Choose childcare with kid gloves

My children are just as grumpy — often rather grumpier, I fear — as the next woman's. (The next woman in this case being my friend down the road, who stayed at home when hers were young.)

The five of them, aged between 9 and 18, slam doors, emit surly grunts, swear and leave large areas of the house knee-deep in unwashed clothes.

Frequently I run the old-familiar tape through my head which begins: “Where did I go wrong?''

Answers that pop to mind vary from the bad example I set myself — tidiness appears nowhere among my middle names — to blaming modern life which tempts them to stay up late, exchanging non-news on chat rooms.

Sometimes I have a go at my husband for spoiling them. At other times, I fear I have passed on some unattractive genes.
The one thing that has never occurred to me is to ascribe their faults to early childcare, as Unicef seems to think I should.

The latest study from Unicef states that infants who are cared for outside home can turn into children who are depressed, withdrawn and suffering from behavioural problems.

Concerns of delegating

To me that sounds pretty normal for a teenager but Unicef's Florentine researchers are “concerned'' that two thirds of women in developed countries now work and delegate the rearing of their offspring to nurseries and childminders.

By the yardstick of early exile from the nest, my children should be psychopaths. Not qualifying for maternity leave, I returned to work when the first baby was six weeks old.

The later children had the luxury of reaching the grand old age of three or four months before being sent to psychological Siberia. It was tough but mostly on me. I was exhausted, tearful and emotionally torn.

However, I don't think it did the children any harm. If anything, such mental health as they display is largely due to the childminder who talked soothing rubbish to them and got them into routines while I exercised a weekend regime of alternate over-stimulation and imprisonment in car seats while I did the shopping.

When I survey their friends and wonder which ones are heading for the skids, I see no correlation between the working mothers and the sad children.

Difficult or depressed parents, nasty divorces and tense domestic situations do seem to affect the next generation.

How could they not? But whether those parents worked or not when their children were small doesn't seem to be a factor.
It all depends what childcare you find.

Some are good, some awful — just like parents. I've been to nurseries where children look bored and staff turnover is so rapid that they never bond with anyone.

I've also seen childminders who seem to feel their duties end with changing nappies and dumping them in front of the television.

Maternity leave is overshadowed by the hunt for someone acceptable with whom to leave one's precious bundle.

The best is often hideously expensive — my niece is paying £1,320 (Dh7,110) a month for a Montessori nursery in north London, a figure reduced by the princely sum of £95 (Dh511) by the childcare voucher scheme.

Government nurseries are only slightly cheaper at £995 (Dh5,354).

Childminders work out at £200 (Dh1,076) a week but there's a shortage because it's hard to get registered. (my own would never have qualified as she had a jailbird son.)

Nannies cost double that. Some have a real vocation but I've known others who lock their charges in rooms while they spend time with friends.

As mothers approach the cliff-face of the return to work, all they can do to find a happy solution is ask around, view the alternatives and count the days until the nirvana of a free school place becomes available.

They would appreciate a bit more help from the government in the form of tax breaks but they could do without another dose of Unicef-induced guilt.