What Women Really Want
There has been uproar about a book that Christina Odone has recently written called “What Women Really Want”. I haven’t read it-but from media reports her argument is that the majority of mothers, particularly those with children under 5, do not want to work at all. Therfore she says this is where government should be concentrating its efforts, not on incentives such as tax credits and “wrap-around schools” which are government incentives for women to go out to work.
One of the reactions has been to say that she is wrong-women are saying they would prefer to stay at home due to the inadequacies of good, affordable social childcare. Therefore what women are expressing is a necessity, not a choice.
I am not sure-and would like to know what others think. I think it may be really what women want. The key factors here are work is not seen as the site of social usefulness any more (men equally do not want to work full time any more). Social childcare is more and more problematised-the latest story of the nursery nurse abusing children is another plank in that unease. I do think that social policy and every book and article that you read emphasises the importance of the early years on the development of the child and that does have a strong impact on how women perceive themselves and their social role.
So I think the counterposition of Odone’s argument with that of -it’s a problem of proper social childcare is in itself problematic.
I think you’re right, Jane – it’s almost as if the debate has gone from ‘how we have it all’ to whether we really want any of it! Certainly the positive, public role of work has been massively downplayed in recent years. Tho’ part of it’s about the grass always being greener – I reckon a lot of working mums say they want to be at home, but if they were they’d be dying to get to work again.
But I certainly think that, while the argument for affordable childcare is as important as ever, it is also important to defend those mums who DO want to stay at home in the early years. I got so cross about that proposal to give 2-year-olds 10 hours ‘free’ nursery care a week – and the idea that this is childcare! It’s not – nobody can work with that kind of provision – it’s about getting kids out of the home because parents aren’t trusted to implement the EYFS (toddlers’ curriculum).
I think as well as work being de-valued and the further erosion of trust in nurseries following the new panic about female child abusers, we also have the general anxiety that exists around the Early Years which has been further promoted through the EYFS. It seems to me that the flip-side of Jennie’s point that parents can’t be trusted to implement this very detailed and proscriptive curriculum, is that parents are much more anxious about whether nurseries, or indeed grandparents and others are up to the job when the early years are seen as so important to a childs overall development and life chances. In these circumstances, the guilt (stemming from anxiety) that many mothers feel when they leave their children with someone else gets ramped up another level and it just seems a lot easier to stay at home.
It’s also worth considering what ’stay at home’ motherhood becomes if mothers feel under pressure to ‘professionalise’ their parenting by taking their babies to classes, stimulating them at home, feeding them an optimal weaning diet etc and also are very worried about many aspects of babycare. For most women, I would have thought that the attraction of having more time at home with young children is that it is leisure time rather than work! Despite the fact that child-rearing can be seen as ‘domestic labour’, with the decrease in the time necessary to run a home (washing machines, jars of pesto etc) this could give us a lot more time, theoretically, to enjoy raising our children however we fit, of course this technological advance has coincided with women rearing babies in a semi-professionalised, anxious climate, but also while worrying about their own ‘loser’ identity as a stay-at-home mum.