This is a controversial subject and one I would like people to approach with an open mind. The question I'd like people to consider is whether working mothers are creating a void in their children's lives which in turn is leading to a sense of alienation and social breakdown? Children need the security of having a parent at home to look after them, what psychologists refer to as a 'Safe Base' However due to the demands of the service sector economy and unsociable working hours many mothers now work late into the evening and the kids are often left to fend for themselves. This undermines the child's confidence and creates a feeling of abandonment.
Is there not therefore an argument in favour of encouraging mothers to stay at home with the children? Particularly during the formative years. We could encourage this through special targeted tax cuts for families with children under sixteen. I also think the moves to coerce single mothers away from benefit and into work is a bad idea, precisely because it takes the mother away from her children, and in a home where there is only one parent, what the children need more than anything is a 'Safe Base' A way around this could be for single mothers to have the option of access to a social fund from which they could top-up their benefit on a weekly basis and they could pay this back at a later date when the children are older. This would serve to alleviate poverty during the child's early years. What do you think?
Because mothers that are returning to work, on the most part low paid jobs in retail jobs. They are entitled to assistance by way of tax credits, child nursery to name but a few and who do you think is paying for that?
Do you honestly think that it's cheaper for the state to send mothers to work, and then pay them to look after their children and be a responsible parent?
Fool hardy
And if the child gets up to mischief, which should be responsible, the mother? I mean the mother who is at work and not raising her children.
I mean really, gosh!! We don’t all live like Dave and Co, with loads of dosh!!
Watch this space; the truth will demonstrate how wrong and misguided such policies really are.....
1. There are some mothers who return to work because they WANT to.
2. There are some mothers who return to work because they HAVE to.
3. There are some fathers who stay at home because of number 1.
4. There are some fathers who stay at work despite number 1.
5. There are some fathers who aren't involved at all.
6. There are some mothers who keep the father out of the loop by fair means or foul.
7. There are children who go to Breakfast and After School Clubs.
8. There are children who let themselves into home.
9. There are children who watch TV most of the time they are at home.
10.There are TV programmes who make this way of life seem normal.
11.There are children who are physically abused by out of work parents.
12.There are children who are physically abused by parents at work.
13.There are children who are emotionally abused by parents at home.
14.There are children who are emotionally abused by parents at work.
At the end of the day, who needs a child psychologist to tell you that a child will benefit from positive care by a parent he/she has been with all his/her life and whom he/she knows, trusts and is bonded with?
If parents can afford to give their child the best love and attention needed for a stable future then this is the ideal. But there will always be unavoidable situations when the parent has to go to work and leave the care and upbringing to a stranger. It's the parents with CHOICE that should perhaps have rethought their position before having a family. Who is the most important person in the equation? Well, the child of course.
It comes down to economic deprivation versus social deprivation. Unfortunately for policy proposers, this oversimplification ignores the interconnected nature between the two.
I like the idea of removing barriers and helping facilitate a mother's return to work, when she is happy, without necessarily forcing her back through changes in the benefits system.
I don't think mum's of children under 16 need to be at home!
I think it would be great to encourage/help/make it possible for one parent of not school age children to stay at home. I then think it should be made easier for one parent to work part time (curing school hours) while their child is at primary school. Personally I think that after a child goes to secondary school parents can work full time without damaging the child.
Also, I don't think it necessarily needs to be the mother who stays at home - daddy's are good too!
Well let's stop and think a minute about this one.
So my daughter (aged 22) goes out of the after school club she works in at 3pm, walks up to the infant and junior school gate and collects the group that she and her co-workers will be looking after until 6pm when the parents turn up to collect them. These kids were dropped off at the same building sometime between 7:30am and 8am when they called it a 'breakfast club' and were walked to school by the morning staff. DO you get the picture ?
And why is this happenning ? Well, for the most part it has something to do with the house prices versus the salaries available.
And who is most to blame for that ? Well let's see. Once upon a time in 1982 I bought a three bedroomed (no, three poky rooms the size of shoe boxes called 'bedrooms' by the developer) house for £24,850 on a salary of £6,500 with my wife bringing in another £3,000. Six years later I sell that house for £30,000 and move into another which I agree to buy for £39,500.
Five minutes after I sign the contract some fat guy called Nigel Lawson - remember him (?) announces that in a couple of ***MONTHS*** time he's going to destroy the dual MIRAS tax relief advantage for people who persist in 'living in sin' instead of doing the decent thing and getting married - which destroys your newly wedded wife's ability to claim an extra £30,000 of MIRAS tax relief.
And what happens ? A week later the houses in that street are changing hands for £65,000. On the day I move in to my new house I go out to take the 'for sale' sign off the gate and a white ford escort XR3i screeches to a halt and a yuppie in red braces (yes, they really DID exist) tries to wave a huge wad of notes under my nose to get me to sell him the house for £85,000.
£39,500 to £85,000 in a little over four weeks. Or putting it another way, as I was then earning almost £17,000 and my wife was AT HOME looking after our first child my house rose in value from slightly less than two and a half times my gross salary to slightly more than FIVE times my salary IN A MONTH!
Nice one Nigel. But the negative equity in 'Sadly Broke' (as we called the district of Bradley Stoke in Bristol just across the severn bridge from us) meant they weren't laughing.
But then you guys did it again didn't you.
A little over ten years after that, and now running a small business bringing my wife and I a gross income of £50,000 I flogged that place for £65,000 and moved to a bigger house in the catchment area for the best school in your newfangled league tables for Newport at a price tag of £94,000. So the house I bought for 39K has gone up by another 26K in ten years. Had average working people's salaries gone up by that amount ? I think not.
But then Nu Labaah took over and everything went to hell in a handcart. Ten Years of Nu Labaah destroyed my business and I'm someone else's servant again and fetching in £37K gross in exchange. My wife gets handed about £13K from the admin job she does for the university. So we're back where we were ten years ago. Except that petrol was 37p a litre then.
But last week the house across the road identiocal to mine was sold for £320,000. SIX AND A HALF times our salaries.
It does not take a genius to see what the REAL cause of 'social breakdown' is. The complete inability to put a roof over your head without working 18 hours a damn day each.
"Are working mothers a factor in social breakdown?"
hahaha - you sound like some sort of 1960s vicar!
You know the real reasons for social breakdown? A government that wants to wage wars on Iraqi civilians rather than on poverty and the causes of terrorism, a government which is obsessed with chucking as many people behind bars as possible without even thinking of the causes of crime. This so called "Labour" government have made the country even worse,pandering to America, treating immigrants and asylum seekers as subhumans.
I agree with you RedAnarchist. Gordon Clown is even worse than Blair.
I'm a socialist with liberal views and David Cameron is much more appealing to me than Brown.
Obviously Cameron is no socialist but he is no further to the right than Brown when it comes to economic policy.
New Labour has increased the gap between the best and worst off. I don't know if David Cameron could do any better but he surely couldn't do any worse.
Tony,
Do single mothers contribute to social breakdown?
Well, the fact that you advocate the need for a ‘social fund’ seems to state that you do believe so.
As such, I’m not convinced of there being this ‘social breakdown’ people here like to be so convinced of. I still see the Brits as a nation of polite stand-in-liners and in times of floods et alia we still seem to be pretty good at helping each other out.
I don’t think rap music, Channel 4 television, alternative comedy or immigration have changed any of that. Civilisation is more than skin deep.
However, I do have some sympathy for the argument of mothers staying at home. I remember being at school when one of the arguments used in books to decry the vileness of communism was to point out how mothers after only a brief time with their children needed to go back to work in state factories, etc.
I find it almost humorous who the capitalist, free west now, after the fall of communism, seems to be advocating the very same thing it once so regaled.
However, I think the greatest worry of sedentary mothers lies in the underclass. Much has been made of it being of benefit to children to see an example of something other than mere passive dole collection in their parents.
Then again, I admit to perhaps not knowing enough about what might actually do more harm, the absolute absence of the single parent who’s at work, or a parental example of complete dependency. I don’t think there’s any easy answers there.
Also of course there is the cost, which I believe would be quite astronomical.
I believe recent polls suggest that, after a continuous surge in women wanting to work, following the activities of the Germaine Greers of this world, we’re now actually seeing a time where more and more women would actually want to drop the career and stay home.
If therefore government would wish to assure mothers the right to stay home, it might in fact face a much greater avalanche than initially considered. The cost would most likely be prohibitive.
As regards the social fund: Financial help that needs to be repaid is no help at all, in my view, Tony. It would soon mount up and thereby create a crushing burden of debt that would ruin many a single parent. I firmly believe that if support is provided by the state it needs to be non-refundable. Else it serves little point.
It strikes me that people automatically think this is a question of restricting a womans right to work. It is not. Its about providing the child with safe base, a mother who is there for the child, as mentor, as educator, as moral guide, as mum!
From the thread question it sounds as though the options of being a working mum and offering your child a safe and supportive home are mutually exclusive options!
Being a working mum doesn't have to be detrimental to your child.
I work in the field of Anti-social Behaviour and I can assure you that there are plenty of non-working parents not providing the loving and supportive home you would hope for!
I possibly have a skewed view given my career, but I personally believe that having working parents who have a sense of pride and self-respect for being able to provide for themselves and their families can make for a better home environment.
Of course, I'm sure that 'parenting drive' of the Labour Party will provide many work-shy benefit claimants with another excuse to evade work by claiming that work affects their ability to parent effectively!!
As a full time working Mum with an extremely well behaved 10 year old son, I can testify that it is possible!
I think it rather depends on the parents. I'm a working parent, partially through choice and partially through necessity. I am told on a regular basis by friends and by complete strangers, that my child is one of the best behaved young men they've ever seen. While the time we spend together is limited, we always make sure it's quality time. At the same time, many of the people I grew up with who have children, allow them to run riot.
Perhaps it could be said that people from more traditional backgrounds tend to (and this is purely a generalisation) be better behaved and there are more stay at home mothers is this sort of environment.
I can not agree with this, My mother worked all through my childhood as an aerospace engineer, so would not have wanted to abandon a career she had worked for, as is the case of many women. Some women need a break from the home so undertake a part time job - Are you saying that in 'your world' this would be wrong due to the reater good of society?
I think it is a little extreme to say it causes 'social breakdown' isn't this a slippery slope argument? you are going from a mother working to it affecting society as a whole.
I can safely say that putting a child into nursery or employing a nanny actually builds character in children and they learn to appreciate their parents more. Also, children learn so much more having external influences.
Whether a mother goes to work or not seems to have very little difference on the behaviour of children. I think it is rather that boys and girls need different approaches when being understood and disciplined. I have had contact with many single mothers through my voluntary work and many of them just do not understand their sons needs,by and large most women can identify with their daughters way of thinking but the boys are a mystery to them. It is easier for fathers to understand boys, for this reason children with two parents have a better chance of being better behaved. It is not the fault of the mothers but this lack of understanding is the reason why so many boys become disruptive. Some women,particularly those who have had brothers or lots of boys as friends when young seem to understand the boys way of thinking better, these women do not always find girls as easy but being female themselves at least gives them a chance. Equally fathers find it easier with sons but by and large it's women who are left with the children. Girls often listen to reason and discussion of discipline whereas boys understand a firmer approach without discussion. Of course this is a generalisation but it makes it hard for women with teenage sons who are challeging all authority, parents have to gain control before teenage is reached leaving it until trouble starts makes it very much harder for parents to gain control
