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 *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html