JAMES H. writes:

Years ago, while speaking to a left coast female physician at a conference, I went into my spiel about how important it is for a woman to spread her wings, have a career, fulfill her destiny and realize her full potential. Of course she nodded dutifully in agreement, an expression of bovine resignation written on her face. After just a few seconds I added, “and if a total stranger has to raise your children, well then so be it! After all, you can easily find a minimum wage employee to love your child just as much as you do.”

Slowly my point penetrated and, as recognition dawned on her face, she fought back tears. “You’re the first person I’ve ever met who thinks it’s OK to stay at home with the kids. You have no idea how subversive what you’ve just said would be in California. I would love to be at home with my kids, but I would be regarded as some sort of nut were I to do so.” 

I couldn’t agree more with your characterization, “scourge of daycare,” for it is indeed a cultural, spiritual and psychological scourge dissolving the tight familial bonds so essential to a well functioning society thereby rendering the individual even more susceptible to the degrading influence of the monolithic state further stripping away our dignity as human beings.

James H. adds:

What about the mom’s who have to work? Well, I’ve said for years that children know when their mom’s leave them reluctantly and sadly. They know when their mom’s would rather be with them. There’s a huge difference between a mother who forgoes raising her children out of choice and one who is forced by circumstances to work. 

Daycare is an abomination.

Laura writes:

Well said.

I know of a very successful professional couple who used to have their two daughters in daycare. Sometimes, however, the wife would take a day off from work. Instead of spending the day with her daughters, she would dress up in her work clothes and pretend she was going to the office, dropping them off at daycare as normal. She even did this one year on New Year’s Eve. Her daughters were the only children in that day. She spent so little time with her children that it was onerous to be with them at all. Children can be very annoying and unsettling if we do not have patterns for interacting with them. This mother also had a night out for herself every week.

                                                           — Comments —

Fred Owens writes:

Instead of getting a nanny to mind the children, why not get a job-nanny. Just tell your boss that you won’t be coming in to work every day, but your job-nanny will be sitting at your desk taking care of the routine matters, and if your attention is required, you will drop everything and rush right over to work and take care of it.

Your boss might object that you are not putting in enough hours, but you can remind him that it’s quality time that really matters — the time you spend at work when you are fully focused and not resentful for being there. Your boss will surely understand.

Not!

Your boss would send you packing if you suggested this, because he, or she, wants you there all the time whether you like it or not.

But if you think about this, aren’t your children the same way? They want you looking after them, all the time. They want QUANTITY time, not quality time.

So, it is said that no one can serve two masters, and which job, home or at work, is your true priority? because you can only serve one faithfully.

A. writes:

James H. said:

“What about the mom’s who have to work? Well, I’ve said for years that children know when their mom’s leave them reluctantly and sadly. They know when their mom’s would rather be with them. There’s a huge difference between a mother who forgoes raising her children out of choice and one who is forced by circumstances to work.

Daycare is an abomination.”

I say daycare as usually established is an abomination. Even if the parent is reluctant to leave the children, daycare as we usually know it is not healthy for the kids or the parents. But, there are people who must work to support their children and the question is how best to help them.

Many years ago, with that realization, but with full understanding of the necessity for closeness between parent and child, some of us put together a child care program in the offices of a major U.S. corporation. The parents had say so in the program .They were two minutes away from the center with full and open access to the children. They spent their breaks and shared their lunch hour with their children. Moms could nurse their infants and cuddle them. They could be immediately on call for any emergencies. The whole, huge group of corporate employees were involved in the center. They often brought treats, donated books, toys and gave of their time to help.

I like to remember that as the Village Square, where the community helps parents, but does not usurp their role. I also like to think that it could be established anywhere. Most importantly it acknowledged the primary role of the parent(s) while taking practical steps to deal with the realities of the need for parents to work. Roots and Wings?

Laura writes:

Communities are not meant to raise children. Parents are. Your intentions were admirable but I think the existence of corporate daycare centers encourage the ignorant to think that daycare is a reasonable alternative. Certainly it is in the case of a family that faces destitution otherwise. Perhaps if these “childcare” centers were given a more honest name, they wouldn’t be so offensive. They should be called “day orphanages” or “child detention centers” because that’s what they are. They create orphans. They detain children from the real business of being children.

As recent as 1963, the Children’s Bureau stated that the “child who needs daycare has a family problem.”

It’s important to remember that corporations have a natural interest in daycare as it creates a cheaper labor pool. Their generosity in opening daycare centers is not generosity but exploitation of women and children. Corporations should not be permitted to open daycare centers. Before World War II, daycare was offered only by charitable organizations and only for families in dire financial circumstances. Aid to Dependent Children was created to prevent mothers from going to work. Unfortunately, its rules were loosened to eventually include mothers who were unmarried. It was meant strictly for widows and those who had clearly been abandoned.

A. writes:

Are you not beginning and ending with ideology in your response to my little story? 

Please know that many of us who have worked for years to save babies from abortion have contributed to the single, unwed mother who needs to work and needs help with her child in order to do so. 

In addition, although you make a good point about corporate greed motivating employers, in the particular case about which I told you, the corporation could have just paid for daycare in a daycare zoo as incentive.

Laura writes:

As James H. said at the beginning of this entry, children know when a parent has no choice. They can sense when they are neglected. And helping poor single mothers who have no family in the world, no one to care for their children in a family setting, and who face absolute destitution is admirable.

My point is, corporate daycare often puts a happy face on child neglect. Also, a corporation should not in any way be involved in paying for or arranging child care. That is a family’s responsibility and the work of charitable organizations. Corporations should only pay their workers. Soviet collectives arrange child care, not businesses in a free society.

Unfortunately, the easier single motherhood becomes, the more common it becomes. That is the sad reality.

Laura adds:

I perhaps seemed in my response to be scolding you for being involved in this center. That wasn’t my point and I do not mean to say that. Cultural affirmation of daycare is the real issue not private efforts to help those in need.

I also have a very strong gut reaction against corporate daycare of any kind because it is so often presented as a good thing. It is not a good thing. It is a way of dealing with a very bad situation, an illness that shouldn’t exist in a society as affluent as ours. Also, the sight of infants in cribs in flourescent-lit office buildings is very sad. Are there no homes in America for these children?

Y. writes:

Here is the site daycaresdontcare.org with this quote by Michael Leunig about a cartoon:

Poignant, sad cartoon starts with “…My own mother…dumps me here in this horrendous créche…”

By the last panel, depressed baby girl concludes it’s her own fault.

In a 5 December 2007 interview on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about this cartoon, Michael Leunig said, “There’s a disaster shaping up here, and it’s the abandonment of babies, essentially, and the abandonment of mothering….”

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