Good Housekeeping - What I've learnt from the budget

Learning from the wisdom of the budget my husband and I have sat down and reviewed our household income. We thought it would be helpful to share some of our thoughts so that other people can also apply the chancellors excellent approach to finances to their own personal circumstances.

The child we were fostering has to go. Though this child has been with us three years we have come to see the lack of wisdom in times of austerity of supporting such scroungers. We are sure if she just tried a little harder he could sort out her parents break down or alternatively support herself with a job I mean if she doesn't put any effort into supporting herself then we can't keep propping her up. Plus we just don't have the room anymore the recession has made our house magically shrink.

We may get another lodger. Our current lodger is great and we really need to let him know how much we appreciate him. We are going to invite him to dinner and reduce his rent as a way of thanking him for paying 30% of his rent intermittently. We hope that keeps him happy because we really couldn't afford for him to move out. Plus we lent him several thousand pounds of our savings and if he moves out we might not get it back so we really need to make sure he stay's cause that was meant to be for the kids uni fees. 

We've cut the kids pocket money - there just isn't any room for that at the moment. We've also asked Granny if she could start doing the childcare while were at work because we can't afford nursery fees and Granny loves the kids so I'm sure she'd be happy to do it for free. Then we can go to work for more hours.

We have a family holiday coming up, to keep costs low we're going to leave the kids behind - they don't really need a holiday. We've had a look at what we could sell off and cut out. We don't want to cancel the golf club memberships or stop hosting dinner parties for our richest friends. We do think though we could put the kids on a diet of gruel. They need to stop eating so much of that junk food and piles of sugar they've been consuming anyway, we have told them repeatedly but they keep on eating what's in the cupboard. 

Also they haven't really been contributing much we might send them a bill for their toys, oh and tax them for our efforts in helping keeping the toys safe. Also I think the third one will just have to go, last in first out. 

If we keep making these right choices we should be able to run a surplus by 3010. We are anticipating some resistance from the children so we are going to make sure they hear us ask the lodger to make sure he please pays the rent. We'll let the lodger know beforehand though because we really mustn't lose him it would be so hard to find another lodger I mean there are just so few people looking for accommodation.

There is a Choice: Jeremy for Labor Leader #Jezwecan

At Risk of Significant Harm

On Friday the Guardian reported that the Department of Education is consulting on privatising children's services including Child Protection. I am not sleeping so well.

Now the bottom line of privatisation is that individuals will profit financially. Personally I'd like to re-nationalise everything, however I feel there is a very fundamental difference between privatising services such as the railway and privatising public services. There are private sector companies already running sexual assault referral centers, just pause on that a moment shareholders are therefore making money because rape exists. If you privatise Child Protection...

If the consultation is a consultation maybe I don't have to worry as the companies likely to be involved are massively unpopular. But as a letter from senior social workers said 'We are very concerned that the government consultation, launched with a very short period of only six weeks,'

The companies who are likely to bid for these services include some currently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. The Howard League have done a good job of summarising some of the appalling things that have happened under their watch you can read them hear.

Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 places a duty on Local Authorities to investigate and  make inquiries into the circumstances of children considered to be at risk of ‘significant harm’. Privatising out Child Protection particularly to the likes of G4S and Serco will on the balance of probability be putting our children at risk of significant harm.

A parent who left their child in the care of someone they new to have a track record of abuse, or who did not provide their child with enough food, or who deliberately let them watch porn would probably find their children where subject to a child protection plan.

The government however is concidering handing over its children to the watch of capitalists, 
has cut support to in and out of work families to the extent that many cannot afford to provide their children with the basics, and are ok with page 3. 

You can sign a petition set up by Children and Families England here and you can respond to the consultation by 30th May.

And if anyone can think of a creative way were we can make a referral to social services for all children because of a risk posed by the state or the media (without causeing them havoc cause they are massively overworked) then your brain has got there before mine. 

Childcare - some Mummy suggestions.

My heart lifted as I heard Ed Balls announce labour would commit to 25 hours of free childcare, while I stood at the Fabian conference bouncing up and down trying to keep my baby asleep. Immediately I wanted to know from what age. I got chatting latter to a woman next to me about the complications of having a family and working. We both agreed we wanted more than a commitment to 25 hours free childcare (from I suspect 3 years) we wanted a comprehensive set of policies that would support families in work and address the competition so many people experience between caring responsibilities and paid employment.

In the lunchtime session with the Fabian Women’s society someone pointed out that the disproportionate effect of the cuts on women had not been mentioned in the main meetings so far and that we needed to mainstream feminist politics. I nearly shouted amen before remembering where I was and giving a polite clap instead. Another point made elsewhere was the rampant nature of individualism and the need to articulate the benefits of collectivist action.

I wonder if these two things contribute significantly to the lack of value we place on caring and nurturing those who are dependent on others. This lack of value strikes me as odd since every single one of us has at some point in our lives been entirely dependent on others. However much people have made their own way and their own money there was a point in their life where they were unable to do anything and would have died had not someone lifted them to bottle or breast. And for most of us there will come again a time where we are greatly dependent on the care of others. I think there is a great opportunity for Labour to fill the gap and come up with a comprehensive set of policies that value family.

Now the phrase ‘valuing family’ from a Christian is going to send many people into a state of panic and with good reason. But rather than shying away from discussing it let’s meet the challenge with a deeper solution than the right can offer.

Firstly my Christian and socialist world I understand family in much broader terms than the ‘traditional’ right view. I put traditional in quotation marks because I’m not sure the nuclear family is all that traditional. Since complete dependence is such a universal  experience lets value it and celebrate it.

So in my nappy changing buggy pushing day dreaming a comprehensive set of policies would look something like this:

·       Joined up thinking from birth to school. At the moment you have to go back to work at year 1 free childcare kicks in at 3 or sometimes 2 what are you meant to do in between.

A universally available community service allowance. This would be an increase of your tax free allowance dependent on you doing at least 5 hours of community service a week. Parents would automatically be entitled and could nominate one other person (relative or friend) who also cares for their child for free for at least 5 hours a week.  Where only one person has parental responsibility for the child they will be able to nominate 2 other people. Adults in need of additional support would also be able to nominate individuals to receive this tax free allowance. People who gave 5 hours a week of their time to a voluntary organisation could get a simple form stamped by the voluntary agency, which they give to their payroll department to receive the tax free allowance. This would be a great answer to the announcement of giving married/civil partners a tax break. Mostly couples save by economies of scale so we must reply with something fairer and deeper.

Childcare vouchers should be changed from a weekly rate to an hourly rate and should be generously set so as to cover at least 80% of likely childcare costs. This would stop it from becoming more expensive to work more hours and allow parents to decide how much to work based on the needs of the child and family. The amount of childcare vouchers available should be increased between the ages of one and three rather than at present where you can get the same for a 3 and 15 year old.

Deal with the lack of nursery places. Deal with term time only issue.

People and companies should be actively dissuaded from people working regularly weeks over 40 hours.  If you’re doing 70 hours someone is missing you and your doing 2 peoples job. If you are just earning enough you are being exploited if you are earning lots per hour than you are also taking someone else salary. 

All jobs should be advertised as optional number of hours unless there is very good reason why the job cannot be done by several people. People should be able to state on application how many hours they wish to do. The selected candidate will get the hours they requested and the next best candidate offered what is left ect.

Workplaces should where reasonably possible be required to make provision for parents to bring infants under one into work. (Most babies are very amiable and it’s a time many parents could work)

These are just a few thoughts after 31/2 years of juggling babies, volunteering and work. They all need thrashing out but are enough I think to provide a little hope that the left could offer something radical and deep that not only would help parents but change the way we value one another and engage with society. 

Why are we teaching children to be fascist?

I had a conversation with my three year old recently that went something like this:

Her: Let's build a castle.

Me: OK

Her: you build it and I do this

She starts to pretend to preen herself in an imaginary mirror. I pile up six pillows 

Her: Do I look pretty mummy?

Me: I think you are pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. You going to climb up?

She eagerly clambers atop the pile

Her: You need to climb my hair cause I can't get down 

Me: Why can't you climb down? 

Her: You need to climb up my hair though.

Me: But that would hurt you, don't you think. I reckon you are clever enough to climb down on your own. 

She climbs down looking pleased with herself

Me: Well done. See you can do it.

Her: Now you be stuck in the tower and I climb up your hair.

Me: But that would hurt if you climbed up my hair.

Her (Stroking my hair) : But it's ok now it's yellow.

Me: Come on let's both climb up

Silliness ensued.

I moved on from the yellow comment because it threw me so much. I would love to know where my daughter picked up in so much detail the story of Rapunzel. I was very glad to have the opportunity to present an alternative reading of the story and as she get's older I'll continue to offer a critique.

But it saddened my soul that we are clearly teaching fascism to three year olds. My three year old thinks it is preferable to have blond hair. Just reflect upon that. Can we please stop telling children these horrific tales of violence and prejudice.

Dear World

Dear World,

I am writing to you because you are a very dear friend and I am under the impression you are not 100% at ease and really quiet worried about us. We are very grateful for your concern but feel it is quiet misplaced. 

When I was going on maternity leave with my first child with no job to return too due to lack of funding, I didn't get the overwhelming impression that you were concerned about 'what I would do'. It seemed it was a for-gone conclusion. I was now a 'mother' that was work enough.

My best friend was concerned, but we quickly learned not to discus it around you world, lest we be chastised for not considering devoting yourself to your children as important. (Something we never said or thought)

Now that same best friend is going on paternity leave which I am gathering world is making you extremely anxious. It would seem that you are deeply concerned about him 'not working' and taking time to devote to his children possibly a 'waste' of his talents and skills.

Do you see the contradiction?

It would seem to us dear world that you are defining us in a way we do not wish to be defined. You are defining me by my relational status and aforementioned best friend by what he does. Neither of us wish to be defined by either of these things. It will be messier and less simple but we think you will be richly rewarded if you get to know us as we are with all our contradictions and frailties. 

And instead of becoming anxious by the choices we are making why not use them to catalyse your own imagination of what might be possible.

In deepest love

Me :)

Not a Princess

My daughter (2&1/2) announced yesterday that she was a princess. This was inevitable, but I had not thought it would come so soon. I informed her that she was not and reminded her of her name. She then started singing the wheels on the bus, life moves on fast at 2. But it did make me think I need to pre think some strategies for tackling this one as it continually raises its head over the next few years. 

The timing of this comment was interesting since there is also another child born recently who will not be a princess but will most probably, though finally getting a republic is always a possibility, become a prince. I have to say that along with Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett I also feel a slight sense of relief that the royal baby is male and will not have to suffer being a princess.

Anyway in search of advice I went to twitter, and while I received some excellent suggestions much was about how to re-define or reshape what a princess is. I'm not sure I want to. I think I'd rather make being a princess an unattractive option. Also I don't want to lie to my daughter. I am not royal so she will never be a princess. I could say that princess can run around, climb trees, wear trousers, but they can't. Kate cannot wear what she wants, say what she wants, eat what she wants, yesterdays revolting issue of OK proves that. 

Also there is the danger of simply replacing one stereotype with another. I don't know if my daughter will enjoy climbing trees yet and I don't want her confronted with the options of pink princess or 'tom boy' princess. I'd rather she could just be her in any combination of interests and abilities she enjoys. 

It is not just the gender stereotyping of princess that I find so difficult but also the inherent hierarchy we cannot all be princess. As much as I love Brave and watch it with my little one repeatedly I'd much rather it ended with the king abdicating and setting up a democratic co-operative community. 

There is too much, competition, I'm the best, look at me, in children's media and for girls princess seems to be the ultimate expression of that. Princess also teaches our daughters to place the highest value in their appearance to the exclusion of other attributes. And not their appearance for their own enjoyment creativity or self expression, their appearance as measured by how sexually attractive they are to adult men. Which is why I would rather expose princess for what they really are (slowly and in an age appropriate way) than redefine princess as something a little more diverse. 

It's going to be hard work.

Two Books on Women

 

I recently read 'How to be a Woman' by Caitlin Moran followed fairly immediately by 'A year of Biblical Womanhood' by Rachel Held Evans. I'm glad I read them this way round! It struck me that there were some interesting differences and notable contrasts that I wanted to share with the world.

I think I might start backwards. Both authors conclude that there is not and shouldn't be a prescribed way to be a woman. For Evans book this felt like the natural conclusion to her discussion. I felt the narrative learnt from the experience of other women from a diversity of cultural experiences and approached such learning with a humble heart. Yet it stayed authentically itself and gave me as the reader permission to do so as well.

Moran's book however irritated me most of the way through. It was essentially an autobiography but despite it's beginning and conclusion about the diversity of female experience I couldn't help but feel I was being told that this was or should have been my experience as well. Especially the stuff around adolescents. 

Both books reference other women who have fought similar battles before and have begun to forge a way and in who's path we follow as well as contemporaries. Evan's does so with great respect and gratitude to those 'Women of Valour' both past and present. One of her final resolutions is to identify and praise women of valor. 

Moran by contrasts dismisses most of her contemporaries, including Object and even Greer as having become irrelevant.  The only woman who comes of relatively well is Lady Gaga.  While Evans writing humbly acknowledge's the work of those who have gone before. Moran writes 'When Simone de Beauvoir wrote one is note born a woman one becomes a woman - she didn't know the half of it.' Hmm.

Moran repeatedly says that woman have done very little (even nothing) over the last 100,000 years, while men she claims have made great achievements in science, art politics and repeatedly in her long lists she includes empire. I find it very problematic to list empire in with a list of great advancements without any deconstruction or critique of the very idea of empire. Evan's by contrast retells the stories of many great women's achievement both biblical and extra biblical. She also on occasion broadens her critique not just to hierarchy between genders but the idea of hierarchy at all in any context.

Both repeatedly use the word 'Lady'. I have written about my dislike of the word here. Evans however only ever used it in contexts where, had she been talking about men she may well have said gentlemen. Generally when she was talking about people and only once directed to the readers. Moran however got right up my noise by continually giving instructions to her readers preceded by calling them to attention with 'Ladies!'. 

Both authors while not writing a book about violence against women and the global situation do reference it. Evans to put her own struggles and difficulties in perspective. Moran to explain that the problem with modern feminism is that it is focused on these things while ignoring things like glossy magazines and pants being too small.

Both authors once mention the Vietnam war, both use it for illustrative purposes. In the case of both books I have forgotten what was being described! Evan's I remember said that some group of people discussed something - "Like veterans talk about 'Nam" I can't remember feeling it was inappropriate or offensive. I cannot remember the details of what Moran was talking about either save that it was about running away "faster than a Vietnamese boy covered in Nepalm". I wasn't expecting that sentence it kind of sprang at me from no where and made me feel positively sick.

Both authors discussed having children. Evan's wrote an honest and reflective account of her worries and fears about having children. She also explored issues around women's relationship with parenting and the difficulty of living in a world which defines women in relation to children and explored the duff theology in parenting as a woman's highest calling. Moran on the other hand wrote 'Childbirth gives women a gigantic set of balls'. To be fair on Moran this is not all she said and she did also point out that there are a variety of life experiences that can change and shape us. But it's almost that that makes these bizar one lines so problematic there is an inconsistency in her writing.

Both authors mention their vagina's. Evans in a discussion about teenage experience of church teaching on sex.  Famously there was big discussions about how that would affect christian bookshops and whether they were willing to stock the book or not. As far as I am aware there where no such discussions as to the inclusion of the c word which I can't even bring myself to write, but that's apparently what Moran calls her vagina.

Both books made me laugh out loud. Moran's book also made me shout and swear. Evan's book also made me cry. Moran's book left me with an overwhelming sense of frustration. Evan's book left me peaceful and wiser. 

The Dyslexic Parent

I always used to pause when filling in job applications at that bit that asks if you have any disabilitys that affect daily life.

Do I? I'd wander - some days, but others not. Is it really suvear enough, what if I'm just making it up. Will they look at my cv see I went to uni and think I'm therefore exaggerating or making it up. Will they think it just means I can't spell?

I'm never going to hesitate again. Not since becoming a parent.

I didn't read many parenting books but of the bits I did read none of them mentioned any particular difficulties you might experience as a dyslexic parent and there's not a lot of stuff out there on dyslexia websites either, though when I posted a question in a forum it seems I am far from alone in my particular struggles.

Through life I have managed to develop coping mechanisms, these are utterly inadequate for organising 2 lives. I forget stuff and people say 'don't worry its just baby brain' I think 'you have no idea'. Before my daughter was born getting out the house having remembered my phone, keys, wallet, diary and bus pass without leaving windows open and the door unlocked was a major achievement as was getting through a week without forgetting something in the oven. 

Organising 2 lives is nigh impossible. I'm not sure I've once left the house without forgetting something. I'm finding it incredibly stressful. But we get through somehow and are very good at learning to improvise when we forget clean nappies, spare clothes, a drink etc. She hardly notices now (though I try to hide it from other parents cause I feel so incompetent) but I'm getting nervous about getting to school in a few years time without something significant.

Then people say have you thought about schools? And I think in my head - yes I have little panic attacks about it every time anyone mentions it. Then I have to remind myself that she's not me, she might love primary school, she might be able to spell. Then I feel a bit sad cause secretly I kind of hope she is because on good day's I'm chuffed to bits I'm dyslexic. Then I think actually I really don't want her to go through what I did. Then I worry cause she's 21 months and still can't walk and only just to crawl. 

So at the moment I am deffinately dyslexic and it deffinately affects my day to day life - and my daughters. Which lead me to do a bit of reading up and I have become absolutely appalled at reading that girls are just as likely to be dyslexic but 3 times less likely to receive support. 

I experientially know why this is. My mum was constantly told not to worry cause I was behaving well. The way we gender our children is clearly going to mean girls who are struggling at school won't have the same assertiveness and are likely to be overlooked because they are being 'well behaved' while boys who've had 'naughty' and 'trouble' written across them since they where born and who have been trained to have no weaknesses are going to kick up and 'behave badly' and are more likely to get help. 

I imagine also that girls will have extra incentive to keep quiet and head down because they will get extra told off about messy writing and not being tidy. 

 I cannot explain how angry I am about this.  

   

Breast vs Bottle War

I have not eaten Nestle for half my life. 14 years. Now you all know how old I am. That is how much I value breastfeeding.

I complained about a display in a local shop that had cow's head's on female dressed manikins with a sign declaring 'Breast is Best', I value Breastfeeding.

But I cannot walk round the adult world and tell who was breast fed and who wasn't.

It's just not as important as we'd like to make it. Sure there are questions to be asked about capitalist marketing, about women's body image and support of the wider community, but at the end of the day what matters is that the child was fed and held and loved.

Pendulum's swing and in reacting against pressure we must ensure we don't create it. There are women distraught because they cannot breastfeed or can't produce enough milk or don't want to, or want to return to work or have to return to work.

Feminists need to create a rhetorical environment that values breastfeeding but also values choice. That values the best for the child recognising that that is not divorced from the needs of the mother. In responding to a situation where women where coxed and coerced into using formula lets not create a situation where they are coxed and coerced into not using formula.

Stop the mummy wars join the movement for parent peace.