Thursday 29 September 2016

What is Parenting Worth?


At a recent Q&A event, I shared the aims of The MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher Project with two separate audiences, and on both occasions was challenged by mothers who wanted to see society placing more value on the importance of parenting.  They seemed frustrated by the idea that doing more than parenting on maternity or paternity leave was necessary to prove to employers and colleagues that a candidate was more than just a parent because - and I wholeheartedly agree with them - parenting is the most important role in our society.

Now this is a tricky thing to criticise because a very simple version of what I'm about to say is that as a country, we don't do parenting very well.  This is, of course, not true - there are millions of caring, loving, nurturing parents up and down the country doing a fantastic job at raising their children.  When we begin to compare the system that surrounds this parenting with systems like those in Scandinavia, for example, though, it is easy to see that parenting well in the UK is an uphill battle: child development experts say that children need love and attention from their caregivers, and there is increasing research into the positive impact of 'stay-at-home' dads, yet my own (fairly generous) maternity package has me cringing at the end of three months, and if my husband was a British citizen and wanted to take his share of parental leave, he'd be bringing in a whopping £137.50 a week - a budget that, in London, would leave us homeless.

Now I want to go back to work, and am sufficiently in love with my career to do so, regardless of the financial cost, but the fact is that if both my husband and I want to have careers, we have little choice but to put our son into childcare, even though the many, many pieces of research that I have read, tell us that this is possibly not the best thing for him due, in part, to the lack of flexible working hours and creative thinking around making work work for parents.

Not only is it logistically difficult to parent well in the UK, there is a dominant culture that sees maternity leave or paternity leave as time 'off'.  In the same breath, I have heard school leaders shudder at their own memories of sleep regression before envying parents their time to 'relax' away from the classroom, which seems to be a confused response, but one that seems to be broadcast by society.  No matter how difficult or easy you find parenting a small baby, it is telling that society considers parental leave as a bit of a holiday - time to do all those things you can't do whilst you're at 'work'... but... surely the definition of 'work' is that which contributes to and supports and economy and a society, and what 'work' is there that does this more than parenting?  As a parent, therefore, shouldn't I be perceived as working hard to improve our society by raising a kind, thoughtful, generous, polite, proactive, educated child?

So are we all just taking a bit of a laissez-faire attitude to parenting, because society is telling us that we are on holiday, rather than reminding us that we have just been promoted to one of the most important jobs in the country, or are we working are socks off to be great parents, and then humbly playing down our achievements because nobody has given us a certificate, and the world of work doesn't see the worth of what seem like highly valued and transferable skills like communication, empathy, multi-tasking, prioritising, educating...?

We've once again come around to the question of revolution vs. evolution: should we lobby for a social revolution that values parents more highly, or should we push upwards by providing society with a clear model of how things might be done better, and by quietly proving our worth by getting on with things now?

If you've read any of my other posts, you'll know that I'm all about doing and doing now, so how about this for solutions-focused thinking: as a parent who gets paid for being a teacher, you are automatically a MaternityTeacher or a PaternityTeacher because from the minute you take an interest in the development of your child or bump, you are learning new things.  Unlike a lawyer or an accountant or an engineer, this is learning that directly translates to the classroom, because your clientele are children, and understanding a newborn baby gives you phenomenal insight into the behaviours and needs of an older child or teenager.  In fact, as a parent, you are simply an 'unqualified' EYFS teacher - a paid, respected career.

So if 'all' you want to do on parental leave is be an amazing parent, and are frustrated that this won't be valued when you return to school, then why not make society's indicators of value work for you: namely, get a certificate and intellectualise your role as a parent.

Now, this might sound like energy that you would rather be spending on your child, but the beautiful thing is that it is energy that you are spending on your child, you are just being smart about it.  The construction of my son's play arch is a perfect example of this, but allow me to give you another example: nursery.  Every parent knows the long and slightly anxious process of finding the right nursery.  Initially, for us, our main priority was cost and bilingualism, but I noticed that there appeared to be different 'types' of nursery, and one that seemed popular was the Montessori approach.  I'd heard of Montessori but I didn't know much about it, so I ordered a book.  Already, I'm doing CPD.

Once I'd read the book, I realised that Montessori wasn't just about Early Years - there are many things that can be taken into the secondary classroom:

  • Child-centred environments - creating classrooms that students can access; that are beautiful and appeal to all of the senses; that encourage independent learning, curiosity and confidence; label resources in a uniform and clear manner to support independence in all learners, including those with SEND.
  • Competence and responsibility - creating responsible young people by assigning roles that help the lesson to function - handing out books, recording house points, rubbing the board, handing out glue sticks and work sheets, opening blinds, updating displays - roles that are both empowering for the student, and which also make life easier for you as a teacher!
  • Observation - watch the students first and understand what it is that provokes certain types of behaviour before trying to jump in to fix things: a perfect approach to peer and mentor observations.
As a mother, reading this book at five weeks was CPD: it revolutionised my parenting in a way that none of the baby books had.  I stopped forcing my solutions on my son, observed his behaviour for a few days and understood his cries, his needs and his patterns far better, which allowed me to work with him, rather than despairing at this unreasonable, incomprehensible little being.  

As a teacher, reading this book was... CPD! and I did the same thing with Rug Rhymes and early reading; concerts and art galleries and sensory understanding; Oprah and early language acquisition; the OPOL approach, EAL students and inclusion.  Essentially, intellectualising 'good' parenting so that those who are ignorant of how important parenting is, are more impressed by what I am doing.

Learning more about child development can be hugely satisfying as a parent.  My teacher brain is constantly fascinated by the new things that my son learns, the way he interacts with his environment, how quickly he changes and makes progress - how his brain grows and learns!  And you know what, the more I see him learning, the more I want to learn about how he is learning and how I can help him to learn more, and this is nothing more than pedagogy - teaching!


If this is something that gets you really excited too, then stop defending your decision to 'just' parent, and embrace the fact that parenting is CPD, and get a certificate that you can wave in your Principal's face by completing one of these courses:
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