On 3/27/12 5:39 PM March 27, 2012, John Sundman wrote:
1) I remain grateful for having been invited to this list. I enjoy it very much, even if many of the references and allusions elude me.
This is true for me as well.
2) About children and day & night care: I, a parent with 75+ parent-years' experience, am very reluctant to judge how other presumably well-meaning people handle their parental responsibilities.
I gulped when I read the “75+ parent-years' experience” and then did my own arithmetic.
I, a parent with 100+ parent-years' experience, am not interested in judging how other parents handle their responsibilities. I do, however, feel sad for people who are so enmeshed in the rat race that they are largely separated from their families.
My grandparents' generation was raised on farms in an extended family where they worked together and cared for one another. As a young adult, I observed that, even in old age, my grandparents were closer to their siblings than I had ever been or would ever be with mine. My parents' generation and mine had been raised in a more industrial model, with nursery schools and babysitters, and early compulsory education. As a result, we were more independent and more isolated than previous generations.
My grandparents had a connection with and support from their siblings that served them throughout their lives. My grandmother and my grandfather's sister, now both in their 90s, still have that connection.
When our eldest was born, it would have been quite natural for us to put her in daycare full-time and continue our hectic high-tech careers. What we chose to do instead was to negotiate schedules where we could reduce our hours somewhat and work mostly from home.
When it came time for the oldest to start school, she had a baby sister. Again, it would have been natural to send the eldest to a carefully-chosen school. I realized that, if we did that, the sisters would likely never be very close. Their lives would be worlds apart. So we chose to start homeschooling, and that choice threw us into an entirely different way of being.
We were fortunate to have the options that we had. A lot of people don't have that kind of flexibility in their work, and lack the job skill set to create the kinds of options that we created for ourselves.
The parents in this article, and all parents, do the best they can. I often wonder, however, whether parents think about the long-term effects of some of the most basic choices they make.
So much of the connection between children and parents comes from spending time together. It comes from sharing mundane chores like feedings and nappy changes and cooking and cleaning and laundry. It comes from negotiating ways to get through all the things we need to do to keep our lives running. It comes from a shared history, shared memories, family jokes, certain ways of doing things.
If parents work 12 hours a day, it is no wonder they balk at the thought of coming home and cajoling a cranky child through the end-of-day chores. They want some time to unwind, to enjoy themselves, to take advantage of the fruits of their hard work. So better, perhaps, to have the baby in night care and let someone else handle the end-of-day crankiness.
Childhood, however, is fleeting. Before you know it, that little bundle is taller than you are, wearing enormous shoes, and eager to be off on his own independent life. Those childhood years will not come again, and whatever you missed (the first step, the first time they sounded out the words in a picture book, helping them with their algebra, companionable times cooking together and cleaning the kitchen) is gone for good. The foundation of your relationship with your children is laid during their childhoods, and there are no backsies.
I don't think that it was worth it to trade in the extended family for industrial society. I think it has led to generations of people who are far more stressed and depressed than previous generations. I think that people traded away something that is essential to human happiness so they could have more stuff. It was a bad deal for them, but it so quickly became the norm that it's hard, now, to move in the other direction.
-- Heather Madrone (heat...@madrone.com) http://www.sunsplinter.blogspot.com Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. - Martin Luther King
