Even before she started writing, Bernie Purcell knew that her book, For Our Own Good - Childcare Issues in Ireland (Collins Press), would raise hackles. Controversially, Purcell argues that children should spend less time in creches, with childminders or au pairs and more time with their parents.
Where parents cohabit, fathers should play an equal role in parenting, says Purcell, and as a society, we need to restructure the workplace to accommodate parenting. Reaction to the book, which is highly critical of our current childcare policies, has been strong - particularly among women, who usually carry the primary responsibility for a family's childcare arrangements.
Purcell, though, remains unrepentant. "Our childcare policies don't extend beyond the funding of creche places for children in order to facilitate parents to work," she says.
"We need to look at what has happened in other countries. My book is built on extensive international research and my own experiences as a psychotherapist and a teacher. I am saying that we should utilise the information we have to change things."
Purcell insists she is neither anticreche nor anti-working mothers (she has been her family's principal earner for most of her married life). "Of course I'm in favour of good, well-run, wellsupervised creches, but it's not realistic to believe that two-year-olds can survive spending eight or so hours each day in a creche. Four hours is the maximum. Young babies shouldn't be in creches at all, because they need a one-to-one relationship." While permanent one-to-one childminders are preferable to day-long creches, there can be difficulties - the child might form its primary relationship with that person, for example. Parents, too, need to spend time with their children in order to know them and understand the complexities of their personalities, she says.
According to Purcell, creche-reared children are often well-adapted socially and highly articulate. However, they can miss out on emotional development, because they haven't had the chance to deal with their feelings and emotions in a safe adult relationship. "Children need a great deal of security. They can't receive that simply by going to the same group every day. They need one-to-one care," says Purcell.
For the future, Purcell fears "we will see an increase in deviancy and that children will form transient relationships rather than intimate longterm bonds".
Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, points to the high cost of emotional illiteracy among American teenagers - an increase in teen violence, depression, eating disorders and suicide. "Unless things change," he says, "the long-term prospects for today's children marrying and having a fruitful stable life together are growing more dismal with each generation."
A number of Scandinavian countries, which have provided superb day and after-school care for the children of working parents for decades, have in recent times placed greater emphasis on family-friendly measures in the workplace. In Sweden, for example, parents of children under eight years of age are entitled to work only six hours per day. Paid parental leave for either parent is allowed for up to 18 months after the birth of a child.
BY working flexible hours, parents can juggle their time to minimise the time their children spend in creches. "creches are a small, important aspect of childcare, but they are not the solution. We have to look at other options - flexi-time, termworking, working from home, cutting down on hours," Purcell says. "If both partners work 30 hours per week, one could work from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. and the other could work later. I'm talking about wrapping personal and working lives around each other." Purcell's critics have charged her with being well-to-do and middle-class. Far easier for her to adopt family-friendly work options, they say. "My choices haven't been easy," she counters. "I was ambitious and I wanted children. I've changed my working life and career substantially to accommodate my children's needs." Parents have to be creative about their options, she says. Can they work from home a few days per week? Can they visit the child at lunchtime or arrange for a grandparent to collect the child early from the creche? "A grandmother collecting a child from the creche a few hours early will make a huge difference to a child who otherwise would be collected at 7 p.m." says Purcell.
