How were the most authoritative baby gurus of the 80s raised and how did they raise their own children? The Observer of 14 April 1985 conducted a series of house calls to investigate.
Smoking in her ‘spacious pine kitchen’ in a Hampstead Victorian semi, Penelope Leach’s ‘outstandingly affectionate’ mother had influenced her baby-centred, attachment style of parenting advice. The expectation of all-day, every-day commitment from mothers without the support of family and wider community made ‘good mothering’ feel impossible, she wrote, explaining her cleaner and childminder, Vi, was ‘the only thing that made working possible’ with her own family. Questions on her academic husband’s involvement in child rearing caused some hesitation: he was ‘positive that he wanted a baby but was a tremendous workaholic’.
Interviewed in her ‘Regency mini-mansion’ while her children waited in the billiard room, Dr Miriam Stoppard preached that ‘happy parents mean happy babies’. She had grown up ‘quite bereft of mothering’, she said. Her ‘very poor’ mother worked and she and her sister were ‘latch-key children’. Although she had written fathers should ‘be patient if the house is not as tidy as it was’, Tom pulled his weight with their four babies, taking his share of night shifts. ‘A series of nannies’ also helped. It was ‘absolute nonsense’ that children might grow up to prefer the help; hers even agreed to take on more chores if the nanny era could be curtailed. ‘It’s important for children to realise right from the beginning that life isn’t all sweetness and entertainment,’ Stoppard declared briskly.
Enjoying retirement in a vast garden full of peacocks and pheasants, Dr Hugh Jolly had offered ‘a respectable imitation of God’ to a generation of anxious parents. Raised by a full-time nanny, Narna, who joined the family aged 16 and only left at 80, Jolly confessed to seeing little of his three children’s infancy, too, thanks to ‘a very demanding paediatric consultancy’ (his wife Geraldine’s high-flying gynaecology career took a back seat). Perhaps that influenced his statement: ‘The really important thing is that parents should enjoy their children’?
