I’ve been a parent since 1990.
In all that time I have never once left my children with a babysitter — at least not the random teenage stranger version. There have been occasions when the children have been watched by trusted and vetted friends for a few hours at a time, but my inclination has been to keep them with me.
If I’m not with them, Byron takes over. This was necessary to protect them from danger but also because the children are not exactly average in their needs or behavior. When I decided to have kids my fundamental belief was that they were my own responsibility, and that I would make a good life for them.
When they started nursery school I was very careful to select programs that would work with their individual eccentricities, even if that meant an extraordinary commitment of travel time. They were always enrolled in special programs, alternative schools with substantial commitment to specific philosophical ideas.
Beyond that, I’ve never forced my children to go to school; if they were unhappy I moved on to the next solution. Mostly this meant letting them stay home.
Why? Because I know that I will not live forever and need to do well with the time left. Because children are only small for a little while. Because my kids are the most interesting people I have ever met. Because it is fun to hang out with my family.
But mostly because I did not have societal permission to produce children. I was young, and poor, and sick. Things that people in other situations take for granted were never part of my daily existence. It was a political act to have children – and I had to be good, the best. It was necessary to excel at every aspect of parenting. There was no acceptable alternative.
So here we are on the other side of the world, proper adults with careers. These children I have nurtured for half a lifetime are sturdy, healthy, loquacious.
Moving here was a choice, and accepting the differences in the educational system is part of living in a new country.
Today I sent them to school. Regular, normal, state-funded British schools, with religious education and PE kits and a dress code and conduct rules.
I find this shocking.
The children do not appear to mind.