Is the Nanny State telling tales?

[doversoul1]

Dear Simon

• Being a housewife is demeaning to intelligent women That’s why it is still left to women.
• You may ask a few young professional women what will happen if they leave their jobs now for a few years.
• Giving up work is nothing to do with doing without a big car, a plasma TV and holidays on the Algarve. It is to become nobody. A mother is nobody to all but to her children. If that’s good enough for you for the rest of your life, fine. Remember, you would be nobody to yourself, too.
• Your mother’s generation had no choice unless she could afford to pay for a nanny and a housekeeper. And most women were and are wise enough not to say to their children ‘I hated it’
• ‘I have given it [to local community and charities]’. Yes, you would have done but only on condition that your work would be waiting for you whenever you became free to go back.

Sorry, Simon. This is 2012. Women have learned. I must say though I didn’t realise just how far out of things you were.

[Anna]

Young children never analyse to that extent. I got through the nursery rhyme stage thinking of them as nice songs to sing, learning about basic language in the process.

I can recall when much later the very first programmes were broadcast explaining the history of them and what the content meant. This no doubt was believed to be a step forwards in establishing the truths but in many ways it was a backwards step.

What it did was to deny that any meaning should have been allowed to evolve into the benign. It was also an adult academic territorialism into the unique domain of childhood, perhaps largely brought on deep down by a jealousy in the serious minded of having lost their own innocence

Exactly, Lat. There has been so much research into the true meaning of nursery rhymes, for example Goosey Goosey Gander supposedly is about prostitution in Georgian times or alternatively harks back to the Civil War and is anti-Catholic! (just two theories from the academics) but it could just be a silly rhyme couldn't it? Lavender Blue, according to Lucie Skeaping, is the most bawdy song ever. Does it matter, people teach these rhymes to their children, some of which have actions like Pat-a-Cake, because children love them, they are simple to remember and children are interacting and engaging with whoever teaches them. If they have hidden meanings, so what? Does that mean they should not be taught?

I know very young children just plonked for hours in front of the television, to keep them quiet, who get their own tv in the bedroom and then a computer or laptop from age of 7. No interaction whatsoever. Far better they learn Jack & Jill (morally dubious) or Little Jack Horner (political), or Baa Baa Black Sheep (tax evasion) All these rhymes encourage language development and children love them. As to the Ma or Pa being at home debate, it matters not, nor does it matter if same sex couple are bringing up a child, what is important is that someone is providing that child with stimulation and encouragement. Without reading (and how sad is it that some 11 year olds are progressing to secondary school with a reading age of a 6 year old) you can never progress. Some parents seem to just hand over complete responsibility for this to the teachers. No, it's not the teachers' job. I am one of four children and we could all read up to a cetain level before we went to school, because our Mum taught us.

Sorry, I do get a bit worked up about illiteracy (which seems to be increasing annually) and paucity of vocabulary in young people. Children are surely getting thicker but it's that parenting is getting worse?
Edit: Was typing this and posted before seeing doversoul's message above. Sorry dover, I disagree totally with what you say. How can being at home and looking after, nuturing and educating your children be demeaning? If women decide to have a child then they have a responsibility to that child don't they?

[Mary Chambers]

1. The stories that we refer to as fairy tales are for the most part folk tales that weren't intended for children in the first place, and the versions we read to our children are simplified and made less frightening than the 'original' versions. I don't think children mind being a little frightened by a story, as long as they are safe themselves. I was never worried by them when I was small, because I knew they were fiction, but I agree some illustrations can linger in the mind. I was rather haunted by some illustrations of 'Sinbad the Sailor' in an old edition that had belonged to my mother. Then when I was older, perhaps 12, I read a translation of the tales of the Brothers Grimm, and they were very different from the expurgated versions I'd known up to then. There were a lot of very terrible details of cruelty in them, and they did upset me. I also read Hans Andersen at that age, and loved most of them, though The Red Shoes is pretty nasty.

2. I stayed at home with my children, and I didn't spend any more time cooking and cleaning than I did when I was at work. I was highly educated (well, fairly!) and was not bored at all. I wanted to have the energy to look after my children properly, and not to be preoccupied with myself and my job all the time. It's a myth that people who work are inevitably more interesting - they only think they are. Being at home didn't stop me reading, or learning, or knowing about the world. In fact, I think working is often a lot more limiting and stultifying, unless you are lucky enough to have a stimulating job you really love. Maybe some people can be a mother and do a paid job well - I didn't feel I could have done. Although I'm one of the older ones here (I'm almost 72), it wasn't assumed when I was in my thirties that mothers would stay at home, and I only knew of one other educated woman of my generation who did. I have no regrets at all. I do not feel or behave like a 'nobody', and if some other people think I am, too bad!

I would add that I don't mind whether it's the mother or the father who stays with the children - I just think someone should. My husband and I discussed this, and we decided that because he earned a bit more than I did, and enjoyed his job more, he should be the one to earn the money.

I expect to be shouted down

[Mary Chambers]

Edit: Was typing this and posted before seeing doversoul's message above. Sorry dover, I disagree totally with what you say. How can being at home and looking after, nuturing and educating your children be demeaning? If women decide to have a child then they have a responsibility to that child don't they?

Quite.

[MrGongGong]

Sadly the "wonderful" boom in the cost of housing has made it more or less impossible for families to survive on a single income (unless , of course, you have an extremely well paid job !)........... some of us have opted to live in cheaper locations which usually entails huge amounts of travel to and from work. Friends I have in London who do similar work to myself (freelance musicians mostly ) would find it simply impossible to afford anywhere to live bigger than a shoebox if they had to survive on a single income.........

[Simon]

[LIST][*]Being a housewife is demeaning to intelligent women That’s why it is still left to women.

If ever we needed a "doh" emoticon, this is one of those times!

Congratulations on the most perverse, insulting and frankly ridicuous post of the year so far. I wonder what those millions of women who love and value their role as homemakers - and who are loved and valued for such a vital role - would have to say about it.

I've a neighbour I know well. I don' t think she's unintelligent. She had two children and didn't work outside the home for seven years so that she could be with them whilst they were small. I must ask her if she felt that it was demeaning...

[Mary Chambers]

Yes, Mr GG, that is true. Yet I'm still puzzled by the fact that my daughter-in-law in London works three days a week and pays a nanny to look after my grandson. Why is looking after him considered to be a job if the nanny does it, but not if my daughter-in-law does it?

[Simon]

• ... A mother is nobody to all but to her children.
  

This is simply untrue - but she is indeed usually the most important thing to them above all else. And how wonderful that it is so. What more richly satisfying thing than to be the focus of future lives, and to love and be loved by them. (And what a responsibility, indeed.)

[Anna]

Sorry, Simon. This is 2012. Women have learned.

What, exactly, have women learned? That they can have children but not care a tinkers' cuss about them, and their upbringing?
I shall now be in trouble for using the word 'tinkers' But, why bother to have children, go back to work, and spend all your salary on a Nanny? I shall never, ever, agree with Mary about Britten and Pears, but I do agree with her on this issue. If you have children, then you take responsibility, tough. There is a thing called contraception.

[MrGongGong]

I shall never, ever, agree with Mary about Britten and Pears,

?
I always thought that they were a lovely couple

[Lateralthinking1]

I accept that women can succeed in business now more often. However, I have always seen the political distinction between women being "kept" in the house and being "allowed" to go out to work as bogus. The latter was supposed to be one of the great transformations in the 1960s. To me, it always seems a bit "Terry and June". Women worked during the war. We would have lost it had they not done so. I can't think of one woman in my family in the 20th Century who didn't go out to work on leaving school.

Just as with men, many of their jobs were hardly liberating. If making cardboard boxes or being a maid for the well-off or carrying sacks of potatoes from markets is the promised land, I don't recognise it. Some brighter ones went into low level banking etc in the 1950s and hated it. Some did so and loved it. Some enjoyed the company and some would rather have been at home. A mixed picture then with the more educated outside our family being in teaching or politics or charity work. Basically, some women chose work. Many went into it because one salary was insufficient for survival. Most did so because it was the natural expectation.

My own mother was typical. She worked from the age of 14 to 32. She then worked part time when I was born - book keeping, shop work, lifting the elderly in and out of baths, leaflet distribution, painting tiny brooches in the living room - and ensured that she was there when I was at home until the age of 11. She then worked full time again. We didn't have holidays. We didn't have a car. We were among the last to get a colour television. Without it, we would have been sunk. Probably on the streets.

Friends with fathers in management had mothers who stayed at home. They loved their lives, were very lady like, mainly reclined, had coffee mornings and a cleaner and only served up frozen food. They were always very welcoming to me, lovely people who even took me on holiday. That made all the difference between resentment and just accepting they were different. Horses for courses, I felt, though the nastiness in the modern wealthy leaves very different feelings. What works for each individual or family essentially, preferably without a history that has so frequently been rewritten that the lies have become accepted truths.

[amateur51]

I feel that the issue about whether or not stay-at-home motherhood is demeaning hinges on choice. If you want to have the child and you have a partner who is prepared to go out to work to earn enough to keep all three of you until child is old enough to go to school, then it is clearly not demeaning. It is a choice.

However if you have to stay at home because your partner earns a very little money (or is unemployed, or doesn’t live with you) and you haven’t the funds to enable you to get child-care, then it may be very frustrating and lonely - demeaning in other words.

And this is the lot of many mothers. The previous Labour government worked hard to support mothers who wanted or needed to go back to work, with childcare options, tax credits etc. Staying at home was not compulsory and there was a choice in it.

What drives me bonkers is people who criticize women who have children and who use the benefits system to the max and do not go to work. Isn’t that just what we expect our MPs to do? Claim the justifiable max but don’t step over the line of acceptability. If more men were forced into this position I think we’d find a rapid change in the circumstances at all levels.

And remember - women haven’t had the vote in UK for 100 years yet!

[scottycelt]

There are plenty of men who have to do demeaning jobs to support the family. Many women have tough lives, some have relatively easy lives, just like men.

If I were a woman, one of the most 'demeaning' things would be men constantly purporting to speak on my behalf as if I didn't have the ability to do so myself ...

As for women not yet having the vote less than a century ago, is it not also true that young male conscripts were forced to fight wars in which they were unlikely to survive or shot for desertion in the same time frame?

Not many life-choices there either ...

[amateur51]

There are plenty of men who have to do demeaning jobs to support the family. Many women have tough lives, some have relatively easy lives, just like men.

If I were a woman, one of the most 'demeaning' things would be men constantly purporting to speak on my behalf as if I didn't have the ability to do so myself ...

As for women not yet having the vote less than a century ago, is it not also true that young male conscripts were forced to fight wars in which they were unlikely to survive or shot for desertion in the same time frame?

Not many life-choices there either ...

Oh dear, scotty! That some men have demeaning jobs is not the topic under discussion.

Are you telling me that because of my dangly bits I am not allowed to comment on the subject in hand?

Keep to the point, old chap

[doversoul1]

Mary
You sound as if you are one of those lucky women (no, I am not being sarcastic). A lot of women find that looking after babies slows their brains down, stop them from reading anything worth reading and have no time for learning (you may say they don’t try hard enough but I think a lot of them do) A lot of women also find that no matter how understanding their husbands or partners are, being financially dependent is not a very comfortable position to be in.

Anna
Looking after, nurturing and educating your children is fine but children do grow up and then what? That’s what women have learned. Once you leave your jobs, that’s it. Nobody is interested in employing a woman in her 40s who has not worked for years other than for routine, manual and part-time jobs. Even those jobs tend to go to young girls. If she doesn’t want to or can afford not to work, that’s different. But you wouldn’t want to be a middle aged (and then old) Snow White waiting for your dwarf to come home for the rest of your life?

Simon

those millions of women who love and value their role as homemakers - and who are loved and valued for such a vital role

A wonderful world of Ladybird Books. You can still dream a dream, and just as well, let them go on dreaming.

Chris
I do apologise for this diversion. I shan’t post any more on the subject of women.

As for fairy tales, I can’t understand why British Folk tales are not more popular. The great Opie Collection, the ‘New Versions’ of British Folk Tales by Kevin Crossly-Holland or Alan Garner’s Book of British Fairy Tales, and of course there is the definitive; Joseph Jacobs.