Some political ideas just cannot get through my thick skull. It's my fault entirely for being an old fuddy-duddy. For years the government has been encouraging mothers to go to work and leave their children with childminders. My fuddy-duddy brain says this is upside-down. If children are so young they need to be looked after during the day I cannot see any circumstances in which it is best for that to be done by anyone other than their parents, in reality that means their mothers in the vast majority of cases. I leave to one side that small number of mothers who are unfit to look after a wheelbarrow let alone a child, I am interested in the dedicated loving mothers who want their children to grow up safe, secure, well behaved and well educated.
It wasn't very long ago that being a parent was seen as a career in itself. My late mother took that view. She worked as a secretary after leaving school and up until a few months before her first child was born. I have no doubt she was a very good secretary and could, had she been so minded, have had a long and successful career doing something she enjoyed very much. But she wanted to have a family and she wanted her children to have the best upbringing she could give them. That required her to be in charge of our care when we were very young. Any suggestion that she should go back to work and leave someone else to look after us would have been met with gasps of incredulity and the question: "What do you mean 'go back to work'? This is work. This is my career now and it's a bloody sight tougher and more worthwhile than anything else I could do."
To my mind her attitude is unquestionably sound. Bringing children up is a difficult job; not just the long hours, the mess and all the other physical strains it imposes but also the need to nurture the brain as well as the body and turn the little pink potato shaped thing you brought home from hospital into a fully functioning, sensible and fair minded adult who will be a useful addition to the world. How can it possibly be thought right to pass that heavy responsibility to another when you are the only person those children will ever be able to call "Mum"? I just don't see it.
In an excellent piece today the very fine Mr Stan wrote about this topic and discussed how feminism has affected the issue. I agree with every word he wrote but I want to address a different aspect of it because feminism is, I believe, only one of the factors that has led to the extraordinary situation of mothers delegating their position to others. I am intrigued by the potential self-interest of the government in encouraging mothers to take paid work and pass their children to child-minders.
Unemployment statistics treat every adult between the ages of 18 and 65 as a potential worker. If they are not engaged in paid work they are treated as unemployed. A housewife (what an antiquated term that now seems) is unemployed in the eyes of the statistics. Still worse for the government is that a housewife in a family that is paid tax credits is not only unemployed she is claiming welfare benefits too. Put her back in the office or the factory and the government receives a triple statistical boon. First she is no longer unemployed. Secondly the household income might rise above the level which entitles them to claim tax credits. And thirdly, someone else is paid to look after the children and is either removed from the unemployed list or receives extra income which might take them off tax credits too.
No one can say with any authority whether children suffer by being looked after by child minders during working hours rather than their parents. No doubt there are some instances in which there is a huge benefit because the child minder is a better influence than the parents would have been and, equally, there will be some instances in which the child minder is a disaster. Looking at things in the round I would not expect any great harm to result because the vast majority of child minders are probably like the vast majority of people and work hard to do the best job they can. What can be said with a fair degree of certainty is that a few years hence there will be an awful lot of parents who will ask whether problems their children have are the result of being left to the care of child minders rather than having their mothers to guide them throughout their childhood.
What can also be said with certainty is that a government obsessed with statistics will pursue policies that improve their statistics. Having people "in work" is an end in itself for such a government. That does not necessarily mean they will pursue statistically favourable policies regardless of the consequences, but where the consequences cannot be measured, as in this case, statistical advantage can only encourage the push for more mothers to be in paid employment.
I wonder how many mothers who have felt compelled to return to work while their children are young will look back in the years ahead and regret their decision. Their children might well turn out to be fine people and will be a cause for pride, but they only had one chance to bring them up and once it has gone it has gone. How many will say "I wish I had been with them all the time when they were little"? I guess the number will be vast, people who missed some special thing their child said or some milestone in their lives because they were at work at the time and another woman witnessed it not the child's mother. You cannot put a price on momentous occasions like the time your child takes his first step or utters her first word, stirs their first cake mixture or first engages in "I'll show you mine if you show me yours". They are little things implanted in your mind forever, part of your personal history as well as the personal history of your child. They are things that matter because they are natural parts of the parental process, hearing second-hand what you should have witnessed yourself deprives you of something that is your right as a parent.
Perhaps one day a government will think beyond statistics and balance sheets and realise that parenthood doesn't have a price either for children or for parents themselves. My mother didn't live to see her children grow up but she knew her second career was successful because she spent every minute being a mother while still able to do so. It is sad to think that many will live to a ripe old age without being able to say the same. No government policy should pressurise mothers into abandoning such an important and natural part of their lives.
It wasn't very long ago that being a parent was seen as a career in itself. My late mother took that view. She worked as a secretary after leaving school and up until a few months before her first child was born. I have no doubt she was a very good secretary and could, had she been so minded, have had a long and successful career doing something she enjoyed very much. But she wanted to have a family and she wanted her children to have the best upbringing she could give them. That required her to be in charge of our care when we were very young. Any suggestion that she should go back to work and leave someone else to look after us would have been met with gasps of incredulity and the question: "What do you mean 'go back to work'? This is work. This is my career now and it's a bloody sight tougher and more worthwhile than anything else I could do."
To my mind her attitude is unquestionably sound. Bringing children up is a difficult job; not just the long hours, the mess and all the other physical strains it imposes but also the need to nurture the brain as well as the body and turn the little pink potato shaped thing you brought home from hospital into a fully functioning, sensible and fair minded adult who will be a useful addition to the world. How can it possibly be thought right to pass that heavy responsibility to another when you are the only person those children will ever be able to call "Mum"? I just don't see it.
In an excellent piece today the very fine Mr Stan wrote about this topic and discussed how feminism has affected the issue. I agree with every word he wrote but I want to address a different aspect of it because feminism is, I believe, only one of the factors that has led to the extraordinary situation of mothers delegating their position to others. I am intrigued by the potential self-interest of the government in encouraging mothers to take paid work and pass their children to child-minders.
Unemployment statistics treat every adult between the ages of 18 and 65 as a potential worker. If they are not engaged in paid work they are treated as unemployed. A housewife (what an antiquated term that now seems) is unemployed in the eyes of the statistics. Still worse for the government is that a housewife in a family that is paid tax credits is not only unemployed she is claiming welfare benefits too. Put her back in the office or the factory and the government receives a triple statistical boon. First she is no longer unemployed. Secondly the household income might rise above the level which entitles them to claim tax credits. And thirdly, someone else is paid to look after the children and is either removed from the unemployed list or receives extra income which might take them off tax credits too.
No one can say with any authority whether children suffer by being looked after by child minders during working hours rather than their parents. No doubt there are some instances in which there is a huge benefit because the child minder is a better influence than the parents would have been and, equally, there will be some instances in which the child minder is a disaster. Looking at things in the round I would not expect any great harm to result because the vast majority of child minders are probably like the vast majority of people and work hard to do the best job they can. What can be said with a fair degree of certainty is that a few years hence there will be an awful lot of parents who will ask whether problems their children have are the result of being left to the care of child minders rather than having their mothers to guide them throughout their childhood.
What can also be said with certainty is that a government obsessed with statistics will pursue policies that improve their statistics. Having people "in work" is an end in itself for such a government. That does not necessarily mean they will pursue statistically favourable policies regardless of the consequences, but where the consequences cannot be measured, as in this case, statistical advantage can only encourage the push for more mothers to be in paid employment.
I wonder how many mothers who have felt compelled to return to work while their children are young will look back in the years ahead and regret their decision. Their children might well turn out to be fine people and will be a cause for pride, but they only had one chance to bring them up and once it has gone it has gone. How many will say "I wish I had been with them all the time when they were little"? I guess the number will be vast, people who missed some special thing their child said or some milestone in their lives because they were at work at the time and another woman witnessed it not the child's mother. You cannot put a price on momentous occasions like the time your child takes his first step or utters her first word, stirs their first cake mixture or first engages in "I'll show you mine if you show me yours". They are little things implanted in your mind forever, part of your personal history as well as the personal history of your child. They are things that matter because they are natural parts of the parental process, hearing second-hand what you should have witnessed yourself deprives you of something that is your right as a parent.
Perhaps one day a government will think beyond statistics and balance sheets and realise that parenthood doesn't have a price either for children or for parents themselves. My mother didn't live to see her children grow up but she knew her second career was successful because she spent every minute being a mother while still able to do so. It is sad to think that many will live to a ripe old age without being able to say the same. No government policy should pressurise mothers into abandoning such an important and natural part of their lives.
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