'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 . . .

No, you don't have to see work as a negative to think that way - just not as a goal that overrides all others. It's not black and white, it's a question of balancing priorities.

Work in itself isn't a negative. Children growing up without their parents is generally a negative unless the parents are harmful or neglectful. A small child in particular needs to bond to their parents and needs constant care and attention that a person who doesn't love them isn't highly motivated to give. If parents are taken away from small children by work, I don't see that as a positive thing. I suppose if you don't value parenthood and see caring for children as something anyone can do whether they love the child or not then I could see how you would feel that both parents being away from the child as inconsequential.

"I suppose if you don't value parenthood and see caring for children as something anyone can do whether they love the child or not then I could see how you would feel that both parents being away from the child as inconsequential."

This is one of big areas of divergence of opinion in society right now, though largely unvoiced (it is economically so inconvenient). Do DCs need a primary carer who loves them, or not? I think they do, and I observe the DCs at my DD's school and see very different personality traits emerging at 7/8 based on whether they have a SAHP or not.

What I find odd also is that if a person's partner has to go away from work they admit that that's hard, that they miss the partner, they wish they were around. Now if someone said "Well why don't you hire someone in to replace your partner" the person would be horrified - only their partner will do, and replacing them is missing the point - it's the partner they want, not just some person to fulfil the duties of a partner. Yet when a parent hires in a person to replace themselves the child is supposed to accept it on the basis that it doesn't matter whether the person caring for them is a parent or not, as long as the person hired in is fulfilling the duties of a parent. The fact is, there is a difference between a loving parent looking after a child and a person who has been hired to look after them, just as there is a difference between a loving partner and a person hired in to fulfil the duties of a partner.

It's the working model we need to change.

Sorry that should say "if a person's partner has to go away for work"

cailin I didn't say or mean that women should be forced to work. I think everyone should do what they think is right for them. I meant that choosing to staying at home has political and societal implications and they can't be ignored.

Most women do not have the choice to be a sahm in the way that I think you mean it. You have to be dependant on either a partner or the state or have independent wealth to be a sahm. Most women in the world don't have access to benefits or independent wealth.

For the historically few women such as ourselves that do not have to work in order not to starve and do not have to rely on a man in order to have a roof over ours and our children's heads to all turn round and say we have chosen to opt out of work and have chosen to stay at home as this proves we love our children beyond all else is not good for women as a whole because it is easy for others to take away our options as they can say and show we aren't using them anyway.

I do agree the situation as it is does not work for families. I'm currently on mat leave and I am deciding what to do about work depending on various different factors, none of which apply to dh who has been promoted since he had a child, whereas I have possibly had some of my role taken off me. I don't want to argue what is best/worse. I'm interested in how things can be changed. And it does hurt when it's implied that you don't love your children by going to work/staying at home. It's easy to get tied up in knots as it's hard not to have an emotional response to that :)

That's interesting Bonsoir, what differences do you see?

The working model + families doesn't work for anyone.

It's that we need to change.

It is still organised around man goes to work all hours, woman stays at home. Women adopting the male role within it isn't the answer, it doesn't address the fundamental problems with it which is why the argument doesn't go away.

It is silly to argue on the simple polarisation of sahm v wohm. Neither are fully satisfactory and the argument accepts the premise that the current model doesn't need to change.

That DCs at around 7/8 start taking notice of the family circumstances of other DCs around them and that DCs who are not receiving enough love and positive attention from their families (parents, but can also be grandparents and siblings) start forming "mini-gangs" at school and being aggressive, if given the opportunity, towards those DCs who they perceive as receiving a lot of love and attention. My DD has been at the same school since she was 2.10 (she is now 7.6) and I have known many of the DCs and their families for years. When they were all little they played nicely together, for the most part. This year there has been a seismic change and all sorts of friendships have been rearranged - practically all along lines of level of parental involvement.

The sahm gets bored and frustrated (often)

The wohm is stressed and misses her children (often)

Neither (except Xenia) is happy.

Let's change the model.

And the children aren't happy either.

I'm not bored or frustrated. I'd like more money but who wouldn't? Anyway, it is economically much more advantageous for DP to do all the earning.

Our children are very happy. But then, that is our overriding priority.

That's why I said (often)

If you are you, who lives a more privileged life than the vast majority, you have the material and educational resources to create a fulfilling life outside of the traditional working model.

I agree totally Hully. I don't actually think being a SAHP is a positive thing for the parent in the long run. I do enjoy being a SAHM and I do it because I am keen to be around for most of my son's first few years, but ideally I would have a situation where both my DH and I could share that experience rather than being in a situation where I'm at home all the time doing constant childcare (which does rot the brain somewhat) and my DH is at work all the time earning money (which means he misses out on a lot of my DS's life). I can't really achieve that balance realistically and because I want a parent doing the vast majority of looking after DS then it has to be me unfortunately.

Our society has created this problem. The goal set for intelligent young people is to work long hours and earn a lot of money. That is considered "success." Having children isn't factored in to that, it's seen as something you do in your spare time. That's definitely a product of the patriarchy as men never really had to face the full burden of what having children means. I would prefer to see a society where material success is seen as something you achieve alongside having the personal fulfilment of having a family and really being there for them, really participating in bringing them up. The current model where either both parents work long hours and the children are brought up by other people, one parent cuts down and misses out on promotion etc or one parent doesn't work at all and becomes isolated is clearly not working. Some sort of balance must be possible. But as long as rearing children is seen as a side project with not much consequence then that's not going to happen.

Yes, I agree but that is also why focusing on our DCs education (in the widest sense) is our family priority - so that they also have the educational resources to create a fulfilling life whatever circumstances they find themselves in.

It's ours too. When we had them we moved and created a life where we both work and stay home (not necessarily at the same time). It gives them role models of men and women doing interesting work AND sharing the shit work, and we are there for them and very close to them. But it is absolutely not easy nor possible for most.

Sorry, it's ours too was about kids' happiness being a priority.

I was also v conscious when we had kids of making the decision that we had enjoyed 30 odd years all about us, and now they were going to take centre stage for 20 odd years before it reverted to us.

Absolutely agree hullygully.

And I know this sounds sexist, but I do think women do have a stronger urge to be around their children than men. It seems a shame that women have been encouraged to deny this, as though it's a weakness and are encouraged to accept putting children in childcare for long hours despite how much it might upset them, just so they can be seen to be successful. It's almost as if admitting that actually material success means very little to me and I'm happy to just be at home with my children means you're a horrible failure.

It would be easier, however, if that model were promoted more in society. We made all sorts of choices to ensure that we can spend a lot of time with our DCs - including ensuring that home/school/work are really physically close to one another so that we can see our DCs at lunchtime, drop them at school, even have a picnic lunch together as family during the school day. Our transport model is largely a foot/bus/bike one. But that has implications for accommodation that English people, certainly, find hard to contemplate.

I do agree with you Hully in general - I guess my ideal would be a situation in which both parents reduced work hours and shared childcare, no doubt with a certain amount of non-parental care (nursery/childminder etc) in the mix as well. I feel very lucky that as a family we've been able to have a set up pretty much along those lines because we run our own business and can therefore work it around our own needs.

What I'm not sure about is whether this is ever going to work for jobs like, for example, national newspaper editor, cabinet minister, finance director for large business. I'm not convinced that you could realistically do such a job part time/job share/always leaving to do the school run.

So the question then becomes, can only one parent in a family hold that kind of job. . . because at the moment at least, if the answer is yes, then 9 times out of 10 if not more the parent who steps back & scales down her ambitions is the mother. I don't want to be a cabinet minister myself, but I also don't want to live in a society where ministers are basically either men, or women without children.

Obviously at the moment the answer for many families where both want to continue on this kind of track is a nanny - and I still remain to be convinced that this is really going to harm the intellectual & social development of the children concerned. I worry that as soon as families come up with an answer that allows the woman as well as the man to carry on at a high-flier level, there is yet another set of reasons produced why this is a Bad Thing.

That's why again it would be good if we could change another model: that of the family. Live in large family groups so that the kids are cared for by gps/aunts or uncles - people that love them AND aren't (on the whole) going to go away.

Again the nuclear family model is both new, strange and unnatural.

Cailin - "I do think women do have a stronger urge to be around their children than men"

I think given the way that our society is structured, it is impossible to form a judgement on this at the moment. There is such a strong push for women to be the ones who step back & take on childcare (social expectations, usually lower wages, much harder for men to go part time without killing their career even more than women) that I don't think you can say what the situation would be in a truly free choice situation.