sweet effay

I couldn't really let this one go by. Mark K-P on raising children:

It is, to say the least, by no means self-evident that the best way to rear children is in a domestic space with their mother. I speak as someone whose upbringing was of that type. Being the sole subject of the attentions of a young woman who - as she would now admit - had limited confidence was unlikely to do much for the mental health of either child or parent. A world inhabited almost exclusively by mother and child cannot but be cloyingly, suffocatingly confining: and any security and safety that both experience is inevitably achieved at a high price, namely the coding of the world Outside as a place of uncertainty, fear and loathing. To be brought up partly by 'strangers' and with other children is not only to let some air into the fetid closeted space of the domestic neurosis factory, it is also to go some way to weakening the distinction between what is familiar/ familial and what is 'strange'.

It may well not be self-evident Mark, but you really should think twice before universalizing your own upbringing. I probably shouldn't universalize either, but having over twenty years of close-up experience of non-working mothers bringing up the younger siblings of the children in various primary schools across several parts of the country and diverse social strata, I can promise you that the world you describe is not at all common. Do you really think that these people lock themselves away with their babies all day? They spend a significant percentage of their time with their peers in social groupings of one kind or another (some organised, some not). Most children are interacting with non-family members on a regular basis from a very early age. 'Suffocatingly confining' it is not. 'Collective child-rearing by groups of women' is actually a much more apt description of how many children are brought up than your own. Consequently, I would suggest that this:

one of the most dangerous presuppositions is the unargued view that the 'best' (='most natural') way for a child to be reared is in a private domestic space by its female parent.

Is simply untrue, although there is an argument that there is a presupposition that the 'most natural' way for a child to be reared is by its female parent. Surprisingly enough, sociobiological studies seem to bear this out in that even newborn infants respond differently to female and male voices.

And before anybody starts leaping up and down about how I'm relegating women to the second classs position of domestic servants, I should point out that Little effay is brought up by me in our not-very-private domestic space, whilst Mrs effay gets to be a wage slave. What a saint I am.