A few weeks ago I offered you a reflection trying to explain why it is so hard to have children, doing a little gathering of events in which we have stopped living together, in towns or tribes, with a common interest and educating and caring among all the children to live apart from our people, together with unknown people who live by our side, but alone, in the care of our house and our children, without the close support of a network of people who could help us out at times punctual or not so punctual (or not so punctual), then we, in the future, do the same with the younger couples who have children.
This was not too dramatic a few decades ago, when the woman took care of the babies and also the care of the house. Eye, I do not say that it was an ideal, because the father was dedicated only to bring money home and to act as a "sergeant" with the children and both me and many other parents we have rebelled before this, but at least the children had someone to take care of them, who was also their mother, almost nothing. The problem is that now the woman is not at home, so I ask: And who takes care of the children?
At first, the man started working
With the arrival of the industry, labor began to be necessary and the man began to work massively, leaving the woman and children at home. The man's schedule did not worry the businessmen too much because they had no obligation but to work (they did not have to take care of the children) and it was not too worrying for men for the same.
"Dad, tell us how the day went"
Little by little, the fact that Dad came home with little to explain asking Mom and the children how the day went was changing to the point that what happened at home, what happened to the children, their progress, their Changes and their anecdotes, that day by day, was no longer interesting. The fun, the stimulating, what made someone special was to be away from home, work, earn money, be able to consume and perform with your work.
This was especially interesting for companies, because getting women to emulate their husbands would increase production, in the best case up to double, and the products would also sell twice: to more money in the families, more capacity to consume.
The woman went to work as a man
And the inevitable happened. The unpaid "work" of the house was reviled by the women who began to earn a salary, began to consume and began to distance themselves from non-workers. It turned out that people began to be better regarded for what they had, materially, rather than for human quality, and more and more families wanted to have more money and more and more women wanted to have relative economic independence.
This was good news in terms of equality because women have the same right to work as any man. The problem, and here is the crux of the matter, is that women went to work in a labor market designed and created by and for men, a system in which the schedule could be extensive because the man, as I said, did not have to take care of anyone.
It happened that the man and the woman working as a man disappeared three hundred hours a day from home to produce, earn money and consume. All correct if they had no children. But they had them. The woman thus doubled her work, since she had to continue taking care of the house and the obligations with the children when she was at home. The man then had to start "matching" the woman, and it was no longer useful to get home and put on the house slippers to sit on the couch. The man then began to help at home, rolling up his sleeves to clean, ironing clothes and making food and also began taking care of his children.
Man and woman, relatively alone, with days of 40 hours per week each, coming home tired with many more obligations ahead, many times exhausted, sleeping badly for children but forced to sign every morning at work, day after day, week after week, month after month, seeing how time was going (going away) between our fingers, being a life that was not exactly what one expected to live, with that strange feeling that you can not choose, but that everything works by inertia, one so strong that if you resist you can go wrong.
And who takes care of the children?
Well, the nurseries or nursery schools that appeared as a solution to that problem, that they do what they can and that they have managed to be well considered because they not only take care of, but educate the children, with clear objectives, trying to teach them to be autonomous and assuming the role that the former parents.
No, what they are not like parents, because a mother and a father are one or two caregivers for a single child (or some more if they have more children) and in a nursery school each caregiver has many more children and because the love of a mother and a father has no possible substitute .
However, as I say, the work of nursery schools has transcended this and many people have come to enroll their children so that they can be educated there even when they have the possibility to do so. You could say it is another little triumph of the system since, although many children will go to the nursery without any problem, others will grow up lacking the love and contact of their parents, keys to forge a good self-esteem, and it is already known that the need to consume and buy things is indirectly proportional at the level of self-esteem.
Obviously we also have the grandparents, those people who would have to be part of the support network of every family as secondary actors, that is, in a short time, sharing the care of children with parents, uncles, older children and young people, who also become in charge of the little ones, but that they have to assume in many occasions the role of principal actor, of caretaker "boss", taking them out of their retirement, of their rest after a lifetime working and educating us, to force them to continue doing the same, this time with our children.
Yes, they are delighted, they would give their lives for us and their grandchildren, but one thing is, as I say, to use them as helpers and another is to give them the full responsibility of taking care of our children, making them food, take them to the doctor if they get sick and educate them and also do it as we tell them.
What should have happened?
Total, how is the rigging mounted right now? the most affected are the little ones, the children, which are not important to anyone even though they are the future of our society. The selfishness is such that the only thing that matters is the now, the us, and a us in which only young, beautiful people have no place, or without family charges (or if they do, who are resolved with the care of third parties) and with time and availability to be able to dedicate their lives to realizing and growing professionally (as if it were so easy or common to ascend), until they reach an age close to fifty and begin to "bother" to charge more than any young person.
What should have happened is that, by the time the woman went to work, the system would have been sensitive enough to consider that children remain important and that an emotionally stable and happy worker is a worker who can continue to spend time. with your children, who can take care of them and what can they do the love and education of their parents, for that they have given birth.
That they had not thought of the entry of women as a possibility of doubling production and consumption, but that they had taken into account that when taking the step to work, houses with children were orphaned as adults, offering jobs , to men and women, in which the schedules were friendly with the children, in which both could have time available to play with their children, in which the children did not have to take the house keys in the backpack to open the door when arriving from school, in which both could take care, in which there is that equality that is claimed, but not introducing women into the work of men, but creating a new work style designed for them, for everyone, being the man who had to adapt to that change. The woman should have fought for it and the man, the parents, especially them, too.
But no, that did not happen and that will not happen as long as the work conciliation measures continue to be created based on the premises that say "being at home is degrading", "doing our grandmothers again is falling into the neomachismo networks" or "men cannot take care of a house, because they do not know", dedicating funds to create more nursery schools in order to offer them to workers (when there were funds, now and not even that). That it is not to reconcile family life with work, that is to accept that you have to live to work and that the child, look, "you calm down, we already take care of you and in passing we make you smarter than you would. And tomorrow, if everything it goes well, it will enter the same wheel. "
Photos | Run Pedersen Holkestad, ellyn. on Flickr On Babies and more | In the nursery or at home ?, Should grandparents take care of our children ?, "If the mother does not work it is because the father earns a lot"
