In the News

[ailbhe]

A woman has been arrested after her baby was rescued from a smoke-filled house.

There were three children alone in the house, aged about 1, about 2, and about 3 (the one-year-old is the "baby" of the headline). Clearly she was wrong to leave them alone in the house.

But oh, by all the gods, I can think of so many ways to talk myself into thinking it might be ok. One year, two years, and three years. Gods.

I wonder have they any other parent, and will that other parent also be charged.

Comments

[naath.livejournal.com]

These issues clearly exist, and it is a shame that they do. I really don't know (and have no experience of) to what extent they are a matter of having chosen something that maybe didn't work out as well as it might and to what extent they are a matter of being forced into something unsuitable for your wishes by social custom. Clearly vastly more women end up doing the parenting than men do; so I guess that unless I want to conclude that women "just naturally love raising kids" social pressure and expectations are obviously a big part of it.

I like to think that if I had kids (hahahahaha no) I wouldn't fall for that pressure; I have a strong desire to not get out of bed early, or go to work early (in such a way as to end up with child-picking-up-duty by staggering working hours for instance)... However somehow I have absorbed the idea that unwillingness to cope with a lot of early mornings is a Reason Not To Have Children rather than, say, a reason to find a partner who likes early mornings with whom to have children. I certainly grew up with the notion that Mummies do All The Parenting, stupid social expectations (get them out of my head).

[rmc28]

Also I am that rare category of mother who out-earns the father, and did so before getting pregnant. This put me in a much better position to argue the "we need to divide childcare equitably" than if I was earning less, as is often the case.

The seeing childcare as coming out of the 'second' salary problem comes out of viewing household finances as only made up of 2 full-time salaries, and of course as viewing the money as the only measure, rather than the happiness. Plenty of people would take a reduction in salary over being happy (e.g. Parent High-Earner works a 4-day week and Parent Low-Earner works a 2-3 day week and childcare is covered out of the joint account and everybody is a bit poorer and a lot happier).

[naath.livejournal.com]

And leads to the dreaded "but you earn less than childcare would cost, so you clearly should do the childcare yourself!" argument; which makes some financial sense but doesn't at all address the happiness question. And why, oh why, is childcare so expensive? (well, yes, skilled job and all that... but why can't it be subsidised?).

I think I'm probably just lucky that I plain old don't like babies and am not facing making my way through all of this.