This morning I had to leave my son at holiday day-care, screaming his
head off.
He’s never been too keen on holiday club, for reasons he hasn’t been
able to clearly express to us. This morning, he’d grumbled a bit on leaving home, but then seemed to be making a real effort to put a brave face on
it, saying ‘don’t worry, I’ll be fine’ to his obviously deeply- concerned baby
sister, and even yelling “yay!’ as we pulled into the car park. But as we
entered the building, something changed. His face grew serious, then crumpled, then as I moved to go he simply dissolved into tears.
Anything I said only made him worse, so in the end I was obliged to leave him assaulting the ears of the long-suffering, council-employed teenage
baby-sitters, and scurry away to leave my daughter with the nanny, then scurry
even faster to get to work on time.
On the tram I wrestled with my demons, tears in my own eyes. I called my
husband, who really didn’t appreciate me trying to off-load some of the
emotional guilt in his direction: his take on the situation was along the lines
of ‘life’s not all good, he’s got to learn to take the rough with the smooth’,
and even better, ‘he must have been picking up negative vibes from you.’ No
consolation there then.
So what to do? I felt as if I had to take action somehow. I finally realised that my reflex was to try to use that verbo-emotional sticking plaster of the
digital age: the text message. I wanted to text my son, to say
everything would be okay, chin up, mummy was thinking about him, mummy would
come to get him as soon as she possibly could. As I sometimes do with my
husband, sending him little “courage, I love you” messages full of xxs if I
know he a tough day ahead, or just to briefly alleviate the boredom of
commuting. A little good deed done, or a bad one undone, and so easily. A
little text would alleviate my guilt and make everything okay.
I realise that even once my son is old enough to read, and old enough to have a
phone of his own (heaven forbid), such messages would be of dubious benefit. Emotional
sound-bites from a stressed-out mummy would not, I suspect, do much more than
add guilt and anxiety to his side of the equation. Then, as now, would it
really help him if I try to explain that mummy simply has to work, and that
my holidays are a week shorter than his? Would it help if I tried to explain that
we made choices? That we
decided we needed a house that was big enough for him and his sister to have
their own bedrooms, with a little bit of garden for him to expend his copious amounts
of energy, to run and shout without disturbing the neighbours, far enough away
from the city to allow him fresh air and garden fruit, and necessitate use of at
least one car on a daily basis? Would it be possible to explain that, even if
we did live in a tiny 2-bed suburban flat, and avoid absolutely all unnecessary
expenses, both mummy and daddy would probably still have to work to make ends
meet, including some of the school holidays?
It is not a
problem with “collectivity”, as the holiday club director will no doubt try to
tell me next time she sees me. My son is not nervous or anti-social, he is
always asking to invite friends around or self-invite himself to theirs, and it
is extremely rare that he objects to going to school. At present I count myself
lucky that I am not one of those parents having to leave their children
screaming and protesting at school 5 days a week, 30-plus weeks a year. Perhaps
these parents are also feeling guilty because they have no choice, or guilty
because they do have a choice as school is not in fact compulsory until
the age of 6. But would we be doing our kids any favours if we kept them in the
protected, parent-focused home environment for as long as absolutely possible?
My mother
didn’t work, from my birth until I was at university. She stayed at home to raise
the kids, a luxury afforded by the nature of my father’s employment (in a
scientific domain), and by a carefully managed family budget (I remember going
years without a holiday, for example). We were lucky, I know. This maternal
presence meant I could read before I went to school, there were never
logistical problems with childcare, and I always felt extremely well-supported
at every step of my education. However, as an adult, I sometimes wonder if the
results were exclusively positive. I rather doubt that I can be defined as more
well-adjusted and ready to face the world than any of my peers whose mothers
worked. Are maternal sacrifice and parental pressure more formative paradigms
than maternal multi-tasking and somewhat blended childcare arrangements? And can
me taking time out of both work and childcare to blog about this issue possibly
gain anything other than the creation of yet another contradiction…?
