Mothers and Time

To be a mother means, you're there for your child. That's the foundation of what motherhood--or parenthood, or caregiving--means.

Of course, none of us has an infinite amount of time and energy to give to our children. Aside from that: children shouldn't be with their parents exclusively, 24 hours a day. From the age of one year, or even younger, they also need stimulation, guidance, love, from people outside the immediate family group. "It takes a village to raise a child," and all that.

Two things I want to say about that--two very obvious comments on the surface, but they also touch on some very sensitive issues in our current cultural climate.

I don't think that village should swarm in and fill a child's life at a very young age. In other words--in some basic way, I'm not comfortable with the idea of a young child, under the age of about two and a half, spending vast amounts of time in a daycare setting of any sort. That's not to say that it's wrong, or that it can't work out. But I think it's very difficult, for both mother and child (but especially for the child), to be separated for several hours a day when the child is still very young.

Of course, our culture has not created an environment where it's easy for the mother to stay at home. Either financially or in terms of a woman's career, it's often all but impossible.

However, in my head and in my heart, I keep coming back to the basic issue of time. Very young children require vast amounts of time. This is something I only fully realized after becoming a parent of a toddler myself.

The other important component of the equation is, how fully present is that mother when she is there with that child?

When it comes to mothers and time, quantity plus quality equals, if not happiness, at least, a very good shot at it. I wish there was some way that that could become a given feature of our culture (mothers spending vast amounts of quality time with their young children), rather than the outlying exception.