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?

if kids are looked after by loving, fun, comitted,NORMAL people be that mum,dad,gran,childminder or nursery then they grow up just fine..
stop the bloody agonising make a decision to find the best care out there, or stay at hiome and then make the best of it..
The angst is all from the parents imho not from the kids..

Absolutely TheFallenM. It is based around probabilities and only that, and will never ever be able to account for all the extraneous and confounding variables to have absolute proof.

I'm not sure why people are trying to belittle daftpunk's opinion in such a sneery manner while crying foul at her for querying how/why people choose whichever form of childcare they do.

I don't believe that many non verbal children (age 3 and under), if they had a voice, would choose anything other than their mother/a loving relative to look after them. Children from abusive/neglectful homes are another matter altogether, and daycare is certainly a better option in some cases.

MS wouldn't it be a valid assumption that some women are trapped by having to go to work when they say that given a chance they would rather be at home with their children?

Wasn't the article about choosing home-based care over nurseries and not about sahm/wohm.?

I was a SAHM for 5 years daftpunk, so far from being trapped, I've actually made a decision based on my experience.

What I meant by unimaginative was that you seem unable to imagine that some women may be happy following a different path to you. Which you have yet again illustrated rather nicely.

I'm sure some women are trapped but the comment was "the problem with you is you're trapped....trapped in a world you think is better than mine"

People are going to react fairly strongly to that.

pointydog...come on, look around you...do you think women have it easy?

feminism isn't about killing yourselves...it's about respect for women, freedom from domestic abuse, loads of things....

some feminists are off their rockers....the female eunuch was the biggest load of shite i've ever read...i wasn't gonna be led by a loonie...i made my own rules.

Good point, Pointydog.

Dongles - how many under threes do you know?? I can assure you that my two year old is perfectly capable of making her feelings known. She is content at nursery and she is content with me.

I am so sick of this debate and I don't know why I come on these threads. The assumptions that are made about working mothers - the implication that we don't love our kids as much as you do, that we are motivated only by greed, that we can't have made a valid choice for US as well as for our child. It always descends into a point scoring exercise because some stay at home parents just can't help but justify their life choice by attacking mine. God willing i will be parenting for the rest of my life - I wish we could stop defining parenting as this magic period that stops when the child hits five. i'm here for kids now - and I always will be - but that doesn't mean I have to be with them 24/7.

I have mixed feelings about nurseries and both of mine went to a great nursery with good reputaton and low staff turnover (many staff had been there for over twenty years and their daughters now worked there and grandchildren attended).
They both started at about 8 months, DS went for two and a half days a week and DD for one day a week.
I chose the nursery becasue of its reputation, low staff turnover and the fact that when we visited, there were lots of kisses and cuddles from staff for children, you could visit whenever without an appointment and it had a real garden with mud and bushes and trees and places to dig.
DS had a wholy positive experience, thrived, is well adjusted, laid back and loved going. DD found it more difficult to settle and is now the more clingy and difficult of the two.
BUT they had different personalities since birth - DS an easy baby, DD more clingy, a worrier etc. I'm not sure that nursery had any bearing on them now, but if DD had gone more often it wouldn't have been a good experience.
Also, I'm a teacher and they only went for one day a week in the hols even though DS went more often in school time, their time at home with me or DH was vastly greater than their time in nursery.
If we were planning on another and cicumstances were different, I would like to try to avoid nursery altogther, but not because I totally disagree with them.

Like lots of things where children are concerned, ther is no black or white answer and as parents, we often have to do the least worse thing rather than the best thing.

It is interesting that we have two posts - that strangly have been ignored - by women who atually WORK in nurseries and they both said that they wouldn't recomend it for very young babies.

I never said women have it easy

I have always been a SAHM and am now a child minder.
I dont think I am a better or worse mother for doing that and I certainly dont feel working mums are wrong.. after all I am one myself( and some of them are my best customers)..
live and let live I say, each to their own...

stop being so vicious and judgemental to each other.

I do much prefer childminders

I think it is OK if men and women want different things out of life and that it is OK to say/think that a woman carried a baby for 9 months and may be more biologically wired to want to be the main carer and not out selling their time/labour to someone else for their profit.

Everyone is different of course, and men can be as good main carers or joint carers but to deny biology and expect men and women to be exactly the same is not right IMO and it seems some people want both parents out at work while the kids are raised in state care, G Brown would love it for a start.

I think in all honesty this is a hard issue as, in truth, you can't be in two places at once and parenting is a full time job IMO.

I don't think anyboy had been particularly vicious or judgemental.

How about the need to pay bills?

I agree with you, Jellybeans.

It's much much cheaper to pay fora daily nanny than have 3 chidlren at nursery all day we found. And it's not 1 - 1 is it if you ahve a family of 5 as I do but I agree with the point in the article about trying to find stable figures in the lives of a child and perhaps having just mother at home is not sufficient actualyl. You could use the article to argue for boys having lots of contact with other men and with uncles and others.

I have non identical twins - boys - they are very very different from each other.

I saw loads of nurseries (and good ones too) and still don't think I saw one where a baby would have got the care I thought she needed (this after our horrendous experience with the nursery dd was in).

Not only the care ratios but my goodness, the ILLNESSES they pick up. I know they pick up stuff from siblings but the sicknesses from nursery when dd was 4 months were relentless. In the first 3 months she got gastroenteritis (was hospitalised), conjunctivitis so severely she had pus pouring out of her eye 24 hours a day (emergency doctor), and countless other infections that just went 'round' the nursery.

Now I know younger ones pick up stuff from older siblings and other children at childminders but I still believe it is not as RELENTLESS as the illnesses they pick up from nursery when they are babies.

Juule and Jelly beans - if parenting is a full time job and I work full time hours outside the home then does that make me a part-time parent then?

Well obviously you are a full-time parent in that you have final responsibility and say for what happens to your child but you are a part-time carer for the child as you have delegated that care to someone else while you're not there.