'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 . . .

I didn't mean money at all although income is one of the key indicators of child outcomes. I just watched 49Up which has followed children born just a short while before I was every 7 years. That illustrates how things are. If your parents pay school fees you do well in terms of income and life chances. However totally separately from that is if you are loved and brought up well and learn the skills you need for life.

In the UK we take children away from parents whose IQs are too low, don't we? So we must as a nation believe there is an IQ level below which however loving you are you cannot bring up children properly. It is a fascinating issue. I am not suggesting that because my IQ is X and someone else's is 10 points above or below that means I will necessarily be a better or worst parent but within broad brackets there will be a correlation. Eg on mumsnet the less educated and bright you are the more likely you are to strike your children if they annoy you (look at any thread about smackers and anlayse their spelling and writing style). It is the same with breastfeeding as well.

Oo, I don't know about that. The ones that can spell just know not to admit to whacking their kids... Or pay someone else to be annoyed by them.

Lol, I don't smack and did loads of breastfeeding...and I can use spell check. Bloody genius me.

I don't think that IQ per se makes anyone a better parent. What makes you a better parent is "executional excellence", to use business terminology.

The fantastically clever parent who is never around won't be doing a lot of parenting. And, even if you are around, if you are not engaged with your DC, so what for IQ.

To be honest I don't think a high IQ makes you better equipped for anything, parenting included.

It always sems to be me one needs to be intelligent enough to make a good fist of it. After that it's all about graft, determination, flair etc

If you have a high IQ you're likely to be more able to understand child development on a broader level and therefore make more informed decisions. Therefore I think children of parents with higher IQs are more likely to have better nutrition and support for their education. That doesn't necessarily mean they'll be good parent though. It's just a person example but both my parents are very intelligent people but they are absolutely woeful, beyond awful, as parents. I was always very well fed, taught manners, given a safe warm home, had support for my education, all those things that would tick the boxes for a good life. But at the same time I received zero emotional support, practically zero praise or encouragement and if I had any personal problems they did nothing to help me. Their parenting fucked me up in a big way. And these days I only maintain a relationship with them because I feel obligated to, I don't actually consider them parents at all.

personal example

As for whether the children of working parents ahve better outcomes, well the jury is still out.

The evidence shows that coing from a workless house certainly increases a child's chance of being workless. However, the evidence doesn't show that this means both parents have to work. It may have implications on single parents though.

The evidence also shows that (across the board) a child's education seems to be linked to the educational status of the Mother. Not her working status.

The evidence also shows that one of the biggest factors on a child's outcome is wealth. A huge amount of opportinuities are accessible only if the parents have sufficient money. So, a family who are going to be poor if both parents don't work, may well be denying their DC certain opportunities that will affect their outcome.

Of course what none of this evidence tells you, is what the outcome will be for your DC.

CailinDana - but surely IQ, by the same token, would allow parents to educate themselves as to the importance of praise, encouragement, emotional support and support with personal problems? Admittedly those things are harder to grasp than good nutrition and good education.

Not necessarily Bonsoir. I am not a fan of the "multiple intelligences" theory as it's a bit airy fairy but I do think IQ only measure factual rational thinking and that things like interpersonal understanding, empathy, warmth are completely different. I think you can rationally understand the need for praise and encouragement but unless you have a true understanding of people, which some even very intelligent people don't, you won't be able to gauge emotional situations correctly. I think if you talked to my parents they would talk a very good talk about how important praise and encouragement are but when it comes down to it they don't respond appropriately in the moment because they don't recognise where certain responses are needed. IME IQ and emotional understanding are completely unrelated. It's possible to have both, but from what I've seen they are not correlated with each other at all.

I think the superiority of posters claiming that IQ has a positive impact on parenting is quite amazing.

A mother with a high IQ who resents being at home and is then cold to her children is a poor mother as is one with a high IQ who spends next to no time with her children because of her job. Luckily there are relatively few of those.
IQ is passed down so of course these children benefit from having clever mothers.

What makes you a good parent is Emotional Intelligence, warmth and love.

On the nanny front, I think generations of children have shown that this has no impact on a childs ability to succeed but will impact their emotional skills if they dont form a bond with the nanny or the mother. Ultimately a child needs a strong bond with a loving carer to succeed - it doesnt need to be the mother - Barack Obama a case in point.

I very much agree with your last post, wordfactory, and I think that every family ultimately has to make its own trade-off between income-generation and child rearing. Money has decreasing marginal returns (and taxation issues and costs of work impact the income-generating capacity of second earners) but I don't think that the same applies to parental input (or maybe we just have particularly needy DCs ).

Each couple (when there are two parents around) needs to decide how to maximise the value he/she can add to the family given the combined skills of the adults involved and the sort of lifestyle they desire.

I think that's right bonsoir. On ehas to make a judgement call on how much money a family needs.

One deciding factor will almosy certainly be how many DC you have. I know xenia has a five aside team. This will obvioulsy affect how much she actually needs to earn!!!

Another factor is how much importance you place on things such as educational opportunities (school fees, university fees, extra curricular activities, residential trips etc). For some families these factor highly and there is certainly a correlation between these things and a DC's outcome. Are they worth both parnets working for them if one parent cannot bank roll them?

Another factor id the family's general standard of living. If a family values holidays, meals out, nice clothes, theatre trips, then these have to be paid for. Again, are they worth enough for both parnets to work?

Each family must decide for themselves.

I have to admit that the thing that informs me on those decisions wordfactory is purely my own experience. We had plenty of money, nice holidays, good education (though not private), after school activities, etc, but I would have traded that all in for my best friend's family in a heartbeat. They had holidays in a caravan and had very little money but they were so warm and connected. Growing up without emotional support and warmth is incredibly hard, and led to huge problems for me in my early 20s. I have a very high IQ, great education, and it all came to nothing because I was deeply depressed due to my childhood. A child needs material opportunities of course but they also need the emotional support and stability to have the mental wellbeing to access those opportunities.

Xenia is probably right on a practical level that SAHM are not furthering the cause of feminism as they have removed themselves from contributing their skills, intellect and earning power from society thereby encouraging inequalities.

However speaking as a SAHM I think children's eventual outcomes will be much more linked to the mother's educational background like Wordfactory pointed out. Having a bright, interested and articulate mother at home is unlikely to be damaging to a child's life chances as long as it is made clear to the child thar being a SAHM is only one amongst many choices.

"SAHM are not furthering the cause of feminism as they have removed themselves from contributing their skills, intellect and earning power from society thereby encouraging inequalities."

Speak for yourself, but not for others! There is no inevitability here and, on the contrary, SAHMs have time and availability to contribute to wider society that many working parents don't have (and, let's face it, lots of jobs are not very worthy).

I'm sorry to hear that caillin.

And I understand why it seems very important to you to be with your DC full time.
But it's perfectly possible to be warm and loving and engaged and make money you know .
I think you just need to be aware that you have to make the effort.

In the same way that bonsoir explained how her DP can be engagaed despite the fact that he works and doesn't even live with his DC full time. It can be done!

I totally agree wordfactory. I'm a SAHM but not because I think it's necessarily the only or best way to bring up my children. I don't trust anyone else to look after my DS, and that's my own issue. Thankfully I actually enjoy looking after him, if I didn't I would be in an utterly shit position. If my own mother had been a SAHM I think I'd be a gibbering wreck in some institution at this stage, I'm so glad she worked!

Emphatic I think the only way having a bright engaged SAHP could be damaging would be if a. they were staying at home unwillingly and b. it meant the family didn't have enough money.

As for the feminism thing, I must admit I do think it is a valid point. By retresting from the work force many women are allowing men to continue their stranglehold on money/power/influence. I don't think a bit of voluntary work wihtin the community can make up for how few women there are in the judiciary, politics, business etc

However, I don't think that that means individual women should make the wrong choices for themselves and their families to further the cause. But I do think we need to be scrupulously honest about its impact.

bonsoir - I should clarify, I meant the wider economic world. Of course SAHMs contribute to society, I just meant not to equality in the work place.

word factory- I agree the mother has to be happy with her choice.

Of course you can be engaged and warm and make money. Obviously the better people male and female which tend to be the brighter ones and who have better coping skills and can organise themselves to get out of bed in time to work and get to work on time and run a family and with the sense to avoid sexist men are likely to be those who manage fine working.

However many people lead lives of quiet desperation. Plenty have depression. Many cannot organise the proverbial piss up in a brewery and even getitng the chidlren to school is a challenge -0 they cannot imagine how anyone could "have it all " (ie be comeptent enough to work and have a family) so they perpetuate a myth that everyone else has their incompetence and add to their mix a statement that a woman who does work is not in some way bringing up her child properly and is damaging it. It all therefore stems from their own inadequacy. Most men too are pretty low IQ and not much good at things, average pay £20k etc. Most people are fairly lazy as well.

The IQ issues are interesting.

1. There will be a level so low that you cannot be allowed to look after your chidlren under English law - presumably about 70 - 80.

2, If you have a higher IQ you tend to earn more and that makes a huge difference to child outcomes on all kinds of levels. 7% at private schools get 74% or judicial posts or whatever the stats are industry by industry, cabinet table, board level etc etc

1. If you're well read, interested in child psychology and health you need a reasonable level of IQ for that- you have to be able to read probably and therefore those parents tend to be a bit better than those who do not acquire the knowledge to do the better job.

1. Of coruse plenty of working and non working/dole claiming parents are pretty useless, burn their children, abuse them, lock them up, kick them, never give them a word of praise or the opposite- give them so much of a free rein they do badly. Obviously that can happen in any set up although in general if children are with several people not just one there is less chance of that happening. Also one reason the state wants more children in nursery school at 3 is because they can undo the damage done to small children at home with mother all day if mother is not up to much.

"Also one reason the state wants more children in nursery school at 3 is because they can undo the damage done to small children at home with mother all day if mother is not up to much."

I very much agree with this. It's what happens in France and, while I think that the école maternelle system (three years of preschool) is probably not well suited these days to more affluent, supportive families with clever children, it is fantastically good at ensuring that DCs from less advantaged backgrounds can actually talk, listen, sit still and be reasonably independent when they go to primary school.

I think there is some truth in what you say xenia in that some mothers that don't work are very invested in it. Particularly those hwo have given up very well paid jobs that they worked hard to get and maintain.

I see it around me all the time. Alpha Mummies who now talk up every moment of their day as if the school run and ironing were tasks involving logistical genius. They talk of sourcing things when they mean going on t'internet like the rest of us, or to the shops.

They are also very quick to the point the finger at working mothers (rarely fathers) and blame them for everything from dyslexia to ASD. I've noticed they love to find a problem in a family with two working parents.

They often try to rope me into their world as they think I'm a SAHM. I'm not, I just work from home around the DC. But I find their meanness of spirit quite distasteful.

But this is a small sub strata of SAHPs. We have to remember that. There are plenty out there who are just doing their thang, happy for you to do your thang. Content to see the positives.

I don't know why but I always picture the alpha mummies at home in the evening, serving their DH supper, yapping on about how so-and-so failed his exams and they have two working parents you know.

Or so-and-so was meanin the playground and he has a nanny you know.

I then imagine the self congratulatory looks...