And be there again in the evening, to make sure everybody gets to bed & reassure Mum that the baby who has been fretful all day is not seriously ill, will be safe through the night
Well yes, they all need someone like my Nana, who looked after me a lot until I started school. It all seemed wonderful & perfectly normal to me then, but now I can see that my mother was having some problems coping with life, & the completely new world of motherhood & household management, for which her wartime army experience had done little to prepare her
My Nana though did not need a salary & her interest in & commitment to my welfare lasted for the rest of her life. She was a great manager (my grandfather cannot have been earning more than about £3 a week) and I in turn absorbed much that is practical from her, along with her strong values. And I knew I was loved
It would be wonderful if every young struggling mother could have such a prop, even if only for a few short years to help her get into a better routine of life. But it will need a lot of effort, search, training & planning just to find the (mostly women) prepared to take on this kind of thing, still less to commit themselves to a particular family for longer than their contractual period of notice. It may be cheaper in the long run than it is to deal with all the criminal, educational, health & social consequences of neglected childhood, but politics is mostly an overlapping series of short runs
It will take more (or less) than reams of documents detailing the approved time for setting the alarm, the precise nutritional content of what today’s expert believes is a decent breakfast, the correct type of school bag & a daily tick box report card of developmental milestones
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