Belief - 'I can't afford not to work.'
Two important books I would like to direct blog readers to are written by Sue Gerhardt.
These books are not diatribes against day nursery, rather they offer deep insights into what infants need in the first years of their lives in order to grow up with the best chance of mental and relationship health and they largely leave it to the reader to work out that, if you understand what infants really need, you will realise that day nursery is the antithesis to providing for those needs. Actually Sue Gerhardt does make some careful reference to day nursery specifically, but with the usual caution because it is such an inflammatory opinion to hold in the eyes of society at large.
Sue Gerhardt - ‘Why love matters’ - Sue Gerhardt explains our current understanding of how the brain develops including prior to birth. As infants, we are effectively a blank canvas in order that we can adjust according to our context - we can develop ways of thinking, feeling and being that best support our survival. This can be regarded as beneficial if we only think in terms of keeping our bodies alive, but in a developed society, we should surely be aiming for better than that. If our brains become programmed for survival in a context without love and emotional safety, we will struggle to engage in fulfilling relationships as older children and adults later on. We learn to give love and empathy by receiving it ourselves in our early years. When we don’t receive sufficient love as infants, we are less able to offer it to our children in their turn and the cycles of trauma and the effect of society becoming increasingly populated by traumatised adults become more difficult to break.
The first part of the book is quite sciencey and I would suggest that if this part is not hooking the reader in, then go straight to part two and accept that the research is there to support the content of part 2. The book is far too important to put it down before reaching the key arguments.
This would be a hard read for parents who are determined that day nursery is the right thing for them and their children - however, we have a choice about whether we have children or not and if giving them the best start is not really compatible with how we want to live our lives then maybe we should be selfless enough to make a choice not to have them. If parents have made the choice to have children in spite of not really having life room for them, having an understanding of what is happening for them in reality can help parents to begin work on compensating for earlier ill informed decisions. Unfortunately, most parents go ahead and have children under the illusion that the now ‘normal’ practice of putting them in day nursery is harmless. No parents go ahead and have children with an intention to do them harm.
Sue Gerhardt also wrote ‘The Selfish Society’ in which she explains fantastically well how we have arrived where we are. She unpacks the central tenet of the book which is that we gave up on love and decided to make money instead - that statement sums it up in a nutshell.
When I was reading some reviews on Amazon for ‘Why Love Matters,’ I noticed that some reviewers were offering understanding to parents who ‘have to’ put their children in day nursery for economic reasons - and also in support offered hope that policy makers etc will eventually come up with policies that support mothers to spend as much time with their children as they would like. Reviewers find it is an important book for child care professionals and policy makers to read as they are the ones who can most effect change. I agree that it is essential reading for professionals, especially as there is extremely limited attention paid to attachment in the training of most professionals who really should have a responsibility to understand it, but I also argue that both books are essential reading for parents. Parents have ‘here and now’ ability to make choices for their own children. It is about priorities and the reality is we live in a society where stuff, individualism and success as measured by career achievement and money is prioritised at the expense of human and social welfare.
We should take care in making the suggestion that parents cannot afford the luxury of choosing to stay with their infants for their formative years - it is a lifestyle choice - because the poorest in our society don’t have the luxury of choosing work over child care. The poorest don’t have the means to put their infants in day nursery while they work.
Of course work isn’t only about making money - mothers want to feel stimulated and fulfilled too and they should have the right to engage in work that gives them that - perhaps a new wave of feminism could influence policy changes that reflect the absolute necessity that infants spend their earliest years with their parents. Parents need to be supported to have sufficient understanding of the importance of this role to enable them to feel fulfilled by it, and they need to have the opportunity to not lose their careers by taking 2 to 3 years out at a crucial time for their children.
Putting infants in day nursery sends the message that they are less important than their parent’s jobs. This message combined with the experience of being without the safety of their primary carer for many of their waking hours can lead to later low self esteem, social anxiety, general anxiety, depression, behaviour problems including ADHD eating disorders and other ‘neurodiversity’ diagnoses.
My response to the oft cited narrative, “I can’t afford not to work” is can we afford not to adjust our priorities for a relatively short period in our lives. First, is all cost measured in economic terms? I posit that our children are paying a very high emotional price for their parents’ choice to work and opt for cheap childcare. Second, the economic cost to society in mental health care, educational support for children with mental health diagnoses, sickness days from work, violence, criminal behaviour and so on is vast.
It is never too late to make change though. Change requires honesty and courage. We are all products of our early experiences, some positive and some negative. As parents we do the best we can with what we have. A parent who has no regrets is probably not being quite honest with themselves. If we are prepared to acknowledge and accept that we didn’t get it all right, we can really start to repair ourselves and in turn, our children. We can break cycles of emotional harm or trauma and do better for the next generation.