I have been cast as a warrior in the Mummy Wars.
Last weekend The Times claimed that I believe “mothers of toddlers should avoid working outside the home” and that “children should not be left in the care of others for long periods”. Whether a deliberate deceit or just a case of incompetence, this completely misrepresents everything I have ever written or said.
In fact, in the introduction to my new book I call for a truce between mothers in this destructive conflict. Career women with small children are prone to view those who don’t work as lazy, indulgent or spoiling their children. At-home mothers sometimes portray workers as cold, neglectful or selfish. While it’s wholly understandable that both groups feel threatened by and critical of each other, the reality is that neither is better or worse. They are just different.
From a scientific standpoint, the same is true for the child. Whether it thrives depends on what kind of person the woman is and what kind of substitute care is provided if the mother works. It’s as groundless to criticise either decision as to maintain that line dancing is a “better” hobby than pub quizzes.
Part of the problem is that there is widespread misinformation regarding the actual statistics. The vast majority of mothers with small children who work do so part-time, usually for less than 20 hours a week. What proportion of under-threes would you guess have a mother who works full-time? It’s 18%, of whom half went to university (an unrepresentatively large proportion compared with the general female population of that age group). On their third birthday, half of under-threes have a mother with no paid employment.
Most people are surprised by these facts. Since female journalists, politicians and other opinion formers tend also to be working mothers, they often either ignore or deliberately obscure them. Unfortunately, the last government spent 13 years attempting to mislead us into imagining that most mothers of under-threes work. It was part of their plan to force as many women with small children as possible back into employment. But while Cherie Blair or Harriet Harman may be workaholics, this was flying in the face of most mothers’ wishes. The vast majority would prefer to work less.
A sample of 3,000 mothers were asked whether they would rather: work more hours if they had access to good-quality childcare; reduce their working hours and spend more time with the children; or give up their jobs to care for the kids. Half said they would like to stop work altogether; two-thirds that they’d prefer to work less or not at all. Of those in full-time employment, three-quarters said they would like to work less.
These facts suggest that mothers, especially when their children are small, either prefer part-time work or none at all. But that does not mean there is anything wrong with the significant number who want to work full-time.
In researching my new book about raising young children, I studied the scientific evidence and interviewed some 50 mothers, before concluding that what is desperately needed is for both commentators and mothers themselves to lay off mud-slinging. To that end, How Not To F*** Them Up offers a way for individual women to define who they are, so they can use that knowledge both to ensure they meet their children’s needs, and to organise their lives in such a way that they are truly comfortable in their skin. I long for a generation of mothers who feel “in the zone”, at ease with their arrangements and enjoying their lives – whatever the choices about work.
I have identified three main approaches to mothering (although, of course, typologies rarely precisely fit any individual case, and none of these approaches is “right”: it depends what kind of woman you are).
About one-quarter of mothers are what I call “huggers”. Often doing no paid work, they adapt to the baby and are most likely to have it sleeping in their bed, feeding on demand. Their greatest difficulty tends to be in letting the baby become independent as it gets older.
By contrast, another one-quarter are “organisers”. Most of them have paid jobs and see babies as creatures who need help curbing their untrained bodies and minds. Since babies are born without a routine, they reason, one needs to be taught. The baby must learn to adapt to the adult world. They may not see the baby as able to communicate much, so often find caring for it dull in the early months. This can make that period tricky, with depression liable to stalk them until they return to work.
The third category, the “flexi-mums”, make up half of mothers. They mix and match, duck and weave, whatever works. They may adopt some of the huggers’ methods, such as building a feeding routine around a baby’s hunger, but if unsuccessful, they may decide to change the plan and get more organised. The risk for them is of becoming too erratic.
None of these approaches is best. Each mother needs to understand what truly works for her – and her partner, if there is one. Ah yes, you were wondering when I was going to mention men. It is my deepest regret that we men do not yet feel anything like as responsible for ensuring the needs of our under-threes get met. Alas, during the working week only a small minority of us care even part-time for babies. For that reason, most of what I have to say applies to women, though I wish it were not so.
If both parents work, it is essential to find someone else to supply the responsive love that all under-threes need when mothers are not there, and it should be one-on-one care. It is a myth that babies or toddlers want other children’s company or that they need any education from teachers. Even as toddlers, they play in parallel rather than together. Other children are a menace: on average, an 18-month-old grabs another child’s toy six times every 45 minutes. First and foremost, they need close supervision from someone who loves them.
The obvious candidate is your partner and failing that, a friend or relative. (This is indeed the largest category that mothers tend to use.) After that come minders and nannies. Only about 10% use group daycare.
Being cared for in groups, even with a ratio of one carer to three children, is not ideal for under-threes. While it may do no harm to about two-thirds of children, there is undeniable evidence that the experience is highly stressful and can be harmful. Levels of the hormone cortisol – which is secreted when we feel threatened – double after being in group daycare for just one hour, and remain significantly heightened even three months later. At age 15, the amount of time spent in daycare is still reflected in cortisol levels.
There seems little doubt that under-threes feel threatened and in danger when in nurseries – the lack of one-to-one adult care, the feeling of threat from other children, the high staff turnover meaning there is no adult who understands their unique needs.
Since high cortisol is associated with all manner of problems, from violence to depression, this is bad news. On the other hand, under-threes of a depressed mother who has stayed at home are just as likely to have high cortisol levels. Where child wellbeing is concerned, it is irresponsible to make blanket statements of the “working mother bad, at-home mother good” variety.
At-home mothers (often “organisers”) who become depressed without workplace stimulation and long for the independence and salary of their job, should go back to work. The crucial thing is that they look long and hard for the right substitute care: someone who is relaxed, calm and above all loving, rather than someone who is keen to educate and “stimulate”, constantly rushing off to museums or looking for “educational” toys.
Equally, mothers who stay at home need to make sure they seek out the right support for themselves, to reduce the risk of getting depressed. That could be from partners and friends, or through NCT classes, or from organisations such as Homestart UK, which aim to help to prevent isolation.
Interestingly, mothers who work full-time are most prone to depression, while at-home mothers are slightly more at risk than part-timers. For many modern mothers, the role’s isolation and lack of status make paid work attractive, although the vast majority do not want to do it for many hours a week, for fear of being run off their feet.
While interviewing mothers, I was enormously impressed by their commitment to doing the best by their children. Yet only a handful were truly comfortable in their skins. This had nothing to do with whether they worked.
For instance, Carrie had only ever wanted to be a mum. Whereas the majority of modern women were raised to be Bridget Jones, the muddled heroine of Helen Fielding’s hilarious book, Carrie never desired a career. In common with one-third of women, she sees work as a job for money, not a means of professional progression. When she met the right man and had four children, she experienced no conflict between a “worker” and “mummy” identity. She did not feel remotely threatened by high-flying contemporaries – if they wanted to work, “good luck to them” was her attitude.
Equally comfortable in her skin, yet working full-time, was mother-of-three Jess. She managed to be responsively loving, taking plenty of time out for each child, yet because she had been to a high-achieving school and university, she also felt a strong desire to continue her career as a commercial lawyer: not for the money (some 60% of working mothers of under-threes aren’t motivated by salary), but for job satisfaction. She also found a fantastic nanny, who she believes did just as good a job, if not better, than her.
Regrettably, these women were very much the exception. The great majority were wrestling with problems which made it hard for them to be really satisfied by their arrangements. Some had partners who opposed their mothering approach (one “hugger” was constantly barracked for “spoiling” her children). Others had partners who did a bunk when the baby was small, leaving them penniless and distraught. Others were torn apart by a yearning to enjoy their time with their children on the one hand, and the lure of a hard-won career on the other.
I hope my new book will enable women to avoid getting into such fixes. Its predecessor, They F*** You Up, in 2002, aimed to help adults understand how their early lives had affected them. Evidence from the Human Genome Project has strongly supported the view I took then, that it is early care, not genes, which explains why we are so different from our siblings. In fact, the white flag has now been all but raised by the genetic determinists. The title of a recent editorial of one of their bibles, the Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry, read: “It’s the environment, stupid!”
How Not To F*** Them Up also seeks to help parents do a better job by understanding themselves. It starts by analysing what your education and career have meant to you. If your job really reflects your deepest desires, then allow it a place in your life and do not feel guilty; get an adequate substitute. If babies ring your bell and you worked only for the money or to please ambitious parents, again, feel no guilt in choosing to be at home. In short, sort out the way your identities of worker and mother are best served, and ignore all the rubbish generated by media, relatives or friends.
When it comes to meeting the needs of under-threes, getting your head straight that is most important. Love will do the rest.
It’s a tragedy that our society does not start making us aware younger of the conflict that parenting will bring. Both boys and girls need to be fully wrestling with the issues in their teens. Because of the biological realities, it will always be necessary for women to get their heads around it earlier than men.
But the real revolution will come on the day that fathers feel every bit as much as mothers that it is their responsibility to ensure that the needs of under-threes are properly met.
Oliver James is a clinical child psychologist and author of Britain On The Couch and Affluenza. His new book, How Not To F*** Them Up, is published by Vermilion, £17.99
