Having commented on the previous news of a mother who has returned to work after seven hours of maternity leave after childbirth, I have been wondering how it has been the history of mothers and children regarding labor conciliation.
The incorporation of women into work has meant that, sooner or later, they should entrust the care of the baby or the small child to third parties for a good part of the day. However this, more than reconciliation of work and personal lifeIt seems to me a distribution of time that is not always fair to the mother or the child, who often suffer from this separation.
This model, although not ideal, is perhaps a new way to approach the problem of conciliation. And it is that the undeniable right of women to work in equality I do not think it is good that it is realized at the cost of resignations such as the need of babies who are better than anyone with their mothers and the physical and emotional need of mothers to raise your children directly for a longer time than we have right now.
Not all places and types of work are safe or suitable for a baby, but I do believe that there are many others who can adapt perfectly to a child being, guaranteeing their well-being, in the same place as the mother and accompanying her in her tasks.
Women at work before the Industrial Revolution
Before the world worked like this. I will do a brief review of the reconciliation history. Women, let's not fool ourselves, have always worked, inside but also outside the home. From time immemorial the children were with their mothers throughout the day and they were not in their locked houses but also made a living with multiple occupations.
The raising of the human species in a "natural" state did not separate mothers and babies. Perhaps in this we have not improved with the centuries.
In the gathering and hunting tribes, women carried their children in their arms or with a handkerchief, while, once physically recovered from childbirth, which in normal conditions may be much earlier than we are accustomed, they walked through the forest collecting food. His children were with them all the time.
The arrival of the Neolithic did not change that, the children followed their mothers who cultivated, woven, made pottery or prepared food. His immersion in the life of society was the norm. Teaching was done in the family and those who came to receive a major training did not do so well into childhood.
Actually, that mothers and children remained together has been what has characterized the existence of the human race, as with all mammals, although it is true that not all activities were allowed for women.
It is not possible to specify when the social structure makes men dominate over women, but many theories point out that the strongest changes occur with the birth of cities and the first empires. Before, in prehistory, we can only know by comparison with isolated societies that maintained the hunter and gatherer way of life, how jobs and power were divided.
The situation after the Industrial Revolution
The change did not come until the Industrial Revolution, when the women left ocupomic and went to work in factories and offices, thereby conquering greater economic independence and rights in theoretical equality. What anthropologists call patriarchy was destroyed, although deep down, many patterns of judgment continue to keep women in a weaker position in many places, including our western society.
And yet the great conquest was paid with a very high price, the separation of children regularly from their mothers a large part of the day and at younger and younger ages, leaving them in the care of institutions or third parties.
The fallacy of the independence of babies
While this was happening, a model of interpretation of the psychological evolution of childhood was imposed that has never been demonstrated and that clashes with what has been the custom of our species and those that resemble us. We are explained that the child must be independent at ages at which any objective observer knows that the child is an enormously dependent being.
The greater wealth of households introduced the availability of security, comfort and heat in them, and it is also usual that we no longer live together in a single room. Since the child will not suffer damage in another room and that room exists, it was possible to sleep in it. But it is not only that, but it also insists that babies must sleep in another room to learn independence habits from an early age, under the threat of disrupting their evolution and turning them into dependent people without self-esteem.
No one has been able to prove this, because psychology cannot handle these variables mathematically, but, in my opinion, nobody can prove it because it is a fallacy. Human children have always slept with their mothers or with both parents, but the invention of sleeping separately is something new, which does not reach us until the 19th or 20th century.
No theory is going to be able to show that our ancestors were emotionally impaired for sleeping with their mothers or, as I will explain below, for remaining with them throughout their childhood without entering institutions that replace it for most of the day.
I see no advantage in a baby separating from his mother, at least for him. Human children have never been educated by a member outside their family in large groups, run by an adult, organized by age in a decisive way. The children were with their mothers and close relatives, with other children of all ages, in contact with the real everyday life of their society all the time. No one ever said that it is good that they are integrated into educational institutions at an early age to become independent, relate or learn to be people. No one said it because it was obvious that it is not necessary.
All these theories in favor of kindergartens They are created a posteriori, when society made it necessary for children to go to daycare for women to continue working away from them. A comfort based on another fallacy. There is no need for children and babies to be separated from their mothers or their close adults to grow emotionally healthy.
I do not affirm that it is something pernicious either, but from there to defend that it is good goes a huge stretch. But I do believe that the attention of the mother and father in the first six years of life is essential for emotional development.
The reality is that, as society and the world works we can't choose. It is necessary to opt for institutions in the vast majority of families. But this should not be so. The labor market is not the greatest wealth of a society, its wealth is families and children, who will be the adults of the future.
The pending revolution
I think that the great revolution pending in the struggle of women for their rights is to claim that their freedom, their work and their independence do not force them to give up spending time with their children and raise them directly.
I do not know how it can be achieved, the truth is that I find myself helpless to give global solutions, but I do believe that it is necessary to become aware that one of our rights is the right that our children do not have to separate from us so many hours to the few months of life That's reconcile work, freedom, rights and motherhood.
