“It had stalled out my career before I’d even gotten it off the ground. What was this time ‘out’ turning me into?”
Living that subsidized, euro-chic life. Photo: Austrian Archives/CORBIS I can sum up my experience of Austrian motherhood in one conversation with my midwife, Andrea. We were drinking herbal tea in her Vienna office while discussing how to insert oil into my vagina.
Once home from the hospital, Andrea showed up every afternoon for a month to check my scar, weigh the baby, and help with breastfeeding. Her ongoing presence single-handedly kept me from slipping into the quicksand of postpartum depression. Four months came and went. I got a wonderful sitter for a meager six hours a week, but I could barely think. Writing went out the window.
But my concern was out of step with my surroundings. Virtually every mother in Austria stays home for at least one year, if not two or three — very few day cares accept children before 12 months and nannies are not the norm. All kids are guaranteed a subsidized spot at age three, but many kids start at 18 months or 2 years when maternity leave ends.
By and large, in this city it is mothers, not nannies, who hold court at the Spielplatz and pick up the kids at day care any time between 11:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Vienna is known for its famously high quality of life, in large part because it makes living so easy for a young family. But this view of early parenthood not-so-subtly decrees that children are best off with their mothers — even if this is not what the mother actually wants.
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