“..Should I go back to work now my children are at school?..”
“..Dear Virginia,
I’ve always stayed at home to look after my children, who are now aged three and four, and both at school for part of the day.
Now I’ve been offered my old job back.
My partner says I should go for it, because he can look after them one day a week and the rest of the time there are after-school clubs and childminders they can go to.
I know some mums who go straight back to work a week after the baby’s born – but my children still seem to need me.
What shall I do?
Yours sincerely, Jennie
Aren’t you lucky to have a choice?
At least I imagine you do, because nowhere do you say that it’s essential for you to go back to work.
And quite honestly, if need isn’t snapping its hungry jaws at you, then I can’t see any reason at all for you to go back.
Indeed, the only time you mention “need” is in the context of your children, who appear still to need you.
And why not?
Having been brought up myself by a mother who worked – at a dazzling career –
- I can only say that it would have meant an awful lot if she’d been at the school gates when I came out, even as little as once a week.
Or she’d ever been at the school gates when I went in.
Sometimes children need a parent to be around at home, particularly when they’re at school.
School doesn’t usually have a nurturing culture.
Kindly, perhaps, but at school you’re expected to be good-tempered, polite, hard-working and punctual –
- all things you can leave behind when you get home and can slob around like a normal person.
With your mum or dad.
A childminder or an after-school club just isn’t the same.
A child still has to behave, be on form, square up to his peers, hold his own.
My own feeling is that when they grow up, it’s for children to leave home.
I don’t think that before that home should ever leave them.
And by “home” I mean it as metaphor for a parent rather than a flat or a house.
And indeed I was surprised, even when my son was a teenager, how important it was for someone to be around “at home”..
.. even if that someone was only someone to kick against in order to propel himself more successfully into the outside world..”
go to source/story>>Virginia Ironside’s Dilemmas: Should I go back to work now my children are at school? - Healthy Living, Health & Families - The Independent