Opinion & Commentary
Paranoid parenting
I recently had the pleasure of spending a few days with a friend and her beautiful baby daughter. I was amazed at the cool, calm and composed approach my pal had taken to motherhood, when only a few days had turned me into a nervous wreck. My unruffled friend has taken a laizzes-faire approach. Apart from reading Kaz Cooke’s ‘Up the Duff’, more for a laugh than anything else, she has picked up most of her mothering skills on the job and by asking her own mum.
Lucky, because reading the mountains of paranoia-inducing advice about parenting is enough to make a potential mum reconsider.
Probably the most paranoid time for any parent is pregnancy. Not only are you a novice but the list of do’s and don’ts is staggering. We’ve known for a while that hard cheese is in but soft cheese is out. Now the people in white coats tells us that it’s not just food, but cosmetics too that can damage unborn babies. So not only will you have to sit at a dinner party watching your friends eat brie and guzzle wine, but you’ll have to do it with no make-up on.
If this seems like too much for you to handle, watch out. A new Australian study found that simply getting stressed while pregnant could affect the development of your unborn baby and lead to behaviour problems down the track.
Even low levels of stress — such as worrying about the barrage of conflicting information about pregnancy — could turn your unborn child into a pint-sized devil.
I’m starting to think that anyone who gets through this without jumping off a bridge deserves a medal.
Of course, the biggest guilt and fear-fest is not what you might do to your kids at home, but what you might do by sending them out of the house. Of all the scare stories which keep mums and dads awake at night, childcare is the big kahoona.
Parents wanting to make an informed choice have to wade through reams of research about what a stint in care might do to their kids. Predictably, about half the studies conclude that childcare is the best thing since sliced bread, while the other half are adamant that putting your kids in care will turn them into axe-wielding maniacs.
And who knows what might happen to them when they’re there? One report shows that if kids don’t get educationally based care provided by degree qualified instructors they could end up obese, aggressive, welfare dependent criminals. That not enough for you? Yet another study found that they could also get skin cancer due to dodgy playground shade cloths. Another found that children are dangerously exposed to junk food advertising near schools.
If you believe what the experts tell you, unless you are some kind of saint it seems certain that your children will end up in the psych ward covered in melanoma.
So, what to do? I think if I ever make the jump into parenthood I’ll adopt the advice of my cool and calm mate. Sit back, flick on the Wiggles, and relax. If all else fails, pick up the phone and call the only expert worth listening to – your mum.
Jessica Brown is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.
