Hallo, Todd,

Thinking of your daughter's predicament about whether to put her career on hold to have a family first,I know thatmany women have a strong desire to have a baby. My two daughters were in their thirties when they had their families, whilst I was twenty one when I had my elder daughter.(Mothers were much younger back then).

It is difficult to resume acareer where you are seeking advancement when you also have young children.

My girls have not gone back to their jobs because both husbands have demanding jobs, involving overseas travel, so sometimes you have to decide who is the main breadwinner and be supportive. As long as the wife is happy at home, it can work well. If there are two competing personalities who want to be 'top dog', then it's no good.

I saw some statistics showing many womenhave decided against having children because they want a career. I do think if you want a 'big' career it's easier to achieve before you have little ones.

In some jobs womenhave to relocate and the children'sschooling gets disrupted, so it makes you wonder if it is worth the hassle.

Anyway, good luck to your daughter. She's bright enough to work things out for herself.

Imagine how complex child rearing is for theParadoxical Frog -Pseudis paradoxa.Its offspring are many times larger than the parent. As the frog grows into adulthood it gets smaller and smaller. Nature tends to play a similar joke on us. We think we know the most when we're adolescents.

And my wife, after being home with the children for twenty years, has just started her own business. It's small, but stable and beginning to blossom. Seems like there was time for this "later"! It's working out so well - at a time when the children are starting to move on in their lives, she has a brand new adventure! Of course, knowing that her largest and oldest child (myself) has no intention of moving out may be providing extra impetus to get out of the house herself!

One definitely has to be on one's toes - a nice neat formula may be convenient, but usually things simply aren't that tidy. The topic comes close to home for me. My daughter really wants to be a wife and mother, and she is constantly receiving unsolicited commentary about how she needs to focus on her career first, and there will be plenty of time for that later. The implication is that she wants to take the easy route - to cop out. These people obviously don't know my daughter. She's in her third year of college, during which she's never taken less than the maximum amount of credits allowable (and sometimes more), while at the same time working on starting two businesses - one in photography, and one in bridal consulting, and she entertains thoughts of being a writer, and has written a fair amount. She's trying to work in a minor or second major, and starting to look at either taking another under-grad degree, or graduate school. She stands a good chance of graduating in seven semesters, when most students do really well if they manage to graduate in the standard eight. But mention that she'd really like to be a wife and mother, and she is undeniably labelled as some sort of slacker. It just amazes me. It seems completely arbitrary. And the concept of "there'll be plenty of time for that later" makes me think these people are not parents, and have no experience with children. The thoughts of dealing with a hormonal teenager while pushing 60 simply boggles my mind!

And I wouldn't worry about the spelling much - I just appreciate your comments!

Correction, Todd: I meant to say 'I don't blame them' (I lost the 'I' somehow) Not my best day today!

Hallo, Todd, Thinking about what you said that parenthood is not respected enough, I believe this is partly the fault of women. They want toshow they can do it all, whether or not they can; don't blame them if they can't. (I couldn't have worked when mine were small - Iwas too tired most of the time) and speaking to a friend she said most mothers are but don't like admitting it.

Those women who return to their desks within a few hours of giving birth are trying to prove that nothing's going to stand in their way, not even their own child.

They say you should always listen to your body. One simplistic example from my own body was the thought of donning work clothes when things were not back to normal physically was abhorrent.I wanted to exist in a pink cloud of feeding, cotton wool,bathing, pretty pastels, stretchy clothes and naps now and then for Baby and me.I did not want to rush anywhere.

Home schooling can produce good results. The problem can be in adjustment to college life and regular routines, plus mixing with others, though this is not always the case. I think it is tiring for parents to be with their offspring all day and 'cabin fever' can arise.

It is necessary to foster a sense of independence and self-reliance in children. On the other hand,reports show that men who are close to their mothers and seek their advice about most things are often the most successful in business.

What it amounts to is that we should adjust our views to different circumstances.

Sorry for the grammatical and spelling mistakes in my message, gaabi. If the screen had been larger I would have picked them out more easily. Must be more careful in future!

Hi gaabi,

Yes, as you say, daycare is a thorny problem.My elder daughter had twins and they moved to live near me (across the road). Given thatone baby is exhausting twins can bring you to your knees.

I was fifty and still teaching when they came. That year, as it happened, early retirementwas being offered to teachers 50 years and over- younger teachers were cheaper and would be employed instead.

It was very tempting to retire but, as Peter was alreadyretired I decided to work on for five years (this was tomake a big difference to my pension.) We decided to see howour daughter managed; I would retire if she needed extra help.

We worked out a plan of action: Peter helpedwith the feeding schedule - they were always hungry at the same time, then he'd load the dishwasher and take them out in the twin buggy for a five mile walk if it was not raining. Otherwise he's play a game with them.

I helped at bath and bed time, with stories and cooking.

When they were a year old they went to a nursery for two hours a day to give Emma some time to shop and cook. At three they went to the local authority nursery school for two and a half hours a day and then full-time at five.

My feeling is,mothers need some breakduring a twenty four hour day of being on duty. My son -in- law was excellent but he worked long hours and brought work he played each night with them andat weekends he pitched in, taking the boys swimming and to the beach.

When I was young, in the forties, there was a small nursery in a chapel two miles away. My mother had modern views and thought I'd like to play with others, but I didn't settle, so only went a few times.

I was brought up on a farm and when I went to school in the town I had not mixed with any children. I hated it for the first few weeks but got the idea I had to stick it.

Living in the country I couldn't go home at midday so my cousin, seventeen, who worked in a shop in town, ran down to school to take me out for an ice cream. In her eighties, she remembered how I clung to her till the bell went at one thirty and she had to run backto the other end of town and was always late!

The only schoolI likes wasthe grammar school, unlike some children who are very 'jolly hockey sticks'.

When my own were small there wasno nursery provision and they wentstraight to school.

I do understand, though, that mothers need to work and I know that they worry a lot about thier children's happiness in school.

I retired as the head of a Local Authority Nursery and always tried to remember thatno school is any good if the children aren't happy.

Thanks gaabi

For the most part I agree. In fact, the original plan we had was for my wife to stay home with them for the first five years, then I would stay home and teach them. But unfortunately for me (and maybe fortunately for them), things just didn't work out that way for me. It's one thing to say what the best situation would be, but when reality comes knocking at the door, you have to do the best you can. The only part I would question is exactly HOW to help parents without enabling unscrupulous people from taking advantage of the effort. I know a number of people who would gladly repopulate a small country if it meant their rent would get paid for them. Unfortunately I'm related to some of them (but not on the CUMBRIAN side! ), so I'm not talking about an abstract group - I wish I were. But you're right - especially here in the USA, parenthood is less and less respected, and deserves our support.

I completely agree with you - my only caveat would be that either parent, mother or father, would be great as a stay at home option. This isn't possible for everyone, I think most parents do the very best they can by their kids and daycare won't usually kill your kids but if you can do it, it's worth having a parent home that first five years if you possibly can.

I've been a parent, a teacher, a nanny and run two daycares - an in-home daycare and a daycare program at a private school, and my personal and professional opinion is that NOTHING is equal to full-time parenting for children under age 5, at least. No matter how good the nanny or the daycare staff are, they can't and won't love your child like you and they can't provide what I think is the necessary bonding that our species requires and which we don't fully understand, even when the parent is indifferent.

Research has shown that babies recognize and react to their parents' scents and visual and auditory cues and model them and that these things affect their sensory, communication and other development. The theory has also been that personality and outlook on life are cemented by age three (don't know how true this is) and the time leading up to that is crucial. My personal observation as that no matter how much I loved the kids I took care of and treated them like they were my own, when mom and dad came, all was right with the world and there's just something there that the nanny can never provide. Daycare staff have to shuffle through too many kids for your child to be all important to them and the focus and I think human babies actually need that, they need that intensive focus from an adult human over time.

I've always been my family's breadwinner. My oldest went to a family home daycare (if you can't stay home, this is the best option - it's still a home and not an institution and that does make a difference) and there's a definite difference between him and the two younger children. He definitely wasn't as secure and as happy as they were. When my second was born, I lost my outside job and had a lot of trouble finding daycare I was happy with (many horror stories there...) to go back to office work so I gave up on that career and started a home daycare of my own. That was really good for my kids as I was with them, I made enough to support us all no-frills and they had the company of other children and the program to do that I ran in the daycare - I did tutoring and preparation for school.

My personal opinion is that it would be beneficial to us as a society to provide more support to new parents, more resources and more protection and especially to single parents to allow them to do this. It's an investment in the future success of our citizens, of our society and of our civilization. If we say to prospective and new parents and their children "f you, you're on your own, sink or swim" we're saying members of our society don't matter and we don't really care what kind of society we make.

Blah, blah, blah, soapbox! Sorry, I think about these things a lot.