Teachers speaking out about parents' long working hours

[vestandknickers]

Here.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27027677

Interesting. I think it is good that this is being raised as an issue.

I am not anti working parents at all, but surely a society that thinks it is ok for children to be at school from 8am to 6pm needs to look at itself.

Hopefully it is still a small minority of children who spend five days a week at school for these hours, but it is good that teachers are speaking out before it becomes seen as an acceptable norm.

[cosikitty]

In my school teachers generally arrive at about 8am to prepare for an 8.50 start. School closes at 3.30pm and teachers have a meeting until 5.30pm one night, they have a team planning meeting another night, and the other 3 nights they need to spend in the classroom marking, preparing, and tidying etc. Most leave around 5-6pm each night. Most teachers also offer after school clubs such as sports, crafts, etc and then there is parents evenings, etc. They even go on residentials with the kids, wekend competitions, fundraising events for PTA (discos, fashion shows, quizes etc) This is before you even start on the planning time that goes into lessons at home. This is why I don't teach. I want time with my family.

[Aboyandabunny]

I am at children in the playground from 6.30am. That can't be right. Are the parents reported?

[minipie]

Abra1d that's true - but they were an incredibly small segment of the population. In fact I think the nobility/gentry class were known as the "Upper Ten Thousand" which shows you how few they were. The rest of the population - women and men - worked bloody hard, or starved.

[TheWordFactory]

It is true that that small section of women didn't work.

However, they most certainly didn't look after their DC either, often spending months away from them as they accompanied their DH's around the Empire.

Even when they were in the sqame house as their DC, they employed nannies.

[minipie]

Good point WordFactory.

So it's actually a very very short period of history (the 1950s, and maybe a couple of neighbouring decades) where large numbers of women were not working and were looking after their own children all day. I am not sure why this has been set up as some sort of idyllic model. There were plenty of people (mostly women) who were unhappy under this set up, and there is nothing to suggest that the children brought up in this era were particularly happy or well adjusted either.

In any case, it would be impossible to go back to that model now even if we wanted to. What is driving longer hours is not people's desire for ipads and holidays. It's globalisation and that fact that if we won't work 10+ hour days, there is someone in another country who will, and will take the job instead.

[wonkylegs]

The answer isn't necessarily that we stop putting kids in childcare, it's that we stop putting them in crappy childcare.
This article isn't helpful nor necessarily an accurate portrayal.
My DS was from 7mths until last year (change to my job) , in childcare/wrap round care until 6pm. He is a sociable, friendly well adjusted kid. He's not bothered by the long day and isn't tired. His childcare has always been fab offering a mix of loud & quiet, inside & outside, educational & play opportunities.
He's made friends of all ages as they mix more in after school club than at school.
I was with my siblings basically brought up by nannies/childcare from a baby until I was 12. I have some of my best memories from this period. My parents weren't cut out for parenting and even if they had been I doubt they would have been up for or had the energy for the adventures & creative stuff that my fab (young) nannies did with us or the amazing stuff I did in holiday clubs.
Childcare is often poo pooed as a negative necessity but if you get good people doing it with enthusiasm & passion, there is no reason it cannot be a positive & enriching experience.

[GoodnessIsThatTheTime]

Does anyone ever think they are putting their child in "crappy childcare" though? Surely most people using childcare think theirs is ok.

I think historically a lot of work could be homebased industries so children weren't in childcare as such, just hanging around the farm/cottage industry/running wild with adults on call if they needed them. Or they'd be helping out with jobs they could do. Not nec safe or "ideal" but not out of the home.

Or childcare was shared among the women in the street.

I read something on mumsnet about a large working farm somewhere where everyone worked but basically the toddler sat on grannys lap and helped while she prepared the food, then helped "dig" in the garden with uncle x while he was working, then went on a tractor ride with daddy while he did was out. SO no one person felt they had a kid 24/7, all were working but the child was having a fantastic experience!

[WheresRyder]

The vast majority of these parents won't be working those hours out of choice though. Cost of living, especially housing means that often both parents (assuming there are 2 parents in the household) need to work to cover basic living costs, i'm not even talking about holidays, treats, technology etc.

I'm lucky, my hours worked are 9-6 but my office hours are flexible, so I drop off at school and nursery at 8.40 go to the office until 3pm and then collect the younger 2, come home, do homework, play, activities, dinner bath and bed and then answer emails, sort invoicing and anything else I can do via my laptop from home. I end up working longer when the dc go to their fathers in order to catch up.

I don't work those hours through choice, I work as I need the salary to cover my rent and bills. If I worked part time I'd be heavily reliant on tax credits and housing benefit to pay my bills.

I work through all of the shorter school holidays so that I can have the summer off and Christmas holidays. Its not ideal and I do feel a bit jealous when I see facebook updates of friends who don't work or work just a day or two about park visits, etc. I just make the most of the weekends.

[insancerre]

I run a nursery next to a school
we have very few children who are in all day every day
most do anything between 2 half days to 4 full days
except the teachers children
they do evey day till about 5.30

[mrsbucketxx]

wonky that's very true.

[Abra1d]

Even when they were in the sqame house as their DC, they employed nannies.

Yup, I know about this from how my MIL brought up her children. Boarding school from eight for the offspring, too.

[YoureAllABunchOfBastards]

I deliberately chose a childminder over a nursery/after school club for my DC. I want them to come out of school and mess about in the garden, play cricket, draw pictures or slob with a book. Sadly, despite my allegedly part time hours as a teacher, I am rarely able to do this myself - I get an early finish on Thursday and Friday as I have no meetings, so can leave school by 4.30pm to get them. The rest of the week I am there til 5.30 - 6.30pm.

I do, of course, get my holidays. Lucky me. Both kids at sports activity today so I can clean/tidy, at my mum's tomorrow as I am at work and back to sports on Thursday as I will be working again.

[Thurlow]

So many jobs just have these long hours as standard - teachers, nurses, doctors, policemen, all doing the better part of 10-hour days, often on stupid shift rotations.

There's not much choice on how long your children are in childcare then, is there?

[mousmous]

it's not that much of an issue imo.
yes I'm one of those parents
my dc like going to school, they are alert and learning. many dc at their school have the same set up.
they do their homework there, so only need to do reading at home. we have dinner together every night.

[Grennie]

My mum worked when we were kids in the 70's and 80's. We were latchkey kids when we were old enough. Not brilliant, but it was okay. My gran worked part time as a cleaner when my mum went to school, but it only during school hours. They also lived in 1 room and a small kitchen with an outside toilet shared with other families. I can't imagine there would be many families prepared to live like that now.

[itsbetterthanabox]

Businesses need to be more flexible.
40 hours a week should not be the norm.
Both parents need to share childcare so incentivise men to do it. They won't do it on their own.
Implement a living wage.

[Lilaclily]

Both kids at sports activity today so I can clean/tidy

I clean / tidy & look after my kids

But only cos I can't afford holiday club & no family to take kids off my hands

[YoureAllABunchOfBastards]

passes Lilac some polish for halo

Luckily it is £9 a day - utter bargain for the peace and quiet it bought me!

[Ubik1]

I thought the article was more about how the rise in cost of living has forced families into both parents working long hours.

Job insecurity, uncertainty about the future, crippling mortgage/rents. It all adds up to making parents and children less happy. Makes you wonder what life is for diesn't it.

I recently put in a request fur reduction in nightshift hours -I work 65% n/s - this was turned down by some pen pusher who probably never worked a n/s in their life, due to 'cost'

[BoneyBackJefferson]

itsbetterthanabox
Both parents need to share childcare so incentivise men to do it. They won't do it on their own.

Its not that men won't do it, its that they can't do it as the world of work is not set up for them to do it.

[CalamitouslyWrong]

I do think parents who use wrap around childcare and who also have two cars, foreign holidays, a house full of gadgets, eat out regularly etc etc need to look at their priorities.

Just because people don't choose to live life according to vestandknickers doesn't mean they've gotten their priorities all wrong. It just means that they've made different choices, and for all sorts of different reasons.

The world would be a better place if people stopped using (an idealised version of) themselves as a yardstick to judge everyone else by and just accepted that people are not all the same.

It would also be better if people stopped idealising the 1950s. They were pretty crap for an awful lot of people.

[Lancelottie]

In the 1950s, my grandmother didn't use any form of childcare.

She was a single parent. She simply left her daughter, my mother, to her own devices from the age of 7 while she worked full-time. As long as mum had the tea started by the time she got back, she apparently didn't enquire too closely what she'd been doing all day.

[Shesparkles]

I'm with horsetowater all the way, I've long said that the problem lies with the banks lending too many multiples of salaries as mortgages which pushed house prices up from the 1970s onwards. A lot of families don't have the freedom to have a non working or part time working parent these days.

[horsetowater]

Shesparkles I'm so glad you agree with me - not many people do! The link between dual income mortgages and increase in house prices is not often looked at but it's actually quite simple.

In the old days you would buy a house that you could afford on one wage. House prices increased dramatically because people could afford more. It's a bit like the help to buy scheme is doing now. Help to buy to make property even less affordable for the next generation.

There is probably a mathematical equation for it...