The talk among the swing-set crowd is often about preschool these days. The oldest children in DD’s little playgroup, the ones who have been in almost since its inception, are now over two. To date, most of them have been cared for at home full-time by a parent, though some have had some limited time with nannies, in a mother’s day out program, or in daycare. In the fall, many of them will be heading off to brightly colored rooms filled with small tables and chairs, art supplies, picture books, ABC charts, and cubbies for half-days of songs, arts and crafts, and lessons on numbers and letters.
DD is not going to preschool in the fall, and she’s in the definite minority. It seems that most children today are going to preschool by age three. In our playgroup, DD is one of only three children in that age group (that I know of) not going to preschool in the fall. I am, on occasion, asked why my family decided not to “do the preschool thing” (though not usually by my fellow playgroup members).
On the whole, I have no problem with preschool, particularly in a setting with well-trained caregivers and lots of time for play. I’ve done a lot of reading on early-childhood education recently, and I’ve listened to other parents talk about sending their little ones off to preschool. Preschool seems great for some kids (particularly, according to the research I’ve read, those who come from less affluent and less educated homes), and it’s convenient and helpful for parents who want or need to work. All the research shows that there’s no harm in quality preschool childcare programs.
So why don’t we send DD happily on her way to the world of songs, crafts, letters, and numbers?
Primarily, my husband and I don’t want or need preschool in order to work. We structure our work schedule around our family life and work from home a great deal. We are very, very lucky both because we are our own bosses and can take such liberty with our schedule and because we have the invaluable (and I mean truly priceless) support of his parents, who watch our daughter two half-days and one full day a week to give me dedicated time in the office. We view preschool as an option, not as a must, and it is an option we don’t need to exercise.
In addition, the reality is that DD is doing just fine at home, and we don’t think she would gain any benefit from attending preschool. She loves to read and color; she’s learning her numbers and colors; she sings the ABC song and just about anything else she hears; she dances around the house; she makes jokes and laughs at just about everything. In short, she does everything that she should be doing right now, developmentally.
She’s also very creative, and, frankly, we don’t want to quash that quality in her. The way we see it, DD has thirteen years of compulsory education and probably at least four years of voluntary post-secondary education ahead of her. That’s plenty of time for her to have structured learning time, time in which someone else tells her how to see the world and why. At her age, she is learning in a purely experiential way that may never be available to her again. And no one is telling her that she can’t stop counting at five and go back to one but has to go on to ten, or that the ABC song doesn’t end at Q, or that the real way to dance like a ballerina is with her toes pointed just so. We want her to continue to love learning.
Lots of parents talk about the social benefits of preschool. We believe those thirteen-plus years of education are also plenty of time for DD to socialize. My observation is that the vast majority of children DD’s age have zero interest in what adults consider “being social.” DD loves being around other children – her “fwiends” – but she does mostly parallel play alongside them and very little direct play with them. In other words, in big groups, she tends to go about her own business. With one other child, she’ll briefly chat or hold hands or jointly play with some toys. The child-development literature indicates that this behavior is normal, and we don’t believe that putting DD into a setting with a group of other children every day will change this behavior because it’s just developmentally where she’s at.
The ultimate point is that we chose the life we are living, and it just doesn’t involve a structured preschool program at this point. I find, though, in listening to other parents, that some of them seem to be intellectually dishonest with themselves about these choices we all make as parents. They infer with worried questioning or even raised eyebrows that we are depriving our daughter in some way by not getting her on the school path early. But I also sense a lot of guilt – about choosing to send a child to preschool or daycare, about wanting to work, or, for those who don’t have a paying job, about simply wanting time for oneself.
I believe that many parents have been convinced (or have convinced themselves) that preschool is the absolute best thing to do for a child and that not sending a child to preschool will deprive her of some vital experience, some vital advantage. In my own neighborhood, dozens of parents recently camped out along the street in front of the neighborhood elementary school for three days solely to be one of the first twenty in line to sign their children up for the free pre-kindergarten program for four-year-olds. Some of them surely needed free childcare to enable them to work. But an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the queue indicated that at least some of the parents lined up because they felt pre-k was in some way, necessary for their children rather than for their own lifestyle choices.
This conviction seems not borne out by the literature, at least not for the children of the type of middle class families that live in our neighborhood and run in our social circles. It seems, instead, like something sold to parents to justify the high cost of preschool (there were only twenty slots for the free program at our local school, and most programs run $5,000-plus a year). And it seems like something that parents are willing to believe simply so that they don’t feel bad about doing whatever it is that they need or want to do, which will necessitate the child going to preschool.
My response: Well, get over it! We all make choices. Live with them. Maybe preschool will give a child an edge in early elementary school (though most studies seem to show that any such advantage is lost by third grade, where genetic abilities and socioeconomic class erase any temporary advantages). Maybe DD is missing out on that (temporary) advantage, but I’m fine with that. I’m not really concerned about DD being top student in her kindergarten class. She’ll be fine, whether she’s reading when she goes into kindergarten or not. I have no guilt over our decision, even if it does turn out the DD is a little behind the other kids in kindergarten as far as her knowledge base goes.
The reality is that a quality childcare program won’t harm a child but neither will keeping a child at home while others go to preschool. So, a parent who wants to work should work. Everyone deserves the opportunity to find personal fulfillment through work, even parents! A stay-at-home parent who just wants a few hours a day of peace and quiet and time to run errands and maybe take a breath that isn’t subject to the demands of a two– or three-year-old, should take that time. I don’t blame them! Regardless of the choice, though, a parent should feel free to send a child off to preschool or keep her at home guilt-free.
Let’s just all be honest about what we’re doing and why.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
We’re Not Losing. We’re Just Playing a Different Game.
You have read the statistics. You know the score. Women hold only 11.1% of board seats in the Fortune 500; only 11.2% of corporate officers are women, http://www.breaktheglassceiling.com/statistics-women.htm, yet, in 2006, women were 46% of the U. S. labor force and 51% of all workers in the high-paying management, professional, and related occupations. http://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/Qf-laborforce-06.htm. In the game of business, women just aren’t hitting the homeruns. They’re not going for the gold. Not winning the game.
Well, I have decided that it’s time someone stood up and said what some of you are probably thinking (and certainly what I’m thinking): WHO CARES!! Don’t get me wrong. I am not complacent about women’s role in big business. I firmly believe that women should be swinging the bat in these high-profile, big-money positions – if they want to be in that game.
But what about all of the women (and men!) who don’t want to play that type of game? What about the people who want to take full advantage of the choices that are supposedly available in our modern society?
The fundamental problem is not that women are not winning at the game of business. The fundamental problem is that we have all failed to recognize that many women ARE SIMPLY PLAYING A DIFFERENT GAME.
So, here is where maybe I am a radical: I believe that success must be redefined; it’s time for a paradigm shift, for the recognition that it is a whole new ballgame in the world of business. And until we do so – until we develop an idea of success that truly values the different choices that people make – and until we extend that definition to everyone, women and men, the strides we have made are meaningless.
In the wake of the women’s movement of the 60s and 70s, we have not lost sight of the fact that it’s all about choice: choice to work, choice to work at a particular job, choice to stay home, choice to make your own path. Almost every little girl now grows up hearing, “Girls can be anything!”
What we have failed to do, however, is to incorporate all of the myriad choices into our definition of success. In spite of our greater choice about how to integrate our personal and professional lives, we have continued to place value only on the choices that have traditionally been valued. Sure, you can stay home if you want to and raise a great family full-time, or you can work part-time or in some alternative schedule, or you can embark upon some “alternative” career, a “choose your own adventure” job. But, in the game of business (and in the bigger game of life), we as a society have continued to say that if you don’t win the traditional game the traditional way, you’re still a failure.
Think about it. Writers on the topic lament that women who go part-time in their work (and, I would argue, remain full-time in their personal lives!) are not “getting ahead.” They are not succeeding. Why? Because they are often not getting the same type of work or pay as full-time counterparts. But we have to ask whether that is so bad. Could these women be succeeding in a way that is not being considered? Could there be trade-offs for lower pay and different work that make these women just as successful as their full-time counterparts?
So how do we get to some new rules for defining the game?
First of all, can we please admit that there’s no such thing as “work/life balance?” For the vast majority of us (Paris Hilton and her compatriots excepted), work is part of life. It is not something we do when we’re not living our lives. If that were the case, then most of us are spending most of our days doing something other than living! Work is, however, something that must be balanced with the demands of our personal lives – our families, our friends, our pets, our hobbies. I know it may seem to be semantics, but it’s difficult to discuss making your work and the rest of your life balance if we keep, at least linguistically, separating work out from “life.”
To borrow a term from a life coach friend, I prefer the idea of integration. What we’re striving to do is not so much balance our “work” with our “life” but to integrate our work into our lives in a meaningful, fulfilling way. This leaves open the possibility for various levels of commitment to work – flextime, part-time, full-time, all-the-time – and to personal pursuits – parents, children, siblings, other family, friends, hobbies, religious avocations, etc.
Once you embrace the concept of integration, the next step is accepting that there is such a thing as being successfully integrated, just successful at being. Every person, if she wants it, deserves a job that at least brings in the bacon even if it doesn’t make her blissfully happy to head off to work in the morning and the opportunity to take that job to her ultimate level of compensation and authority. But every person also deserves the opportunity to find additional fulfillment in other areas of her life.
Maybe those women holding the 11.1% of board seats (and the men holding the other 88.9% as well) are terrific people with fantastic personal lives or maybe they’re total drudges tied their job with no other real connection to anything. And maybe all those women NOT sitting in corner offices and running big companies or law firms are trapped by the glass ceiling, held back by their demanding families and complicated choices, or maybe they’re incredibly fulfilled in ways that money can’t compensate. Either way, we need to stop linking our idea of success to one aspect of these people’s lives!
Work is great, don’t get me wrong. If you’re one of those women who finds total fulfillment from work, who wants to play that traditional game and go for the big bucks and the power position, more power to you. If you’re one of those women who wants to work part-time and spend part of your time volunteering, at home pursuing a hobby, caring for aging parents, or raising children – go for it! Want to stay at home full time? Yay, you!
Regardless of the choice, what we need to start doing is focusing more on the success of someone’s overall life not just one aspect of it. We need to recognize that having a healthy relationship with one’s spouse, any children, parents, other family members, and friends is just as “successful” – and requires just as much work, sometimes more! – as bringing home a six-figure paycheck from a high ranking job. In addition, the truly integrated person recognizes that a huge aspect of success is being in a healthy relationship with oneself – doing the things that make one feel healthy, content, satisfied, happy, challenged, whether that’s the job or the family and friends thing or a favorite activity outside of work.
Really, isn’t that what we want to be remembered for when we’re long gone and all we are is memories and passed-along stories in the minds of our children and grandchildren and beyond – for who we were as people and not what job we held and how much money we made??
Well, I have decided that it’s time someone stood up and said what some of you are probably thinking (and certainly what I’m thinking): WHO CARES!! Don’t get me wrong. I am not complacent about women’s role in big business. I firmly believe that women should be swinging the bat in these high-profile, big-money positions – if they want to be in that game.
But what about all of the women (and men!) who don’t want to play that type of game? What about the people who want to take full advantage of the choices that are supposedly available in our modern society?
The fundamental problem is not that women are not winning at the game of business. The fundamental problem is that we have all failed to recognize that many women ARE SIMPLY PLAYING A DIFFERENT GAME.
So, here is where maybe I am a radical: I believe that success must be redefined; it’s time for a paradigm shift, for the recognition that it is a whole new ballgame in the world of business. And until we do so – until we develop an idea of success that truly values the different choices that people make – and until we extend that definition to everyone, women and men, the strides we have made are meaningless.
In the wake of the women’s movement of the 60s and 70s, we have not lost sight of the fact that it’s all about choice: choice to work, choice to work at a particular job, choice to stay home, choice to make your own path. Almost every little girl now grows up hearing, “Girls can be anything!”
What we have failed to do, however, is to incorporate all of the myriad choices into our definition of success. In spite of our greater choice about how to integrate our personal and professional lives, we have continued to place value only on the choices that have traditionally been valued. Sure, you can stay home if you want to and raise a great family full-time, or you can work part-time or in some alternative schedule, or you can embark upon some “alternative” career, a “choose your own adventure” job. But, in the game of business (and in the bigger game of life), we as a society have continued to say that if you don’t win the traditional game the traditional way, you’re still a failure.
Think about it. Writers on the topic lament that women who go part-time in their work (and, I would argue, remain full-time in their personal lives!) are not “getting ahead.” They are not succeeding. Why? Because they are often not getting the same type of work or pay as full-time counterparts. But we have to ask whether that is so bad. Could these women be succeeding in a way that is not being considered? Could there be trade-offs for lower pay and different work that make these women just as successful as their full-time counterparts?
So how do we get to some new rules for defining the game?
First of all, can we please admit that there’s no such thing as “work/life balance?” For the vast majority of us (Paris Hilton and her compatriots excepted), work is part of life. It is not something we do when we’re not living our lives. If that were the case, then most of us are spending most of our days doing something other than living! Work is, however, something that must be balanced with the demands of our personal lives – our families, our friends, our pets, our hobbies. I know it may seem to be semantics, but it’s difficult to discuss making your work and the rest of your life balance if we keep, at least linguistically, separating work out from “life.”
To borrow a term from a life coach friend, I prefer the idea of integration. What we’re striving to do is not so much balance our “work” with our “life” but to integrate our work into our lives in a meaningful, fulfilling way. This leaves open the possibility for various levels of commitment to work – flextime, part-time, full-time, all-the-time – and to personal pursuits – parents, children, siblings, other family, friends, hobbies, religious avocations, etc.
Once you embrace the concept of integration, the next step is accepting that there is such a thing as being successfully integrated, just successful at being. Every person, if she wants it, deserves a job that at least brings in the bacon even if it doesn’t make her blissfully happy to head off to work in the morning and the opportunity to take that job to her ultimate level of compensation and authority. But every person also deserves the opportunity to find additional fulfillment in other areas of her life.
Maybe those women holding the 11.1% of board seats (and the men holding the other 88.9% as well) are terrific people with fantastic personal lives or maybe they’re total drudges tied their job with no other real connection to anything. And maybe all those women NOT sitting in corner offices and running big companies or law firms are trapped by the glass ceiling, held back by their demanding families and complicated choices, or maybe they’re incredibly fulfilled in ways that money can’t compensate. Either way, we need to stop linking our idea of success to one aspect of these people’s lives!
Work is great, don’t get me wrong. If you’re one of those women who finds total fulfillment from work, who wants to play that traditional game and go for the big bucks and the power position, more power to you. If you’re one of those women who wants to work part-time and spend part of your time volunteering, at home pursuing a hobby, caring for aging parents, or raising children – go for it! Want to stay at home full time? Yay, you!
Regardless of the choice, what we need to start doing is focusing more on the success of someone’s overall life not just one aspect of it. We need to recognize that having a healthy relationship with one’s spouse, any children, parents, other family members, and friends is just as “successful” – and requires just as much work, sometimes more! – as bringing home a six-figure paycheck from a high ranking job. In addition, the truly integrated person recognizes that a huge aspect of success is being in a healthy relationship with oneself – doing the things that make one feel healthy, content, satisfied, happy, challenged, whether that’s the job or the family and friends thing or a favorite activity outside of work.
Really, isn’t that what we want to be remembered for when we’re long gone and all we are is memories and passed-along stories in the minds of our children and grandchildren and beyond – for who we were as people and not what job we held and how much money we made??
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