Precipices and canyons

Since I last posted in early December over 7ft of snow has fallen in Campusville; one American President has come back from the precipice; two Middle Eastern Heads of State have been pushed over the precipice; and a little person I know has started skating a little too close to the edge for my liking.  

Little Teadrinker has officially reached the ‘pre-toddler’ phase. In many ways its been a magical whirlwind.  Where there were gurgles there are now genuine giggles; where arms reached out there are now heartfelt cuddles; where there were indiscriminate smiles, well remembered friendships are now formed.  Every day a new word. From the fragile helpless little baby, a multi-faceted human being is emerging and I feel myself falling deeper in love by the hour.   

Yet in spite of this, the idea of continuing as a stay-at-home mom is losing its appeal. In my naivety I’d imagined that bumptiousness, bossiness and bloodcurdling tantrums were reserved for the ‘terrible twos’.  The reality of mealtimes with a just turned one-year-old evolving into forty minute food fights, and attempts to put snowsuits and mittens on being met with a head butt has taken me by surprise. In peacetime the job is only marginally less demanding - the library visits and toy-shop sing-alongs that used to pleasantly break up the days now involve complex negotiations, chasing up and down isles and frantic efforts to put things back on shelves. To top it off, the nanny who we have been sharing with another family for a few hours a week has quit, citing artistic differences...  

So, where do we go from here?  Mr TD and I have concluded that the best scenario would be for one or both of us to go part-time and combine this with part-time nursery care. This would allow me my sanity, not to mention the chance to reclaim salary and career, and give LTd more of the social stimulation she craves whilst maintaining the one-to-one time she still seems to rely on.  

But if I’m looking for a decent part-time position anywhere round here, my luck is likely to be out.  In contrast to the UK, where workers have a legal right to request flexible work (albeit limited) and the most common pattern in two-parent families with children under-14 is that one parent works part-time, most American moms - and dads - face a stark all or nothing choice when it comes to combining work and family life. 

Other than for a few high income occupations such as pediatric medicine, most part-time opportunities offer vastly inferior pay and conditions. There is no requirement for parity of pay for part-time work and it has been proven that, for the lip service corporate America pays to ‘family friendly working’, even those women who take-up offers to take more flexilble or shorter hours find themselves discriminated against and overlooked for promotions.  Under these conditions, it is little surprise that most  moms feel they have little option than to bite the bullet, going back to work full-time and accepting the long hours (often 50+pw), limited holiday and family sacrifice that entails.  Meanwhile, the minority of educated professional moms who choose to stay at home have long been fetishized in the American media as self-sacrificial ‘opt outs’ - a trend started in 2003 with a NYTimes article by Lisa Belkin  which ignited major feminist debate. 

In well-to-do Campusville, the cultural divide between stay-at-home moms and worker moms is plain to see. I have a vague memory of this dynamic from when my own mum used to complain about the ‘worker mums’ who’d patronise her at North London dinner parties in the early 80s.  But I’ve not encountered anything like it at home yet since reaching the motherhood age, and can only think that its disappearance must be down to the rise of part-time working as a life-style choice in the UK.  Here, by contrast, it can be hard to escape the group politics (small ‘p’).  Feminist stand-points aside, each camp has their own set of support groups, their children often don’t mix until they reach school age and if you raise the subject of the ‘other’ with either it won’t be long before disparaging or perplexed comments are muttered.

Of course, the stay-at-home/worker-mom chasm is not the only division that is made wider by the poor prospects for part-time workers.  New analysis from UMass shows that low income women face the greatest ‘motherhood penalty’ in terms of earnings - and largely this is down to dropping their hours.  The authors speculate that low paid women who overcome the initial childcare conundrum and stick it out at work often quit altogether later on to accommodate family crises, lacking sufficient paid time off. Interestingly, the same study finds that there is a fatherhood income premium which is also linked to hours worked - in other words, as women drop out of the labour market, or accept poorly paid part-time work, dads are having to work longer.  It's the traditional breadwinner model plus.

Improved part-time work opportunities would help our family out, but I don't pretend they offer a panacea for gender equality - just look at the state of the remaining gender pay-gap in the UK.  Yet if US employers and regulators could get to grips with the issue they'd be swiping a significant blow at gender, class and cultural divisions all in one shot.

People like US

Wanna get your child on the development fast track?  Got $400 and time in the day to spare for a course of classes? Live in an affluent area in the US? Then do not fear, commercially run parenting centres like this Boston based chain may be opening in an area near you soon.  

Little Teadrinker and I sampled our first session last week - we chose the Movers and Groovers developmental class for 9-11 month olds. Having navigated our way through the centre’s enticing posh baby shop to the ‘studio’, we were greeted by a circle of 10 cheery moms and their babies.  Our Akela was an uber parenting expert and Masters qualified early years pedagogue - Brits: think Floella Benjamin meets Tanya Byron.  After an initial exchange of baby related woes and advice, events kicked off with songs and stories, the moms and the brightest babies fluently baby-signing along. Next up was a range of motor development activities involving high-tech props including a parachute. The moms enthused from the sidelines as the babies crawled clambered and toddled around happily in the centre of the circle. The vibe was relaxed, although the competitive under-tone irrepressible “Has Aiden crawled through the tunnel yet?”, “Did I hear Josie say quack already?”.  Akela rounded up with some Thanks Giving advice on safety and dealing with sensory overload, finally sharing some Christmas shopping tips on where to buy the best wooden toys.

The pushy posh parent phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the US, yet in the UK we have not seen the likes of private parenting centres.  Could the reason be that the state has captured the market?  After all, Sure Start Children’s Centres now exist across England offering families with young children universal free access to everything from baby massage to dad’s stay and play and breastfeeding consultations - where they are run well, middle class parents come flocking.  The US equivalent, which started in 1965 and was an antecedent to Sure Start, is not open to better off families.  Typically for the US, Head Start is targeted exclusively at those on low incomes.  Obama is a firm believer and used the Economic Stimulus Package to boost its funding to the tune of $2billion.

Yet in the UK the principle of a universallity is proving hard to defend in the face of massive pressure on public finances - why shouldn’t “middle class freebies” be first in line for cuts?  Ministers are hinting that Children’s Centres could go the same way as Head Start, and as the UK's Child Benefit system, with only the most disadvantaged drawing the full benefit in the future. 

The argument for targeting Sure Start seems, initially at least, pretty compelling. The original architects of the Sure Start programme argued that universal, free access was necessary to avoid stigmatisation of services - something which had been a problem with Headstart. Yet England’s Sure Start experience has shown that even an open-to-all service does not necessarily entice those in the most dire situations, many of whom run a mile from anything that looks like authority or institution.  An early evaluation showed that Children’s Centres were failing in this respect, and a lot more money had to be pumped in to reach out to those families.

But before throwing the baby out with the bath water, politicians in the UK should take time to look once more at the US experience.  It reveals at least three troubling trade-offs...

1/  Targeting early years services could be culturally divisive. As our little venture last week illustrates, while it may be pleasant to be surrounded by “people like us”, the US’s targeted approach has led to a socially segregated, two-tier system.  A sorting effect happens of course to an extent anyway when children reach school age (watch Waiting for Superman for a powerful tale on the divided US school system), but by drawing the line so clearly about who accesses what so early in a child’s life differences between social classes are being reinforced at every level: social networks, peer effects, parents’ aspirations expectations, notions of tastefulness - remember the wooden toys...

2/ There’s a risk of disenfranchising the wrong groups.  A large proportion of families are likely to be left out of the equation all together - not poor enough to qualify for publicly subsidised services and not wealthy enough to fork out for the private alternative.  Many of the would-be excluded families make up the “squeezed middle” whose needs politicians both sides of the Atlantic are now claiming to acknowledge.  

3/ A minority services is often a weak service.  Headstart has survived an incredibly long time, but only just.  Most would acknowledge that it has remained a marginalised service with significant shortcomings: notably, the most comprehensive evaluation to date came out in January showing that children's attendance in Headstart had no impact on their academic, social-emotional or health status at the end of first grade. The lack of sustained benefits has been troubling its proponents for years, but attempts to fix it have been relatively limited.  Such drift would likely not have been tolerated had pointy elbowed middle class parents seen it as in their interests to agitate for a solution.  Crucially, the lack of broad public support is now putting the programme at risk, in spite of Obama’s wish to improve and build on the programme.  


Last week, a vote to renew the fiscal stimulus money for early years was kicked into the long-grass by Congress, meaning that it might be ditched entirely and hundreds of thousands of children could be kicked off the Headstart rolls. The issue hasn’t even made the national press.

Motherhood & Apple Pie

Little Teadrinker has just made it successfully through her first full week in daycare.  After 8 months at home together it feels like a wrench, but looking at the moms around Campusville I'm reminded of how lucky we've been. The UK maternity deal may be average by European standards but it wipes the floor with the measly twelve weeks of unpaid job protected leave on offer to American women (and that’s thanks only to the relatively recent efforts of the Clinton Administration).  The US is the only Western country where women have no statutory right to paid maternity leave.  

You'd be forgiven for assuming that America's less appealing national traits are rooted in this epic failure to support parent/baby bonding in the critical first year of life.  But it doesn't seem so. According to the Professor teaching the sophomore psychology course I’ve been auditing, around 2/3 of children are “securely attached” – i.e. when stressed they go to their primary care giver for reassurance - and this is consistent across Europe and the US.    

So how come US children seem unaffected by such early separation?  A recent US study suggests that going back to work brings benefits to income, relationships and mental health that outweigh the negative effects *. That sounds like apple pie, but I can't help thinking there must be more to it.  A couple of features of family life on Campusville give pause for thought...

First, the moms here hug their babies tight.  Baby-sling wearing is such big business that the European designer pram fetish seems to have passed many by. I've not seen a single Bugaboo, or for that matter a single newborn in a pram. According to the New York Times there are now at least 30 companies promoting designer baby carriers in the US, and between 2006 and 2008 sales of carriers rose 43% . 

Second, the women here pump like daemons.  By the time they go back to work many have produced enough breastmilk to fill all the teacups in New England.  But it doesn't stop there. As of this year, women's rights to pump are protected by Federal law and increasing numbers of employers have “mothers' rooms” specifically designed for the purpose.

Third, the ready supply of low-wage migrant labour here seems to mean that better off families have their pick of talented and dedicated nannies. Latinos are unsurprisingly the most common - hiring someone who speaks Spanish to your children all day is seen as a bonus - but recently Tibetans have been gaining popularity.  And crucially, its not uncommon amongst the nanny hiring class to appoint a nanny before the child’s been born, allowing the baby to get familiar and  form attachment from day one.

So women here, like women in adverse circumstances around the world, do find a way to make it work for them and their children. And there are no doubt things that early returners in Europe could learn from their US counterparts. But personally speaking, I'd take nine months maternity pay over office pumping any day.

*Note that this study looks at the effects of going back to work in the first year for American Moms - i.e. Moms who do not have an alternative of paid maternity leave available.  It does not offer any rationale for cutting UK maternity benefits in case you were wondering Mr Osbourne...

Blueberry jam storm

Its been two days of blistering heat since we stepped off the plane, and now we’re preparing for a hurricane... Earl is on his way.  While this part of the Eastern Seaboard is not predicted to meet the eye of the storm, the weather men are saying the city could take some thrashing tonight.  The Mayor has declared a state of emergency and Liz our landlady, who while not landladying is being a leading academic authority on the art of writing a steamy novel, is coming round to help us secure the rickety windows of our clapboard house and clear the portch.


Meanwhile the Moms of Campusville have other things on their minds.  How do I know? There's nothing more that these people love than connectivity, so being a newby is no obstacle to getting the inside track. 1500 local moms have now collectivised through Yahoo messaging group which exchanges as many messages a month with numbers fast growing.  Exchanges are lively and cover everything from public breastfeeding rights to dealing with dads who give too many desserts.  Yet Campusville.com moms have not had time to worry about the storm. The preoccupation of the day has been a dramatic collision between Percy, friend of Thomas (the Tank Engine), and a parcel he is carrying which culminated in blueberry jam, with a distinctly bloody appearance, being spilt on the tracks. Should our children be exposed to this level of violence the moms wonder? There is concern that the “dynamics between the engines are surely sometimes less than kind”. Should I take this as the first bit of evidence that far from their liberal reputation East Coast moms are protective beyond belief?  Or that behind the facade lies an old fashioned, conservative soul, which only bares itself when it comes to deeply personal matters such as parenting? Perhaps I'm reading too much into it.  Perhaps the heat, or the blueberry jam, has just gone to their heads. Time will tell...