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?

blueshoes, thanks, think I was getting a bit touchy. Nursery nursing is more than just a job to many (usually the best) of us. If I just wanted a job I would work in a shoe shop or something - I'd certainly get paid a lot more and it would be less stressful and less dangerous (you wouldn't believe the statistics!). The reason so many good nursery nurses stay in bad nurseries is the same reason many nurses, midwives, carers, doctors, teachers etc do - it is the nature of many in the caring and education professions, even if it may seem hard for you to understand. Bad nursery or good nursery, almost all nursery nurses still recognise babyroom care and full time care as being a poor alternative to a happy time at home.

SSD, I wish I got paid £6 an hour!

I would say I do love most of the babies I care for, definately my key children, but not in quite the same way as my own children. But then I also love my brother, my husband, my sister, my MIL, my dog if I had one etc, and definately not all in the same way!

Woby, nursery on this scale may be a social experiment in the UK and Australia but there are many other cultures that have used a similar childcare set-up for many decades, centuries, and I think even millenia.

That shared/formal childcare is a modern invention is as much a myth as the idea that women have only begun to work in recent decades. The only real difference is access to contraception and therefore careers, and even that was more in existence than we often think.

To quote motherducky
"Pure purple is only saying the same as most intelligent, experienced, hard working and caring nursery nurses (and a few lazy ones). She just didn't highlight any of the grey areas. Only the arrogant, ill-informed or inexperienced will tell you otherwise.

I feel sorry for the babies I care for who have the most amazing mummies, and would be much better off at home. I also feel sorry for the babies I care for who benefit so hugely from our babyroom because thier homelife is so awful. The other children benefit and lose out in differing degrees.

In real life home is rarely perfect so I don't feel that part-time nursery is damaging say %60 of babies, but there are many that nursery does not suit, and I think gender is irrelevant. I hate full-time nursery for children of all ages, no matter how good the nursery. I'm sorry if that offends anyone, but I have yet to meet a decent nursery nurse who thinks otherwise.

And like I said earlier, I work (hard) in one of the better babyrooms."

I too work bloody hard at my job in a fantastic nursery. In september i will have 5 staff children in my pre-school room and we have under 20 members of staff, so that's a high number of staff children. I have lots of experience and am doing a degree in early years.(That's why I haven't replied sooner, I've been at college)
I still wouldn't put my baby in a nursery.
I work with pre-schoolers and like to think I do make a difference. I am very involved with special needs and I love my job, and I am bloody good at it. I have bulit up a good relationship with them but I don't 'love' them.
I have never and never would work in a baby room.
I have very high standards and am a very principled person. My principle is that babies are better off with their mothers.
So, why would I pay somebody else to do a second-rate job when I can do it so much better?

BBBB - i agree, i think this has drifted away from the OP which was about the article (based partly on HIS book)....i don't get how he can make these statements about boys and ignore girls?? I know he has written a separate book about raising girls but since i have boys, i haven't read it...

Incidentally, Motherducky, i am not an aspirational 'must work to earn money to get my nails done' type. I work because i HAVE to, not bbecause i want to and there are lots of others like me. DH is starting a business and does some childcare as well. I do not have a lifestyle even close to people without children and resent your assumption that i work so that i can. However, i agree with you on one point though - using others to care for your child is NOT a modern phenomenon and Biddulph spouting stuff that we are experimienting with our children and taking huge unknow risks is nonsense. in fact, children were usually raised and wet-nursed by others in this country until the last 100 years or so. Mothers worked and others fed their children....little has changed really

I have now read the article but not all the posts.

First I note the article was written by the author of Toxic Childhood, who has an agenda of her own.

Second, Mr Biddulph is making a sweeping generalisation saying "quality nursery care doesn't exist for young children". Perhaps I imagined the fabulous care mine received? From people who formed strong attachements to them which they didn't have to keep breaking off to put the washing on / answer the phone / cook lunch etc.

Third, My dts are 6 now, and I have tried many forms of childcare, but the one which benefited THEM the most (and, in particular, also contrary to the article, ds) is their nursery. I went back to work when they were babies, not just for financial reasons, not even primarily so. But because I found having 2 babies whilst living in London in a first-floor flat really quite overwhelming. Any nanny would have faced the same logistical issues, eg how to get 2 babies down a narrow cast iron spiral staircase; getting to a childminder and getting home in time would have been difficult, plus, of course, the ratio and attention levels would have been no different.

So I think Mr Biddulph should acquire a bit of humility. I have experienced quality nursery care for very young children, therefore it must exist and therefore he cannot be correct.

And surely one of the "secrets of happy children" must be that they all have different needs that should be met. So why he can say that one approach is "wrong" and particularly so for a whole gender is a bit baffling.

purpurple, your original post was: "I have not read the whole thread but as someone who works in a day nursery, I do feel myself really lucky that i never had to put my childen in one.

And I feel really sorry for the children that I care for."

Yet from your last post, you clarified that the children you work with are pre-schoolers and never babies.

Your original post about feeling sorry for the children you care for directly contradicts what you are now saying - it is only babies (that you never care for) you feel sorry for and you are making a difference in the pre-schoolers you care for.

Flip-flop?

Bunnyrabbit, it is not easy to answer your question, mostly because Italy has a contrasting economic structure (to be simplistic: Northern Italy is wealthy, the South is economically depressed).
Overall Italy has one of the lowest rate of women in full time employment in Europe, which is linked to Italy having more or less the lowest fertility rate in Europe.
So, lets say that compared to the UK, the Italian job market is more immature, and the salaries are lower.
However, in the North and in many big cities the rate of women in full time employment is higher.
The centres with a higher rate of women working fill time also have a better network of nurseries.
In Milan (where we've moved back after yrs in the UK) there is a good number (though not enough) of nurseries subsidized by the council (they are means tested), plus private nurseries + mixed ones. They've always enjoyed a great reputation.
I'd say that middle class, professional women who live in a big city like Milan don't tend to sahm, and they usually choose to use a nursery. All the people I know here have used a nursery and have been happy about it.

Sorry, it's long!!

What puzzles me the most about these threads are the amount of people who come on insisting that other peoples children are not happy in their nursery. As if you as a working parent are completely oblivious to your child.

Franca, are nursery fees affordable in Italy? I appreciate it is relative to earning power but it is prohibitive in UK, around £800 to £1,200+ for a fulltime place, something only executive and professional women would be able to comfortably afford.

I am interested to know how private nurseries can provide high quality care AND be affordable. State subsidy, tax breaks?

Blueshoes, the rates paid by parents who are lucky enough to get a place in a nursery belonging to the Milanese council are means tested and the following

I.S.E.E. from ? 0,00 to ? 6.500,00: free
I.S.E.E. from ? 6.500,01 to ? 12.500,00: ? 103,00
I.S.E.E. from ? 12.500,01 to ? 27.000,00: ? 232,00
I.S.E.E. from ? 27.000,01: ? 465, 00

These are monthly fees. The ISEE is calculated taking into consideration the family salaries/composition/bank account/rent or mortgage etc.

Have no idea how much a private nursery can be. Sadly there aren't enough places for all the children in nurseries belonging to the Milanese council, and the amount of money invested into this sector has been decreasing.

there's a question mark instead of the Euro sign.

franca, thanks for that. Those figures are . It would enable a lot more lower income women to go back to work in UK, should they choose to.

It's not a bed of roses (is this the right expression?), as the demand is higher than the offer. Private nurseries are obviously more expensive, but not as much as the ones in the UK.
As I said, many parts of Italy don't have the same offer in terms of childcare as places like Milan. So, there is still a long way to go here.

Yes, 'not a bed of roses' or 'not all rosy in the garden' even .

Pity subsidised quality childcare is not more widely available in Italy - these things make a huge difference and should not depend on chance or lottery.

Private nursery from 1-3yo in the Milan area costs between 700-900 euros. I used to pay 700 a month 8.30-6pm, nappies and all food included. The quality of care was excellent, 20 children max, lots of cuddling, plenty of activities etc.

lou lou, have you confused me with someone else? - I never assumed anyone worked simply to have thier nails done! unless thats your idea of sanity

Oh dear I seem to have offended everyone.....

blueshoes
yes I work with pre-schoolers and yeas, i do feel sorry for some of them
the full time ones, that spend more time with me than their own parents
the ones that have been in day care since they were tiny babies, that spend all day, every day in the care of strangers, with never a day off.
They spend so much time with me that they pick up my accent (I am southern working in the morthwest)and sometimes they call me 'mummy'

Just because a nursery is open for 9/10 hours a day doesn't mean it's ok to put a child in nursery for all that time (but, the nursery is not going to tell you that, are they? They are running a business, after all)

what always comes out of these threads is that most people who work in a childcare setting would never send their babies to nursery or their pre schoolers full time

speaks volumes

The woman who owns the nursery local to us has a nanny, says it all to me.

I have a very dear friend who is a Norland Nanny - she is a good nanny.

You should hear the stories about other Norland Nannies and such like she knows. Mummies would be shocked to hear what their children are up to when they think the Nannies are feeding them organic food and playing with them 10 hours a day.

motherducky - i am so so sorry i menat to type miggins when ranting about HAVING to work to survive rather than to maintaining pre-child lifestyle. I presume pre-child lifestyle involves manicures but i can't remeber that far back.

I didn't mean to have a go at you at all. I was agreeing with you about the years women have been working and using child care and wet nurses.

Must go and take ds1 to nursery

ssd, that is not actually true. There are childcare workers (minority) who give a fair and balanced view. It speaks volumes for what you want to see.

And if you think about it, most childcare workers (I assume but of course we agreed to disagree earlier on) enjoy spending time with children. So when they have their own, it would make sense that they would want to spend time with their own. Why would they send their children to ft childcare if in many cases they cannot afford it anyway?

It is a totally acceptable choice and one that is understandable.

Why not acknowledge it was their choice rather than justify it on the basis that all ft childcare is 'damaging'. A bit of a sweeping statement and shows a lack of perspective.

I work in a nursery part time, dp has lo when I work but this is not because I dislike nurseries as lo goes 3 mornings a week, its simply because I can afford it full time.
There are some excellent nurseries out there.

I found out this morning that my sons' nursery has won 'nursery of the year' award for Scotland!! I guess some would say that being the best nursery is like saying Hitler was the best Nazi - not much to crow about, but i am chuffed for them none the less.....i expect the fees to go up next year though