Do you have a full-time job? Do you have children? Do they go to child-care for more than four days a week? Are you able to spend a full 24/7 period with your child only on weekends? Congratulations! You have just won a job to become a Part-time Permanent Parent!
What this means is that your child obviously belongs to you and stays with you and hence you are his permanent guardian and sponsor. However, this also means during the active hours of the day (between 7 am to 7 pm) your child is mostly in the care of a person who is not related to him and is most likely a professional caregiver. Usually this means that the child is bonding with this person and is mostly going to pick up his early learning when it comes to his mental, emotional, physical, verbal and social development from this person/these people. Considering this is a paid service that the professional caregiver is offering to your child, there are chances the person will have a very mechanical, enforced, regimented and disciplined approach to your child’s nurturing. The care given will be holistic and healthy in most cases but will also be impersonal and standardised leaving very little room for customised attention or approach since each child is different.
No matter how advanced and altruistic a childcare service is, it has the humongous task of nurturing your child multiplied by 22 (for children of preschool age for example). Imagine where you can barely handle one or two of your own, a maximum of two-three professional caregivers are saddled with the responsibility of supervising and caring for over 20 such children. How much individual attention can therefore be expected to be given to each child? How much time do you think will be invested in understanding and responding to each child’s needs? And how far do you think the child will be able to solidify his bond with that caregiver given that he will move up a class every year and will be introduced to new people every time this happens?
So who’s side am I on: having been on both sides of the road I now know what it feels like being a parent with a child in daycare and how it is for professional caregivers who take care of my child at daycare. In my studies in Early Childhood Education and Care, I have seen all kinds of parents and teachers and can vouch for the fact that mostly, both parties have the child’s best interests in mind when they keep children in daycare. However, when children as vulnerable as 6 months of age are sent to childcare, it means we are placing them in an environment that is not natural to their upbringing. It is an environment where at least 4 others of their age will be vying for the caregiver’s attention and children can be a dollop of disaster waiting to happen if neglected for even a minute. I empathise with every caregiver who is therefore responsible for children in daycare. Knowing that they can never take the place of a parent in the child’s eyes, they still have to relentlessly pursue the role of being a parent/teacher/caregiver in the child’s life, for a significant period of time knowing that the child may never recognise them when they grow up. It is a job which can influence and change a child’s personality for the better or worse but one that is barely acknowledged by those who have built this system or the ones who benefit from it. So pardon them if this is a thankless job they are clinically pursuing most of the time.
On the other hand, parents and especially mothers these days are bound by their educational qualifications, professional aspirations, economic circumstances, social expectations and a liberal government who wants more taxpayers to go out there and do a job. We women take it upon ourselves to balance the heavy weight of running the house as well as the workplace, uncompromising as both may be in their demands of us. Most of us resent the role but also know there is no other way of doing it. Feminists would have us believe that we are not justifying our identity if we do not share the world stage with men and conventional wisdom will not leave us in peace until we ensure our children’s comfort and wellbeing. So I am not here to judge a parent who is trying to pull all the strings at the same time and deflate her efforts at being worthless if she is not a completely devoted mother. My earlier barrage of questions however is just a way to make us realise that this is not an ideal situation that we have carved for our children and they are most likely the innocent recipients of this modernised urban caregiving system.
Most children from the time they are born will always want to spend more time with their parents than in childcare and the best place where a child from 6 months to 2 years belongs is home. A childcare service simply tries to be the best alternative to home but can never replace it. A woman who therefore chooses to stay at home and look after her child is simply fulfilling her responsibility as a parent because she consciously chose that role for herself. There should be no guilt or demand made to force herself to go out and work. She should have the freedom of choice to decide which role she prefers to take on without being judged. As an educated woman who has been a working professional for the best years of her life, I am often questioned for taking a three-year break from it all to take care of my child. This came from well-meaning relatives, neighbours, friends, ex-colleagues and even those who interviewed me for a job after I wished to get back.
In all of this, we should not forget that the child we bring in to this world is not a puppet and deserves more respect and worth than what a part-time, permanent parent can afford. We are already robbing that child of his time at home and with us when we send him to childcare. Being brought up in a home where a mother figure was a constant and the rock around which the whole house functioned smoothly has made me realise how important it is to give a wholesome, personalised and unconditionally supported upbringing to one’s child. When we choose to not give a child that time and support, we already ‘compromise’ his upbringing and question his worth. This puts additional responsibility on us to shine as the permanent parent figure in whatever little time we spend with the child. So don’t hesitate to ask yourself, “Am I doing enough for the child simply by spending heaps of money on him and providing him all the material comforts of the world- read expensive holidays, a shop’s load of toys and splurging on Sunday treats, clothes and extra-curricular classes? How often do I hold the child and comfort him? How often do I sit and enjoy some interactive activity with him? How many times do I have a conversation with him, yes, even when he is an infant? How many times do I put him to sleep holding his hand long after he has closed his eyes? How many times do I motivate him to get up and try again when he fails at something? How often do I sit or lie down in the grass at the park with him and look up at the sky?”
As a parent, whether full-time or part-time, we owe our children much more because they deserve it and because we chose to bring them in to this world.
If your child puts his arms around you to say,
“I love you, you make my day,”
toast yourself with a glass of wine
because it means, you are doing just fine.
