Just want to air some feelings about how easily radio reports one sided on
many issues.  Last night, on our national radio, in prime time news, (6pm),
the radio reported on a piece of research that has just been released from a
University in Sydney.  The research was reported as claiming that the
earlier babies are placed in child care, the less stress that they
exerperience.

There was no mention bonding issues raised, no feeding issues raised, no
mention of how they measured stress (I heard one researcher 2 years ago say
that although a child may cease crying or hiding behind mothers skirt -
figuratively speaking- the physiological and internal stress and distress
still continues in children. The children simply have learnt that it is no
good displaying how they feel because no one will listen or respond to meet
their needs any way.)  They did mention that child care was a fact of life.
Nothing about ways to improve the life of the baby.  It was so much a
patronizing article where the feelings of mothers and children were
disregarded and we were being told that mothers had no basis for feeling
anxious or stressed about leaving children and babies in child care.

The message seemed to be - put your child in care early if you want to avoid
separation anxiety and help your child accept inevitable separation. It
seems a bit like the reason that some women want c-sections - to avoid
labour because they have heard so many bad birthing stories and not anough
positive experiences or you put the baby on the bottle to prevent
breastfeeding problems and ignore the natural function and place of breasts
in the life of a mother and a baby.

For mums whose children are in child care, their emotions and concerns
surely need to be acknowledged and not belittled and tossed away so
carelessly and thoughtlessly.  Surely mothers need to hear both sides of the
story to make informed decision.  This in no way denies mothers who need to
return to work or coherse them into staying at home.  It instead recognises
them as people and asks that they be given relevant support.

The way the issue was raised and discussed reminded me in many ways of the
way artifical feeding and breastfeeding are treated in relation to guilt vs
grief.  This has been discussed so often on Lactnet.

Anough of my rambling.   My husband and children heard the lot last night.
JMHO
Ruth Fiedler

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