Last week, during lunch with a mum friend, a deal was proposed to me. If my friend dropped my two children at school every day, could she leave her newborn son at mine three mornings a week? Just until she’s done at the office at around 11am? I nearly spat out my coffee. She then suggested that she’d happily pick up my kids from school if, say, she suddenly had a work lunch she couldn’t get out of, which would mean she wouldn’t be around until 2pm rather than 11. “He’s no trouble, I promise,” she said, with slight desperation in her eyes. “He just sits in his bouncer cooing.”
I told my friend I couldn’t do it – “I have to work, too,” I said. An unusual request, though, this isn’t. More and more middle-class parents are opting for “muddling” – meaning to forgo expensive nannies or nursery school, and just hoping for the best with friends or family stepping in to help when need be. On the surface, this sounds ideal – it’s totally free of charge, after all. But rarely mentioned is the mental cost of it all. That, surely, is priceless.
