Читать книгу Raising Babies: Should under 3s go to nursery? - Steve Biddulph, Steve Biddulph - Страница 28

It is just after 7 am, and I am taking an early morning run in a town I am visiting for a few days. Turning down a leafy side street to get away from the noise and smell of traffic, I come across a rather posh nursery behind a big fence. A sign announces that it offers ‘early learning opportunities’ for children from birth to five. I pause for breath and study the sign, noticing the hours – 7 am to 7 pm each day. Suddenly I am startled by the sound of tyres skidding on gravel. A large four-wheel drive vehicle mounts the kerb just feet from where I am standing, so close that it makes me jump backwards. It comes to an abrupt stop, rocking on its springs. A frowning, smartly-dressed man leaps out, slams his door, strides around the car and pulls out a bundle from the back seat, from which I can just glimpse a tiny baby’s face peering out. The man barrels through the childproof gate and into the centre. In less than a minute he is out again and the car screeches away. The whole thing is like a cash drop at a bank. Maybe he is having a really bad day. I hope that’s what it is, and not just another morning. In either case though, I would hate to be that baby.

Sliders, by contrast, are parents who only place their children into nursery care gradually, and often much later – perhaps not until they are aged two or more – and usually for much shorter periods of time each week. This is closer to what child development theory would advise. (For more detail of what is appropriate by age and gender of child; see the Appendix at the end of this book.) Slider parents use nursery care cautiously, sometimes reluctantly, but balanced against a wish to get back some of the financial independence and self-esteem that goes with being in the paid workforce. They use nursery more when their child is over three and ready for some social and educational input. Sliders consider their children’s needs and attempt to find a family-friendly balance. Significantly, and thankfully, sliders are a much larger group – they outnumber slammers by about 8:1.

Of course, parents sometimes have to slide faster than they would wish. They are often forced to do so by economic pressures, as well as the loneliness that confronts mothers in commuter suburbs or apartment blocks where there is little other way of participating in the wider world. Since fathers are assumed to be going to work, the problems – and joys – of parenthood are largely left with the mother, though in a significant positive trend, increasing numbers of couples now reverse roles, or even take a year off work in rotation, so that their children can have a loving parent to care for them for at least the first two years of life. This non-sexist arrangement seems to work quite well, but again requires employer flexibility and some willingness by fathers to break old stereotypes.