[Columbine]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

I think that society, to an extent, pushes parents into isolation. It isn`t necessary that you stay at home all the time and do nothing for yourself... It`s just the way that "advances" in childcare have pushed it.
There seems to be a culture of all or nothing when it comes to parenting, when that can`t be good for anyone involved.

I wholeheartedly agree. There's this awful dichotomy around aimed at women thinking of having kids that you should be a super eco-mum, breast-feed, give them organic stuff, stay at home etc etc, or else your children will grow up to be diseased warped delinquents, but then you should also be a sexy high-flown career lady too, and still do the 'double shift' with the housework. It's all guilt-tripping and pushy.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

I have a child and my life does not revolve around him, nor did it ever. I did very little differently once I was caring for him. But my philosophy was more that he was simply an addition to my already existing life - not that I needed to change the whole world to care for him.
It seems, at least to my eyes, that in the west there is a very strong line drawn between those who take care of the children and the rest of the "real world". In Japan that is a bit more blurred. This is why - to the often noted shock and horror of western visitors to Japan - you`ll see parents out with their children at bars or late in the evening. It isn`t poor parenting - it`s continuing life but with child in tow.

You see that in Europe too, some places, and like you say, it's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, in some ways it's a good thing; there's a pretty famous study that looked at african women who took their babies to work in the fields with them. Because they were in close contact all day, they tended to have more stable relationships, and unlike the western view, that wasn't something that they had to actively work at. It was just circumstantial to the way they lived with their children. And definitely there's this issue that the west views having kids as having to change roles dramatically, rather than just make an addition to the list. It's very much a status thing. With one tongue society tells you 'it's wonderful to be a mother' and with the other they hiss 'you loser'.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

There is no inherent reason that you can`t go out and take your child with you - other than the eyes of "society"... Which seem to be particularly passionate about the subject in the west. It seems these days babies are close to taboo in public places that aren`t specifically set aside for parents. There always seems to be something in the news from somewhere about people getting offended when a parent brought a baby into some "adult" venue like... Oh, a cafe... Or the shock and horror of a mother feeding her baby in public. And not just by breast - people don`t want to see babies sucking on a bottle either it seems.

This really gets up my nose too. Outside of urban areas, there's a real lack of practical infrastructure aimed towards people with small children. I live in a pretty small town, but there's no public changing facilities provided, and very few cafe's where you can squeeze in a buggy or a push-chair. Only two I know of actively cater for children (asides Macdonalds, I mean), and provide highchairs and bits, and both are exceptional to the rule being organic vegan cafes which are already bucking the trend (they're also really good to disabled people).
Children under 14 are banned from all the pubs in town, bar none. After a certain hour you have to provide over-18 ID to even order food and soft-drinks. You have to drive out of town to find somewhere that caters for children, and even then you're regulated to the garden usually, because they don't allow kids in the bar area. There's no parent and child dedicated parking spaces in the central carpark, so if you can't get a space there, you're stuck in the outer carpark and that's got a two-story footbridge to cross to get to the shops. Two large flights of stairs with a push-chair/child in tow can be fairly discouraging. There's legislation which says large-scale retail developments have to provide such things, but nothing for municipal parking areas in general. And it's not just mothers either. One of our local chain shops got in trouble because they stopped a parent taking a baby into the baby changing area. Why? Because it was the father with the baby and the changing area was inside the ladies toilets. Similarly a guy at one office i've worked at had trouble because the rules about mixed-development meant there weren't any day-cares or creche's anywhere near his work, and they wouldn't take his kids because if something went wrong, he'd be too far away to deal with it. This might paint a bleak picture of the UK, but that's often what it's like.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

I Why are these the only options? I mean this honestly. Why can`t you take your baby out with your childless friends? Why can`t you go out without baby with other mothers who also haven`t brought their babies along? Sure you probably can`t go out binge drinking or to a night club with baby in tow - but you couldn`t the whole time you were pregnant either... And there are countless other things you can do with baby adhered - without them getting in the way.

*laughs* Ok, I concede this one. You're quite right, there are more options than I put forth, I guess I was just channelling the frustrations of a couple of girls I know. Both are first-timers and they say it can be really hard because you meet lots of mothers at nursery and things, who could be great friends, but really you only end up talking to whoever is the parent of the kid your kid plays with, and it tends to be more about the kids friendship than building your own. It's a community thing I guess; in my village people really just don't know each other or they're set in established cliques. The other one especially had a while where she kept refusing to go out with her particular group of friends (not crazy drinking and dancing) because the others all had work and study and things to talk about, and she said she felt dull and frumpy in comparison or if she took the kid, it felt like she was holding the group up. I mean, no one said anything, and even she didn't think they actually thought of her like that, but she couldn't help feel it in herself.

Originally Posted by Nyororin

I ETA;
Using your mind keeps you sharper. You don`t have to be paid for it.

This is very true, and now you mention it, the ladies I do unpaid volunteering with don't have 'careers' in that sort of sense, but they're wonderfully sharp and lively. Motivation to keep up with things can slide though, if you wipe out over your kids from all the pressure to be a 'good' mother. It's more the regular activity, sense of achievement and so on that you get from working that's important than the career prospects. At least there's the internet and mumsnet, nowadays. You can get involved with all sorts of things without even leaving the house. I guess I've just seen too many of my mum's generation who really were all-or-nothing mothers and didn't have that support and then somewhere along the line, as the kids got older and more independent, something broke.