5-Minute Time Out: Dr. Penelope Leach
Working parents are in an "impossible situation".
by Ada Calhoun
May 7, 2009
As anyone who's tried to balance a career with a family knows, what we do is practically impossible. That we Americans manage to get it done: raise our children, keep our jobs, is a miracle owing much to our do-or-die spirit, and very little to a culture that
pays lip service to the family while making it extremely hard to take care of one, especially in this kind of economy.
Dr. Penelope Leach, author of a massive new four-year study, the largest in the history of the UK, has now written what may be
the definitive reference book on child care of all kinds — care by the mother, by the father, by grandparents, by nursery schools, and by daycare centers. She doesn't say — and how refreshing is this! — that full-time care by the mother is the gold standard
(although
the press has tried to interpret it that way), and she doesn't scold anyone for choosing childcare outside the home. What she does do is detail the advantages and disadvantages of each form of care, and suggest that each family ought to select the kind
of care that best fits its own unique situation. Her research in a nutshell: "The quality of care matters much more than the kind of care."
That such a straightforward, non-judgmental book should be so revolutionary is a sign of how polarized we've become on matters of working vs. staying home. Babble called Dr. Leach at her home in Cornwall to see if she could help us put the U.S. child care conundrum in perspective. —
Ada Calhoun
Penelope Leach Talking With Mothers About Care in the First Year of Life:
Leach: So you think the very best kind of care for babies in their first year, the ideal, is to be at home with their full-time mothers?
Interview Subject: Yes I do.
Is that ALL babies and mothers?
Well, yes . . . what do you mean?
I mean do you think every mother who's at home full-time can give her baby ideal care?
Maybe some can't. I mean, some mothers get depressed, don't they?
OK, so that ideal care is "at home with their full-time mothers who aren't depressed"?
Yes, I guess so. Aren't depressed or too lonely. I mean it can be tough being at home with a baby if you're on your own and maybe at the top of a high-rise.
...continued on next page!
Your book really starts a whole new conversation about childcare. Unlike what seems like every book out there on the subject, it's not about how women should stay home or go to work!
Well we certainly needed a new conversation, I felt! [Laughs]
I particularly enjoyed the little dialogue box on page 94 (see sidebar), where you start out a conversation with a mother about how she feels full-time at-home mother care is the very best kind of care for all babies and by the end she has a million
qualifiers. So you don't idealize full-time stay-at-home motherhood?
That's right. In effect, that was my motivation for writing the book. In the course of my research, we learned otherwise, and yet you still end up with people seeing mother care as the gold standard and everything else as being lesser, whether that's care
by the father or something else. In my own study we had 1,200 families and there were some pretty awful full-time mothers among them! [Laughs] The truth is, it depends. Who are we talking about? What mother? What family? What child? That's why I don't
think there's a lot to be said for generalizing. People say to me, What kind of care is the best for a baby? And really the best I can do is give certain indicators of high-quality care. It just depends.
It's amazing how rare it is that an expert will say, "It depends."
I came out of this study feeling very strongly that this is one area in life where choice is absolutely vital, and where women in particular have a right to choose. They have to choose. Their ability to choose is what ensures the baby's care will be good,
whether that means staying home or going back to work. What's bad is when the mother wants to go back to work but can't find childcare, or the other way around where she desperately wants to stay home but can't afford to. And I'm afraid that may be more often
the case now because of the economic crash.
It is a very hard time to be a parent of young children.
Unless you are singularly gifted: a highly qualified mother with a loving grandmother living around the corner, a devoted husband wants to be involved, and a very understanding boss who will do anything rather than lose you. Unfortunately, that isn't a large
percentage of us.
About the Author
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Ada Calhoun was Babble's founding editor-in-chief. She has been a theater critic at New York magazine, an AOL News blogger and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. She has written for Time, Salon.com and The New York Times Arts & Leisure. Her first book, Instinctive Parenting, will be published by Simon Spotlight in 2010. Visit adacalhoun.com. |
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