Читать книгу Raising Babies: Should under 3s go to nursery? - Steve Biddulph, Steve Biddulph - Страница 32

The media must accept a lot of the responsibility for shaping the attitudes and beliefs of young parents as to what is normal: ‘You can have it all’ is a very advertiser-friendly editorial line. A recent magazine article on childcare choices featured photos of unusually good-looking mothers with their babies at the beach. One of the women – a fashion model – told the interviewer: ‘I stayed home for the first six months. Then I put him in a nursery full-time and returned to work. I really needed my independence.’ It was a strange choice of words – a mother is not dependent on her child. (Independence is what you get when you leave your parents – not when you leave your child!) Perhaps what she really meant was ‘I really needed my freedom.’ To be free of this demanding little person, to focus on me again. Except, put that way, it doesn’t sound quite so edifying.

Several years ago one of the largest bookstore chains in the UK asked me to write a book on ‘Choosing Childcare – deciding what is right for you’. I was excited about this idea since it was a chance to put across some of the concerns you have been reading about here. I wrote back to them just to be sure. Were they aware that I believed most alternatives to parental care of babies to be seriously second-rate? That I would not recommend nursery care or nannies for children under the age of two? No, it turned out they had not read any of my books, though they had sold millions of them! You could hear the back-pedalling all the way from Australia. They wanted to sell books that made people feel good whatever they chose, and perhaps I wasn’t their man. So, with courtesy and warmth, we parted ways! I guess they found somebody else.