From breastfeeding to the cost of childcare, foreign-born mothers share their thoughts on child-rearing in Ireland

NOTHING IS MORE likely to make a woman homesick than giving birth for the first time in a foreign country. We all want our mother when we become one ourselves.

However, unlike some of her compatriots living here, Californian Andrea Mitchell never considered going back to the US to have her first baby. “For one thing it is practically free here and second of all it is pretty good care.”

But she was a little perturbed initially by the “laid back” Irish maternity system. Cousins back home who were pregnant at the same time were going in for some test or another every couple of weeks, and she worried that she was missing out.

“I thought there was no way I was going to be able to produce a healthy child without all those crazy tests my cousins were having!”

Mitchell is a member of the American Women’s Club, which has a mother and toddler group that meets every week. The most common gripes over morning coffee are the Irish weather followed by the cost of childcare.

“With any group of people that lives somewhere else, sometimes we have to do that comparison thing – that things are different here and we miss home. We get that off our chest,” she explains.

“On the up side we all think it’s great that our kids can go out and play on the street.” That was something her mother remarked on when visiting recently.

“She never sees kids outside . If kids go outside they go to the back yard.”

Mitchell has an outsider’s view of the parenting culture she has been parachuted into. Having met Irishman Alan McDonald in her native San Diego, she married him, came to live in Dublin five years ago and they now have two children, Annabelle (two) and Juliette (six months).

She acknowledges that raising her children in Ireland inevitably influences her mothering – a belief shared by other foreign-born women canvassed by The Irish Timesfor their view of family life here. What differences do they see in parenting compared with their native countries?

Although hardly scientific, a few common themes emerge, such as our problem with breastfeeding, for one; the high cost of childcare another, but they all agree that Ireland is a good place to bring up children.

Gaby and Fernando Aguayo came to Ireland in 2010 because, although six years married, they did not want to start a family in their native Paraguay, where there is a high level of crime. They were both working as English teachers in a prestigious school and anybody with nice clothes, a nice car, is a target, she says. She did not feel safe walking down the street.

They wanted to emigrate to an English-speaking country and learned about Ireland through a close friend of her father who had been living here for many years and also an Irish colleague at the school.

But Gaby found that having a baby far from home, without the support of family, was a lonely experience, although she had made a determined effort to meet other mothers.

When she was heavily pregnant with Maximo, who is now 11 months old, she brought a home-baked cake around to a neighbour in Firhouse, Dublin, who she knew was a stay-at-home mum, and introduced herself. A year later they are firm friends.

However, the early days of motherhood were tough. Suffering the “baby blues”, she wanted to go home. But she is glad her mother talked her out of it as they are happy now – but she would love her mother to see Maximo.

“Despite the recession, we wanted to be here,” stresses Gaby who works as a childminder, while Fernando cares for Maximo. Her husband wants to work and she thinks it is “unfair” that prospective employers lose interest when they realise they would have to apply for a work permit for him.

On differences in parenting styles, she says Paraguayans are typically very demonstrative in their affection to children – “we are very loving and really show that with hugs and kisses”. She finds Irish parents “a bit cold” in comparison.

However, as a teacher, she likes that Irish parents seem quite strict. In Paraguay she thinks many parents have no rules and their children are badly behaved.

The one big thing she misses is the free medical care in Paraguay, whereas here “you really have to consider when you take your baby to the doctor because you have to pay for it. You don’t think about it twice when it’s free”.

Several of the foreign-born mothers talk about how the high cost of childcare is a defining factor in their lives in a way it would not be at home.

“You can’t really work here because childcare is so expensive,” says Frenchwoman Veronique Nash, mother of Alexander (nine), Emma, who is nearly three, and 16-month-old Louise. “If I was still in France I would work as the childcare is just so great, but here it is not possible.”

She returned to work as an office manager in Paris after the birth of her son but, five years ago she and her Irish husband, Patrick, moved to Dublin because they thought life here would be better for their family – and it is. She sees the life of her sister with young children in Paris as being much more stressful.

Although Nash would love to go back to work, she won’t be looking for a job while their daughters are so young.

"I am adjusting to being a stay-at-home mum and am trying to adapt to the country and go on coffee mornings so I don't go crazy just staying at home." She helped set up a forum for other mamans here, home-sweet-home.xooit.eu, where they can chat online or arrange to meet up in real life.

According to the much-talked-about book French Children Don't Throw Food, by US journalist Pamela Druckerman, we Anglophones could learn a few things from chic French mothers.

Living in Paris with her British husband, her mission to discover the "secret" of French parenting was triggered by a trip to the coast for a holiday that was "ruined" by the strain of trying to eat out with their two-year-old daughter, while all around them the natives dined peacefully en famille.

Druckerman concluded that French women manage, with a lot less angst and guilt, to raise well-behaved children because they are not sucked in by the “child king” syndrome and get on with their own lives.

Working outside the home does give you another life to think about and dress for. “I see myself here and most of the week I have to admit I am stained from head to toe,” says Nash with a laugh at her home in Raheny, Dublin.

She thinks she is perhaps stricter than the typical Irish parent and certainly expects her children to do what she says – but she always explains why they must behave in a particular way rather than ordering them.

The one big cultural “trauma” for her and other French parents here is the way some children are expected to gobble down a packed lunch in 10 minutes at primary school. It’s not a good habit and one that runs counter to the promotion of healthy eating, Nash suggests.

“In France, in your school, you have a canteen and children have time to sit down for an hour, an hour and a half, and eat meals cooked by chefs,” she says. “The way my son eats has changed since he came here because he has to eat quickly.”

She agrees with Druckerman on the behaviour of French children in restaurants. “You go to restaurants here and kids are running wild – my kids do it now!”

But it sounds as if she has gone native as regards family meals – she does not impose formal dining at home. “When my mum visited, I tried but it is not our style; that is not the way we are.”

It might surprise people that Italian mum Carlotta Musa thinks Ireland is more child friendly than her native Sardinia. Italians do love children, she agrees, but they just get on with their lives.

“When I was younger, my parents would just bring me around to whatever they were doing. While here you do stuff that is orientated towards your child.”

But she was a bit bemused after the birth of her son Conor, now aged three, that she was the only one in her ward in the maternity hospital who was breastfeeding as most mothers in Sardinia feed their babies that way if they can.

“Breastfeeding is one of the things that is very different here and more problematic,” agrees Mitchell. “There is far less patience for breastfeeding in public, especially older children. Newborns are fine but once the baby gets past the three-month mark, people are looking at me as if I had 14 heads!”

Another thing that Musa does not understand is why Irish people are inclined to give children juice drinks all the time rather than water and, as a result, she struggles to get Conor to drink water because his friends don’t.

It is also more common to let young children watch more television here, she suggests. Conor is allowed to watch a film on TV for an hour and a half each week and that’s it. Her Carlow-born husband, Colm, thinks she is a bit obsessed about this, she admits.

Conor has already started in kindergarten at the French school in Foxrock, Dublin, so is well on his way to fluency in three languages – English, Italian and French.

Musa is working full-time, for Adobe Ireland, but Mitchell is glad that living here has led her to stay at home with her children – something she would not have done in California. She felt she had the freedom to do it here without being judged.

“Nobody here asks me why I stayed at home, whereas friends I meet in America wonder if there is something wrong with me, couldn’t I get a job or something?”

She is also impressed, she adds, by the glamour of mothers living around her in south Co Dublin and is amazed to see them in heels out pushing buggies.

“I live in sweatpants and they are dressed to the nines at 11 o’clock on a Saturday morning.”

GO EAST: 'SOMETIMES THE SMALL ONE GETS LAZY':

CHINESE PARENTS are renowned for pushing their children hard to succeed – a stereotypical view that was confirmed by the publication of Amy Chua's controversial book last year, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, detailing the parenting strategies she had used on her two daughters.

Jenny Jiang, a part-time Chinese teacher who has lived in Dublin with her Chinese husband since 1995, identifies with that desire for your children to be “perfect”. But the way Chua went about it was “a little bit mad”, she says. “She mean well.”

Jiang says she does not push her two children, Lily (16) and Kevin (11) Wang. But it sounds as if she doesn’t have to – Lily got As in 11 subjects in her Junior Cert.

Her son works hard too and although his primary school teacher says he is good at maths, Jiang knows it is one subject that is being taught at a much lower level here than children his age would be learning in China.

This discrepancy in the standard of maths is also highlighted by May Chi, a mother of two children living in Dublin 11 with her husband, Tiger Son. She thinks Chinese children seem much “smarter” when she and her family visit her native Shenyang in northern China for summer holidays. However, she sees how her children benefit from a much broader education and wider understanding of the world.

Chi’s two children, Melody (13) and Dunah (seven), both play the piano and have to practise for an hour every day. “The older one is okay, sometimes the small one gets lazy.”

When her daughter started secondary school, she told her she would have to do two hours’ study every night but Melody said she was only required to do an hour to an hour and a half. “I still think that is too light,” says Chi, who has asked teachers to give her more homework.

On balance, though, Chi thinks maybe it is a better approach to education here and that the children are happier than they would be at school in China.

That does not stop her expecting them to be top of their class. She has told Melody that she should be aiming to get at least 80 per cent in all her summer exams.

It is important for Jiang, too, that her children are happy and she favours the less pressurised teaching and parenting here. Both her children learn the piano, do swimming, badminton, table tennis and go to Chinese classes every weekend.

When it comes to discipline, Jiang insists on good manners but does not shout at her children – “well sometimes!”

swayman@irishtimes.com