Thread: Parenting and Work

So this happened to me today. I was talking just before with one of my female friends, she's a full time caretaker for this mother a little out of town. She owns a series of hair salons in the area, about 8 different establishments, each doing quite well so as you'd imagine she is a busy woman, she spends about 10 hours a day working and on weekends the children stay with their father who's an electrician. anyway, this is what happened. she called me earlier today in tears and wanted to talk to me about something that happened, those kids she's paid to take care of, they've come to identify her as their mother instead of their actual mother, today their actual mother took a day off work to spend it with her kids, and long story short, they cried, they threw tantrums etc... and one of them dropped a line that caused my friend to be fired and be threatened by the mother, the kid said you're not my real mommy! my friend is my real mommy! She had spent so much time working that she had completely alienated her children, most of the time she would come home after the kids had been put to bed and gone to sleep, and she was gone in the morning before they woke up. now with their father, even before the divorce he didn't see the kids all that often but they still very strongly identify him as their father and love him deeply, but with their mother focusing so much on her work they completely disregarded her as their mother I've even heard them refer to her by her name, not as mommy. Now comes the point of discussion, should this be acceptable? should the mother cut back on her work so she can try and re-connect with her kids? or do you think the kids are acting spoiled? there are three kids, 2 boys of 10 and 9 and a girl of 7 and what do you think this might say about our society as a whole? where more and more children spend their whole days with strangers child care workers, nannys etc... because their mothers would rather be working full time etc...? she works full time because the little girl has a mental disorder so she iswas home schooled by my friend who was also trained when the poor little thing had a fit. My personal opinion is that, no matter the parent I posted about the mother because it's a gleaming example of this I know personally Parenting and Work should be balanced out. with mothers especially children must identify with and almost always rely on their mothers for help in their young lives, this is a natural instinct and while fathers can take that place, it doesn't come as naturally. If a child has a learning disability to the degree they need to be home schooled, then a parent should be home at all times, even if this means sacrificing work time in order to make sure their child is properly cared for. I think that the role of parent should never just be left down to taxable labor, childcare like nannies and the such should only be for occasions, to prevent especially young children from associating their nannies and the such as their parents. Taxable labor should never replace parenting in my opinion, like what happened with my friend here. Here's a bit of data. What about you? do you think it's fine for the role of parent to be given to someone paid to take care of them? do you think parents should be putting spending more time with their kids over fewer work hours? or do you think I'm just some women shouldn't work etc... sexist like others have called me when I told them about this? Note I am NOT saying women shouldn't work, I realize I didn't phrase some bits of this as good as I should have and I've made the adjustments. I use mothers as the example here because as I said in my personal experience it was the mother who didn't make time for her children.