To work or not to work , baby due , what to do ! !

Jubi, it's not all black and white. Every child who goes to a creche is not taken out of their bed at 6am. Even if they are they probably don't know any different. Some kids are part time in creches. Some creches are bad, some are good. I agree it seems like a tough station for everyone concerned in situations where they all get up really early, work all day and see the child for a couple of hours at the end of the day but people have their reasons.

I used to think that it would be terrible to have a baby and have to put it in a creche and go out to work. but since then I've seen how well my niece and nephew have got on in their creche. They love it! They love all their little friends, and the creche workers. They spend the whole day playing and singing songs and they're as happy as Larry. It's very hard to meet those kids and think the creche must be bad for them.

It's also very hard to imagine how you could match that by staying at home with kids. Imagine having 2 kids under 5 and trying entertain them all day and do a better job at organising all the activities etc that the creche does!

what happens to triplets when the primary carer is only there one third of the time?
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Sandrat's on to something here. Many women just cannot cope with being primary carer on their own with no support. Back in the days all the women stayed at home and you had your mother down the road and all the neighbours and it was safe to have kids running around the place. Now you're stuck in a housing estate and all the other mammies are working and you can't let the kids run around and everyone has tiny back gardens. Sure there are mother and toddler groups but what if they're not in your area, or what if you don't drive, or if you can't manage to take all the kids out together.

The world has changed and most mothers and families have to change with it and do their best.
 

Excellent post.

I particularly agree with the point raised about women being in a housing estate thats largely empty during the day and little or difficult access to mother/toddler groups.

This is the reality for a lot of people. I was off work for a couple of days sick recently and the area around my home was completely deserted from 8am through to 5pm because everyone was in work. I had no friends off work and I dont have any family. I was lonely and bored after just 2 days. If I were to stay at home everyday minding children I would feel very isolated and lonely. There isnt a 'natural' support system for mothers in terms of community and family the way there would have been when all women gave up work after they married. This is modern society.
 
I am a mum who works outside of the home....and has to as a result of punitative mortgage rates to feed inflated house prices (we live in a 2 bed in an average area...). I worked hard to get where I am, but would gladly give it up for a while for my son's early childhood, although this also has its disadvantages, as my employer does not facilitate long career breaks and I can only do the job in one place in the country.A change of jobs would mean a change of country?!
I really needed to post here because I take exception to the discussion and assumption that working mums binge drink. In my experience of friends/family, it is the exact opposite. Although nobody binge drinks, it is the stay at home mums who drink a lot more. The rest of us are too exhausted trying to juggle 3 hours traffic/day, home, work (and in some cases studies) that we conserve the little energy we have to give it to our children and family life. A point in case is my best friend. Her son is exactly the same age as mine (days apart). She stays at home and is a brill mum. She also gets to go out at least once/week. I go out once maybe every 6 weeks. Just don't have the energy to face a late night/a few drinks and dashing out the door with toddler in tow at 7am, or on weekends, feeling that I can give my son the best of me if I am exhausted or hungover on the sofa. She can take her time getting going in the mornings, and does not have to look decent and speak sense to a room full of questioning adults at 9am every morning and continue doing so without a break some days until 4/5pm - on these days I am lucky to find the time to go to the loo, and breakfast, lunch and tea is a muffin in the car to collect my son from the creche in the evenings. So, she goes out. I don't. She drinks. The max I have is maybe 2 glasses wine/week (with meals at home), since any more than that and the time taken to drink it going out, just does not fit into my life. There is no time. I have not had more than 2 drinks at a time since becoming a mother.
 
Geld

When i spoke about binge drinking it was totally taken out of context, The point I was making is that people were talking about equality and i was merely stating that there are aspects of equality that are not beneficial to society in general. If equality means that women are treated with respect and are not made to feel second class citizens then that is what our forebearers strived for. However there are women who believe there equality comes from behaving like men in respect of drinking etc THAT was the point I was making. With regard to working outside the home I also maintain that some women believe in order to be valued they must contribute financially even if it not the best option especially for their children because they see mothering as a devalued profession.
 

I find it offensive that you equate being a man = binge drinking. A small minority of the population, both male and female, binge drink. Kindly refrain from tarring an entire gender in order to make your points about the desirability or otherwise of stay at home parents.
 
Sherman

We dont binge drink yeah right. When I moved here 11 years ago I was astonished and still am with the amount of drink consumed. When i ask someone did you have agood night they say great craic 15 pints so they equate a good night to how drunk they are. Further are you deliberately misinterperting what I am saying I am not equating binge drinking in relation to working mums I am merely stating AGAIN please note not all aspects of equality for women is BENEFICIAL TO society in general.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT.
 

So you're saying that men have always been binge drinking, but for women it's only in the last 15 years due to feminism? Maybe you're moving in particularly alcohol-fond circles?

You are directly linking the rise in the occurrence of working mothers (facilitated by, you argue, greater equality between men and women) with a breakdown in society, a symptom of which you argue is increased binge drinking among women. Where am I misinterpreting you exactly?

Oh, and please don't shout in your posts.
 
Yea, I find that strange as well. I don't binge drink and I never have. Most of my friends don't either.
BTW, in many cultures (and most agrarian societies) children are minded in the village by the elderly women and older girls while their mothers work in the fields. Since this is common in Kenya and Tanzania, the place we all came from, is it reasonable to suggest that a mother staying at home with her kids all day in unnatural and communal minding (the Crèche) is the more natural way for children to be minded. My children don't go to a crèche so I have no axe to grind on this one.
 
Sherman
please answer one question and then we will leave this discussion. Do you think that on the whole equality has made our society better or worse vis a vis working mothers. Please point out benefits to society especially for our children and the disadvantages.

Purple your comment regarding the community rearing children can you please enlighten me is their a high turnover of carers in these communities you are talking about like there is in creches I am puzzled as to how you can equate the two together. In African society the children are better behaved, have excellent values and therefore they would not be as affected being reared by the village whereas our children are already at a disadvantage with regard to little discipline and a poor moral framework within our society, therefore creche care would be a poor substitute for the moral guidance offered by parents. I worked in Kenya for 1 year and yes there is a saying it takes a village to rear a child but if a child misbehaves they are allowed to chastise the child try doing that here.
 

You are coming out with odder and odder huge generalisations- can you see that? All irish children are poorly disciplined, morally starved brats?
Crazy
 
PaddyBloggit said:
This thread has lost all sense of direction.
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to get back on topic, we've sent our first to the local creche since he was 9 months old. Its just round the corner, run by the locals (co. Dublin commuter town) and our child absolutely loves it.

plus points:
- Just a minutes walk away
- lovely staff (and well staffed). Same girls minding him since he joined 2 years ago
- well priced. 815pm
- dropped off at 7.45, picked up about 5.30
- we get a daily report sheet (what they ate, slept, pooped etc)
- they play different games and educational items every day, something impossible to organise as well at home, no matter how hard you try.
- fit kidz
- interaction with other children; some great best friends, great to see them interacting
- meet all the local parents in the same situation. We're not locals so its been great
- cost of changing to single-income is a lot
- child is in a routine. its not to everyones taste, but makes getting them to sleep and up in the morning a breeze.
- kids from the creches are further advanced when it comes to starting school. Its not an important thing; they are only 5 at that stage after all, but this has been verified by a few close friends who are infant and remedial teachers. Our creche has its own sylabus for wobblers, toddlers, pre-schoolers etc.

cons:
- as someone pointed out, they catch every bug. Doc's always keen on antibiotics, so we've become much better at self-diagnosis (the non child-neglect kind)
- cost. its not cheap, whatever the price
- the 'not raising your own lids' argument, and in particular not knowing if its even a valid argument
- burning up haft a years holidays when they can't attend the creche after catching a bug
- they do a longer day in the creche than I do at work


All I know is that we consider ourselves lucky to have such a great creche, and when no.2 arrives in the coming months, we'll do exactly the same, and send both to the creche.
 
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Did i say all children no i didnt, I said that we have seen a decline in childrens behaviour in recent times, Please dont insult me by saying this is not the case. We have teachers assaulted, bullying is rife in our schools, Children appear to have lost the abilty to say please and thankyou, there are
more and more children being diagnosed with adhd. Our childrens innocence is being eroded. Our children are required to fit in with their parents lifestyle and therefore their own resourses at a much earlier age and they clearly cant handle it. Hence a prolifiration of risky behaviour. Please wake up all parents and smell the coffee otherwise our future generations are in a lot of trouble.
 
did they know about adhd 100 years ago? they would just beat the child until they saw sense, maybe changes are due to reduction in walloping?
 
Sandrat
ADHD caused by higher levels of cortisol caused by stress. I wonder why a 1-2 year old would be stressed
This article was written by Oliver James who is an emminent clinical psychologist psychologist The article is called blind feminism and it sums up for me what I have been attempting to put across.
I spent a week in Copenhagen observing 18-month-olds in what is often regarded as the best day nursery in the world. The Danish Government holds it up as the model of its system (three quarters of Danish children are in day-care nurseries by age 18 months), and representatives from all three of our political parties have been shown around it. But the most unbiased of observers would have found it hard to avoid the conclusion that the toddlers were upset by their care. Some became aggressive, others withdrawn, but it was horrifying to see the contrast between their wellbeing at home, where I also observed them, and their manifest distress while at the nursery.
Although I admire Toynbee’s writing on many subjects, she epitomises the blindness to evidence found in this area. When Jay Belsky, the distinguished psychologist, published the findings of the Sure Start evaluation in the British Medical Journal, it turned out that the programme had not only failed to help the children, but had also led to worse outcomes for some of the most disadvantaged.
For instance, a survey of all the studies on its impact found that whereas 41 per cent of children in day care for more than 20 hours a week were insecure, this was true of only 26 per cent of toddlers cared for full-time by their mothers. More recently, a definitive study of more than 1,000 British children by Penelope Leach revealed that children who experienced day care were more likely to be disturbed than children cared for by minders or by grandparents. Most recently, several studies have demonstrated heightened cortisol levels and proneness to ADD. The most consistent finding is that such children are more likely to be aggressive.
Interestingly, few if any of the new Labour elite opt for group day care for their own children. They prefer one-on-one nannies. I once heard a new Labour woman minister say, “if women really want to sit around all day looking after their children, OK”. Like the vast majority of senior politicians, she had never done so — otherwise she would have known that it is nothing less than the most exacting of roles.
Real feminism requires us to reevaluate the roles of both men and women. Of course, that means women having careers as men do — but not at the expense of their role as mothers. Likewise, it entails men becoming much more involved in caring for their small children and investing less in their careers — at present, by far the most significant pillar of identity for both sexes in the English-speaking world.
 
I see nannies mentioned, so it is ok to go off to work and leave the child with a nanny but not in a creche? Were the introduction of new carer to child ratios ever taken into account in these studies? I think a child would be more disturbed if they were minded all day by someone who resented minding them like a mother forced to give up work after having a child.
 
sandrat

The article actually states that whilst entolling the virtues of day care the Labour ministers obviously didnt want it for their own kids, its a bit like the ministers here where they say state education is brilliant and send their own kids to private school. Its alright for us but This post will be deleted if not edited immediately I am not risking my own childs welfare by doing it. Further comment on why a 1- 2 year old might be stressed and the notion put forward in the article that whilst women are entilted to have a career should it be AT THE EXPENSE OF MOTHERHOOD. I am beginning to realise sandrat that you cant answer the tough questions so again WHY would a 1-2 year show heightened cortisol levels in their system from attending daycare.
 
jubi ~ you seem to be getting a little bit stressed. And a little bit overwrought as evidenced by your use of caps.

With all you've written I haven't a clue about what you are trying to say!

Any chance you'd bulletpoint your points to illustrate your stance? (in as calm a fashion as possible)

Thanks!
 
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article goes on to say that in europe children are minded in their homes until 1 year old. I am doing that well until 11 and a half months. If maternity leave was available and affordable for that long maybe more people would do the same. Please stop shouting in posts, use italics for emphasis if you must. Personally i think that maternity leave should be extended and breastfeeding rights in the workplace should be extended beyond 6 months but in recessionary times I don't see it happening. I was not minded at home by my mother - she had to go back to work when I was 8 weeks old but I don't have ADHD and neither do my siblings. I don't see where in the article he mentioned the medical fact of heightened cortisol levels, did he do blood tests or just observe for a week? Maybe being watched by a strange man for a week made them feel stressed?
 
Paddy

I am so not stressed, i am bloody angry that children lives are disrupted so that we can have it all and their needs are very much pushed into the background all in the name of political correctness and our acceptance as a society that this is the best way forward.

Sandrat

I totally agree that maternity leave should be extended for mothers.Iflly maintain that the first 5 years are crucial for the child. The reason I write capitals is because nobody appears to be able to answer the tough questions.Further you pointing out that you survived a working mother with no adhd is not really scientific. Finally the article asks should a womans career be at the expense of motherhood. This for me is the most important question in this whole debate.
 
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