Put this one in your “who’d a tunk it” folder. Unicef (the well-known right-wing reactionary outfit) has just released a report saying long hours of formal, institutional child care is detrimental to very young children. Actually, I’m semi-impressed. That Unicef would have the guts to put that sort of thing in print is most commendable. Among other things, it “recommends that all children should where possible be cared for by parents at home during the first 12 months of life.” I especially love this part of the story:
The report has been published at a key point in the childcare debate. Children born today into the rich world are part of the first generation in which a majority will spend a large part of their early childhood in childcare. In Britain about 80 per cent of those aged 3 to 6 are now in some form of formal childcare or education. For those under 3, the proportion is now 25 per cent.
In part, this reflects new opportunities for women to be employed outside the home. But it also reflects new pressures, particularly on the poorest, to return to work as soon as possible after a birth – often to low-paid jobs.
The report notes that high-quality formal childcare can bring huge benefits to children, particularly those from disadvantaged homes, expanding their social and cognitive development and providing them with stimulation that they might not get at home.
But it cites research from Britain and the US suggesting that children who spend too long in formal childcare at too young an age may suffer from long-term effects, including behavioural problems, aggression, antisocial behaviour, depression and an inability to concentrate – although the effects are thought to be relatively small.
Although the effects are thought to be relatively small… You wonder, sometimes, what it would take for some people to get it. This business of sticking very young children – babies – in institutional daycare for many long hours every day of the week is a new and dangerous experiment that goes against everything Mother Nature tells us. But hey, what the heck, effects like antisocial behaviour and aggression and an inability to concentrate “are throught to be relatively small” so who cares! We’ve got jobs to get to, here! Real, meaningful jobs, mark you, not something dull and mindless like looking after our very own babies.
I wonder what Jack Layton will have to say about this report… Think he’ll change his mind about the need for a national child care program? Nah, me neither.
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Tanya remarks: “But it also reflects new pressures, particularly on the poorest, to return to work as soon as possible after a birth – often to low-paid jobs.”
Childcare at seven bucks a day in Quebec; you better believe some women feel an absolute obligation to place their tots in daycare and go back to the less than $30K/year job they very likely dislike. It’s not a choice anymore. Women constantly have to fight for their right to stay home with their children. Go women’s lib!
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Normally I like and enjoy this blog, but I do not like this post, for many reasons. But first, some background.
I am a conservative Catholic mother (I accept ALL Church teachings) and my daughter started childcare at 7 weeks. She went in in the mornings, and I came to breastfeed her when she was hungry. I needed those mornings to do work on my dissertation. My son started childcare at 6 months, first for 15 hours a week, and by the time he was 12 months, for 25. By allowing others to help raise my children, I keep some pretty good company. For example, Elizabeth Anscombe, the great Catholic philosopher and defender of chastity, who had seven children of her own, left them all with a nanny while she frittered away her time doing some of the best and most influential philosophy of the 21st century. Was she engaging in some crazy social experiment, putting her children at harm? It doesn’t appear so. All of her children are successful (one is a nun, another a philosopher herself), and all are committed Catholics to this day.
Throughout history, the European upper classes have always had childcare: wetnurses, nannies, tutors, etc. Poor women, we know, were out in the fields or in a rich person’s home tending to the needs of others, and who lost so many of their children that in many cases, the evidence points to lack of love and concern for small children for fear of losing them. The “ideal” of the stay at home mother, which so many claim for Nature herself, is mostly a bourgeois invention. It has no real roots in Catholic European history.
Not all Mothers need to be at home with their children every minute, and most throughout history never were. Mothers have always needed help. In the past, they received it from extended family and a network of other relationships. Today women fulfill that need for help from daycare facilities.
In the future, I hope this blog sticks to Church teaching, and does wade into the “mommy wars”, which only divides women of faith.
Jack Layton? I don’t think children are on his radar. If he and Olivia Chow have kids, I am not aware of it. “Taliban” Jack’s inflated ego is way too busy with illusions of grandeur and self promotion to be bothered with kids.
I think there is a difference between having your child cared for by extended family members and even in-home nannies and nurses for a certain number of hours a day or week and putting your child in institutional day care with a whole pack of other children and professionalized day care “workers” seven days a week 9 to 5. I think it’s the setting and nature of institutionalized care, for so many hours for so many days, that is an experiment and not the fact of care of children by others not the mother.
As a single mother I commuted to another city 2-3 days a week to study for my M.A., leaving my infant in the care of my mother while I was gone. I was very comfortable with that (although it was a necessity, I would not have chosen it); I would never be comfortable with institutional day care for more than a few hours a week. I think it is difficult to justify morally given what the research (and common sense-think back to your childhood. Would you have liked to spend all day, every day in a day care?) is telling us.