Child care - Mother or Day Care

Great Debates
21

Thank you Tranquilis and Gundy for your well voiced comments.

And I agree with the point that I think even sven was making - that expectations about the extent and types of parent/child interaction have a large cultural component. To add to it subjectively, from discussions with friends in Asian countries (specifically Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore), the children of professional class parents are often raised full time by a nanny till school age, like the old English upper class system. I’m not hearing a lot of reports about the kids there being more agressive/delinquent than in previous generations.

Any reports that children in large families (say, 7 kids) are more aggressive because they have to compete for scare partental resorces?

Or is this day-care thing just another manifestation of the idea that the mother has failed because she is not fulfilling someone else’s expectation that she be Donna Read II?

Gundy, your kid may not be getting all the face-to-face time that you might wish, but he is learning about social and personal responsibility from your example. Good luck to you.

22

Sweeping generalizations ahead:

I think that there are very few adequate substitutes for parental love and parental supervision. In our pursuit of bigger houses, bigger t.v.'s and bigger cars, we have abandoned our children.

When people say, “I need to pay my mortgage.” I wonder if they realize that OUR parents also needed to pay their mortgage. Somehow they found a way to make ends meet with only one parent working outside the home. The difference is that they had no problem raising a slew of kids in a 1200 square foot home. (I shared a bedroom with my sister and we only had one (gasp) closet.) They only had one car between the two of them, and if Mom had to go grocery shopping we all drove Dad into work. Air conditioning was a luxury not a birthright. Steak? It didn’t exist in our diet. The only designer clothes on my body were the ones I paid for out of my babysitting money.

But somehow, as deprived as we were, we all turned out just fine. Because our parents had their priorities in order. And anyone who prioritizes a big house and mini-van above having a PARENT at home with the kids has lost sight of what’s important, IMO.

I know, I know, I’m a bitch for saying this.

23

I think that in my whole life I’ve met one set of parents who put luxuries over their children’s welfare. On the other hand, I know lots of parents who both work full time.

I’m a SAHM, but I made that choice because it seemed the best for my family, and our situation. We do without a lot as a result of my staying home, but that’s not anything noble on my part, it’s just part of the choice we’ve made.

My sister works full time, as does her husband, and both kiddos are in school/daycare full time (50 hours sounds about right, with work time and commute time). They’re great kids, and well loved. She could probably stay home, but she’d be desperately unhappy, and it’s obvious that their setup works for them. My own mother worked because she had to,we’d have starved otherwise, but I know full well she’d have worked anyway, because she’d have lost her mind at home, and her job was one she loved. We still knew she loved us, and never felt neglected. And we turned out fine. It wasn’t just that it was good enough–it was the best choice for our situation. The fact of the matter is, each family has its own situation, and parents make choices based on what will work best for them and their kids.

I also get kind of steamed at the “who’s raising the kids” thing. Parents never, ever are the only people raising kids. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, school–everyone participates in one way or another. Yes, you have your own values that you want to impart to your kids, but at the same time, those kids need to be part of a society. I’d be kidding myself to think that my husband and I could do it all by ourselves–the job is too big. In fact, I picked up some part time work I can do at home to send my 4 year old to Montessori school, because I think it’s a great program, and while I’m sure I could teach her to read, etc. by myself, the teacher is trained to do it, has lots of experience at it, and why not use her expertise? She’s helping me raise my daughter, in a very real sense, and I’m grateful for that. (Montessori rocks! Have you ever seen a Montessori class? Every kid who’s come out of one, in my experience, has been polite, articulate, and confident. I want that for my kids, you bet). A good childcare provider can do the same thing–lend their considerable experience to your effort to raise your children. Yeah, a lot of daycare sucks, but the best response, IMHO, is to try to fix that, rather than proclaiming that the only moms who really care about their kids will stay home. 'Cause that just ain’t so.

I have yet to see any research on the effects of daycare vs SAHM that wasn’t driven by a social agenda, and don’t trust any of it. I put it in the same category as research about gender differences–so charged with the prejudices and preconceptions of the researchers, that it’s impossible to get an impartial result.

24

Do tell.

**

No, but you’ve betrayed a seriously parochial set of assumptions. Read the other postings, examine other points of view, and see if you don’t qualify your statements a bit.

25

Is this an emotionally laden issue or what. I’ve debated with myself about answering over and over.

Let me just make a few observations:

  1. The concept of a parent staying home to rear the child for extended periods of time is a modern one, it would seem. Actually, the concept of ‘working outside the home’ be it mom or dad isn’t all that old, either. farming communities, for example, everyone worked. older children for the most part were tending the younger children, not mom. Mom was busy sewing all the garments worn, and doing household maintenance chores w/o appliances, tending to the animals or the garden raising food for the family, canning etc.

  2. I believe that in general, most parents do the very best that they can with what they have to work with at the time. See Gundy’s statement. Sure, in a perfect world, I’d have preferred to have raised my son in a two parent household. That decision wasn’t mine alone to make. However, I’ve also seem a dramatic shift in opinions on that topic over the years. The welfare reform packages that have been enacted insure that anyone on assistance has to work and earn income, usually meaning, working outside the home.

  3. One thing I spotted in the article that should generate more discussion, was that the study included under the ‘child care’ outside the home option, child care by an extended family member (ie grandma etc.). So far all of the arguments for strong belief in the study have focused on the intangible of ‘loving care of a parent’ type of thing, but wouldn’t gramma be damn near the same sort of thing? surely we’re not going to claim that only the biological immediate parental units can give the level of care necessary to raise a healthy human being, are we?

  4. talking too much??? that’s a problem??? (ok, yea, I know it’s a problem in a classroom, but sheesh. that’s like saying “FBI reports huge increases in serious crimes, rape, murder, robbery and littering”)

26

**

Maybe you’ve got a persecution complex. I don’t recall anyone here saying that you were a bad mother.

I don’t think the study cited in the OP had a thing to do with SAHM vs. daycare. Nor do I recall a lot of mention about mom’s staying home from work.

Marc

27

You probably didn’t mean it this way, but that quote sounds a lot like “people that put their kids in daycare don’t really love their kids” or “people that put their kids in daycare don’t deserve their kids”.

People are being sensitive because it is a sensitive subject. No one likes to be accused of bad parenting, especially when they are working their butt off and making hard decisions.

28

I taught preschool for 7 years and saw all kinds of parenting or lack thereof. Being in a very small town, our school was lucky enough to work closely with the local elementary school and we got to see our babies get to be kids and teens. The people of this little town were lucky, too----all staff at out little preschool were college-educated women who worked teaching because they loved it. The pay was lousy but the conditions wonderful and each and every one of us put all our kids through the program. Some kids came 8 to 12, two days a week. Some came 7 to 6, five days. We taught ethics as best we could and had kids pulled out because their parents didn’t want their child to hear the word “No”. We gave hugs to kids who never got any at home. We provided the only stability some of them ever knew. We were invited to birthday parties and to dinner, to see new kittens and even to spend the night because the crib was gone and the bed was new and wouldn’t you like to sleep in my new bed, teacher? Some preschools are storage facilities, holding tanks for children. Of the hundreds of children I was responsible for, only a few would’ve been better off at home. We supervised. We taught. We loved them even when they weren’t all that loveable. We parented them and their parents, sometimes. But with no benefits and just above minimum wage, how can you expect quality staff to stay? How can a parent afford 400 bucks a month for parttime child care? Hugh staff turnover doesn’t provide much stability for a child in daycare. Large numbers of children per facility doesn’t provide much individual attention, much less good supervision. Most daycare is mediocre at best. If you have quality childcare, let your provider know…s/he is helping to rear you child.

29

**

No, I don’t have a persecution complex. I’m a stay at home mom, as I mentioned in my post, and am therefore excluded from the group of moms who don’t stay home. However, statements like "In our pursuit of bigger houses, bigger t.v.'s and bigger cars, we have abandoned our children. " and wondering why anyone would have kids only to put them in daycare both imply that working moms don’t care sufficiently about the welfare of their kids. Despite the fact that I am a stay at home mom, I take offense at this. I was pointing out that these sorts of generalizations are not only offensive, but flat out wrong. Please read more carefully.

I don’t think the study cited in the OP had a thing to do with SAHM vs. daycare. Nor do I recall a lot of mention about mom’s staying home from work.

Marc **
[/QUOTE]

"The study, whose detailed results have not been published, found a direct correlation between time spent in child care and traits like aggression, defiance and disobedience. "

It seems obvious to me that the more time a child spends in daycare, the more time his/her parents spend at work, and the less time, the more likely it is a parent is staying home to care for him/her. In other words, the study compared the behavior of children who spent lots of time in daycare (kids of working moms) to kids who spent almost no time in daycare (kids whose moms either don’t work outside the home, or are doing so very little) and gradations in between. It doesn’t take much of a leap to conclude that if more time in daycare causes behavior problems, then kids with SAHMs will have fewer, and even less of a leap for some to conclude that WMs are harming their children and SAHMs are just better moms, as a few posters have implied-- subsequent discussion of the OP involved criticism of moms who work outside the home as valuing luxuries over their children’s welfare.

Any research on the benefits or detriments of different types of child care (daycare, sahm, whatever) will be, in this society, loaded with social and political agendas, conscious or not. They are often badly designed, and the interpretation of the data is going to be colored by the opinions of the folks doing the study. And by the time they hit the water cooler/gossip circuit, they get boiled down to “we’re abandoning our kids! Moms should stop being selfish and greedy and live for changing diapers! Daycare is evil!” or “Stupid SAHMs are stunting the intellectual growth of their kids! If they had intelligence, they wouldn’t stay home baking cookies! And daycare’s okay, really, it is!” You may think I exaggerate, but I’ve heard variations of both these statements in various places. Both offend me.

Really, am I just not writing clearly, or what?

30

Whether those parents stay at home or work outside the home, parenting is work, no question.

Okay, now that I’ve got that off my chest:

My husband is a musician. When we married and decided to have kids, we chose to have him be a stay-at-home dad, because that was right for us. He worked weekend nights, and I have a 9-5 Monday through Friday job, with benefits. It worked for us.

But by the time my daughter was 3 and she had a baby brother, we decided it was time for her to get some day care. Even though my husband was home all day, she needed to hang with kids her age. It was the best thing we ever did for her. Her language skills improved dramatically, as did her social skills.

When my husband accepted a job teaching guitar at a music store, we put or son in the same program. He did fine, even though he was only a year old. Never had any separation issues, and he really was thriving there.

Recently, though, financial difficulties have forced us to remove our kids from day care. While my son is fine, my daughter is hurting because of it. She’s beginning to regress, and act very baby-like. She misses the day care, and it’s showing. My husband’s older son is here with us on spring break, and those baby-like qualities have nearly vanished.

In the majority of cases, putting a child in day care (whether you work outside the home or not) doesn’t harm them. And these studies that say that kids are suffering for being in day care do nothing for me but make me angry. Who are these people to try and tell me that I suck because my kids are in the care of someone else? Who are these people that try and tell me that my husband sucks because he took a day job doing something that he loves? My kids have never had a problem with me leaving in the morning–it’s always been that way, and they know that Mama always comes home. My kids know that Daddy plays guitar, and they think it’s incredibly cool that he has a job at a “guitar school.”

My goal is to someday get my kids back in to day care. They like it, and they’re little lives are tremendously enhanced by it, whether one of us stays home or not.

31

I think the real point of discussion is about the quality and availability of daycare. I first became of the issue as a recruiter for the Navy, when doing fincial analysis on potential recruits, to see if allowing them to enlist would actually be a burden. I found so many potential recruits with children would wind-up on foodstamps if they were allowed in, that almost no recruiter would even give a parent the time of day as a prospect. Shortly thereafter my daughter was born, and this issue became more personal: The Nav doesn’t pay all that well, and both my wife and I had to work: We got lucky and found an excellent center, at a cost we could just afford, but it meant a major tightening of our belts. We couldn’t make ends meet without Mrs. Tranq’s check, but with her working, more than half her pay went to covering daycare. So much for additional education, and so much for owning a house. Mrs. Tranq had to drop from college, and I had to shelve plans fo going back to college myself.

Since then, conditions have improved for my family, but informal polling of my family whom have worked in daycare, or needed daycare, and my own searches for daycare as we left the Nav, have revealed a disgraceful situation: Daycare workers, enven the highly motivated ones in quality centers, get paid precisely squat. On pay sometimes reaching $9.00 per hour (~$18,000/year), they have to be parents to 6 to 8 children (in centers that follow Fed. standards), or more. They rarely get free care for their own children, even at their own centers, and on a typical salary, can’t even afford daycare of their own. On top of this, they have to maintain current qualification, which means classes, which while deductable, still eat into their meagre pay.

It’s no wonder that crap care is so common: Many of the people most in need of daycare can’t afford quality care, and the places they can afford can’t afford to pay decent wages, so they get the quality of worker they can afford, which is pretty low.

We, as a society, blather endlessly about how important our children are, but we reveal ourselves, as a society, as a bunch of hypocrates. We’re not willing to make the social adjustments to take proper care of our future. The time of one parent working outside the home, while the other stays home, is gone. It was an aberration in the first place, a product of post WWII prosperity. Look before that time, and you’ll find thousands of years of human history where women worked as hard and as long as men, and child-rearing was in the hands of grandparents, maiden aunts, and older children. There was a strong social environment where children were looked after by a collective of the faminly and community, and they started working as soon as they had sufficent strength and coordination. The nuclear family (not a reference to the Bomb, but to a nucleus of father-mother-children, with no uncles, aunts, or grandparents involved) is the model we all so fondly remember. It was an illusion, a figment of brief and unique set of circumstances.

I have an extended family, one that works together to raise the collective children. Without that family, My child would be denied the quality of education her level of intelligence requires. I pay about 30% of my disposable income to provide her an education, and consider it a bargain. Better to pay now, than to pay later, and the montessori program she’s in is everythig I could want, except cheap.

32

Quote:

Personally I don’t think someone is fulfilling their parental obligations but that’s just my opinion.

The child joins the family, not vice versa. What is most important is what is best for the entire family. What good is it to have a stay-at-home-Mom/Dad if the bills can’t be paid, if the stay-at-home parent feels trapped or one of the many other reasons that adults continue to work? An intact family, satisfied and successful with their working/parenting abilities is the type of security and incentive that can only benefit children.

Let’s not add to the difficulty of single parents trying to keep it all together while they’re being derided for depending upon daycare. I thought the push was on getting moms off welfare and into ‘workfare.’ Which way do we want it?

Also, what is the definition of agression? Is it bullying, fighting, etc., or can it be the positive agression that makes a champion athlete or dynamic business person?

These are just my opinions…

33

MGibson: replied to me: *Yes, excuse me for not basing my values on what other cultures might do. Shame on me for not being culturally sensitive. *

Shame on you indeed, not for “not being culturally sensitive”, but for refusing to think critically about what you believe and why you believe it. Other cultures are helpful in this regard, not because we should slavishly follow them in everything they do, but because they provide us with different sets of assumptions that we can use in examining our own assumptions.

I think the first 3-4 years of a child’s life is when you have the greatest impact on their lives.

I agree with you, but this is true for the parents of children in daycare as well as for SAHPs.

*I don’t think you’ve got to literally be with the child every second of every day but spend 50 hours a week in daycare is a bit much in my opinion. *

You’re entitled to your opinions, but so far you’ve done a pretty lousy job of defending them (especially since you’ve stated them aggressively enough to hurt the feelings of some other posters, which IMHO would seem to warrant some pretty solid rational justifications). All you’ve done is reiterate that you believe that parents who put a child in daycare for 50 hours a week aren’t fulfilling their parental obligations. You don’t say where you draw the line between “enough” time spent with one’s kid and “too little”, nor why you draw the line where you do. You don’t say why you believe that putting children in kindergarten or first grade for as many (or nearly as many) hours a week is okay. You don’t say why you think the first 3 or 4 years of “greatest impact” on a child’s life imply the necessity for almost constant contact. You don’t say why you don’t consider it necessary for both parents to have this almost constant contact with their young children, and why you think it’s okay for one parent (for example, the father) to continue regular full-time work and not see the child for 50+ hours a week. In short, everything you’ve said implies only that you have a strong emotional bias in favor of your position. Fine, you’re welcome to your emotional biases, but you can’t expect them to convince anyone else.

*Why would someone have a kid only to put them in daycare for 50+ hours a week? *

Um, maybe in order to be with them for the remaining 118 hours a week? To cherish them and help them grow into good and happy people even when they’re not with their parents? To love them, support them, discipline them, worry about them? Do you seriously imagine that parents of young children who don’t see them during the average workday are somehow not “really” parents, that their having and loving their children is somehow pointless? I think your emotional bias is kind of skewing your perception here.

34

Daycare… I can actually remember going through that. It all depends on the actual day care. You can have really bad daycares with not so good people who run it(one of the daycares I went to lost their daycare because of illegal buisness pratices) or a good daycare. Putting a child in a bad daycare is bad parenting, putting a child in a good daycare is good parenting. (to an extent of course)

School, however is a tool of the devil.

35

Har…!

36

Maybe YOUR parents … mine both worked outside the home, so did both my grandmothers. Go back another generation, and my greatgrandmothers worked, too. In a slaughterhouse. Or they were farm wives - i.e. farmers - yes, much of it inside the home (except during planting or harvest, when they were outside - or when they were tending chickens and pigs), but not exactly Donna Reed.

37

Getting back a little late…

Where did I intimate that these studies were intended to make me feel guilty? I simply stated my feelings after reading the reports. And reading about starving third-world children makes me feel guilty, too. I doubt reporters write about that with the intention of making me feel guilty. But thanks for the keen insight. Of course I feel guilty! I’m a parent! I feel guilty because I yelled at him about leaving his towel on the floor. I feel guilty because sometimes we run out of macaroni and cheese. I feel guilty because I have more shoes than he does. Because I have to take him shopping, and he hates shopping. Because I can’t afford to take a vacation. Because I don’t like fishing as much as he does. I could go on, but…

**

Exactly what I’m trying to do.

**

Well, I guess it all boils down to what one believes one’s parental obligations to be. My main priority: keeping him alive, housed, and fed. To do so I must work. I am his only parent. I won’t get married simply for the sake of financial security. So: daycare was the only option. But even if I were married, or if I were independently wealthy, I would have had him in daycare part-time. I think that his social skills and lingual abilities were enriched by his daycare experience, and it gave me time to pursue my own interests.

**

I personally have heard more detractors than supporters, but I may have selective memory on that. That persecution/martyr complex, doncha know.

**

Who said anyone here was? The whole of my post was general, not specific. People HAVE gotten in my face about it.

**

But you won’t back it up with anything besides, “Because I think so.”

straykat23 wrote:

Well said. In my experience, we’re wanted to a) go away or b) not to have had the child in the first place.

38

Well, my daycare doesn’t. It’s a home care situation, but even so there is a lot less structure than other home cares. This was starting to unnerve me, but there is a school of thought that says that there is a limit to how much structure is good for young children. Obviously they need limits and they might even need some routines, but there’s a child psychologist on the faculty here, for example, who is a very strong advocate of staying away from day care that puts the kids through organized activities. She says they need time to play, and they need love. That’s it. They don’t need “art time” and “music time” and “reading time.” Not to say that they should be forbidden from enjoying art, music, and reading. But she thinks they ought to choose to do those things on their own schedule when they feel like it.

FWIW, it was my understanding that a higher percentage of kids in daycare were found to show aggression. That’s not the same as every child in daycare showing a higher level of aggression. I’m not sure the national press always does a great job translating academic research for the general public.

I can’t help but believe that it’s something about having working parents, as opposed to the daycare itself. I say that because the effect was the same even when the caregiver was another family member. A grandparent, for example, is likely to adore the child and give it all the emotional interaction you’d want for your child. The fact that this doesn’t matter mystifies me. So I wonder if it’s not, as the critic of the study suggested, the tiredness of the working parent, and how that (or any guilt about being away all day) subtly alters how the child is raised or disciplined.

39

My point was:

[sup](Italics added for emphasis)[/sup]

I’m not talking about rigid plans, nor about cookie cutter treatment, and perhaps programmed was a poor choice, as it has aquired distinctly negative connotations in this usage. I’m talking about age/developmentally appropriate play and education, and I’ve even had this in home-care situations. Hell, the Navy required that home-care providers working from Navy housing be trained and certified. In many cases, especially for younger kids, “appropriate” means supplying the right kinds of toys, and plenty of safe, clean space in which to play.

There’s a fact!

Interesting, but that’s the subject of another, more carefully done, study.

40

There is a columnist for the LA Times who I enjoy, named Sandy Banks. A lot of her columns mention her three daughters. I shouldn’t have to mention this, but Ms. Banks is black. This will become significant later.

In one particular column, she spoke at length about the difficulties facing working single moms. She talked about the issues with day care, finances, not having a father in the home, etc. It was thoughtful and well-written, with both seriousness and humor, so I was totally unprepared for the backlash it caused (as was Ms. Banks).

Ms. Banks got tons of critical and downright threatening email, telephone calls and letters, as did her newspaper. People raged about “those people” (told you the color of her skin was going to come into play) having multiple children they couldn’t afford, selfish “mothers” who needed to feed their egos by having a job to the detriment of their kids, women making shitty choices and raising their kids without spouses, etc. The Times printed many excerps of these messages, and they were startling in their ugliness.

Well, guess what? Sandy Banks IS a single mom, in a manner of speaking. She is a widow, whose adored husband died suddenly when he was very young, leaving her to raise their three children alone and afraid. She is a courageous woman who declined public assistance and worked hard to keep her family together and set a strong example for her daughters.

Some people are too quick to judge. That’s why these sweeping generalizations don’t work. BTW, have we established whether MGibson has raised any kids? Or was his wife the real parent while he was out working 50 hours a week? Or is he just blowing smoke without any experience in the subject?