Yes, thanks Poly - I would not argue with any of that reasoned and responsible commitment, I was just seeking to clarify that her interpretation of #48 effectively ignores the gender-specific first word. Like I’ve said, if someone were to utter the words to #48 in my company, I wouldn’t immediate think they were talking about parents vs. childcare (or else they’d use the word “parents” in place of “mothers”, surely?)
Here I go again, but Lissa’s post really compels me to respond.
Your beliefs about being there 100% for your theoretical kids are idealistic, but it doesn’t quite work that way. 100% of your time? 100% of your energy? 100% of your mental space? A newborn takes all of that. And then after a few weeks you really begin to lose your mind. But it’s okay. You start to pull back a little, the baby starts to realize it’s an independent being, and the dance begins.
It appears that our cross-section of parents we know is far different. In my part of the country, and among my circle of acquaintance, paying a “stranger” to take care of a small child is virtually unheard of. Similarly, any daycare worker who is splitting their time between a dozen small children is violating state laws, and parents who choose that setting are being negligent indeed. Even if you were exaggerating for dramatic effect, this picture is still not an accurate picture of the daycare situation for all young children. Some families employ different means such as nannies, au pairs, grandparents, or a home-based daycare, for example.
When I recall that we are talking about young children here, this simply doesn’t fit. It is not possible to have a “casual” relationship with an infant or toddler when you are responsible for feeding him, breastfeeding him, putting him to bed each night, taking him to his well-child visits, getting up in the middle of the night with him, and so forth. You are painting a cavalier attitude towards child care which I simply do not believe is possible for most parents of young children to maintain, even if they are working parents.
Also, if the correlation between working and “not having conversations” with your children is so high, if parents who work cannot in your opinion “know” their children, then that suggests that a family with ANY working parent is compromising a parent-child relationship. That’s pretty awful. Perhaps you’re overstating things? Otherwise, it seems you’d also have to face the fact if your husband continues to teach sociology, he will not know your children.
I’m troubled by your seeming assertion that when YOU read your husband’s books, it’s because you care. When working parents read books on child development, they’re anxious and troubled and guilty about what they secretly know is true: they are failing their children. And the ones who aren’t reading it? They’re simply indifferent. I understand how easy it is to judge people that you think are making decisions which run contrary to your values. But you’re assigning a lot of motivations here that I think are awfully speculative–and doing a lot of guessing about what it means to be a parent caring for a child outside of those daycare hours .
Polycarp said it better than I could when it comes to the gender issue. Stay-at-home dads can and do parent just as well as the mother, but a lot of times, the mother is the one who takes that role for a variety of reasons. In my family, it would be my husband who continued to work, because he makes about twenty times what I do, and his job has medical benefits.
A “dozen” children was simply a turn of phrase. My point was that a daycare provider cannot possibly provide intensive one-on-one care of a child when she has multiple children who have different needs. A toddler seemingly defies the laws of physics: anyone who’s ever been around one of them can state that it sometimes feels like they’re in three places at once.
Most of my working acquaintances are fellow employees of my husband at his main job. (He’s also a deputy warden at a prison.) These are state employees, whose salaries would never allow for a nanny or au pair. They would be able to afford to have a teenage babysitter come into the home, but in some ways that would be worse. (A daycare worker is more experienced, even if his/her attention is spilt between a handful of children.) In this world, many grandparents also work, so they cannot care for the children.
Most people I know do not breastfeed. In this area, for some unknown reason, there is almost an aversion to the idea.
Many women I know have complained that they either don’t have the time to spend with their kids, or by the end of the day, they’re so exhausted they don’t want to.
All I am saying is that many parents I know find that they don’t have the time to try to work with their young children as they need to do. They’re away from home for nine hours a day, sometimes more, and older children have needs which take up a lot of time as well. When does the baby get the intensive attention it needs? There’s more to raising an infant than changing a diaper, or feeding them. Some parents I know complain that this is all they really have time to do.
Well, that’s one reason why we’re not having any. He works two full-time jobs, teaching and running a prison. I don’t get to see him enough, let alone if we had a child.
Nor am I saying that having any working parent harms the child. I have said that one parent needs to be home with the child during its formative years.
No, it’s not because I care. It’s because I’m curious. I read books on lots of subjects not because I have an emotional involvement, but because I like to learn stuff.
Some authors have suggested this, yes.
Perhaps. All I’m doing is reporting what I see, and unfortunately, I see a lot of parents who don’t spend much time with their kids. Some parents I know spend more time out drinking with their co-workers than they do with their children.
Isn’t the same thing true of a father who is at home with a baby, a toddler, and a preschooler? They’ll still have multiple children with different needs. Their attention would still be split. Should people who want more than one kid have them a couple of decades apart so that they won’t run into that problem?
Well, that also calls into question the sort of care a loving stay-at-home mother (or father) can offer a child if she bears more than one. I understand your point, but it’s not true that all SAH parents can offer this one-on-one care standard you’re talking about.
The point is, some working families do have those options. I’m saying it is possible for some women to elect to not be homemakers, but still arrange intimate loving (and even family) care for their child or children. You are also overlooking home daycares, in which a trained licensed professional cares for a small number of children in his or her own home. There are still some of the drawbacks associated with daycare, but it also mitigates some of the other concerns rightly raised by child advocates and folks like yourself.
I understand the sentiment, but it’s simply not an option with small children. it’s not like refusing to play catch with your 8-yr-old. Their needs have to be met, and parents must meet them. Perhaps non-working parents meet them better than working parents, but this model you have held up of detached working parents simply doesn’t mesh with the reality of life with a wee one. I also think some stay-at-home parents might take exception to the suggestion that it’s only “working” parents who feel tired at the end of the day. I can’t speak for the parents you know who have confided that l they do nothing more than change a diaper and stick a bottle in the baby’s mouth, but as a parent I find that so hard to imagine I will have to optimistically assume they’re unusual cases
Frankly, I think there are many strong arguments for a parent choosing to stay home during those early years. But you made special mention (in your post made a 12:04) of your belief that working parents are but casual acquaintances with their children. “Harmful” or not, that sounds to me like a pretty unfortunate relationship for a parent to have with a child. I question whether you really meant to say it, because barring the rare family situation where both parents stay home, that would be the case in nearly every family in America–at least one parent is a mere “casual acquaintance”. Including in your own future family.
Yeah, you might know my former brother-in-law. Heh. But that’s a different situation there; that’s a parent choosing to spend time away from their child ina social situation, a choice separate from choosing to work. Many working parents hold jobs that don’t include going to happy hour.
I don’t really buy into the ‘quality’ time line and think there is no subsitute to quantity time, but can accept your view may be different.
I am using paying off in the way that a person has taken on a responsibility that really only can be filled by that particular person, or their mate, IMHO, but has decided not to go through with this and justify it’s OK by hiring someone else to do it.
My BIG problem with this line is characterized by a friend of a very successful business when he told me that employees are the paid enemy. I don’t feel that people can be paid to sucessfully raise someone else’s child. (my H.O.)
Some of the reasons have been stated (bio & the sacafice the woman must make to birth the child). In general, I think we agree that someone who has actually gone through months of major discomfort and some of the worst pain known to human kind to be more willing to make sure the product of that pain (child) to be raised in a proper way.
I am a bit taken back by the term homemaker, and now openly disagree with it, this is about primary care giver. I don’t care if they hire a fleet of full time maids, butlers and cooks to take care of the home, but it is her primary responsibility to make sure that child is raised properly (as she sees fit). I do realise that this means for most of us this means that she will be home and by default take care of the house as well, again this goes into another issue, as most womens’ tollerence of ‘dirt’ is usually lower then mens, in my experence, leading to the woman wanting things cleaner then the man, leading to her acting on it - again this is another issue.
You mistake my meaning. I’m sorry for not being clearer.
I am not talking about the concept of quality time.
I am merely pointing out that I believe that a parent who is responsible for the care and well-being of their young child 16 hours of a weekday (as an example assuming 8 hours with a caregiver) is still, essentially, “raising” their own child.
You have stated here that you do not.
Therefore, you must have some other point, between 0 and 40 hours a week, at which the parent is no longer raising a child.
I don’t know what that is, and I doubt it would even be possible or useful to pinpoint what our different levels are, but theoretically our difference seems to lie in how much time a parent can entrust their child to another’s care and still be considered a parent.
Economic Left/Right: -6.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.97
Strongly disagree.
I’d have gone “strongly agree” to amarinth’s statement:
To single out the mother is, to me, absurd. Both parents (or all parents, in non-traditional family configurations) have full responsibility for their children’s wellbeing. Sure, a lot of families choose to place a bigger part of the day-to-day tasks on the mother. That’s fine if it works for them (and very far from fine if it means that the father barely gets to know his children), but I see no reason to treat this as better or more right than families where fathers take an equal or greater share of the tasks.
So, on to the “primary care giver” part of the debate. I strongly disagree that a full time stay-at-home caregiver is essential for children older than a year or so. Sure, it’s important that parents have time for their children, that they spend time to raise them, read for them, have time for both meaningful and trivial conversations with them. But some hours each day in a good day care – and by “good”, I mean a sensible ratio of grown ups to children, decent facilities, and employees with relevant education – is an advantage to both children and parents, not a second-best alternative for those who can’t afford to quit their jobs.
A day care is place for additional socialisation and learning. Some aspects of patience and sharing, as well as (perhaps even more important) how to handle conflicts, are easier to learn in a bigger group than at home with one or two grown ups and one or two siblings, or none. Sure, children will also learn things the parents aren’t happy about. As a feminist, I was pretty dismayed when my then-three-year-old son came home from day care and told me that he didn’t want any more female pirates in the stories I told him. It was a long and hard struggle to get across the idea that some girls like swords, that mom is a girl and mom likes swords, and that girls can too be good at swordfighting and hunting for treasure 
But I see that as another valuable learning instance, teaching him that different people have different ideas and ideals, and preparing him for developing the ability to be critical about what he hears. That will, of course, sometimes lead him to the conclusion that mom and dad are wrong, and he’s right. And that’s good too. We’re not raising children to become copies of ourselves. They don’t belong to us, they belong to themselves.
Not as rare as one might think for a child to be better served being brought up by a non-parent. German psychoanalyst Alice Miller in her book The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self makes this point very powerfully in the case of children who must ignore their own needs in order to make good those of their parent(s).
For the record, I disagree with #48. I would disagree completely but for the fact that women are typically much more committed to homemaking than men, and more dedicated to their family.
I agree to disagree on this point, I don’t feel I can put an percent of time to this, To me it’s a question of responsibility. A parent does what they can, anything less is not being responsible.