Olga Pereda: caring for children, “the most difficult job in the world”

Before some thirty readers of EL PERIÓDICO (some with children present), in the refurbished Abacus de Còrsega bookstore, a loquacious and amusing Pereda, mother of a seven-year-old boy (“whom I love very much,” she said, and to whom she dedicated , she remembers, an emotional love letter, when a reader urged her to also deal with positive aspects of motherhood), she confessed from the outset that when her son was born she felt loss, unlike the perfect motherhoods that appear in series, magazines or Instagram photos. And for this reason, he defended speaking of a “real” motherhood, a motherhood that, yes, implies unconditional love for the children but, at the same time, accept naturally the “dark room”, the feelings arising from a responsibility that can drown. A vision that Pereda shares both in the Education and Parenting Club and in his newsletter.

Pereda insisted that the Club address all kinds of issues that interest the reader, from how to approach pregnancy and childbirth even how to treat children in a difficult stage such as adolescencegoing through the problems of mental health, which emerged strongly after confinement. And without any type of taboos, as in the case of the Postpartum depression. For this she put For example, the Movistar series ‘Perfect Life’, by Leticia Dolera, where the actress plays a mother who feels guilty because she doesn’t love her baby.

Presented yesterday by Nuria Brown, coordinator of EL PERIÓDICO’s Notebook, Pereda affirmed that caring for children “is the most difficult job in the world” and that it should be given the same value as that which an executive does during hours in his office. Parenting should be question of statehe continues, and should “be part of the political agenda, without leaving it cornered in the private sphere”, unlike other nations around us, where birth policies are integrated into public management.

Impossible reconciliation

As a consequence of this lack of active policies in favor of the birth rate, motherhood is exercised in an environment where, Pereda emphatically affirms, “the reconciliation does not exist. Conciliation is the mothers from school who pick up your child when you don’t arrive or the extracurriculars”, as Diana Oliver denounces in her book ‘Precarious Maternities’. And, of course and fundamentally, the ‘conciliators’ are grandfathers and grandmothers. At the request of Antoni Riba, a veteran reader who explained that he had to constantly care for his granddaughter (daughter of a single-parent family), Pereda stated that “grandparents are here to enjoy their grandchildren and, if they have to spend a lot of time with them, the better that they do not contradict the education of the parents and always agree what they can or cannot do and say to the child”.

But, above all, Pereda insisted that the Club be a meeting point in which “moms and dads make a tribe, that in the face of the difficulties of parenting we are not alone, it is not a war in which I do it better than you”. We must not fall into the derivatives of the hyperpaternitydescribed by the popularizer Eva Millet as an education to make perfect children, “where I enroll my son in fencing and Chinese and I enroll him in the best school in the world, so that you can see what a good father I am,” says Pereda ironically.

And in the end, the journalist points out, “what matters is that your son is healthy“. And it can contribute to this early attention, which seeks to stimulate children (whether they have a disorder or not) from birth. “Children have to be snuggled, hugged, talked to, made to feel your presence because, as neuropsychiatrist María José Mas points out, when mom picks you up, your brain enlarges.”

Parents who raise

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After his intervention, several readers commented on their experiences with raising their children. Before the exposition of Vanesa Castañeda, a reader who defined herself as an “entrepreneurial mother”, Pereda agreed that they also have to have time for themselves and not be ‘Monpet’ (acronym for ‘mother with no personal time’), that is, don’t focus 100% on your children without making you feel guilty.

Among a mostly female audience, the writer Joan Antoni Martin Pinol, author of ‘Harry Pater and the Philosopher’s Diaper’, a fun guide for new parents, claimed that there are also parents who are in WhatsApp chats at school and who prepare breakfast for them, but he pointed out a key issue: he is autonomous and has more time to spend with the children. Although, as Pereda agreed, in the end it’s about thinking of them as the most important priority in your life. And when asked when the next club will be, Pereda threw down a glove: he will have to talk about teenagers. So, those parents with turkey-age kids, stay tuned.