Who says children need full-time mums?
CUE PURSED lips and disapproval: while feckless mothers sneak off to enjoy themselves in the workplace, “record numbers” of children under 5 are going to day nurseries. Almost 12,000 of these institutions now tend to 704,200 children, representing a rise of 31 per cent in five years and providing ample fodder for a rash of social studies showing that children thus cared for become more disobedient and disruptive than those looked after by their mothers at home. In fact, most of the small print also adds that such irritating behaviour is only marginally increased and it has also been shown that the nursery alumni go on to do better both at school and later in life. Next week a new book called What Children Need by Jane Waldfogel, an American professor of childcare, goes further: it suggests that at least part-time work is actually positive for mother and child. But no matter. The guilt-inducing damage to parents is already done by the implicit perpetuation of the most tenacious of conte
