If my 4-year-old had a mobile

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…?