It hardly seems fair, but one of you had to. I'm sure you almost sobbed at the door as you left home on your first day back, and certainly did not skip or gambol down the road like a newborn lamb. Six months on, many mothers are thinking of returning to work as well. Indeed, some will already have gone back, having handed over daily care of baby to a grandparent, a registered childminder, a Bosnian au pair with bad skin and an ankle bracelet, or the prestigious and expensive Dotheboys Nursery in the next street but one.
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| Working And Taking Care Of Baby |
Their sense of relief will have been compounded by the absolute certainty that their baby is getting the best possible care, learning social skills sooner than most babies and almost painfully happy to see mummy and daddy in the evening, if they can tear themselves away from the office soon enough. Which, to me at least, begs an important question: if you are going to do this to them, why have the fucking babies in the first place?
This is a complicated and emotive issue, about which everyone has fierce opinions. For what it's worth, I do not believe that Woman's Place Is In The Home. It would be nice (although naive) to be able to say that things have moved on a little since anyone genuinely thought this. If a mother prefers her old job to the grind of parenthood, who can blame her? I certainly prefer writing this blog to reading The Gruffalo to my children for the six-hundredth time.
There is also the question of money. In our materialistic and debt-crazed society, many couples need two incomes to avoid penury. And whatever your circumstances, if you can find someone else to look after the baby who gives it all the love and care and attention it needs, and you can afford it, then great. I know a working single mother who shares care of her daughter very successfully with her own mother. And I know middle-class parents who have found wonderful, loving, dedicated nannies who have stuck around for years and given the children everything they needed.
But.
The main priority - the only priority - has to be the needs of the baby. And until they are two years old, what they need more than anything is a mother or a father. It doesn't matter which. If you disregard breastfeeding, there is no identifiable difference between a father's full-time care and a mother's full-time care.
A baby will thrive with either parent as long as that parent looks after the baby properly. And the same applies to a designated carer who loves the baby as much, or nearly as much, as you do.
What a six-month-old baby does not need- and this is just my opinion, so disregard it if you wish - is to be dumped in a nursery with a lot of other babies for eight hours a day, five days a week. They don't need their social skills sharpened; they need love, and they need one-to-one attention. Even with the best of all possible intentions, nursery staff cannot give them these things. By the age of two most babies are ready for a little socializing, but full-time nursery before the age of one is a stark choice for a little baby. Put it this way: there is no way I could do it.
One solution, of course, is that you could become a househusband. Send the missis back to work, settle down for the day with the remote control ... and then give her a hard time when she rolls in late from work smelling faintly of white wine spritzers. To find out more, you can check out Working And Taking Care Of Baby.