Spring2012

Now, more than ever, the role of a mother at home is

under threat. Despite promises to be the most ‘family friendly’ government ever, the coalition government seems determined to implement Child Benefit cuts, unfairly damaging the financial situations of many single-income families, already taxed to the hilt.

The recent Panorama programme ‘The Cost of Raising Britain’ highlighted how using institutionalised childcare for very young children is not only seen as the norm, but as a better option for both the mother, who can get back to work, and the child, who gets formalised education and social interaction with their peers. An influential woman such as Helle Thornton-Schmidt, the Danish prime minister, has been reported saying that an educated woman who has chosen to be a mother at home is ‘wasting’ her

education. The

Scandinavian childcare model, where 92% of all 18 month olds are in full time daycare, is held up as the ideal for policy makers here in the UK. As our Chair says in her address, the reasons for the organisation’s existence have not gone away and ‘are becoming more and more clear as the years go by.’

But it is also a good time to push for change. As Jonas Himmelstrand pointed out in his presentation at our AGM, there is more and more evidence emerging to show that ‘lack of attachment in infants and young children, especially in the under threes, leads to low thresholds for stress throughout the rest of adult life.’ If we parent our children right in the very early years of their life, we could be producing more emotionally balanced, healthy adults. In our Book Review, Dr Peter Cook, author of Mothering Matters, insists that ‘a child needs motherly love in the same way as he needs food and shelter.’ It is not a luxury to be a mother at home, it is providing your children with a basic commodity. And crucially, author of How Mothers Love, Naomi Stadlen, has noticed that mothers at home are now less apologetic about their choice than mothers twenty years ago, and exhorts us to unite our voices and become experts in our own field, “After millennia of theorists defining our role, we are, at last, in a position to define it for ourselves.”

Time for Change

Time for Change

From the Chair

The Myth of Swedish Utopia

Turning the Government Tanker

Book Reviews

Motherhood in the Media

Back To School

Letters

Website News

Contents

Poppy Pickles, Editor

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The newsletter of Mothers at Home Matter, PO Box 43690, London SE22 9WN

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Financial Report From the Chair

It only crossed my mind the other week that last year was

a very special year for us.

Twenty years ago a group of mothers of different ages and different backgrounds first met and discussed what united them and the seed of an organisation was sown. The notion of “setting up some sort of movement” was vague and alien to me, but the older and wiser ones among us, some of them seasoned campaigners, saw us through the pregnancy and eventually acted as midwives at the birth of a creation that we called Full Time Mothers (as it was then). They checked the weight of the baby, looked it over for physical defects, gave us some stern warnings about how to look after it and then they did what midwives always do. They moved on and left us to it. And I too moved on when the going got tough and only reappeared many years later.

This is an annual report and I therefore will not dwell on the intervening twenty years. Suffice it to say that it is easy to set up an organisation when the right mix of individuals share certain concerns, but keeping it going, like a marriage, presents different challenges. At different times and for different reasons an organisation can come under strain, can lose heart or can become stale. But the reasons for this one’s existence have not gone away and are becoming more and more clear as the years go by.

Thankfully there continues to be a pool of people, not all of them committee members, who are happy to help us as and when they can and according to their expertise. Without such people it would sometimes be difficult to produce a good newsletter.

After last year’s AGM, when our new name, Mothers at Home Matter, was ratified, we were in limbo as far as contacts with the outside world were concerned. MAHM needed new clothes to wear and there were a few false starts, which all took up time. We needed new leaflets, stationery and a brand new look

to go with the name. Whilst this went on there was one bright spot when two committee members, Anne Fennell and Poppy Pickles had a meeting with the Rt Hon Oliver Letwin MP, about which there is a report in our last Newsletter.

Design rescue came in the form of Laura Boon, a member and very modest lady who claims that she only wanted to do the job to see if she still had the knack for it. I’m sure that you will all agree that she has. Anne Fennell edited the recent Newsletter with Poppy and Laura in the background. The latter saw to the design and layout and compliments from the readership have been numerous. It’s definitely true that pictures do draw the reader to an article that they might otherwise omit to read. One busy reader commented that “it looked so good that it made her read it from cover to cover”. Others now refer to it as our “magazine”.

Some time after finding Laura we also found a local web designer, and the new website took form. The original aims remain, but what has truly enriched this website are the resources that we have built up over the years and that are now displayed in a manner that does justice to them. They will be added to regularly. Communication is now a vastly different game from what it was at the time when we first set out. The site will have a link to Twitter and Facebook about which some of us may have our doubts but, used sensibly, they could bring our cause to the notice of many more people. Occasional Internet browsers and Facebook chatterers will hopefully stop and be drawn to this site and may even be moved to become members and activists. And the same of course goes for the media.

A longstanding and quietly serving com-mittee member, Alan Bright, who for years acted as our webmaster on the site that he put together himself many years ago has called it a day. And we also thank Mel Tibbs and Kirsty Robeson who both feel that they are unable to give this or-ganisation the time that it deserves.

Mothers at home Matter relies on your subs and donations. If you pay annually, please don’t forget to renew your subscription. There is a renewal form included with your newsletter. Alternatively, this year, you will be able to renew your subscription to the organisation online. Just go to w w w.mothersathomematter.org and click on the ‘Join Us’ tab at the top. Any questions, please email membership@mothersathomematter.org

Anna Lines, Chair of MAHM

I would like to thank our Honorary auditor,

Derek Holley, who has once again audited the accounts.

In the year up to 31 August 2011, our income from subscriptions was £3886, 5% lower than last year (£4070). However, as donations of £1393 were up by 16%, total income was the same as last year.

Two newsletters were published this year compared to three last year, which was due to the complete redesign of the newsletter and logo.

A cheaper yet comfortable new venue, a few extra guests, some hands-on catering and a delivery of tasty sandwiches brought the AGM costs down from £380 in 2010 to £77 in 2011. The bank balance stood at £11,519 at the end of August 2011 compared with £10,655 the year before.

Thank you for your support – your subscriptions and donations mean that we can continue to raise the profile of mothers at home.

Pat Dudley

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The Myth of Swedish Utopia

“despite appearances,

Sweden’s socialist dream has failed to

deliver”

Speaker and academic Jonas Himmelstrand

uncovers the truth behind the myth of the utopian socialist Swedish society.

At our Open Meeting in November Jonas Himmelstrand captivated us with an account of Swedish family life, which was in complete contrast with the perfect image many have of Sweden, whose family policy legislation has ‘for the past decade or so become a point of reference for policy makers in other welfare democracies’1. Jonas told us that, despite appearances, for the last thirty years, Sweden’s socialist dream has failed to deliver. What is interesting is that the problems faced are not material: the standard of living remains enviably high: life expectancy is long, child poverty is low, spending on education is generous and there is sixteen-month parental leave, so that no young babies are left in day care. However, this utopia is built on a false ideology, which has led to major social problems, especially among young adults.

Jonas had first been alerted to the problem ten years ago by a headteacher, who was in despair over the poor psychological health of his students. Since 1989, Swedish children have been said to have the worst psychological health in Europe, something acknowledged by Swedish institutions. The response to all of this has been to introduce more school psychologists. Bad morale leads to bad discipline, including bad language. Some schools are on the verge of breaking up, with youngsters becoming impossible to teach. Girls, especially, are suffering. While anti-depressants have helped to bring suicides down among adults, this is not so among the young.

1 ‘Swedish Family Policy: controver-sial reform of a success story’By Tommy Ferrarini, Ann-Zofie Duvander

Poor psychological outcomes for children are often blamed on poverty but the test case of Sweden shows that material prosperity is not the greatest need. So, if poverty was not the reason for this epidemic of mental ill-health, Jonas began to question what was going wrong.

Identifying The CauseThe answer seemed to lie with Sweden’s childcare policy. From the age of 18 months, a massive 92% of children are in full time day care till they reach school age. This is heavily subsidised by the government, with state subsidies of £14,000 per child and initially the quality of this care was relatively good. However, thirty or so years down the line the system is now at breaking point, and now each carer is in charge of 18 1-year-olds, a shockingly high number. Despite these facts Swedish politicians are still following the goals set down in the 1970s. These goals are to have TOTAL gender equality, with the same amount of women as men in work, and not only that, but full time employment across the board is seen as the ultimate. The focus on gender equality stretches across the political spectrum and dominates the media. The Prime Minister had recently said that women should be “liberated from part-time work”.

In order to achieve this goal huge social pressure is exerted to get every child into the

day care throng. Home-schooling is effectively illegal, and families

can face fines of up to £10,000, and social services can be called in. Consequently, there are only 75 home-schooled children in

Sweden, compared with 100,000 in the UK (a

proportionate figure would have been 15,000). This reflects the

chilling fact that in Sweden the philosophy is that the State knows better than parents, and

has ultimate responsibility for children. If you go with a toddler for a medical check-up, the health professional is trained to question why that child is not yet in day care ‘where they belong’.

The effect of this policy is that young couples have practically no active family life. Swedish parents are losing their self-confidence in their parenting skills and their sense of responsibility for their children. Even when they are at home on leave with a new baby, they will leave a toddler in day care. But of

course, schools and pre-schools cannot provide the love that parents are

no longer giving. The word ‘housewife’ in Sweden

is an outlawed word, despite the fact that those few that admit to being housewives are in practice active in many

fields and have little in common with the 1950’s

caricature to which they are likened.

People are often further surprised to discover that, in Sweden, although most women go out to work, the labour market remains highly segregated between the sexes, with women taking only 10% of management positions. The difference in opportunities for men and women can be compared with that in Muslim countries. Many women are in fact employed looking after other people’s children, in day care and in education. At the same time, women have very high rates of sick leave, with day care staff one of the top three susceptible groups. This is not surprising when you look as the huge expansion in provision that day care is expected to cope with and it is even being publicly admitted that staff have an impossible job. Women are generally burning out and frequently retire by the age of 50 or so. Jonas pointed out that, were mothers given a break to look after their children, many would go on working

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for a good ten years longer. All of this is in contrast with Finland, where day care only begins at three years old, there are home care allowances, fertility is higher and top schools produce excellent results. Sweden does have a reasonably high fertility rate for Europe, but lacks the quality of upbringing.

The Effect on Babies and Young

ChildrenThere is an increasing amount of early years’ research that shows that lack of attachment in infants and young children, especially in the under threes, leads to low thresholds for stress throughout the rest of adult life. This is due to high levels of the fight-or-flight hormone cortisol when young children are placed in an environment which is stressful for them.

When this is also coupled with high early exposure to large groups of other children, you get unhealthy peer-orientation. Without a strong hierarchical relationship with their parents, children focus their attachment on their peers. The result of this is that child maturation is held back and the development of speech and vocabulary suffer. It has been found that interest in learning weakens and without it culture flat-lines. In large peer groups bullying can quickly lead to gangs and you also get more promiscuity. Given all this, it is not difficult to see why the psychological health of teenagers is suffering.

So children are suffering and parents are suffering. Every society needs close emotional relationships; without them you get sickness, weariness, and a lack of civic pride. A society cannot maintain itself in this way indefinitely. Good relationships are more important than diet, housing, cars and all the other symbols of material wellbeing.

The fact is that surveys show that the great majority of women want to spend more time with their children, especially when they are small. Younger mothers are reacting most strongly and so are the children themselves, who repeatedly say that what they want most is more time with their parents.

Why has there been no change? A principal reason is that people are in denial. The whole subject is too sensitive to debate in public. Also, child rearing skills have been lost, and with them the confidence that parents can bring up children on their own. The very idea that individual children need individual care has become foreign. What began as political ideology has now sapped parents of their will to nurture.

Jonas ended his riveting talk with a warning. Swedish family policies need to be tested by careful multidisciplinary research before any other nation adopts them. At the same time much greater efforts should be made internationally to support and respect the institution of the family and to make sure that it is safeguarded by society and by governments. After all, as he said, it’s all we’ve got left.

You are strongly recommended to look at the complete slides of this talk, available at: www.mireja.org/ottowa_2011.html

BREAKING NEWS!

The realities of homeschooling in Sweden

Since coming to speak at our AGM last November, Jonas Himmelstrand and his family have been forced into exile to neighbouring Finland. From 2010, when the Swedish parliament passed a draconian law effectively banning homeschooling the Himmelstrands have been fighting for their right to homeschool in their native country, but, late last year the situation for the family finally became intolerable.

Local school officials reported the Himmelstrand family to the social services in November, when their 7-year-old son did not show up for mandatory schooling. Like many other homeschoolers in Sweden, Himmelstrand was forced to meet with local “social” officials to explain himself. “It was just harassment,” he said. “But we

were not going to take any chances with anything. You never know with Swedish social authorities. You never know.” Due to the shocking case of the Johansson family, who, in 2009 had their son removed and put into the care of social services, Himmelstrand went to the social services meeting alone, after making sure that his family was safe on the Aland Islands in Finland. He asked the social services if they would guarantee that his family could remain in Sweden safely. They said “No”, matter-of-factly stating that to homeschool safely, the family would probably have to leave the country.

The Himmelstrands will not be alone on the Aland Islands as more than a quarter of Sweden’s homeschoolers have moved to the island, as the Finnish allow home-schooling and the island’s first language is Swedish. Now that any threat to his family has been removed Himmelstrand feels that his efforts to fight Sweden’s policy on homeschooling will be redoubled.

He explains, “ROHUS [The Swedish Association for Home Education] is going to survive, it’s going to survive very well — because now we’ve got almost half of the board on the Aland Islands.”

We at Mothers at Home Matter wish Jonas every success in his fight to restore educational liberty to Sweden.

Based on an article published by www.thenewamerican.com, by Poppy Pickles

The Myth of Swedish Utopia contd.

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Turning the Government Tanker

Our chair, Anna Lines, introduced our second

speaker, David Burrowes, Conservative MP for Enfield and Southgate, and Secretary to Oliver Letwin MP, Minister of State for Policies.

David Burrowes began his presentation positively by assuring us that he has the greatest respect for all that we are trying to achieve as an organisation. He told us we are a lone voice in a crowd of voices calling for ‘more childcare’, ‘equal pay for women’ and so on. He too has had personal experience of what it means to stand up for what you believe in, however old fashioned it may seem, and he gave an example of the negative tweets that even the word marriage drew from a speech he gave in the House of Commons. Also, as the father of six children, and the husband of a stay at home mother, he commented that if there are two things which are always in short supply in these fast-paced, super-connected times, they are time and love and it is these crucial aspects of childhood that it is up to mothers to provide.

His response to Jonas’ talk was that it was a depressing but helpful story, which should serve as a reality check for over-zealous policy makers. However, he did reassure us that our social and religious heritage leads to a different approach to Sweden’s, in that the basis of family policy in this country is that the State is not the nanny, and does not bear ultimate responsibility for children, even if we may be edging in that direction. He also commented that, unlike Sweden, which has an impressive list of achievements on child poverty, health and employment, the UK has a range of difficult social issues that bring with them major challenges.

First of all though, he reminded us that it was a genuine aspiration of David Cameron himself that this government should become the most family-friendly

government ever seen, but the reality is that turning round social policy is like turning round a tanker with many parts. Since the August riots, which have been a wake-up call to everybody, he has insisted that the litmus test for any policy must be to see how it might affect families. However, the country’s financial deficit makes this more difficult still. Families are hard pressed to pay their bills, and this means that getting parents back to work is always going to take precedence over policies that don’t.

He said he did not wish to sling mud around, but that the Coalition Government had had to pick up a terrible mess from the previous Labour government. A recent Unicef report had shockingly named the UK as the worst place in the Western world in which to be a child. More children than ever were growing up with no working adults in the house than anywhere in Europe, teenage pregnancy and divorce were both at the highest rates, and he could go on. The question was how to rise above such figures and turn society round.

Another legacy has been falling standards of education. The Government is presently focusing on the poorest, because it is they who suffer most when provision is inadequate. If children start behind, they fall behind yet further. It is for this reason that education needs to be seen as part of family policy in the round. Government here recognises that it cannot do everything and that it needs to withdraw to allow families to look after themselves.

Within the home, children are also suffering from a lack of boundaries and of meaningful relationships. We all know the problems caused by lack of fathers and stable parenting, but doing anything about it using the heavy hand of thegovernment is not easy. Early years’ intervention is important, but again the best intervention comes not from the State but from family members. The Government’s aim is to invest short-term so that families can be enabled to

help themselves without long-term dependence upon the State.

At this point David put in a word for the Liberal Democrats, saying that it was ironic that the assumption is that the Conservatives are pro family and that the Lib Dems are pro state, as Sarah Teather, MP for Brent and current Minister of State for Children and Families, has recently been simplifying early years’ requirements. He also quoted her saying that time spent at home is critical for giving children the confidence to thrive and do well at school.

He reassured us that strengthening the family is genuinely at the heart of Government thinking. Marriage is to be championed as the most solid basis of family life. Recognising it in the tax system is one measure, but we also need to create a marriage culture as part of a wider social good. Relationships support is a part of this. He quoted the ‘Let’s Stick Together’ (http://www.letssticktogether.co.uk/) programme as an example which had been very popular and successful. It empowers people locally to strengthen other families. Voluntary groups generally have a lot to contribute, but so can mothers themselves in helping other mothers. Mothers can also have a profound amount to offer in changing the culture.

David rounded up by asking whether or not the Government was fulfilling its promises on promoting family values. He asked for patience, saying that as yet it was too soon to make an assessment. The will was there but the problems were great and it was not in the Government’s gift to solve many of them. This takes a collaborative effort in which many people contribute. However, the role of women and more specifically the role of women as mothers is recognised as being vital to

national life.

Talks written up by Louise Kirk

6Cover image from Mothering Matters by Dr Peter Cook, used with permission from the author. Cover image of Too

Much Too Soon? ed. by Richard House, used by permission of Hawthorn Press

Mothering Matters - The sources of love and how our culture harms infants, women and society’by Dr Peter Cook

The word ‘Mothering’ is now politically incorrect (in a recent Early Years Study it appears only once where it is equated with peer rearing in disturbed monkeys) so Dr Cook is bravely putting his head above the ideological parapet in this book. As a well-respected and experienced child psychologist he is well placed to challenge the current, embedded ideas that anchor our society to its doomed approach to raising children.

In part one, Dr Cook shows how five different lines of evidence converge to establish that the best, healthiest and most natural source of care for an infant is his or her mother, and has been since the evolution of our species. In short, he makes clear that a child needs motherly love in the same way as he needs food and shelter. In part two Dr Cook describes the ideas and traditions in our society and culture that serve to disrupt this natural pattern. These include presumptions of ‘Original Sin’, stemming from the Christian tradition and ideologically skewed research indicating we are solely shaped by nurture not nature. This suggests women are no more able than men to raise children, which in turn leads to early feminists encouraging women to reject motherhood in order to compete in the male-centric rat race. Finally, in part three he offers some suggestions as to how, as a society, we can best support early mothering. These include support from fathers and extended family members and friends, better maternity leave arrangements nationally and recognition of her contribution to society through pensions on her return to work.

This is the first book I have read as a parent on the topic of raising children that I have felt is both interesting and true to my experiences, but also clearly based on large amounts of solid research and an almost fiercely scientific approach. In fact, I found Mothering Matters gripping, in the same way a horror movie can be gripping. Dr Cook is clear that in the past 50 years we have been steering towards a system of increasing reliance on institutionalised day care, which is psychologically damaging those infants who pass through it, possibly for life, a fact that is truly heartbreaking. The big ‘problem’ with this book is that for those who have placed their children into childcare, it makes for such uncomfortable reading that the choice is either to reject it as nonsense and to carry on as before (far more convenient and easy for our government and those who rely on the system) or to accept the findings and begin to radically rethink how our society is structured. The danger is that unless the entrenched point of view is changed soon our tender, precious young will maintain long-term psychological damage, not to mention their mothers who also suffer at the hands of the current status quo.

Katharine BoddyAt present Mothering Matters is not available to purchase in the UK, but if you would like a copy please email newsletter@mothersathome-matter.org for up-to-date information.

Too Much, Too Soon? - Early Learning and the Erosion of ChildhoodRichard House, EditorPublished by Hawthorn Press

The list of contributors to this superb book reads like a Who’s Who of advocates for childhood: Penelope Leach, Sue Palmer, Sally Goddard Blythe, David Elkind, and Aric Sigman among many others, with either personal or professional experience of the government’s Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) or ‘nappy curriculum’. The collection of essays tackles the issue of young children’s well-being and learning in a passionate, yet scholarly, way and is backed by the 100 prominent educators, academics and researchers who signed an open letter on the subject when the book was launched.Too Much, Too Soon? tackles the burning

question of how to nurture young children’s well-being and learning to reverse the erosion of childhood. It’s based on the premise that children’s lives have been speeded up by commercialisation, ‘adultification’ and the government’s EYFS curriculum, aspects of which ‘schoolify’ young children and push quasi-formal learning too soon. It contains over twenty hard hitting chapters advocating alternative ways ahead for slowing childhood, better policy-making and above all the right learning at the right time for children.

As it was being written the EYFS was being reviewed by our government and the book was designed as a major intervention into the crucial debates on the future well-being of our youngest children. It represents the work done over several years by the Open EYE campaign. Three previously published articles by the campaign feature in the book and there’s a real sense of momentum building behind the individual essays, which come together in the book as a sensible, balanced argument for change. The EYFS has only been in place for a few short years and one wonders, or rather hopes, that one day we’ll look back at it and find it hard to imagine what place it ever had in our children’s lives. In the meantime, however, countless professionals working with young children find their passion and instincts stifled by the paperwork, assessments, targets and ‘goals’ they’re obliged to observe and record.

The sheer breadth of perspectives covered by the book means that most parents of young children will find something they can identify with. I was particularly struck by Sylvie Hetu’s chapter; Sylvie challenges the often disempowering ideology of professional ‘expertise’, and the way in which such impingement into the world of parent and child can so easily disrupt,

Book Reviews

7Cover image from Mothering Matters by Dr Peter Cook, used with permission from the author. Cover image of Too

Much Too Soon? ed. by Richard House, used by permission of Hawthorn Press

rather than help parents in their natural, intuitive parenting capabilities. There is also a worryingly Kafka-esque account of one parent’s attempts to understand, and opt out of, the EYFS. As House says in his introduction, “Officials at all levels of government would do well to read this chastening chapter, for it shows all too clearly the way in which inflexible bureaucratic agendas... can all too easily create a stultifying… milieu in which any pretence to so-called ‘consumer choice’ in the public services becomes little more than a sick joke.”

There’s no doubt that this is an important book, bringing together the physiological, psychological, and sociological analysis of the impact of a hurried childhood. There are representatives from the Waldorf community, Montessori practitioners, child-minders and parents, essays on the importance of play, the place for technology and, of course, comments on the rush to encourage mothers back to work. It’s great to see so many interesting perspectives coming together for a common goal, and to find a book with so many voices singing in harmony about the importance of our children’s childhoods. Too Much, Too Soon? is a kind of manifesto, and it’s up to us readers to take things forward.

How Mothers Love - and how relationships are bornNaomi StadlenPublished by Piatkus

Naomi Stadlen is the psychotherapist and author who brought us the brilliantly ti-tled What Mothers Do, Especially When it Looks like Nothing in 2004. She has been running London–based weekly discussion groups called Mothers Talk-ing for many years. The women sit in a circle and Stadlen asks each of them about their week, a question which immediately sparks discussion and prompts the wom-en to open up about their experience of mothering. Mothers can make the hard work of mothering look like ‘nothing’, but we all know that underneath that ‘noth-ing’ there’s a whole universe of feelings, desires, wishes and problems to be ex-pressed and solved. In the safe setting of the discussion groups, women have been given the opportunity to open up to one another and, while children grow and

parents move on, Stadlen’s presence has been a constant. What Stadlen has found over the years is that after the meetings certain phrases and comments kept com-ing back to her and she started to write them down. In time, she found she was starting to piece together a fragmented, yet telling portrait of maternal love and shadowy patterns were beginning to emerge. How Mothers Love is a detailed study of this long term overview; Stadlen has been able to examine her own expe-rience as a mother of three and a grand-mother of two, as well as all the insights she has acquired over twenty years of taking La Leche League and the Mothers Talking meetings.

The subtitle to Stadlen’s second book is just as powerful as that on her first; it reads How Mothers Love and How Rela-tionships are Born. The interesting thing here is Stadlen’s use of the plural, ‘rela-tionships’; at once we’re conscious that we’re dealing with the birth of several relationships when a baby is born, and as that baby grows. And the mother-child relationship is placed centrally to all oth-ers. This is also evident in the fact that the book is proudly called How Mothers Love; focussing on the relationship between mother and child rather than ‘parent’ and child, or ‘carer’ and child. Stadlen says in her introduction, “How Mothers Love is an attempt to rediscover some of our early wisdom. It is especially important to do this today. The word ‘mother’ is fast be-ing replaced by ‘parent’ and also ‘caregiv-er’. But surely the love that mothers give their babies is unique. One interesting question is who teaches whom to love? … perhaps love is a mysterious alchemy that is kindled between mother and baby, and is a shared adventure between the two.” Having listened to so many mothers in discussion with one another, Stadlen is of course in no doubt that the relationship between a mother and child will not al-

ways be instant, or faultless or perfect; the idea of a ‘shared adventure’ describes well the unexpected roads our children guide us along.

From a MAHM point of view, there is a very balanced, unfashionably bold, rep-resentation of the ‘stay at home’ mother in Stadlen’s book. She recognises the uniqueness of a mother’s quality of care, something which can’t be quantified in terms of competence alone. Among rel-evant topics, the book discusses the fact that a career which has required selfish-ness to get going does not prepare women for the selflessness required for mother-hood, and that education systems are usu-ally inferior to the spontaneous educa-tion that a mother can provide, conveyed through everyday life. Stadlen invokes Aldous Huxley’s dystopia with the mod-ern idea that day-care can teach an infant lessons about cooperation, independence, self-sufficiency and friendship that he wouldn’t learn at home.

But as well as this familiar critique of our current attitude to motherhood and childcare, Stadlen sounds some posi-tive notes. She says she has noticed that mothers do not apologise so frequently for being ‘only a mother’ as they did when she started Mothers Talking in the early 1990s. She, with all her first-hand ex-perience to support her, asks, “Is it right for anyone to ignore mothers, or to de-fine their work as ‘time off’? It’s hard for mothers to give their love generously. It’s much harder when surrounded by people who don’t value them.”

And at the end of the book, Stadlen tells us something we all believe, “Mothering certainly matters.” Most inspiring of all is her call to action: “Can we afford to let ‘ex-perts’ define what we are ‘supposed’ to do, and then complain how badly most of us do it? If we want respect, especially from our employers, or family members, or the government, we ourselves need to spell out what we do. Together, mothers are a vast and widespread international group. Nevertheless, with the internet linking so many of us, we can hold genuine discus-sions. After millennia of theorists defin-ing our role, we are, at last, in a position to define it for ourselves.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Mel Tibbs

Cover image from How Mothers Love by Naomi Stadlen, published by Piatkus. Used by permission of The Little Brown Book Group

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The Latest on Child BenefitAs the pressure mounts from backbench Conservative MPs in the run up to Budget Day, Chancellor George Osborne is ready to make a partial climbdown on cuts to child benefit, as he fears ‘alienating middle-class supporters’.

The latest plan is to increase the cut-off point at which families will lose child benefit from the current higher rate tax-bracket figure of £42,475 to the round figure of £50,000. This will apparently ‘soften the blow to higher-rate taxpayers’.

However, there are also other ‘options ...on the table’ according to a government source, although ‘this is the leading one’. However, with the inherent unfairness in this cut still an issue, the real question is ‘Is it enough?’

The Independent, 5/3/12

Mothers are not wasted at homeThe Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, recently dismissed educated women who chose to stay at home to raise their children, as ‘a complete waste’. This attitude towards mothers who are passing on their education to the next generation was branded by the journalist, Anne McElvoy, ‘condescending and irritating’. Instead of having two earners per family, working in order to pay out vast sums for childcare, private education and then university fees, the credit crunch has finally convinced some well-educated women that it might be a sensible (and even enjoyable) choice to be at home to supplement their offspring’s education.

These women also contribute to David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, by being on school governing bodies and taking on other voluntary roles that enrich and support their local community, rather than just dashing to the office and back. For some women work ‘is not the sole purpose of life’ and ‘as a feminist’ the

Danish prime minister ought to have known better.

The Evening Standard, 29/2/12

The REAL cost of raising BritainThe current affairs programme Panorama recently looked into ‘The Cost of Raising Britain’, which investigated the rising costs of nursery childcare, based on recent findings published by the Daycare Trust.

It focused on a typical family with two parents in full time employment with two young children, who have to be up and out by 7.15 every morning, one being dropped to the childminder and another to the local nursery. The cost of this combined childcare is £750 per month, which is the same as their mortgage. As the 2 year old was left crying at the nursery in the arms of one of the members of staff, she was told, ‘You’ll be ok, you’ll be alright’.

The option of giving up work to care for her children was presented as the absolute worst case scenario. They interviewed other women working in the hospital where she worked, who said, ‘My career’s really important to me’ and ‘it would be a waste of skill not to do both’ and ‘I don’t think I just have to be a mummy.’ The other catchphrase that was repeated several times was mothers saying, ‘We want the best for our children’, which meant that

they wanted local, affordable, wrap-around childcare for

their children. Nurseries have had to increase

fees above inflation to be able to afford high-quality staff and to keep on top of the increasing raft of regulations

imposed on them by the government.

However, this doesn’t mean that they are raking

it in, in fact, the opposite is true. Smaller nurseries are often run on a very small profit margin, if at all, so it isn’t them that are winning by charging high prices. The unavoidable truth, which was neatly side-stepped throughout this ‘hard-hitting’ programme, was that good quality childcare is by its very nature expensive, as the nursery manager

interviewed said ‘£27 out of £40 per child per day goes on staffing costs’.

According to Panorama, if you’re not a working mother, then you must be on benefits, there is no in between. Another case study was a mother of three boys who had had a free nursery place taken away from her youngest son - which ironically meant she had to consider putting on hold her study for a childcare qualification. The local council, which was held up as being the responsible party for depriving this mother of subsidised or free, high-quality childcare, apologetically explained that there simply wasn’t the money in the already reduced budget to cover the massive cost of subsidising enough local nursery places. The chief executive of the Daycare Trust, Anand Shukla, was interviewed, and aggressively stated that ‘Councils need to get serious and meet their legal duties’ but as the Councillor admitted, this is impossible in the current economic climate.

One featured family took a drastic course of action and emigrated to Norway because of the expensive childcare costs in the UK. From the age of 1 children in Norway are entitled to a full time nursery place, which was described as a ‘good start for the children.’ There were then idyllic scenes presented of children being outside with happy nursery staff, building campfires and singing songs, and ‘there is even a sleepover once a month so parents can have a night off’. When interviewed the couple happily declared that they now had a ‘better family life, more flexibility’ and crucially, ‘more money in our pocket’.

Throughout the programme, childcare is presented as the ideal setting to bring up young children, not as something which should only be used if necessary. For example, the government are currently looking at a proposal to extend free nursery places to a quarter of a million 2 year olds, who ‘stand to benefit’ from this move. It might be the case that there are a minority of homes which are in fact less beneficial to children than the local nursery, but the vast majority of 2 year olds do not ‘stand to benefit’ from being anywhere other than in a home setting, with loving, one-to-one care.

Panorama, BBC1 27/2/12

Motherhood in the Media

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Poor child development Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity and author of a recent report on Child Development in the under 5s, worryingly revealed that 41 per cent of children don’t achieve a good level of development at age five.

This failure could be due to multiple causes such as inherited biological traits, but more importantly are influenced by the quality of parenting and are related to inequalities in society. Sir Michael suggests that both traditional wisdom and modern science come together to provide the (obvious) answer: cuddling, playing, talking, reading, and generally loving children have a huge influence on the quality of early child development.

The Telegraph, 15/2/12

Mothering not childcare is the answerThe government’s latest plan to ‘square the childcare circle’ is to offer 300,000 eligible families a loan of up to £10,000 each, which would then be paid back out of their subsequent earnings. However, this plan is a disastrous one, argues Kathy Gyngell. The solution to the ‘problem’ of expensive childcare is always the same, ‘the state footing the bill and mothers at home who want to bring up their children themselves ignored, sidelined and treated as worthless.’

Although the government pretends that this would be cost-free for the tax payer, the truth is that it ‘would add some £3 billion, per every new cohort of eligible families, to the welfare bill and public sector debt burden. And that would be on top of the billions already invested annually in child care and early years’ services.’

Ms Gyngell suggests that instead of taking the child out of the home, could it ‘make more economic sense to pay families to look after their own children instead, during their early years at least?’ And even without economics the fact is that research shows that ‘peer contact and conversation cannot and do not replace mother and baby attachment and interaction.’ It is not a coincidence that the summer riots in 2011 ‘revealed

a generation of disaffected children and a generation of parents who have lost control of them’. Because what the country needs is not more childcare, but less, and importantly, ‘the re assertion of the value of mothering and motherhood.’

The Daily Mail, 10/2/12

Househusbands on the riseNew research from the Office of National Statistics suggests the phenomenon of the househusband has seen a rapid explosion in numbers, but experts say the trend is less about choice and nurture than an economic necessity that is not being recognised by policymakers. However, not all fathers have made the decision for purely economic reasons.

Farrow, from Edinburgh, who set up DadsDinner.com to tackle the gap in services, said: “I always wanted to do it, even before we had kids”, “My family was supportive but some of my friends thought it was a bit odd. I wanted to see them walk and hear their first words, childhood is such a finite time. I love hanging out with my kids.”

The Observer, 29/1/12

Female Breadwinners need support at home tooEleanor Mills, in the Times, argues that the old family model is outmoded and outdated and that ‘in fact there are more female breadwinners than there are stay-at-home mothers.’ However, these high-flying business women are not doing it on their own, but very often ‘have supportive husbands at home.’

She then goes on to describe how these women patronisingly talk about ‘safeguarding the kept-male ego’ by giving them ‘sex and supper’ and have to resist being ‘a long-range domestic control freak’. Not surprisingly, to counter this degrading description, men at home usually describe themselves as ‘“freelance”, “starting a business” or some kind of “consultant”’ in order to justify the fact that they are at home looking after their children.

Ms Mills admits that the reason for this is that with one parent spending long hours holding down a top job, someone ‘needs to take care of household duties’.

Regardless of which partner goes out to work and which one stays at home, it is very difficult to run family life without the support of a “wife” – whatever their gender!

The language used throughout this article is systematically derogatory of either partner that takes on the domestic sphere, as she goes on to remark that ‘not all women are stay-at-home mumsy types’. With dismissive, ignorant notions of what it involves to take on the equally demanding role of raising our children, it is not surprising that men are reluctant to admit their real job.

The Times, 29/1/12

Cutting Child Benefit is a blow to mothers at homeThe government’s plan to scrap Child Benefit for families with a higher rate taxpayer ‘perversely targets the middle bracket (married) single-income family - ones mainly with a male breadwinner, families who, under the current tax system already pay a disproportionate share of their family income in tax and receive no government support back’. Unfairly, those ‘dual earning families, who could be earning twice the income (up to £80,000)’, will still receive their Child Benefit.

Two members of MAHM went to confront Oliver Letwin MP, who stated in his meeting with them that ‘no one would sympathise with a minority of people who appear to be substantially better off than the majority of the population’. The fact that the numbers that they had presented to him showed that single-income families just over the higher rate tax bracket do not actually end up with a higher disposable income than a single mother on 18k- ‘was clearly of lesser concern to him.’

So here’s hoping that David Cameron manages to convince the Treasury that this particular U-Turn would be no bad thing, and would ‘make for an economically competitive, thriving and happy family based society.’

The Daily Mail, 13/1/12

---Poppy Pickles

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In January this year MAHM member Poppy Pickles was

invited back to her old school, St James’ Independent School for Girls, to give a talk to the Year 10 girls on what it means to her to be a full time mother and her reasons for doing it. I began by thanking the girls and their teacher for asking me back, as the fact that a full time mother was being asked for her story countered the view that mothers at home have nothing to speak about.

Firstly, it would all have been very different were it not for my husband, James. My relationship with him is the bedrock of my life. He came before my children and was the reason why I wanted them. When they arrived he was the other half of a very tired team that struggled to adapt to sleep deprivation and all the other shocks. And he was also the reason I had the choice to stay at home, as someone had to go out to bring home enough money to raise a family.

I met him very young, at 17, and my family warned me not to ‘throw my life away’ by just getting married and having babies. But I didn’t want to throw my life away either. I was privileged enough to have the same rich education as the bright girls in front of me, followed by a degree in English Lit. from Kings College London and an MA in Musical Theatre from the Central School of Speech and Drama. However, when I had my son Daniel, at the relatively young age of 23 I decided that I wanted to stay at home and raise him myself. This was not a decision I took lightly, as I didn’t want to ‘waste’ that education. However, as I explained to the girls, regardless of how young I was, whenever children had come along, the same decision would have had to be faced: ‘To work or not to work’. This is the question that many women find they are facing with little warning for how far-reaching the effects of that decision will be, not only for themselves, but for the whole family.

The early years of having children were incredibly intense, but my education did not lie dormant. I was there to bond, talk to, and interact with my young children. Being at home was also an

Back to School

education in itself. Knowledge isn’t everything and there were wisdoms such as learning to slow life down to a toddler’s pace, working on patience and putting others’ needs before your own. I felt strongly that just because I was not earning money from my job as mother, its value was equal to my husband’s.

My mother-in-law introduced me to Full Time Mothers (as it was then) when my son was 6 months old and I felt so gratified to find an organisation that supported my choice to be at home. As the children grew more independent I naturally began to get more involved in Mothers at Home Matter, first acting as a media contact and then writing and editing the newsletter. This process was also a steep learning curve, as faced with the cameras or having questions fired at me by canny journalists was a swift way of finding out exactly what it was that I thought, and why I was doing it.

I’d always thought that when my two children were both at school I would ‘go back to work’, but I’ve found that hasn’t happened. Through a vested interest in my children I have become Co-Chair of the PTA at their school, organising events and raising funds that benefit the whole school. I am available to help others who need a helping hand, and first and foremost I’m a fixed point in my children’s world. The truth is, I’m already ‘at work’, it just isn’t a paid job.

QuestionsThe girls asked some really good questions, which I did my best to answer.Q. ‘What jobs did you have before having children?’ The honest truth was I hadn’t really had a single ‘proper’ job. When I fell pregnant, I was in the process of auditioning for musicals, but then decided to get a temping job. I was lucky enough to get a job in the Catalogues Department at Sotheby’s Auction House, so although I really enjoyed the role, it was not a career built up over years, which made the decision to be a mother at home easier.

Q. ‘At 17, how did you imagine your life was going to turn out?’ The answer was of course, not how it has! I imagined that I would either be a star of

stage and screen, or a published novelist, but at the same time, I always knew that I wanted children. I have never been an ambitious person though, and just ‘being happy’ was pretty high up on the list, which I have definitely achieved. Q. ‘If you hadn’t been in the newspapers, would you still be fulfilled as a mother at home?’Being a bit of a show off there are performance aspects of getting dressed up or being in front of the camera that I enjoy, but journalists are adept at putting things said out of context and I have made a few mistakes. The real reason I have appeared in the papers is because I believe that mothers at home are under-valued and misjudged and if I wasn’t fulfilled as a mother it would be hypocritical of me to do so. Q. ‘What does your husband think of your choice to be a stay at home mother?’My husband totally respects my choice and we have always worked on the understanding that our roles within the family are of equal importance. Q. ‘Do you think it’s wrong for a woman to go out to work rather than stay at home to bring up their family?’I admire women who manage to hold down a job and maintain family life at the same time. Many women are doing it, and it’s not my place to label this as ‘wrong’. What I do feel strongly is that there should be equal value placed on the choice between going out to work, and staying at home to work in the home, and that government should support and recognise the role played by parents at home. There is also increasing evidence to show that full time nursery care especially can cause lasting psychological damage to young children, so their welfare must always be considered when making decisions, which have an impact on the whole family.

Poppy Pickles

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Letters

From the heartI sent off a letter to my MP yesterday regarding the ridiculous idea of how to cut Child Benefit. We would lose it - my husband’s salary is just within the tax bracket. I have been a full time mum for 12 years and recently launched a small business from home part time, which the household income is funding for at least the first 3 years. I doubt I’ll be paying any tax for the first 5 years, so to lose Child Benefit on top would be a real concern.

I feel strongly that children still need their Mum, even after they have started school. Mine are nearly 14 and nearly 8. But I lost a stillborn and had 3 miscarriages in between, so have been ‘out of the workplace’ for twice as long as I anticipated, through no fault of my own. I wish I could have signed my tax allowance over to my husband for the duration, like my mother did. I feel all the emphasis and encouragement (pressure) is on getting mums back to work. Bad idea. With social mobility making extended families rare, hardly anyone has in-laws in the next street to help with childcare these days. My mother is 82 and has never changed a modern nappy or pushed a grandchild in a pram, because of the distances involved.

Nuclear families are isolated and the government want the mothers out at work so the children become isolated too. And then they wonder at ‘the youth of today’?

Ok, some sweeping generalisations there I know, but the fact remains that I am the best person to look after my children, but the government would, it seems, be happier if my friend and I had become registered childminders and looked after each other’s children instead. Families matter. Children matter. Mothers used to be the glue that held it all together. Mothers matter.

Nicky Heppenstall

A Letter to The TimesI very much doubt that Jenni Russell has thought of looking into the history of Child Benefit. It is rooted in the pre-war

child’s tax allowance that amounted to 60% of the single person’s allowance and grew by another 10% in the 40s and 50s. Family Allowances partially replaced it and by 1977 both the child’s tax allowance and Family Allowance were removed and replaced by Universal Child Benefit.

Few of the mothers who gratefully collected their fistful of fivers from the Post Office at the time could see that their families were effectively “being had”. What was once a fair fiscal recognition of the extra costs that children bring had been relegated to the status of a handout. And ever since its introduction poor parents have been accused of spending it on the wrong things and the better off have been told that they “do not need it”.

Only a re-appraisal of family taxation can help those families who find that they are at the receiving end of the rough justice that will result from the removal of Child Benefit from many a single earner family.

Anna LinesChair, Mothers at home Matter

A Letter to David Davies MPI am writing to you not as an MP, but in your capacity of being a public figure who can influence opinions and policies and put forward certain arguments/views to the British public through your regular appearances on TV/radio (something that I, as a mum, cannot do).

Having watched the Andrew Marr show this morning I am frustrated and saddened by suggestions that the UK adopts lessons from the Denmark model on governement subsidies to help cover the costs of childcare. Research shows, time and time again, that this is not what most parents want for their families in the UK. Rather they want opportunities to take care of their children themselves – it is the most natural of human instincts and one which is under threat.

Also, contrary to claims in the media and from certain commentators, paid childcare for those who want it is not too ‘expensive’ by any stretch of the imagination. It really depends how you look at it, and how you much one values

the care of a young child. In reality the cost merely reflects the job it entails. Consider that when a mum or dad gives up a job to do the caring unpaid, the ‘costs’ (ie the salary forfeited ) are not recognised in any shape or form. These caring costs (often higher than the cost for someone using childcare and earning a second wage) for a parent at home, who devotes time and expertise to caring for their children themselves, are met by the parents and no-one else. Why should we therefore subsidise the childcare costs of others who are often on a higher household income, when us parents at home are expected to (and think it’s right to) absorb the costs ourselves?

Marie Peacock

The Whole Story Yesterday I heard on the ‘Today’ programme on Radio 4 that there is an exhibition about women working in the 1950’s. It appeared to be saying that we were wrong to think that women stayed at home to look after the family. They only have half the story – as usual.

When I worked for the Town Hall in 1953 it was compulsory in the Treasurer’s dept to leave when you got married. One lady fought for the right to stay on, as it was the only department there that still had that rule. She won, and left soon after. Gradually, it became the ‘norm’. Most women did leave after a while, until their families were grown up and then looked for work if they need the money or wanted to go back out to work, but still many of us stayed at home and became the ones who volunteered and helped all round the neighbourhood.

The government is beginning to realise the value of stable homes, but how can you discipline in the early years if you are not there to impose your discipline and have to leave it to nurseries, schools and ‘after school’ clubs where the staff may not have your ideals?

Every time we try to put our point, there seem to be louder voices which are listened to and we cannot get through.

Mrs S. A. Shippey

Please send letters & contributions to P O Box 43690,London SE22 9WN or to newsletter@mothersathomematter.org

The Editor reserves the right to edit letters and articles for space and clarity.

Opinions expressed on the letters page are not necessarily those of MAHM.

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Mothers AtHome MatterCOMMITTEE

ChairmanAnna Lines

020 8653 8768 chair@

mothersathomematter.org

TreasurerPat Dudley

01737 832 598 treasurer@

mothersathomematter.org

SecretaryLynne Burnham01737 768 705

secretary@mothersathomematter.org

Membership SecretarySine Pickles

020 8299 0156membership@

mothersathomematter.org

Newsletter EditorialPoppy Picklesnewsletter@

mothersathomematter.org

Media EnquiriesAnna Lines

020 8653 8768media@

mothersathomematter.org

Other Committee MembersLouise Kirk

Marie Peacock

Print & Distributionam-pm Design and Print

01452 332 027

Design EditorLaura Boon

PatronsFiona Castle, Lady Griffiths of Fforestfach, Oliver James,

Patricia Morgan

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Annual Membership is £10.00. Please make cheques payable to Mothers at Home Matter. Please cut out this form and post to Mothers at Home Matter, PO Box 43690, London SE22 9WN

Mothers At Home Matter

We now have a fully-functioning, all-singing, all-dancing website!

www.mothersathomematter.orgThe old trusty website, set up and maintained free of charge by a loyal member, Alan Bright, has been revamped after our extensive re-design of the organisation’s logo following our re-naming last year. We welcome you to our new website, a collaboration between Tim Sharville at Gun-powder Studios and three committee members.The site has many of the old features, re-organised under clear headings: past AGM Presentations, Book Reviews, past newsletters, information on income splitting and other taxation issues. We also try to keep members updated on the latest breaking news in the area of mothers at home, un-der the Media section. There is also a MAHM Blog on issues of interest. We now just need people to use it! Please do forward the site to friends, family, MPs, policy makers and anyone who you feel would be interested in our organisation. We need to spread the word, and encourage other mothers, faced with the decision ‘To work or not to work’ to feel sup-ported in her choice if she opts to stay at home to bring up her children.

Please send any feedback or thoughts to newsletter@mothersathomematter.org

If you have been inspired by what you have read in this newsletter, please join us using the form below and add your voice to our or-ganisation. Or, go to our website: www.mothersathomematter.org