'High fliers' and nannies

[Takver]

I've seen in several places recently (including in threads on here, and for example in this article in last Saturday's Guardian) an assumption that if you are a wealthy and successful family where a nanny provides most of your childcare this is likely to result in your children being less 'stimulated' / likely to become highfliers themselves / otherwise missing out.

Typical quote from the piece linked to: "You assume they'll be intelligent, but you've never wondered how this will come about: when they try to interact with you, you're too busy."

Now maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems to me that if we go back 40 or 50 years, it would have been the absolute accepted norm in a wealthy family for nannies / other staff to do the vast majority of childcare, and indeed for boys at least to then be sent off to boarding school from age 7 onwards. I can't imagine that anyone would have dreamed that this would in someway disadvantage their children or result in them being less successful themselves when they grew up. Of course back then the women of the family wouldn't have had the option to have top jobs themselves, they would have been occupied with their social functions.

Yet now - when women are able to access high flying jobs - we are told that this pattern of purchased childcare is going to disadvantage the children. And of course the corollary of this assumption is almost invariably that it is the mother - never the father - who is in some way being selfish by devoting their time to work and not childrearing.

I should say that I don't have any direct interest here myself - I am absolutely Ms-hippy-nature-walks-and-crafty-shit-mother but it just seems to me like another cunning way to stick women right back where they belong . . .

Yy, and the wealth sends them to the schools and produces the connections necessary.

At the risk of rehashing the nursery thread, I don't think you can pay someone to love your children. A nanny might eventually come to love the children s/he looks after but IMO that will never be the same love that a parent feels, and isn't a substitute. I just find it a bit sad that we live in a society where some people seem to value wealth and connections over love and family.

It's really silly. And is based on assumptions about a set of classes or periods.

If your ma had 12 children and almost no income, how was she going to stimulate them? The older ones or a spare aunt brought the younger ones up. And is anyone saying that intelligence was limited by that? Availability of education yes, intelligence no.

If you were brought up by a parent who would have been much happier working, does that help? My ma would say no.

The research tends to suggest that children thrive with stable carers to whom they can relate. But that it doesn't have to be a parent the whole time.

I agree Cailin, I looked after mine and worked/work from home. If they are going to be fucked up, it's me that's going to do it!

But the what you value thing is different to whether it makes a difference who brings them up - esp as some parents clearly don't love and value them...I am more of the significant attachment school.

Didn't see the nursery thread (probs a good thing)

I agree it doesn't have to be the parent the whole time spendthrift. The family in the article sounds like a few families I know where both parents work in well-paid jobs with long hours. They literally see their children for about ten hours a week. I was chatting to a boss, whose family was like this, about her children once and she had to admit she didn't know much about them at all. All her answers were prefaced with "Well the au pair tells me that.." All her knowledge of her own children was second hand, which I found quite sad. She would tell me about the things the au pair was doing with her children and I found it really odd - it was as if she was experiencing being a mother vicariously rather than actually doing any of it herself. Being a working parent isn't a bad thing in itself, it's when it's getting to the point where your children are just small people you happen to see now and again that you have to wonder where your priorities lie.

One of the very sad things too about having the children being looked after for very long hours by a nanny is that if they do become very attached to him/her then when the nanny leaves it can be absolutely heartbreaking for the child, almost as bad as losing a parent. This is what happened in one family I knew - the child was looked after from birth to seven by the same woman, 12 hours a day 6 days a week. When she moved back to her home country the child was absolutely distraught - to him it was like losing the only mother he'd really known.

Right, but you can't stop a child getting attached to someone for fear of them leaving later. How many marriages end in divorce? Oh, that's right, nobody considers the role of the father in these conversations.

The thing for me is, every single time we have this argument, and God knows it's enough times, nobody ever says that they don't understand how men can work long hours and never see their kids.

My husband worked in mining for years. He got out of it largely because we wanted children. The job meant being away for 6 weeks out of every two months, but with very good money involved. Many of his colleagues had started with the intention that they'd make their bundle, retire early and see their kids. What actually happened was that by the time they did that, the wife - who'd long ago given up her career since she was effectively a single parent, albeit a well supported one - and kids were their own little unit, and the man was superfluous.

That sounds v "what about the menz". I don't mean that at all. I mean - the cultural expectation on men to earn means that a lot of them don't see their kids (and a lot of them don't seem to care, frankly) and i NEVER EVER EVER EVER see articles written which express concern about that.

Because men write them and don't much care for looking after small kidz on the whole

^^ states bleedin obvious

If a couple gets divorced the child usually sees the absent parent. If a nanny leaves then it could be that the child never sees him/her again or only sees them a few times a year. Comparing a nanny leaving to a couple getting divorced is quite odd really - the nanny is a paid employee and has no blood tie to the child whereas the parent does, divorced or not.

Plus it's normal for a child to get attached to parent, that's what you would hope would happen. For the child to get so attached to a non-family member that they grieve like they've lost a parent when the person leaves is not a good state of affairs IMO. The chances of an employee leaving are much much higher than the chance of a parent leaving.

Lots of interesting ideas here, many thanks. Sorry, am at work so have to be brief, but a few thoughts.

• sorry, the article is perhaps a bit of a red herring. As many have said probably written by journalists in their teabreak. But, it conveniently summarised comments that I've read on a few threads here and heard in RL also recently.

• Callindana, I can't speak for others, but I absolutely wouldn't condemn a working class mother who fed her kids chocolate biscuits for breakfast and worked long hours. On the contrary I would be first to say that society would support her through good quality subsidised childcare and also through a decent minimum wage and strong unions that meant she could earn a decent living whatever her choices. (I'm also rather partial to a chocolate digestive with my tea in the morning and wouldn't put money on dd never having eaten the same.)

• Himalaya, you're saying I think that its not a fair comparison - that the dc of the past brought up by nannies/boarding school didn't actually need to compete with the masses - that we live in a more competitive world now where children need every advantage and a nanny-upbringing might compromise that? I take your point, but I'm not 100% convinced - I suspect the advantages that such children get from excellent private schools probably balance up against 'tigering' that happens at home?

• Hully, I think you really summarise how I feel. There are loads of cultures where children often live with GPs, extended family members etc. Also of course in the war vast numbers of children were separated from their parents either because of evacuation or (probably greater numbers) because their mothers were working long hours & fathers in the forces. At that point - when it was convenient to the state - we didn't see any messages at all about how bad it would be for the children. And indeed that generation seems to have done just fine.

• SGB - yep, exactly my point!

I just think there has to come a point where the needs of the child override the desires of the parents. That doesn't necessarily mean that the mother should stay at home. I just think that when a couple has a child they need to factor that into their lives, not just farm the child out to someone else and then carry on as normal. A child might have the same academic achievements and life prospects if they are looked after by a nanny but is it really a positive thing for a child not to have regular reliable attention from a loving parent?

I don't like being part of a society that values work and money over family.

My worry too is that instead of the culture shifting towards expecting both parents to invest time and energy in their children, it has shifted towards women spending less time and energy on their children while men stay the same. That means women end up feeling guilty, men have nothing to worry about and children lose out. It's not a good solution IMO.

Ideally what should happen is that it should be acknowledged that children need regular reliable input from both their parents and that having children in childcare for very long hours just isn't a good thing. The shift should be towards doing away with the culture where work is everything and you have to devote the vast majority of your waking life to it, towards an attitude that work is part of your life, but children are an equally important part and time needs to be dedicated to both.

I guess my point really though is that it isn't a new thing - sections of society have always done this, and indeed for anyone who could afford it it would have been the norm in the past.

Obviously, saying that parents should stay home and look after their own children doesn't necessarily imply that it will be the mother, but in society as a whole we don't seem to be doing a great job of shifting to a situation where fathers moving down to part time and taking on a substantial amount of childcare is usual practice.

That seems to me to be particularly the case in 'high-flier' families (or whatever you like to call them); ie, just the sort of families who would always in the past have farmed out most of their childcare. It just seems to me that this line of 'using nannies will result in less intelligent/successful dc' is basically just one more way to keep women in their place.

I agree it's the wrong sort of message to be giving out. I do think though, that it is important to emphasise the fact that parents, mums and dads do need to dedicate more than a few hours a week to their children. Just because certain sections of society have always used nannies doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing.

I agree with every sentence CailinDana has written on this thread, and especially this one: ' This isn't about women at all, it's about children, who are in fact real people of their own accord and are not just there to make women feel guilty.'

You have to remember that using nannies/boarding schools was once the norm, but it was also once the norm to hit children, even at school, to ignore children if they complained of abuse, to leave babies crying for long periods etc. We know more now about children's development and saying that one particular way of bringing up a child isn't the best way to aid their development isn't automatically an attack on women.

Xenia: children of housewives tend to be less clever both because they have worse genes passed to them and second because the mother is not using as many words as she knows fewer than women on say £100k a year who are successful

Do you have any evidence for this? or are you just spouting your own prejudices

Ha I hadn't even read Xenia's post. Very funny :)

Unlike Patsy, I disagree with almost every sentence CailinDana has written, or rather, the assumptions most of her statements are made on. Dh is a SAHD. So he is at home giving DS lots of input and I'm at work. I do not see him very much during the week. I miss him and am working on a better work life balance but I dispute a number of statements Cailin makes that could as easily apply to me now but even more if DH worked the exact same hours I do:

"I just think that when a couple has a child they need to factor that into their lives, not just farm the child out to someone else and then carry on as normal." - why do you assume a nanny means the parents have no input? They choose the nanny. They are with the children in the mornings/evenings/weekends (and often, regularly, the middle of the night). What about a situation like mine where one parent works long hours? Does that mean that you would consider DH to be the only one who is really involved in bringing DS up?

"I don't like being part of a society that values work and money over family." - I work because I like to work, yes. But I also do it so that we have a roof over our heads and food on the table and because I'm a middle class mother who wants her child to have the best opportunities.

"My worry too is that instead of the culture shifting towards expecting both parents to invest time and energy in their children, it has shifted towards women spending less time and energy on their children while men stay the same." actually, this is the one thing where my radical feminist leanings feel at least SOME progress is being made. Lots and lots of men are taking a more active role in bringing up their children. Half of the men in my ante natal class took some of the extended paternity leave that has been on offer since last year.

"Ideally what should happen is that it should be acknowledged that children need regular reliable input from both their parents and that having children in childcare for very long hours just isn't a good thing." - again the assumption is that long hours negates or removes any involvement from parents. Why?

"They literally see their children for about ten hours a week" you must move in different circles to me. Evey single family I know with a nanny spends much more time than this with their DC. and in the case of SIL, with whom I've discussed this at length, she feels the nanny also frees up time for her to spend with her children as the nanny does the DC's washing, keeps teir rooms tidy, cooks meals for them etc. So SIL's time at home is much more focused towards the children than towards chores.

Bet I know more words than Xenia . Shouldn't work in bloody publishing, though, as I'm never going to make my £100k that way.

BlingLoving - I completely agree.

Bling the families I was talking about, my former boss in particular, have a situation where both parents are gone from the house at 7 at the latest and back in the evening by about 8 or 9 so the only time they see their children is for a few minutes in the morning and evening and a few hours at the weekend, in between the children's extra curricular classes and the work the parents do from home. I admit they are probably unusual in the sense that both parents have extremely well paid jobs, their house it worth 4 million euros and they are both workaholics.

I didn't say the parents have no input if a nanny is looking after the children. If both parents work long hours then the situation is that the person who knows the children best is not a parent, but an employee of the family. It stands to reason that if a nanny spends 60 hours a week with the children while the parents only spend about 10 hours a week with them then the input of the nanny into the children's upbringing will be more than that of the parents.

I wouldn't consider your DH to be the only one who is really involved in bringing your DS up, no. I don't know what your situation is like but in my family I'm a SAHM while DH works full time. I know more about my DS than DH does simply because I actually experience his life with him day by day. I know how he interacts with his friends, I know what toddler groups he likes and doesn't like, I know how he's likely to react in certain situations. DH knows these things because I tell him but effectively I do know DS better. That doesn't mean DS and DH don't have a great relationship, they do, but DS tends to look to me more for help as I understand what he's saying and I know what he's talking about. That's to be expected I think.

Long hours don't negate or remove involvement from parents, but they do reduce the involvement of parents. That's just a fact. A parent who spends 30 hours a week with their child is inevitably going to have more involvement with that child than a parent who spends 10 hours with them. That's just a fact. It doesn't necessarily mean the parent who spends more time with the child will have a better relationship with him/her it just means that that parent will have experienced that child's life with the child and that gives the child and parent a common ground that doesn't exist if they don't have that time together.

One other thing that I find quite sad about children spending long hours in childcare is that the parents miss out on so much. Children grow up so fast and I think it's a shame if some parents look back and wish they had spent more time with their children. I know some older people who definitely feel that way. They are retired now, and have all the time in the world but their children have their own lives and they feel they missed out on that time when they were all together as a family. One man I know who worked away a lot became deeply depressed when he retired as he felt he had wasted the years he could have spent with his family. He has a lot of money but that doesn't really make up for it, in his view.

I just read the article in the Guardian. Hilarious and so true!

Takver - my paternal grandmother had five children, five nannies and sent all of them to full boarding school by 7 at the latest (one of my aunts went at 5). But she spent masses of time with her children, reading and talking. She breastfed them all, too, for a very long time (no formula where she lived). She just didn't do the dross! She wasn't occupied with social functions more than she could possibly help it, either. I don't think she was unusual in enjoying her DCs' intellectual and moral development but not wanting to do the housework and physical care.

Bonsoir how did she spend masses of time with them if they weren't even at home?