Life Partnerships?

Fredrik,

You are absolutely correct IMO. Regardless of political correctness the overwhelming evidence is that children thrive best in a home where the father goes out to work and the mother stays at home and grandparents live in the same house or at least nearby and have plenty of contact. I am not saying this is how it should be I am saying this is how it is - generally speaking of course. This is very much the norm in the Philippines and overall families are way happier here. A child on anti-depressants? It's virtually unheard of.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by acad tsunam1
You are absolutely correct IMO. Regardless of political correctness the overwhelming evidence is that children thrive best in a home where the father goes out to work and the mother stays at home
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What is this evidence? where did you see it? Who researched and published it?

I think it would be better if one parent COULD still stay at home.

The selling off of council houses added to demand for privately rented accommodation and locked more of the population into mortgages. As couples competed with singles for property, the prices became less achievable by the single and the less well paid.

Couples now both HAVE to go out to work - only to achieve the same necessity - one house/home. They are no better off - just the "value" of their home has increased. Much of their income will go on child care and double commuting.

The huge mass of this inflationary market distorts control of the economy - like trying to ride a bicycle with a bag of groceries in your hand. We are well overdue a collapse of house values - despite the idiots who always say "I think this time the market is immune to such cycles" - right up to the moment sanity breaks out and values fall.

"We're all doomed, doomed I tell you".

Dear Adam,

I thought I was the only pessimist! I am emigrating. The UK is completely finished in my view unless you have a couple of hundred thousands in wealth, or some really valued skill! [Spiritually rich Smiley]!

Kindest regards...

Fredrik
Please share with us the name of the Utopia you have found to escape to.

We made the choice to live more frugally on one income, one car, modest house, one UK based holiday, you get the picture, and for my wife to stay at home and raise the nippers.

The result - two well adjusted, happy, popular children with none of the issues that seem to blight our small world. They hate McShite, would rather play in the garden with the dog than watch TV or play computer games, enjoy the countryside, etc.

Jono

Dear Bob,

I'll certainly let you know when I get there!

I don't think Utopia comes into it. There are problems there as here, but not quite the same ones! It's still in Europe, but there is a lot to organise now! Please don't speculate for all that. [Smiley].

At least I might be able to buy a flat and therefore be in some position to retire eventually. Also I shall be rspected for I will do for a living, rather than sit at the bottom of the wages heap, paying out more than two thirds of my income on water rates, council tax, and rent! The UK really is finished for the little man, unless he bends and scrapes and asks Mr Brown for handouts. I have no intention of ever doing that.

In sterling terms I shall be worse off of course, but that hardly matters if life stays reasonably within budget. If I stay in UK then I shall certainly have nothing, not even a roof over my head, within five years...

This is a long way from the topic, but this is the Padded Cell I suppose!

Kindest regards from Fredrik

Dear Jono,

I know what you are doing sounds old fashioned, but your kids will gow up very nicely in that environment!

ATB from Fredrik

quote:

Originally posted by acad tsunami:
Regardless of political correctness the overwhelming evidence is that children thrive best in a home where the father goes out to work and the mother stays at home and grandparents live in the same house or at least nearby and have plenty of contact.

Research has also proven that children that go to a nursery in their early ages later on make better social contact.

I think there is not a general rule that applies. What if the husbands works, the wife doesn't, at home the two have nothing to talk about besides the kids, the wife would rather work and blames the husband, and the atmosphere in house sucks and eventually leads to a divorce...

Imo if you do what is best for you, it is often best for your children.

You can't generalise because everyone has specific needs, circumstances and ambitions. With three children, my wife would go brain dead if she was just a housewife and mother over the duration of birth to full time school (12 years total for the three) with no outside interest or challenges. Fortunately she is a freelance writer and so can find time to work when she wants and keeps a very full diary - she and the children are never in during the day. On top of that she buggers off for a long weekend abroad every month with her mates for a breather. That's fine for us with our freedom, but having to find employment would be a very different matter. Bas is right that being forced to spend your time totally at your place of work (home) with only infants for company and conversation is asking for disatisfaction in life, no matter how you dress it up, and that's going to cause problems down the line.
I am extremely fortunate in that we seem to have it sorted, but that is due to our circumstances and it isn't that easy for many people. It would be wonderful to live in a country where family and community are a way of life (France maybe, certainly Italy) but this is the UK where we need both parents to work full time just to pay the mortgage and tax - and then they make childcare cost so much it wipes out a wage anyway! I would LOVE to move to a country where we could live a proper family life, but I'm not the only one making the decisions. The UK is not family friendly.
You can't apply your philosophy to others. We all have different needs, although I agree that the children's needs should come first.
To make a happy home for children you firstly have to be happy yourself.

quote:

Originally posted by Malky:
[QUOTE]--

What is this evidence? where did you see it? Who researched and published it?

I read it here A jolly good book

One thing that avoids most problems is that we don't do each others families. That alone removes 99.9% of arguments.

quote:

Originally posted by Rasher:
One thing that avoids most problems is that we don't do each others families. That alone removes 99.9% of arguments.

LOL very true. 'Just don't go there' has to be the best advice.

quote:

Originally posted by acad tsunami:

quote:

Originally posted by Malky:
[QUOTE]--

What is this evidence? where did you see it? Who researched and published it?

I read it here A jolly good book

Acad,I haven't read it and, to be honest, don't intend to. I just think you have to be careful about making huge generalisations on the basis of having read a book. Children thrive best in a loving, caring and stimulating environment. This does not necessarily imply a situation where dad works and mum is a housewife. Women's equality is not political correctness. It has been fought for long and hard, from the suffragettes to the situation today where, on average, women still earn less than men.

True Malky, but the bottom line is that children need someone with them at all times and offloading them on someone else or some daycare business isn't necessarily the best thing for the child, irrespective of the parents "rights to work".

quote:

Women's equality is not political correctness. It has been fought for long and hard

Fair enough, but where does that leave the kids?
It ain't easy and no-one said it was going to be. Having children is something to be worked out beforehand - not after the child is here, and anyone who has a child ultimately wants the best for them.
I'm not disagreeing with you Malky, but the responsibility of looking after and bring up children lies with the parents, not the state. How you work that out between you is another matter, but it remains a responsibility.
I know a guy who is a house husband and I envy him. He's bloody good at it too.

rights, rights, rights, rights, rights, rights, rights, rights.......responsibilities

Fair enough Rasher. I was objecting to the huge generalisation re: Dad= work and Mum = stay at home.
I think we can all agree that kids are bloody wonderful as well as bloody hard work.

I agree about the book by the way - or any book on these subjects for that matter. My wife works commissions by writing on subjects that she admittedly knows nothing about, as does my sister. They just happen to be able to do it convincingly well enough to be asked to do it again and again. My wife has written about the McLaren F1 team without ever watching a race on TV or live. My sister has written a book on Shaker furniture without previously knowing it even existed!
Books are business - there is a market for something and the publishers commission a book for it. Believing that you can get tips for bringing up children from a book is naive at the very least and deluded at worst.

I read a report somewhere that said that if you ask a child what they want more than anything, its for one of their parents to be at home.

More children get themselves into trouble when both parents are not at home.

How can you teach them morals and standards and show them how to behave when you are not there.

Regards

PB

quote:

Originally posted by Adam Meredith:
Couples now both HAVE to go out to work - only to achieve the same necessity - one house/home. They are no better off - just the "value" of their home has increased. Much of their income will go on child care and double commuting.

Very true. My wife and I both work as one income would not be enough to pay the mortgage and run the household. She is a nurse and we are basically like ships that pass in the night sometimes. As I come in from work, she heads off to do the nightshift or the late evening. She more often than not works Saturday and Sunday as well, whilst I stay at home and look after the kids. They are, I think, well adjusted and socially skilled children, they always have one parent or other at home with them, the only exception being that I sometimes have to drop the younger one off to a child minder for an hour some mornings and she takes him to school. He also has to attend after school club from where I will collect him on days when my wife is working an early shift. You might say that my marriage is at risk as we do not see much of each other, or you might say that that is the reason why it has lasted (14 years so far)!

The point is that although we both work, we are no better off materially than my parents were when only my dad worked. Where we differ is that my parents split up when I was seven and my dad left his job to bring us up himself (unusual in the extreme in the seventies owing to the extremely sexist family courts and not greatly different now) and I suppose this leads to the conclusion that it it is not whether one or both parents stay at home, but how well the family unit works together as a team and how the parents relate to their children that determines how well they develop. The effects of the divorce were profound on us as children and led to some very miserable times that have left permanent scars.

Mark

Chaps

We are losing sight of the fact that there is no discipline any more. Even adults act like kids now a days.

I attended a boys only school and at the age of 11 learned how to take discipline from the 15 yr olds.

When I was 15 I taught how to dish it out, but in a fair and civilised manner. You need to learn how to instruct as well as how to take orders.

Dicipline is essential for character development and for getting through life as one gets older.

Regards

Mick

Malky,

I did say in my first post 'generally speaking' of course I was generalising - it is completely impossible to offer a universal quide to parenting in one or two sentances.

As for the book, it is only one of a great many sources of information which confirms what I said. Some patient googling will find other sources. Family and child therapists deal with this stuff everyday and they all say the same - children are happier where the parental roles are clearly defined (all other things being equal)etc.

quote:

Originally posted by Rasher:

Believing that you can get tips for bringing up children from a book is naive at the very least and deluded at worst.

Of course you can get tips and much insight to - however you cant get a universal/recipe pancea and the reader must choose carefully. The book I mentioned earlier is written by a family therapist with years of experience not an unqualified chancer. The reader must descriminate between what may be right for one and wrong for another, and blindly accepting anyone's recipe for succes without carefull consideration would be wrong. Total unthinking reliance on a book could well prove to be counter-productive but dismissing all books as useless is also problematic IMO.

Here is another generalisation: In general the friends of mine who are parents and who work very long hours and have little time for their children (even though they provide them with every material comfort)have children who are far less happy than those children of other friends of mine who work resonable hours, have far less material comfort but go to bed each night with at least one parent reading to them and being told how much they are loved. This is priceless.

Malky said:

quote:

What is this evidence? where did you see it? Who researched and published it?

Just take a look around you...

quote:

Originally posted by Mick Parry:
I attended a boys only school and at the age of 11 learned how to take discipline from the 15 yr olds.
Regards
Mick

A bit Lord of the Flies - I doubt a very moral universe could be constructed by 15 year olds. The prime source of socialisation is the family (in whatever effective form that may take) - then peer group.

A large part of the problem today is exactly that young people lack solid parental guidance and fall back on the values of their equally adrift peers.