But if childcare is not great for kids, as Mem Fox claims, then the corollary is that being cared for at home is best for them.
The problem is, someone has to care for them at home, and this usually tends to be women. And women at home, we are told constantly, are a dying breed, a 1950s white picket fence throw back for all but the most privileged few who don't have to rush back to work.
Their opinions should not be counted, as what do they know of the real world? They can, after all, afford to stay at home and look after their children. This - we are told - is simply not a choice for most people.
Actually, in this privileged world, of which we can count middle class professional women in their thirties and forties, very few actually stay at home with their children. The reason is however, not financial, as they might have you believe. It is because staying at home with children can be soul destroying, grindingly boring, and badly paid, and ruins careers and aspirations – not to mention superannuation.
I should know – I am one of the privileged few who opted "out", stayed at home and paid the price.
I never expected to be one of these women. I loved my career; I had five years of university behind me, and had traveled and owned a terrace house in a trendy inner suburb. Then I had the misfortune of interviewing a childcare expert when I was six months pregnant with my first child.
I understand why Mem Fox is getting howled down in the media for what she said, because this expert told me the same thing when I was in a very vulnerable position, and I believed her. I read her book and spoke to her at length and made the decision not to put my child into care.
It is a decision my career probably regrets every single day. My two children, on the other hand, feel differently. But, damn it; it's not about them, is it? It's supposed to be about me – me, me! My wants, my needs, my aspirations, my desires.
I feel duped. Why did I realise that I was the last person who counted, and that when I had children, it was all about them, when so many of my friends and colleagues thought otherwise, and sailed through the early parenting years without missing a beat. Child care? Oh yeah!
My mistake – in believing older, wiser experts like Mem Fox – was brought home to be when I attended a local council seminar on feeding fussy eaters. I got my mother to babysit and dragged myself away from the toddler and recently weaned fifteen-month-old who wouldn't take to solids.
I looked like a slumpadinka after a day at home in the trenches – an unbelievably a well dressed woman in a smart business suit beat me to the seminar door. I figured she must be the guest speaker, but low and behold, she took her place next to me and asked some questions, such as "should I believe the child care centre when they say my daughter has eaten everything that day, when she cries from hunger at night?"
Three things occurred to me – with shoes that expensive, the woman's decision to work was a lifestyle choice, second, that if she stayed at home she'd know what her child was eating, and finally, looking down at my exercise shoes embedded with home made play doh, I had made a big, big mistake.
The thing about staying home to raise children is that it takes time – a great deal of time. If you make the decision to stay at home until they are, say, three years old, you have to also factor in extra time needed for subsequent children.
Before you can blink, you are road kill on the mummy track. I have a friend who impressively had her first child at the age of thirty after getting her PhD, and then had three more eighteen months apart, in order to both beat the biological clock, and to minimise her time out of the workforce. She stayed at home for all of them, up until the youngest started school this year.
Can you do the math? Her four children haven't been in childcare, but she hasn't worked in ten years. That's not a concern, however, because in that time she has been earning superannuation, a basic salary and has been guaranteed reentry into her profession using all the skills she has gained in that time.
Okay – that last paragraph is an outright lie. Like all the women I shared my stay at home journey with, she still hasn't got her career back. Stay at home mums will know it is a lot easier to get your figure back after children, than get your career back. Because once you have a couple of children, full time work in a demanding career is impossible unless you use child care, after school care and hired help.
That is why women put babies into childcare – because the birth of a child is the slippery slope to the death of a career. The privileged professional women in our society who wait until the 'right' moment to have children will soon realise there is no right moment because everything changes once you become a mother. I once pitched a novel on the phone to a publisher while my son tried to get my attention by trashing the house and finally taking off his nappy and weeing on the dining room table. That was a harder task than meeting any newspaper deadline.
Given my time again, would I have put my children into long day care as babies and kept my career on track? I had two high-risk pregnancies, which puts a lot into perspective. Being in danger and having your babies in danger means you are quite the lioness when it comes to their care. If you have fought hard to become a parent, chances are you will fight hard to parent them yourself.
The fact is that children's demands are as never ending as the constraints of a big career. It is no wonder so many of these privileged women toss the corporate job away, stay at home and then ease into the "mumpreneur" role with their own innovative businesses when their children are older. This is simply the only way to "have it all" without a corporation overseeing – and judging – your every move.
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