some kind of universal truth

FM - yellowrose is not a spiteful person at all. She speaks a lot of sense.

Who wants to be typical though? Who wants to be mainstream? Human beings aren't robots to be programmed into lives by governements.

NK - ok, good point, but do financial necessity or the fact some people love their jobs and a child's emotional well-being ALWAYS coincide ? according to xenia they do. according to me and purely personal observation of friends and colleagues who have children with nannies or chilcare, they don't. i had one woman tell me that her 1 year old was becoming more and more unhappy and aggressive due to the high turnover of her nannies. it took her months she said to calm him down, so she gave up her job and stayed at home. the high turn over of nannies and staff in nurseries is TYPICAL in the UK. few people have the same nanny/staff in nurseries for 10 years.

interestingly the UN research on child happiness is also telling us there is something wrong in the UK, but people prefer to bury their heads in the sand.

yr - yes, the UN research and lots of other research tells us something is wrong with the way children are being brought up and I agree, people prefer to bury their heads in the sand.

I was reading an article in the Economist this morning about IVF which made a point about how children are so low on people's list of priorities in the UK, after "work, money and having fun". (page 35 of the international edition).

it is true that there are people who end up with a very wealthy ex and a very poor prospect themselves..my children are not about to follow my example so i agree with the original article

They know that the reason I have decided to stay home is that I enjoy being with my son and he enjoys being with me. So, yes, they most defo. DO know how I feel about raising children. They say they can't do what I do because they get bored with small children at home. How is that being spiteful, I am just conveying to you what they say ?

Are people accepting the UN report as true though? I had grave doubts about its validity. So much was self declared, about how people felt. And I do think there can be
a "woe is me, isn't everything awful, we're all doomed" etc streak in the British psyche.

YR - I see your point but to my mind, your friend was unfortunate with her nannies, saw a bad situation developing and corrected it pronto. Her bad luck doesn't prove to me that children always suffer from having working mothers.

NK - like most things in life, the research isn't clear cut because there are millions of variables. It's not unfortunately as easy to prove/disprove as the babies-lying-on-their-front-causes-cot-death issue.

Most of life's dilemmas aren't (or we wouldn't all be here getting quite so excited - how boring would that be?).

Personally, I don't want to take a risk with my child's emotional development or my own. We are happy together and are both developing beautifully as mother and daughter.

NK - HOW else are you going to actually finding out how a child FEELS other than actually asking him ? If a British child feels they are being bullied at school or that no one listens to him at home or in school, why shouldn't he say it ?

In fact aren't we Brits. generally less opinionated than our continental friends, so I am actually surprised that a British child would exaggerate their situation.

I doubt the UN would have done if they did not think it was valid or interesting to find out what individual children think about their lives.

Any way, off to make some food to go out to park with friends. Hope you all have a good weekend

Surely we all do what we believe to be best for our own children? Why do we get so aerated because someone chooses a different path? It just makes me cross that Xenia & others make such sweeping generalisations.

I loved staying at home with mine. Of course changing nappies is a menial task and I hated it, but so what? It doesn't take long.

When I cook I hate chopping onions, but it's still great to prepare a lovely meal for friends & family.

My boys are happy, well adjusted, unspoilt children. So are those of my friends who worked full time.

Yes of course YR - there is nothing wrong with asking a child how he or she feels. But the same situation could be interpreted by one child as happy and another as not so good. This is a sweeping generalisation but I do think Brits like to grumble and have got into this "We're so awful. The rest of the world is doing so much better" mindset. I don't think it's exaggeration, it's a glass half empty way of looking at the world.

I know surveys can be interesting but I only really have time for the hard facts. The number of children living in poverty in the UK (as the UN report showed)is a point worth noting and acting on. But that very real concrete example of actual physical suffering was largely ignored in favour of anxiety about children's happiness.

But how do you know these unhappy children in the UN study were children with working parents. Perhaps the unhappiest where the children with SAHMS. We dont know that. Now, UK children were unhappier than Scandinavian children. Scandinavian women work. So I conclude that either UK children moan more or they might actually be happier if they went to nursery like the Scandinavian children.

FM - you cannot infer that conclusion (or its opposite) from the information on this thread.

I wouldn't say that the children of working parents are unhappy - it just irritates me that someone would infer that I'm inferior in some way because I chose to stay at home.

NK - there are hard facts (though I don't have a link right now - will try to find one) about things like teenage drug taking, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, depression where the UK doesn't look good compared to other developed countries.

The trouble with research into multiple variable issues is that unless you know an awful lot about how the research was carried out and by whom it was financed, it is hard to trust. It is quite easy to make research say what you want it to say.

The advantage of the UN is that it is not biaised by commercial interests and is a supranational organisation.

Personally, on all medical issues, I read up what the WHO has to say. It is the least partial source available.

It is true there are huge social problems in the UK. What on earth has it got to do with working parents I dont know.

FM - do you think that whether neither, one or both parents work in a family with children is neutral to those children's life outcomes?

I think its important that children are properly cared for and have adults in their lives who love them very much and are there for them weather neither work, one work or they both work. I am looking at Scandinavia which are countries where normally most parents work and the children attend nursery from around 12 months and note that Scandinavian children are happier than UK children.

FM - fine, but you didn't answer my question.

Is it neutral to a child's life outcomes if:

• neither parent works
• one parent works
• both parents work

Which affects:

• parental income
• parental time spent with children

all other things being equal?

No its not neutral, but just by looking at these factors alone and out of context, you cannot say one is better than the other.

FM - indeed, it's not neutral. And you can control for other variables ("context") when doing research to make everything else equal.

So you do not in fact agree with your own statement "It is true there are huge social problems in the UK. What on earth has it got to do with working parents I dont know."