I was at a dinner party last night when the conversation turned to parenting. Unexpectedly, the word ‘fashion’ was thrown into the mix.
“It was the fashion, five or six years ago, for parents to say they had a nanny.”
The mother went on to explain that in the wealthy, educated circles it supposedly said something about your ‘status’ if you could afford to pay another person to care for your child. It was almost elite, exclusive, and dare I say, ‘English’.
It also offered the suggestion that as a mother (or father), you had more important things to do in your life. You were a somebody. You had a career, or were president of the social club, or you volunteered at a charity. You could not afford to just stay at home and take care of your kids.
On the flip side, some parents employed help because they truly believed in the benefit it offered their children. The best tutors, etiquette coaches, and I even know some with personal dieticians. It was like outsourcing the aspects of parenting you were sure somebody else could do better (and at a lower price).
But now, as hiring help for childcare is not quite the luxury it used to be, we’re entering a danger zone.
We’ve got other people doing the ‘dirty’ work: the laundry, the bathing, the feeding, the sleeping, the tantrum-appeasing; everything that’s not so fashionable to discuss at dinner parties.
And what are parents doing? Still providing, still loving, still caring–but something has shifted. It requires a certain amount of time alone with your child, in physical contact with your child, to build a strong emotional relationship. Are we running the danger of losing this?
As parents we often get caught up in hectic professional and social lifestyles. And while we rely on our help to pick up the mess around our kids, we could find ourselves with teenage and young-adult children we don’t recognize.
Times are changing, as they should. We talk this month about the positive and negative effects of having another person help in caring for your child–be it in daycare or a nanny at home. And although each parent to their own, there are some things–attachment, love, security, and the warmth of a parental touch–that we can’t contract out to anyone else.
We’re just asking you to be a little more mindful of those.
