Читать книгу Raising Babies: Should under 3s go to nursery? - Steve Biddulph, Steve Biddulph - Страница 9

Becoming a parent for the first time is an unbelievable feeling. It is an intensely happy time, and yet frightening too. Having this tiny baby in your home, in your arms, you feel terribly responsible and want to give your child the best care that you can. As it dawns on you how utterly dependent a human baby really is, you can easily feel overwhelmed by its needs and demands. Gradually, through the struggles, the sleep deprivation, the altered sense of time, the totally rearranged priorities, you and your child find a rhythm, and you discover you really can do it. You begin to live a very different, subtler, deeper kind of life.

And then you are faced with the decision, like an impending grief – to return to work or stay at home? People are urging you in different directions, but what do you want to do? The first thing is to realize that you really do have a choice. You may be surprised to learn what other people choose. Despite all the financial pressures, and the general feeling that both parents should be in the workforce, from government and employers, over 40 per cent of all UK parents choose that one of them will stay home until their children are of school age. (And these are surprisingly often people who choose to make financial sacrifices, and are not especially well off. Wealthier people have a long tradition of farming out their childcare, which continues to this day.) Of the rest, most ‘primary caregivers’ (by which researchers usually mean mothers) return gradually to part-time work, usually only after their child reaches two or three, and perhaps full-time work as their children get older and better able to cope with out-of-home care. (In around 5 per cent of families, the father stays at home, and the mother returns to full-time work at some time during the first five years.) And finally, it might surprise you to learn that only about 1 in 20 families put their baby straight into full-time, ten-hours-a-day nursery care before the baby is one year old. We will look at these choices and their pros and cons later in the book. For now the main point is – you do have a choice.

To choose wisely you must be informed; so the most important thing you must do, before committing yourself to any long-term plans, is go and find out what a nursery is really like. Forget the brochures, the glowing propaganda, and the cheery reassurances of those who want to persuade themselves that all is fine. For a decision this big you have to see for yourself. Not just a flying visit, or the official guided tour – ‘look at the little toilets, aren’t they cute?’ – but an hour or more of melting into the background, quietly observing what goes on. It is a good idea to go alone the first time (without your baby), then you can ask to go back with your partner for a second look at a different time on a different day. The aim is to get an accurate sense of what it might be like to be a child spending ten hours a day in such a place.