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social issues & initiatives | by Sebastian Fasthuber | 2010-06
“Where do I get care for my child?”The psychologist Martina Genser-Medlitsch from NÖ Hilfswerk in conversation with Sebastian Fasthuber about the current situation and the future of the family, the difficulties of many parents in finding suitable day care, and traditional role models.Sebastian Fasthuber: Over the last decades families have become ever smaller. Grandparents live in the same house only rarely. What challenges does this present for child care?Martina Genser-Medlitsch: Nowadays mostly just two generations live in one household. But I can see that the grandparents still contribute a lot to the care and education of children, even if they do not live in the same household. Today many grandmothers are still active in their profession and therefore only partly available. If there are not grandparents at all in the vicinity, one really has to think a lot about the children’s accommodation. Many parents find the available choice of child care very confusing. In Austria child care is a matter of the federal regions; therefore parents find different offers. Depending on how old the child is, what stage of their career the parents are at and how much time they have to take care of their child themselves, they have to check what types of care are offered for their child in the vicinity. And because it is growing up its needs also change rapidly. Therefore one frequently is confronted with the question: Where do I get care for my child? The working world of today demands flexible workers. Therefore, parents need flexible care times for their children. Is there a lot of catching up to be done? Actually, the offer per se is there. We have numerous care facilities: day mothers, mobile mummies, kindergarten, nurseries, au-pairs, company kindergarten, babysitter services. But there’s still a big hole in fringe time care. Some parents would sometimes or even regularly need child care from 6 to 8:30 a.m. or from 5 to 8 p.m.; public institutions are closed at such times. Or someone does shift work on weekends. Often there is nothing in the vicinity of the family or the workplace, or it is difficult to offer such special care at affordable rates since it also means higher expenditure for the carer. In Lower Austria we have many day mothers who also work on weekends. But they could not survive financially if they only took care of children at fringe times. What would be adequate in your opinion? If a society says that family and child care are valuable things then this should also mean that their worth must be increased. Private organising institutions should be better supported or put on the same level as public institutions. Also, the interconnection between the working world and child care does not yet work so well here, their alignment could be fine-tuned more. E.g., in Scandinavian companies there’s hardly any meetings scheduled for late afternoon any more – on principle. At the moment there is chaos. At the beginning of June many private organisations did not know how much support money they would get and how much parents would have to pay in autumn for child care. Will all that level out? My prognosis is that on a short-term basis especially private organisations will make an effort to manage the balancing act. It was politically irresponsible to send things out into the world before their implementation was planned, and even before those who will have to take responsibility for the implementation were informed. These people would have to be integrated much more beforehand so that obstacles could be recognized much earlier. But processes like that need more time. What would long-term planning have to look like? Fundamental changes need analyses of the status quo, assessment of necessity and the development of a vision. And in order to realise such a vision one again has to plan well. Of course it is hard to anticipate changes. We live in a fast-moving world. Can a new model even keep up for a longer period? The benefit-cost analysis is a difficult one. Let’s talk about the parents. In former times there was a clear distinction between parents favouring authoritarian and antiauthoritarian education. How would you describe the current generation of parents? There is a multitude of notions concerning parenthood. The antiauthoritarian movement has much decreased. But partly there still is the traditional conception with the typical role models of father and mother. And there is a large group going in the direction of a partnership-oriented parent model. These parents get lots of tips from books, papers, TV and the Internet how to bring their children up properly. This information often will be contradictory. The confusion of the parents can be felt very strongly, especially with those who are very diligent. One gets the feeling that the gap is pretty wide. As you say, many parents exert themselves, while others do not look after their children much. That is the other end of the multiplicity I mentioned. There still is a group for which upbringing is only a marginal theme. This may be socially disadvantaged families, in precarious financial circumstances. The question how to bring children up properly is rarely asked there. Mostly those people do not reflect their own negative experiences; on the contrary, they apply them again to their own children. What questions do people ask you at the relief organisation? One big issue are peculiarities of children which mostly show when the children are taken care of outside their home. E.g., my kid has got problems at kindergarten, it scratches the other children. Another issue are partnership conflicts which also influence the children. Of course, domestic violence comes up again and again. Also, one often sees overstrained parents who aren’t able to manage everyday organisation any more. This is often accompanied by burnout and psychic problems. Do more people call you today than five or ten years ago? Yes, we notice an increasing demand at our information centres, and our two telephone hotlines are called more often, too. On the one hand, the problems become more and more diversified. On the other hand I notice that it isn’t such a gigantic barrier any more to admit that one cannot cope with a problem alone and therefore has to ask a psychologist’s advice. Our offers are also often spread by word of mouth among mother friends. Are women especially under strain? Yes. Nowadays women often get completely different messages regarding child care. One is: who stays home longer suffers financial loss. But when women get child care outside the family relatively early they still are accused of being uncaring mothers who prefer their carreer to their children. That’s a tension field for women which in my opinion is becoming wider and wider. It is often hard to find a solution for oneself where one can have a good conscience. And even if one succeeds there still is the question how to organise one’s time together? That, too, is a great challenge. One pressures oneself because the scant time one is able to spend together as a family should be of high quality, be fun and moreover be productive, too. Which crisis scenarios or problem areas will we have to reckon with in families in the future? You can deduct this a bit from the development of society. The blurring borders between private life and occupation, the permanent availability will create more and more problems. Here we will increasingly be confronted with psychic problems. When families separate and new families form in other places, it will be a challenge in the patchwork field to keep up good contact with one’s children over long distances for a longer time. It will also be interesting to observe how the Facebook Generation will keep up its real social contacts. I would also like to talk about men. Many take their role of father more serious than their fathers did, and nearly all of them push prams. But how far advanced are we really? It will take a good while yet until the father role is really established as a provident, equally integrated part. I don’t believe that something like this can change fundamentally within one or two generations. Maybe we’re a bit too impatient there. But you can see signs everywhere: Father is much more in use as a word, and in children’s books, too, fathers appear much more often. But at the workplace it is not so easy yet. It would be wrong in this situation to mark out those who do not participate in child care as bad fathers. This kind of integration has to be based on a certain readiness and willingness. Those fathers who already actively contribute something of course deserve maximum appreciation. This should also be emphasised in public. “Male kindergarten workers are considered to be unmanly”, was a recent headline in the “Standard”. Are traditional role models still more pronounced in Austria than elsewhere in Europe? In my experience they are. You just have to watch tourism commercials. We’re really accentuating our sense of tradition with this alpine culture very much. Maybe we are a bit more shy of changes in this country. One likes to hesitate a bit before chancing the cold water. Mag. Martina Genser-Medlitsch (*1967, married, one daughter) is a clinical and health psychologist, and has worked at the NÖ Hilfswerk for twelve years as division manager of the child care offers day mothers, mobile mummies and nurseries. Sebastian Fasthuber works as a literature and music critic for the Viennese city magazine “Falter”, the music magazine “now!” and the monthly “Datum”. Fashuber is since 2008 father of a son. External links: Hilfswerk Austria
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