'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 . . .

absolutely! xenia, as such an apparently radical feminist, why are you so keen on working within precisely the system that we have at the moment, with no ambitions whatsoever beyond that? It's hardly a revolutionary position to want more women at the top of society without any kind of societal change beyond that.

libel - It's hardly a revolutionary position to want more women at the top of society without any kind of societal change beyond that.

i think for women to have equal power in whatever politial system we have is revolutionary.

with the possible exception of the group Mini mentioned, when have women ever had equal power?

mini - but lots of people were starving before capitalism existed. women werre second class before capitalism.

In a sense it is a politically wrong self indulgent thing to be at home as a woman as you damage the progress of women so much by doing that particularly if you might have been one of those women to rise to the top.

Xenia can I ask you, would you have chosen to continue in your high flying career even if you had not enjoyed it and wanted to spend more time at home? In other words, do you think the political value of women staying in high flying jobs is sufficiently important that you would have gone against your own wishes and desires?

TillyMinto, I have already put forward an argument against that, up thread. You don't have to agree with it but I am trying to work it's based on the study of ancient and isolated tribes, where without the money form of exchange women have equal value and power even where there is a division of labour.

The biggest threat to women, is the threat of a system constructed by men, for men and that system is economic not social. The "patriarchy" is a fairy, it doesn't exist. What we have is a system that places value on wealth and confers power through wealth, that system is the social modelling of human behaviour caused and reinforced through capitalism. That's the real bogey man.

600 years after the first settled peoples, rose up and toppled the feudal system, only to be plunged back again into social conditions & deep divisions of another system. After 600 years we might have stopped to question why we can't feed millions of starving African women and their children. Women in this country have it pretty good in comparison but that is also at the exploitation of poorer women. Worrying about pensions or childcare provision, or wondering why men still joke about female drivers is a bit of a walk in the park compared to watching your children die through preventable disease and starvation.

Tilly - there's a similar argument made about poor women's labour and status pre-welfare state (can't remember which historian - since I gave up academia to stay home with the kids, I've turned into a half-brained moron...) In any case, it suggests that it was women's household and financial management that kept families from starvation, and that role (keeping the family fed on wholly inadequate resources) conferred power and status. You see it particularly in mining communities in the 30s. It was only later, the argument goes, that women's household management was devalued to the extent that it is today, ironically, by increasing wealth and the safety net of the welfare state. I'm not sure I buy it wholesale as an argument, but it's an interesting one to consider.

libel - i dont think you can compare 'women's work' of the 1930s and before with that of today.

then keeping the house was a full time job. my DGma has told me about her mum's house work routine. the washing took all day and involved a mangle. my washine machine involves about 5 mins of easy effort per load.

dishwasher, microwave, vacuum, food deliveries etc. oh i expect DP to do half.

so really very different in terms of effort, skills and time taken.

that's the point, yes! In other ways though I suspect it has become more challenging (in terms of community involvement and parenting expectations, for instance). I'm not saying we should reify carework. But society should recognise that it still needs doing, has value, and needs the workplace to adapt - for men and women - that allow it to happen.

sorry - to allow it to happen.

so if business should change, how?

scandinavia, scandinavia, scandinavia. Oh, did I mention scandinavia? Universal, low-cost childcare. Long parental leave shared between parents. No long-hours culture just for the macho hell of it. It being the expectation that both parents will take their fair share of childcare (see the eg above of a norwegian man saying he can't close a deal at the weekend because he has a family commitment).

So we are saying being a housewife used to mean hours of boring manual labour (although physical labour actually keeps women healthy and fit and happy and sitting at home watching television eating donuts does not but leaving that aside),... now it means lots of leisure time when you are not doing the work nor necessarily even with the children. So are we saying it is good for women now to be housewives because labour saving devices do much of the work but it wasn't before? In other words it's politlcally good women can sit around and be kept like idle Kings by men who work very hard? Why should the idleness of a modern housewife be a good?

No, it's been replaced by other expectations, amongst others about what young children need in terms of adult attention and input. Not all of them are good, as you've mentioned - but some of them are.

Still pondering why you aren't engaging with any of the bits of the argument that actually matter, xenia? I guess hammering at one bit of irrelevant argument and ignoring all other input, until everyone else gives up, is maybe the way forward in business. It's mighty boring if you're attempting an interesting discussion.

Swedish equality is better than us but it is far from equal:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11525804

and we dont have the oil or fish stocks of Norwey.

If you look at what kind of adult input poor kids got in the 1930s, it would fall firmly within modern definitions of neglect. In fact it did at the time too, but in a family with 10 kids and not enough money, there was just no alternative but to let them bring themselves up. Have a read of maud pember reeves' 'Round about a pound a week' if you're ever tempted to stick rose-tinted glasses on about the lives of the interwar working class...

yep wasabi, but it'd be a start, hey!

Libel - I am!

every time i sit in a meeting and i am the only woman/senior woman!

actually everyday when i go to my company & lead men through the technical problems they cannot solve.

everytime i beat the competition!

libelulle, she is reading the posts, and I have noticed over the past few weeks, that she has is learning too.

hmm, not sure I've noticed:) Wasabi, that's great stuff. But if childcare costs were 100 pounds a month as in Sweden instead of upwards of 1000, there'd be more of you!
amillion - haven't noticed that. And xenia, poor women in the 30s were certainly not anything approaching fit and healthy, as a general rule.

but now I'm trying to argue with two small children at my feet, and I'll be the first to admit that doesn't work, so am bowing out!

This thread does seem to be attracting polarised views. An obsession with wealth and earnings is not healthy and there are many contributing to society in ways other than by earning, but if Scandinavia is being held up as a balanced example it is worth noting that they have some of the highest per capital incomes in the world. It is wealth that has allowed them to have their much lauded system.

Being gentle, Xenia, I am begining to wonder whether you were protected as a child.You can pm me if you would like to.