Lazy SelinCan everyone please stop asking me, in an incredulous tone, why I send my daughter to daycare?
And then follow that up with, “Are you working”? It makes me just want to say, no, I send my daughter to daycare because I love throwing money away while sitting on my ass all day and not doing anything.
Of course, when I say everyone, I mean those people, particularly women, from my home country of Turkey.
You see, it had been quite some time since I came face to face with the sexist and judgemental attitudes so deeply ingrained in Turkish culture. So when I had my daughter, and suddenly everyone, from close family friends to acquaintances I’ve met only once, decided that it was their right to comment on how I raised my daughter, I felt an anger that I hadn’t felt in a long time.
From doctors to so-called ‘aunties,’ women kept saying: “Oh no, we really don’t recommend sending children to daycare before they turn 3.” Or “Can’t you get a full-time nanny so she’s at least at home with you.” Or my favourite: “Why are you even working, it’s not like your job is saving the world”.
Turkey: where women are still expected to stay home
This idea that a woman has to stay home with her child is so accepted that it is shocking to many in Turkey when one doesn’t. According to the National Institute of Statistics in Turkey, only 28% of women between the ages of 25 to 49 with a child under 3 years old are employed. In contrast, 90.5% of men in the same situation are employed.
Overall, only 30.4% of women over the age of 15 are employed, compared with 65% of men.
My daughter, who is part Turkish and part French, is almost one. She started going to daycare in Paris when she was six months old. To be honest, I think it was more difficult for me than it was for her. I like my job and I never once considered stopping working full-time after maternity leave to look after my daughter. But I am also quite open about the fact that I would have liked to stay at home with her for longer and believe that parental leave rules in France need to change and allow for both parents to have time off work for longer. Unfortunately I only got 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, while my partner got 28 days.
But what has made the transition easier for me is the fact that she seems to love it. She likes being around other babies, and she likes the people looking after her. She didn’t struggle going, even from the beginning. And the reason I send her to daycare is quite simple: I work. And I need to work, not just because I like my job, but also because we need both mine and my partner’s incomes to have the life we want.
Yes, I’m a freelance journalist, but that doesn’t mean my work isn’t full-time (like some people assume). It also doesn’t mean that because a lot of my work involves sitting at home writing, I can, at the same time, take care of a baby who has constant needs.
But here’s the thing. It is none of your business.
So for once and for all, I would like to ask everyone to stop asking me and other mothers why they are sending their children to daycare, and stop judging them for not choosing to or being able to stay at home until their kids turn three.
This is exactly the kind of thing that adds to mothers feeling guilty and burdens them with unnecessary stress and worry and feelings of incompetence. Unless you’re offering to pay me what I make in a year or move to Paris to take care of my child at home for me, you do not get to comment on my decision.
The benefits of quality childcare
Meanwhile, think about the gender inequality that you are inadvertently promoting.
Having access to quality child care is a privilege not a lot of women have around the world. It’s been found by organisations from the United Nations to the World Bank that access to childcare enables mothers to stay in the workforce, increase their earnings, ensure their economic independence, and boost their empowerment. It positively affects not just women and their families but also the wider economy.
In addition, it helps take the burden of providing unpaid care off the shoulders of the mother – a responsibility that usually further exacerbates gender inequality. According to the International Labour Organisation there are around 606 million working-age women who are not seeking a job because of unpaid care work, compared to only 41 million men.
When I receive all these comments from well-educated, well-off women in Turkey who are able to afford a live-in nanny, it also makes me sad because of how disconnected I think they are in their judgement.
Women’s rights are under constant threat in Turkey. The most recent battleground is over the payment of alimony. The New Welfare Party, the Islamist political party and an ally of the ruling AKP in Turkey, has submitted a legislative proposal recently to limit alimony payments to five years. However, the ultimate goal is to prevent divorce. Because if those women who do not work, who stay at home to take care of their children and depend on their spouses for financial support, cannot receive alimony payments, the idea is that they will not dare leave. And if you have several children and you remain out of the workforce for many years while they grow up, it is all the more difficult to return and establish economic independence.
Next time you make a judgement and want to ask someone why they are working and sending their child to daycare, just don’t.
It’s a deeply personal decision, one that mother herself might have struggled with, but has to make, and she does not need your judgement. If society better supported families and mothers in particular, and had carefully thought out parental leave policies that do not disadvantage one gender over the other, we would be having a different conversation.
Written by Selin Bucak. Click here for her latest pieces!
Illustrated by Safae Boudrar.