Is the intense focus we are expected to put on our childrens lives another way of keeping women at home/making them feel guilty

[snapsnap]

Recent threads have got me thinking about this.

There seems to be a belief that unless you are focusing all your energies on your children all the time, then they will some how end up failing in school/running wild/homeless/jobless. To me, this is just another way of re-inforcing the idea that women should be at home, sacrificing their own education and prospects for that of their children.

Amongst my peers, none of our parents spent the level of time on their children that we spend today, yet we all ended up successful and happy.
Last weekend I brought my 3.5year old to a childrens workshop in an art gallery where they 'imitated the great impressionists' To fit this into the day, I had to have no lunch myself and race like a lunatic. My own mother was falling around laughing at this and I know myself that the class was bit ridiculous and inconvenient yet I still felt that I should do it as if I dont do lots of these activities I will be failing my children.

Surely we should be giving ourselves a bit of a break!

I agree totally. There seems to be a myth that "proper" mothers should want to behave like this, and that you are failing your children if you don't. Whereas I grew up in the 70s - I went to Brownies, then Guides once a week (walked there myself), had a few swimming lessons (to the not-drowning stage). Weekends and holidays were mostly spent playing in the house, or the garden, or a neighbours house or garden. And a fortnight in a caravan in a field somewhere, being taken on walks and round National Trust places because my parents liked them.

Nobody spent their life focussed on giving me "activities" and "opportunities", parents focussed on working to pay the bills, producing adequate meals and clean clothes, and assumed the children would get on with it.

I think it's because "parenting" became a verb at some stage, when in my childhood there were just "parents" who lived their lives and thought of children as just one part of "life".

Who do you think is expecting you to have this focus. Where do you think the feeling has come from that you will be 'failing your children' if you don't take them to activities like this? Clearly not from your mother. Other parents? People on MN?

Epiphany I would say some friends (although not all), aquantances through the children, media, and most certainly MN!

If you're talking about the Equality in the Home thread, I don't think there were any posters advocating spending all their time and energies on their DC were there?
Maybe one or two but no more than that.

Some of us were saying it's extraordinarily hard for both parents to have highly demanding and time consuming jobs and spend any time with the DC.

I think spending all your time and energy on your DC would be very boring for you and stiffling for the DC. I am hugely involved in my DC's education and lives. I parent consciously. And no, I don't replicate the 70s parenting model of healthy neglect...but I still have more than enough time to write a novel a year and run several businesses.

Ensuring my DC are being brought up how I want is time consuming. But it doesn't take up all my time!! Far from it!!

There are loads of theories as to why parenting is the way it is today.

I don't think it's so much about keeping women in their place -- but I think it's sad that even though parenting is much harder work than it used to be, women are still not given enough credit or appreciation for the parenting they do.