Day Care

[dazzleman]

I think there's good day care and bad day care.  It may have certain benefits in certain cases, but in most cases, I think children are better off cared for by a parent in the preschool years.

A child of 2 does not need exposure to the "real world" per se, though a child needs social exposure at the earliest possible age.  However, day care if not required in order to provide this.  Stay-at-home parents can arrange for social activities also.

Much day care is of poor quality.  In general, it is a low-paying job.  Young children are very impressionable, and their potential cognitive abilities are formed to a large extent in the preschool years.  A committed parent will usually do a better job than a minimum wage day care worker in making sure a child develops good learning potential.

Whether day care versus staying home with a child is the best option is really a personal decision of the couple.  For many couples, having one parent stay home is the best option, but in some cases, the parent may not be tempermentally suited for this, or finances may not allow it.  But I don't think that both parents working is a good thing in and of itself.  Working is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

The job of raising kids cannot be subcontracted out to day care.  A working parent will have to do a lot of his/her parenting job after work hours, even with day care.  The two-career lifestyle is a stressful and hectic one, day care notwithstanding.

[dazzleman]

It does depend on the situation and the provider, of course, but generally I see day care as a negative thing, mostly because we're inventing day care where it really doesn't exist nowadays, ie: in classrooms, preschools, playdates, etc.

Far too many parents today view their children as a burden rather than a blessing.  They're willing to send them to preschool when they're two or three years old, not because it enriches the kids' lives, but because it's an easy form of day care for the parent.  Many parents are content to let television do the parenting, or a teacher take care of their children, rather than putting forth the effort required to be a decent parent.

Very good comments as always J-Mann. 

I find that many of the "day care is wonderful" type people have no idea what raising kids is really all about.  They think of it as simply babysitting, as in keeping them occupied and from playing in the street for a few hours.  There seems to be little appreciation from these people of how much time goes into teaching kids about life, providing guidance, character development, etc.  This is something that must be done primarily by parents, and if they're never around or around very little, their kids are going to be at a big deficit.

I'm not suggesting that it is impossible to do these things if both parents work and the kid is in day care.  But the need for it should be recognized, and the pro-day care feminist types generally do not recognize this need.

[dazzleman]

I disagree. You could call me a "pro-feminist day care type" but I do recognize the need. After all, though not all of us have been on the giving end we have all been on the receiving end.

Actually not everybody has been on the receiving end, and that is part of the problem.  The other is that most people, when they were on the receiving end, never realized what a difficult job it is.

As I said, putting your kids in day care does not preclude being a good parent.  But J-Mann did make valid points about the motivations some people have for putting their kids in day care.  And being overly occupied with work does make it more difficult to be a good parent, all other things being equal.

Good day care does not equal good parenting, and I do have a disagreement with people who imply that it does.

[dazzleman]

Very good comments as always J-Mann. 

I find that many of the "day care is wonderful" type people have no idea what raising kids is really all about.  They think of it as simply babysitting, as in keeping them occupied and from playing in the street for a few hours.  There seems to be little appreciation from these people of how much time goes into teaching kids about life, providing guidance, character development, etc.  This is something that must be done primarily by parents, and if they're never around or around very little, their kids are going to be at a big deficit.

I'm not suggesting that it is impossible to do these things if both parents work and the kid is in day care.  But the need for it should be recognized, and the pro-day care feminist types generally do not recognize this need.

Good points.  Also, I really resent the prevailing notion that schools are becoming more and more responsible for taking care of children in the ways of watching them during the day and feeding them, but they are stripped of the ability to teach basic and universal morality as well as adequately discipline children.

Absolutely.  Some people want schools to take on more and more responsibility that belongs to the parents, but want to strip them of any ability to discipline or socialize the kids as was done in the past.  It's a very bad trend.

[dazzleman]

thefactor, I can't disagree with anything you say, really.  I would just point out that many of those who are most favorable toward day care do consider it a substitute, rather than a supplement, for good parenting, and are generally in favor of subcontracting parental responsibilities from the home to institutions like schools, day care centers, etc.  I view this as a very negative thing.

These are the same people who think fathers should simply send a support check every month.  Their view of parenting is very limited and distorted, to say the least.

This doesn't mean that good day care is not sometimes the best solution for certain kids.  But I am just very very wary of the "day care" lobby.

[dazzleman]

thefactor, I can't disagree with anything you say, really.  I would just point out that many of those who are most favorable toward day care do consider it a substitute, rather than a supplement, for good parenting, and are generally in favor of subcontracting parental responsibilities from the home to institutions like schools, day care centers, etc.  I view this as a very negative thing.

These are the same people who think fathers should simply send a support check every month.  Their view of parenting is very limited and distorted, to say the least.

This doesn't mean that good day care is not sometimes the best solution for certain kids.  But I am just very very wary of the "day care" lobby.

Well I don't disagree with these points, either, though it's not as simple as a difference between theory and practice. On the whole, there is a cultural issue of responsibility that has plagued this country and is responsible for a huge part of support for social conservatism. It arises from the explosion of consumerism and changes in people's psychologies due to such large increases in wealth. Culture needs to adjust to this, and it's taking a while (though some progress is being made) but this adjustment can't just be a wholesale backlash against social progress.

I don't consider having some reservations about substituting day care for parenting as a backlash against "social progress."  I love the way some liberals define "progress" in terms of how far they have advanced their agenda, and consider any other agenda reactionary.  Liberals don't have the market cornered on "progress" and much of the "progress" that has been delivered by left-wing ideology has been highly deleterious and negative.  I don't consider high divorce rates, high rates of children born to unmarried mothers, high rates of fatherlessness, etc. and all the ills associated with these factors as "progress."

Could you be more specific about how some of these things are caused by increases in wealth?  I'm all ears.

[dazzleman]

thefactor -- I don't argue that day care shouldn't be available.  Clearly, it is necessary for some people, and some forms of it are actually good for kids.  I just question the real motivations of some people who think that day care is superior to parental interaction.

I find it hard to agree with your thesis that wealth leads to irresponsible responsible behavior, necessarily.  I think that unearned wealth generally does, but for most of us who are reasonably well off, our wealth is earned, and would not have been earned in the absence of responsible behavior.

The ironic thing is that the behavior that you mention as being produced by wealth -- high rates of fatherlessness, high rates of divorce, etc., actually produce poverty, and are therefore much more prevalent among the poor than they are among the middle and upper middle classes.  I would probably date the explosion of this type of behavior to the time when we started to subsidize and encourage it through welfare programs that reward it, at least to some extent.

On the other hand, you see some of this type of behavior among the very, very rich for basically the same reason you see it among the underclass -- there's really no downside to it, since extreme wealth insulates people from the negative effects of this behavior.

[dazzleman]

I think people on this board are making an incorrect assumption that rich people are actually keeping kids at home and taking care of them on their own. Many rich people are MORE likely to send kids to preschool and MORE likely to hire a nanny.

I'm not making that misconception at all.  I think rich people are more likely to leave the raising of kids to a paid nanny or day care.  Poorer people are more likely to shove the responsibilities onto school systems.

True, it's not an ecnomic thing necessarily.  Many rich people are irresponsible parents.  Rich people generally don't use day care, because the option of hiring a nanny is much more convenient and flexible.  Day care is generally for those with less money.

Whether one hires a nanny or sends a child to day care, the parenting job still remains, and cannot be subcontracted out.

J-Mann makes a good point about school systems.  Poor people in particular often seek to dump their parenting job on school systems.  There is a push to keep schools in poor neighborhoods open practically around the clock to give the kids what their parents fail to provide.  The best part is that a good percentage of these parents have never even worked outside the home.  It is no accident that the schools that are being asked to do the biggest part of the parents' job are also the schools that are failing most egregiously at their real job -- educating the students.

[dazzleman]

I think people on this board are making an incorrect assumption that rich people are actually keeping kids at home and taking care of them on their own. Many rich people are MORE likely to send kids to preschool and MORE likely to hire a nanny.

I'm not making that misconception at all.  I think rich people are more likely to leave the raising of kids to a paid nanny or day care.  Poorer people are more likely to shove the responsibilities onto school systems.

 The best part is that a good percentage of these parents have never even worked outside the home.

Could you clarify this? What are you basing this on? What do you consider a "good percentage?" This seems an incredible generalization or stereotype with little basis in fact.

 I can see you and J-Mann are both smearing the poor with terms like "leave the raising of kids" to describe the rich and "shove the responsibilities" to describe the poor (J-Mann) and yours: "option of hiring a nanny" to the rich and "dump their parenting job" for the poor.

Why is this loaded language being used against the poor? Because of taxes?

I think you're overanalyzing to an extent.  I am also critical of rich parents who don't do their job properly as parents, though I do believe that poor parenting is more prevalent among the underclass poor than the rich.

Still, when the rich fail as parents, it usually doesn't result in me being asked to foot the bill directly as a taxpayer, nor does it usually result in me being robbed or beaten or the victim of some other crime.  The rich largely pay the price for their own failures, while society in general pays the price for the failures of the poor.   That's probably why the poor are judged more harshly for their failures than the rich are.  And frankly, I think that's appropriate.

My comment about parents not working outside the home refers to underclass welfare parents.  These are often the parents who find it too difficult to give their kids a bowl of cereal in the morning.  I don't mean to say all poor people are like this, but a good number of them are.  I can't say what percentage, and neither can you.  But it's not low.

[dazzleman]

Yes, that's what I thought you meant, the old, tired propaganda that programs for the poor are the cause of our high taxes, despite the fact that we spend much more preventing the spread of communism in nations far, far away from home, and spend hundreds of billions so that oil companies have more agreeable leaders in Iraq or tens of billion annually that go to quite well off people to own farms that grow absolutely nothing. Tax laws that favor very profitable corporations that pay less in taxes than many working class families. Sorry, but the rich in this country are subsidized too; your "hard earned tax dollars" pay for plenty of stuff that has nothing to do with the poor and really has nothing to do with you or me.

Honestly, it's not so much the cost of those programs that I object to, though they are considerable, notwithstanding what you say.  I object to the fact that we have spent money to expand a problem and entrench it more deeply.  If the programs worked, I wouldn't be complaining.  But most of the anti-poverty programs that we have had do not work because they encourage the type of behavior that perpetuates poverty.

In any case, my original point stands.  If rich people have to spend large amounts of their own money on psychologists, drug rehab, etc. for their kids because they have failed as parents, that doesn't really affect me directly.  It doesn't mean their failures are any less; it only means I'm not paying for them directly.  Your other comments about spending in other areas aren't really relevant to this topic, so I hesitate to address them here.