Would anyone be interested in calmly discussing this Times articles with me please?

[Sycamoretree]

Article from Times 2 today.

here

Have read with interest as DH is currently SAHD due to redunancy over a year ago, so my youngest, (DS) has only been cared for at home with a parent. He is 20 months old.

My DD is at pre-school and starts reception in Sept. She had a nanny for the first couple of years until DH got made redundant.

DH is trying hard to get back into full time work and nursery was/is something we are considering. We certainly could no longer afford a nanny for one on one childcare.

I'm particularly interested in anyone who can confidently refute this quote from Steve Biddulph:

"quality nursery care for young children doesn't exist. It is a fantasy of the glossy magazines."

On the one hand I am furious that such an article gets printed as so many of us are between a rock and hard place when it comes to just surviving, and nurseries are often the only solution.

On the other hand, if any of this is actually true, then as a society, we need to start having this debate/conversation - surely?

we too are extremely fortunate that my mum has DS 1.5 days a week and is generally around ot pick him up from CM if I'm running late in work. My mum is a saint.

Mind you, she loves it so hopefully she gets her rewards in kind...

Anna, my mum is too frail and elderly to do things with my kids and my dad died when my eldest was a baby - I'm so jealous of you

My boys 2.5 and 4.8 are both at nursery ft. They love it. DS1 thinks he runs the place. Yes they love me and DH too...we see them every am and every pm and all weekend.

Anyway re the nursery I have no doubts about the one they are at (2 branches in N London), but some of the ones we looked at were dire.

FWIW I was at home until a year ago, and I think both children and me too are a lot happier now!

for you ssd.

My mother isn't young (72) but she is still in good health and very enthusiastic. I hope that my DD will have children before I am too old to be of help to her - she had better get on with it as I was 38 when I had her!

do you work anna?

Only a bit and mostly during during school hours. I didn't work at all before DD went to pre-school (at 2.10).

my mum had me late and I had ds at 31, such is life!

It depends greatly on the child and people forget that, I know one little boy utterly distraught by nursery at 18 months and his mum said she had to work to keep their house, they would have been better off loosing their house and going into a small rented until he started school, however my middle daughter hated moving house so for her I should have moved heaven and earth to stay where we were including putting her in nursery (I think).
I think we kid ourselves though sometimes that nurseries are better and socialising them etc the babies would rather be sat on our laps than anywhere in the world.
There are good nurseries, you just have to spend a lot of time looking for them.
It took me 3 years when we moved house to find one I was happy with and we went through 5/6.
I'd have no calms moving a child and you really only find out what a place is like when you start.

anna...i always imagin you as a multi-million pound fashion designer

LOL! Nothing like that!

daftpunk - since when has any social development given any human being utopia? All anyone needs is the same chances as anyone else. Feminism has given us that to a large extent.

I thank my lucky stars that i live in North Wales! I am shortly going back to work fulltime when DD will be 10 months. I have been lucky enough to spend almost a full year with her on maternity leave and I am seeing her now starting to take an interest in other babies, so I am happy that she is going to an excellent local nursery 3 days a week, and will spend 2 days with MIL (IMO, that's ideal - 3 days of socialising and the rest one to one).
But the reason i say it's good to be in wales is that here the nurseries are not drowning in excessive red tape and government targets (of course, they are subject to all the expected inspections and guidelines) But there is no detailed form filing and log books, nor key milestones to be achieved, regardless whether the child is ready or not. Instead, it's all learning through play (and onto primary school - no Sats), lots of information about how her day has been, but generally through talking to me, not filling in endless bits of paper. The nursery she will go to has a waiting list and everyone local says it's because the staff genuinely love the children and staff turnover is very low.

Sycamore - well put and I agree that it's maddening that we can't have this debate without getting derailed by defensiveness and point-scoring on both sides.

I'm sure you'll be able to find a great nursery. It might be the first one you look at, it might be the tenth. Personal recommendations would probably be the way to go. And keep the childminding options open as well - the situation is constantly changing.

Just to let you know that they are currently discussing the problems of combining work & motherhood on Woman's Hour

OrmIrian...not sure if you're around for 5 minutes...but can you help me out here;

apart from the vote and equal rights at work

what have the feminists ever done for us.... [life of brian stylee]

Have only had time to skin the thread but - gah! Yet another article peddling the total untruth that women have only just started going to work in the last few decades. There have always been a large proportion of women working, even when mothers - whether doing cottage industry, farming or piecework at home, or going out to work. Childcare used to be done by extended family members, siblings or a childminder in the community - and there was no regulation of that at all in the past, so in that context a lot of children were neglected or abused. A lot weren't obviously, but I really loathe that spinning of a lie about the good old days when women knew their place and stayed home playing with the kids and doing the dishes. It never happened. As someone said on this thread, even a SAHM can completely neglect her kids anyway if she just does housework all the time.

A nursery may not always be the ideal solution but it's not some modern evil that compares badly to the past. At our nursery, DS gets a whole lot of genuine love and interaction and is deeply bonded to the staff, as well as having a huge range of interesting activities to do. It may not be quite as much attention as full-on one-to-one care by a mum, but what these articles (and steve b) fail to realise is that that is not what most children would get at home anyway. Most people have more than one child, housework to do etc even if they are not working. And tbh I think DS has a much more interesting time going to nursery 3 days a week than some of his contemporaries who just sit around at home while their baby sibling gets fed, wander round the park, erm, go home, erm that's it.

I really do suspect these articles have an agenda - to make women feel like the are failing to live up to a nostalgic ideal, Everyone needs to wake up and realise that this vision of an ideal, nurturing, contented, unstressed soft and gentle motherly woman with endless time on her hands id a pile of bullshit.

oops you did ask for "calmly", sorry!

Daftpunk I'm not that well up on feminism but I would think it involves changes to legislation about voting rights, laws about equal employment opportunity, laws about basic citizenship and property rights, and other stuff.

Maybe start to read through this lotand see what you think feminism has done for us.

muffle the article wasn't about sahm/wohm. It was about how appropriate nurseries are for very young children (particularly boys).

No-one is saying that women shouldn't work.

"apart from the vote and equal rights at work" - ! well daftpunk - would you fancy trying life without these rights (such as they are, to the extent that they do work...)

I think one of the things that feminism is is a struggle to see things clearly - to say no to inequality, whether on a legal basis, or on a personal basis (eg insisting on equal share of chores in a male-female relationship, sharing financial control equally etc.). That struggle is still very much going on and I would say it has even taken a few steps back recently, as so many women are "not a feminist" and accept unequal terms in their relationships and at work. So in that sense it's also about what feminism has yet to do.

But also, I think fighting for and winning rights just gradually helps everyone see women as more equal in everyday interactions - so, although inequality is still with us, there is probably less harrasment, fewer sexist jokes at work, more encouragement of girls to aim high, than in the 70s for example. The fewer rights and lower status women officially have, the lowlier they are regarded, they shitter they are treated and so it's a vicious cycle. The point of feminism is to keep objecting, keep thinking and keep spotting and fighting inequality instead of accepting it.

juule the article states very clearly that:

"Women, released from their traditional roles as helpmates and home-makers, have now left home in their millions to join men in the workplace...

Many have found themselves dreadfully torn between the competing demands of work and childcare...

Now that, after several decades of equal opportunities, some of the shine has gone off the world of work, a majority of women surveyed on the subject say they?d prefer the childcare option. But work, as often as not, still wins the day."

That is what I'm talking about - there is a strong message that women should "go back" to being SAHMs and that women working - as set out at the start of the article - is the cause of the problem as identified - boys having to suffer at nurseries.

that's my problem with all this...in womens fight for equality they have lost some of their identity.....there is nothing wrong in admitting you love being at home with your children, nothing wrong in getting satisfaction out of seeing nice clean washing blowing in the wind.....

So if women have been released into the work place how exactly has that benefited the family, especially now unemployment is on the rise, house prices have pushed the quality of life down for so many and now it seems child poverty hasn't been reduced at all.
Strikes me we've rather shot ourselves in the foot here.

My goodness! Where to start?

Just think of where you'd have been 100 yrs ago and ask that question again.

Unmarried women were largely seen as inferior. Marriage was, for most women, the only path to a decent life and financial security. Unless they were wealthy in their own right, and in that case marriage would have given over all their wealth to their husband.

Divorce was almost unacheievable. Especially for women.

DV was accepted as 'just one of those things'.

Unmarried mothers were shunned - social pariahs. Any sexual laxity amongst 'the weaker sex' was a social taboo. But men got away with it. Strangely.

Work for women tended to be limited to a very few 'careers' Prostition being a favourite for those who were desperate.

Girls were not routinely educated past a very basic point. If you were wealthy you would learn marriageable skills such as sketching and embroidery.

Women died in childbirth and postpartum in huge numbers - amongst the wealthy too, but mostly amongst the poor.

Then we got the vote. And things have started to improve. Massively. Admittedly there have been other factors at play - wwii for a start, but feminism as a movement has acheived a lot.

I don't really understand how you can seriously not see that feminism has done vast amounts for us. No-one is going to stop any woman from being a wife and mother, but those who want the choice to be other than that, have it.

"in womens fight for equality they have lost some of their identity....."

How? Why is my identity tied up with children and the home?