The Monster Money keeps Mothers away from their Children

I yesterday already hinted what I would be writing about today. I elaborated on my reasons for finding full-time schools horrible and not at all good for children. I explained why that even provoked the question why parents would even have children as they give them to strangers to care for them when they are only some months old. In the end however one has to be fair and look at the real situation of parents, too, because most of them are more than just a little bit unhappy about this as well!

I still believe three or six months is much too early for a little baby to be separated from his mother for several hours in a day. Nevertheless it would be very wrong to say that all mothers who give their baby away at this early age are heartless monsters! One has to ask them for the reasons why and consider their feelings, too.

For me there is hardly any other valid reason than financial problems. If anybody says that mothers have to get some time for themselves, too, that being a mother is so stressful that they only feel good if they give the baby away for some hours in a day, I wonder about their sensitivity. Don’t they miss the baby and don’t they think that it would be best for a three-month-old to sleep at the chest of his or her mother instead of a crib in some institution, no matter how nice that is? No, I believe the main reason and the only one that I can understand is money.

It is normal for men and women to work alike and when mothers stay at home, they depend on the father’s income. This can get stressful for the father who suffers with the added burden of responsibility. He may work longer hours to make sure they can make ends meet which then results in stress for the mother who would like to have some support at home as well. She wants her husband to be there for the family at home, too, but also sees that the money is getting tight!

This is how they take the offer of day-care centers, sometimes even fighting hard to get a place for their baby. Mothers then have an additional income and the family can relax a bit even when bills for doctor visits, baby equipment and clothes arrive at home.

It is a solution but that doesn’t mean they are happy with it. It doesn’t mean that they enjoy running to work, back in the stress and hectic instead of playing at home with their baby! They don’t necessarily enjoy giving away their baby so that they can work just in order to be able to live, even in not very high standards. And whenever they read lines like my two previous blog posts, they have a feeling of guilt and sadness for themselves even though they know it was the only way for them.

These thoughts make me feel grateful again that we are in such a wonderful situation that we can work at home and play with our baby at any time. With our big Ashram family we have our own day-care center at our home and are ourselves part of it.

Dear parents, I wish for all of you that you find a way to spend as much time as you can with your little ones. Try to manage however you can because this time is so precious that we should cherish it as much as we can!