Working mothers lambasted again!!

[Missmibaby]

Has anyone seen The Times today? Yet more articles telling us that wokring mothers are bad for their kids development. Isn't it funny how all the examples they use are middle-class women who left well-paid jobs, who are married to husbands with extremely well-paid jobs: bankers, lawyers, media-types. One of the headlines was that a woman didn't go back to work until her children were ten years old. The article then went to explain how she worked from her attic whilst employing full-time nannies! Real world? Not for most of us. I am the main wage-earner in our house. My DP is on £20,000 per year and our mortgage is c.£10,000 per year. What little luxuries would anyone recommend we cut back on if I were to give up work. Beleive me I do nothing but think about my son all day, I would love to be with him. I have another on the way and am trying to think of ways that I can work less. My son has always been cared for by well-chosen loving people. The childcare arrangements have changed very little inhis short life and I think he is a well-balanced, sociable, well-advanced little boy. I think the most important thing that he has in his life is that I love him to bits and I make sure he knows it!! Sorry for the rant I know it's not mumsnet faultbut but these generalisations make me so

I don't think women who stay at home are better or worse than women who go to work. It's how they treat thei kids that matters.

issymum, thank you for that post. the discussions dh and i have had about this were along the same lines. what would also be interesting is to know how the study results could be linked to the causative factors derived from other studies, e.g. that children "do better" based on the educational attainments of the parents. so are you ok as a nursery child provided your parents are educated to degree level - that sort of thing.

my opinion of p. leach has been confirmed by her comments on this study...

bk you've never been sold on P Leach have you

thank god for nurseries, and for Issymum

Marina, has your elevation led to ignoring my emails again, btw (only about after school club)?

MI, I now have a secretary gel from Lucie Clayton's to handle my monogrammed, embossed e-mails. And I don't correspond with anyone Inferior.
I will check. Remember my work filters are savage. Worse than Blu's.

they seem to have videoed mothers at home to assess 'positive expressed emotion,
responsiveness, facilitation, recognition of cues' and assessed 'Organisation of the environment, Provision of appropriate play
materials, Opportunities for variety in daily stimulation.'

And they seem to be concerned with the quality of relationships in particular, as previous studies have shown disagreement about the role a 'key worker' in a nursery plays with the children, i.e. how close they are, or whether they are just there to liaise between the business and the parents.

There aren't any results on their website though. So most of the interpretation in the newspapers is based on a press release or speculation. The Guardian are interpreting it as a study of settings (perhaps as they foster relationships) rather than SAHMs vs. WOHMs.

Might be worth e-mailing PLeach and asking her!

Apparently there are studies which show that children do best if their mothers (not sure about fathers) are doing what they actually want to do in terms of WOTM/SAHM/part time working etc.

hurrah. A licence to do what we like perhaps I should try and post the reference.

Fennel - Makes sense.... children are at their happiest when their parents feel fulfilled in whatever they are doing.... and are not so stressed about money that they are screaming at each other every day (DH and I for a while)!!!

In general:

Happy secure parents = Happy secure children.

Issymum - well put. I was thinkning the same thing in bed last night. Basically this kind of study is very hard to do because of the so many external factors out there.

I too don't feel guilty about leaving my son at a nursery/with a nanny whilst I am at work. He is an extremely happy boy, extremely well-developed .

I guess it made me angry and maybe a little confused, because I don't think it was very clear in what it was trying to prove.

Anyway time to move on I guess...

are SAHMs still allowed to use their childcare vouchers for ofsted inspected nurseries or not?

Fio - If mean can they still attend a Private Nursery that works in conjunction with the council to give you the 12.5hrs pre-school..... then YES! But most Nurseries will only allow you to use the free hours if you are also paying for some extra hours too.

Issymum - to try to answer your questions a bit.

The survey certainly attempted to be 'balanced', as far as ages of parents, social status, educational background, etc. So I think the SAHM experience of the children in the survey would vary immensely.

I am not aware that they 'assessed' the nurseries/childminders in any way; or the 'at home' provision for that matter.

Within the survey they did gather a large amount of information as to what children did during their day or week. But I don't think this sort of information has been included in the 'broad' results which have been announced so far.

There were a whole range of tasks, tests, questionnaires, interviews etc. At no point were we given any information as to what constituted a 'pass' or a 'fail' of any particular test. It certainly wasn't anything as blatant as that.

Fennel, please post it.

Oh dear, both of my kids were in full time care well before they reached 4 months of age. Oh they must be ruined. Shall I just scrap them and start over with a new family?

Lucky for them,I don't believe everything I read/hear.

DS is a bit young to judge. But DD certainly seems to be a well adjusted, intelligent, happy 2 1/2 year old. And you'll be interested to know that every morning when I get her up, she asks for Daddy (who works away most of the week). And, no, no one ever asks why he doesn't get a job closer to home.

However, even after reading this thread I am still happy with my decision to work full time. And any study or person who wants to criticise me for it can talk to my back side...

Another thing positive about nurseries. I have a very bright boy (well I would say that) and to be honest I find it hard to keep him stimulated.

The nursery were brilliant at recognising and fullfilling his need for mental stimulation. I get a pain in my head at his questions sometimes and am simply not equiped to deal with them e.g this morning he asked me to explain the big bang theory (he's 5). I don't know how to explain complex ideas to a child even if I understood them myself.

If his care had been exclusively mine , hand on heart, I would not have developed him educationally as well as the nursery did.

Emotionally I'm not sure if he has been affected by nursery life but I think not.

My name says it all really. I work full time and don't have any friends except one super rich b*h (said lovingly cos I do love her and we call her that anyway)that doesn't work and have kids. So why is the guilt trip always laid outside our front doors. I have to admit that part of the reason I work is to fund a life style I quite enjoy and my children love and no-one is gonna tell me that I shouldn't have kids just cos I work and that I should make massive sacrifices and be without my little luxuries just they have a chip on their shoulder.

There I have said it.

Working mums of the world unite, or else let us take all our children who feel that they are not getting the best from us mums to start a protest.

And Daddy's you get so much off the hook. My DH doesn't feel at all guilty about going out to work every day and isn't the one left in the position of having to take time off work when a kid is sick and having to sheepishly phone Mr. Bossman to tell him "sorry can't come in today".

Oh this whole issue makes my blood boil.

Different strokes for different folks. Lets leave the debate at that.

Why isn't he the one who has to take the day off when his child is sick?

Anyone seen this?

Kinda sums it up for me.

I think that's a really defeatist article actually. She basically seems to be saying that they should shut up, because even if it's true, as most women have no choice, there's no point saying it anyway.

But the point is, most mothers want the choice. But they're never going to get that unless government and society change their attitudes and practices. But you don't get governments to change policies, by shutting up.

I agree wtih Caligula.This study isn't even aimed exlusively - nor not even primarily - at us - at mothers. It is bigger than that. It's about society, about government policy - a policy btw that refers to women who stay at home as 'problem'and offers the greatest financial incentives to those who use nurseries for childcare and least to those who use nannies or family.

The thing the Guardian article was saying is that some women will always have to or choose to work - and studies like this doen't change anything, apart from making them feel even more guilty.

Penelope Leach was on R5 the other day discussing the stuy, and basically said that the detrimental effect of group care on small children was miniscule. The media (as usual) have blown it all out of proportion. And she kep saying again and again that it's not the type of care that does damage, it's the quality. so good quality group care is better than poor quality one-to-one.

Anyone remember a study a few years back (commissioned/publicised by Panorama or somesuch prog) which monitored the educational achievements of children who had experienced different froms of childcare in their pre-school years? Basically those kids who had been at home with mum full time, and those in childcare while mum worked full time, showed a more or less equal rate of achievement. The ones that did best were those whose mums worked part time and had part time childcare.

It all goes to show that studies will contradict each other all the time and confuse and depress the main readers of such reports, ie mums who work through necessity or choice. What's the point?

but what baout the gvmt policies i described?