'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 am not a second class citizen- never have been and never will be. I don't know why looking after DCs has such low status and why highly paid employment is the be all and end all, it is only the means to live life the way you want to live it and not the reason for living.

I want an interesting job that earns enough to be comfortable, doesn't take over my life and leaves lots of spare time for friends, family, hobbies, interests and volunteering.Why is that bad?

Highly paid employment is often very stimulating in and of itself. it is valuable, therefore, not merely because of the remuneration associated with it.
And in a world where money still equals power, women ducking out of the careers which would bring them money to raise children is depriving them of power. it just is. Xenia is right about that, I'm afraid.

It isn't bad exotic, it's sensible, refreshing and entirely rational. Not every one wants power and prestige and dreams about pound signs.

Fish, anyone who continues to make assumptions not based on evidence that
A) all women who decide to stay at home are morons
B) all people should work and pay tax
C) some people clearly can't work because they are too thick
D) children need good childcare
E) People that perform child care are morons
F) People with an IQ of below 100 are clearly............what, taking up space that shouldn't be allocated to them?

is clearly not as bright as you like to think.

I could continue using exact quotes. Much of this argument is incoherent.
It is irrational and driven by petty discrimination.

It's not what I think. The fact is she holds a professional position which it is simply not possible to hold without being very clever. I realise it makes you feel better to think she's stupid, but it just isn;t the case.

Why are you defending someone who holds extreme right wing views?

I'm just pointing out that your speculations are factually inaccurate.

I am not sure it could be said I hope extreme right wing views. I am a libertarian most of all. So I would never psas a law say requiring a man or a woman to be home. I would rather have totally neutral laws in this and other areas so people take their own decisions through persuasion.

The bottom line is as ReactionaryF says it - unless and until more mumnetters stay in work we will continue with 10% representation of women in positions of power and 90% men. Of course if people want they can argue that scrubbning a floor is wonderfully satisfying and they woudl hate to run and own the companythat makes the mops but to suggest there is no adverse effect on women's careers and the like because they not their men stay at home is just plain wrong.

I want to take my own decisions- not make my own decisions with persuasion. I dare say I would feel stifled if I had children at 21yrs, I hadn't even started my career then. As it was I had worked for years, started to climb the ladder- far enough to realise that I didn't want to go further- quite common judging by the fact that you can't get applicants for primary headships- who would want to exchange hands on for office work, number crunching and meeting government targets? As an older mother I was quite ready for the new challenge of being at home with them.
Only a small promotion of women are going to be in careers of power, in the way that only a small proportion of men are going to be. My dream job of working in a job that involves history of some sort is never going to give a position of power.

I think it has a lot to do with the age you have your DCs - lots of women are much older and have worked out that they don't want a position of power, takes up too much time and is rather lonely at the top. Much better to go to work, put your all into it, get home at a reasonable time and forget it. It takes a special sort of person to want to do it.

Minimathsmouse - in relation to your study of the Iroquois, I think the difference is that they were a subsistence society, living from their own labour. So the value of a mans traditional role may have been roughly equal to the value of a womans traditional role.

So say the womans role was to bring up and educate 6 children and mean the difference between survival and death for them, plus collect water and firewood, do food processing and growing and house maintainance (...I'm just guessing) and the man's job was herding, hunting, house building and defense (...say)

Compare that with now where most of those functions have been commercialised and mechanised. So the person in work earns the money that pays for the house, water, fuel, transport, food, medicine, education and defense and the SAHPs does most of the daily work to bring up 2-3 children and keeps things organised at home, but not in a life- or-death way.

The status of the worker goes up because they can do so much more than a iroquois man, while the status of the sAHP goes down because
they do so much less than the iroquois woman.

So given how we live now the solution can't be just to say both roles are equal "like the iroquis" but to encourage and enable both men and women to do bothe roles equally.

The Iroquois on the plains of North America in 19th century are not very relevant to women in UK in 21st century!

Given a choice of killing a buffalo or cooking it I would go for the latter!

I think the difficulty in recruiting HTs is precisely because of the problem we are talking about.

Primary teaching is predominantly a female profession, often attracting women because it is seen as family friendly. But the road to headship is only open to those who are willing to work full time plus, move around a lot etc... It is not incompatible with parenthood (plenty of HTs are dads) but it is pretty hard to have two parents working as HTs at the same time (or one as HT and one as CEO etc..)

I agree it's probably hard to jobsharer the HT role, but it is possible to do it 4 days a week (our head went off to help another failing school once a week, our school didn't fall apart) and in a manageable way if you had professional facilities managers, Burser,, HR manager etc...instead of HTs doing everything.

I know that there are not many men in primary teaching but they are not applying either. More to do with government interference than anything else.
A successful school can manage on part time- a failing one can't - the head needs to know names, they need to be outside first thing greeting pupils and parents, they need to be in the playground often at break and dinner times, they need to be there to deal with difficult pupils, take lessons- be highly visible. There is no one else to do it in a primary school - they are in classes themselves. Once they have turned it around and established their reputation they can relax more.

Highly intelligent, powerful people can say and do stupid things- you only have to look at politicians!

It is very hard at hojme. It is dull. IT is badly paid or unpaid because just about anyone can do that work. It is not being "rude" it is saying that it is at the level the I indian women worked and any of us with an arm which can wield a brush can do it. That is why it is minimum wage work when it is paid at all.Obviously some women are able to persuade high earning men, because they are beautiful or clever or nice or sexy or whatever, to keep them to a higher standard than I indian women were kept and some of the work can be a bit more complex - I did our tax returns at home as plenty of women do, but the bulk of it with under 5s is fairly mundane a lot of the time so all women always have always tried to find others to do it or help with it right through the ages and who can blame them?

To suggest that housework and chidlcaer is some kind of higher calling which women adore is just about the least feminist statement you can make. if it were that much fun men would be beating a path to the door to do it.

It's not hard at home. That's just ridiculous. It is as easy as anything being at home with DCs but you do have to be a self-motivated person who enjoys managing their own life. If you lack the skills to manage and structure your own life, a good fall back is institutional structure.

There you go again- everyone has to be the same. It is as dull as you want to make it. Housework takes very little time and then you are free- much more liberating than working and then doing it- or do you expect DH to work full time and do all of it?

What on earth will you do when you retire Xenia when you appear to only be interested in work and can't imagine being in the home without doing housework?

Xenia has no concept of civilisation. She can discover it in her retirement - there is so much of it that is unknown to her that she will never run out of discoveries!

Well I think Xenia is putting things in such a way to make people react. And tbh it is working quite well!
The advantage of putting 'extremist' views out like this, is that it makes people think.

Tbh, I've always thought xenia was a bit too 'out there' and that she was too extreme to my liking ie I would not be happy to work/life the way she is.
However, I think she is right in saying that power is financial power. And that, as women, we should think about it in this way before taking a decision re what type of work to do, how much to work etc...

This is exactly what I have done when I retrained. I am not making buckets (yet) but I am doing a job that I like and can pay enough that I can work part time earning a decent wage. If I want to, I can also go full time (self employed) and make more money, employ people etc... Which is something I will consider in the future.

The thing is we are very rigid in the way we look at work/employment. It's very much 'here is a job, this is how you can work, ie part time or full time, and that's it'.
It's missing the flexibility that can come from using the new technologies to their full potential (eg working from home). It's missing the fact that we can job share more than we want to acknowledge. Adding this flexibility and acknowledging that people have a life outside of work would help even things out.
I don't think though that things will really change until:
1- men are taking on much more of the childcare/HW duties (ie proper sharing of parenthood responsibilities)
2- more women have highly qualified jobs (be it CEO or or other highly skills works incl craftsmanship)

Well I think Xenia is putting things in such a way to make people react. And tbh it is working quite well!
The advantage of putting 'extremist' views out like this, is that it makes people think.

Yes, I agree Notsure - Xenia is writing polemic - an aggressive form of argument designed to win and to shake people into questioning long-held , often comfortable assumptions. It does work and has been very interesting but misunderstood when people occasionally take perceived insults personally rather than argue back about the possible merits of staying home. I don't think she truly thinks sahms are morons (do you?)

I have enjoyed reading the arguments here from everyone, especially as I have three teenage daughters and am concerned about the choices they will make. I am a sahm, able to enjoy financial security as I have taken a traditional role since giving up work in my mid-thirties to become a peripatetic expat. I was warned by thoughtful older women, 30 years ago, not to give up my earning potential and chose to ignore them but I have never forgotten the warnings.

I am lucky. Things have worked out fine for me so far - I am 50, but about to lose my "job" as a mother (well in a day-to-day sense anyway). I think I will suggest my daughters do not follow my example.