Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: At what age is day care appropriate?
From: johnnyb@ims.com (Johnny Battle)
Date: 13 Apr 92 21:49:30 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Integrated Measurement Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Apr09.204136.905233@locus.com>, judy@locus.com (Judy Leedom Tyrer) writes:
|> In article <1992Apr8.190818.7838@clpd.kodak.com> staffan@ca.serum.kodak.com (Kenneth Staffan (x37507)) writes:
|> >
|> >I try to stay out of this discussion, really I do, but come on.  Speaking of
|> >basis, what is the basis for the assumption that the "Mother's at home feeling
|> >of security" contributes to a lifetime of self-confidence and happiness?
|> >If I was going to go strictly by impression,...

You said it, "impression."  It is my subjective impression that a very young baby
doesn`t care didley (sp?) about how fulfilling a parent finds his or her career.
A baby doesn't care if her parent is exhausted, he doesn't care
if the parent is nauseated by the smell of excrement, she doesn't care if the
parent deeply resents being awakened in the middle of the night, he doesn't care
(and I know this one for a fact) that it is a serious faux pas to puke all over
your father's head when your father is riding you on his shoulders.  It 
requires very little imagination and empathy to realize that babies mainly want
to feel secure and constantly loved. It seems self-evident that the best person 
to make a baby feel loved is someone who actually loves the baby. 

Even the best daycare worker can, at best, only fool the baby into thinking the
worker loves her.  Oh, I'm sure many workers really like their charges, but
no one can love your baby like you can.  The worker is doing it for money,
and the worker always gives up the child (we hope) in the end.  It must
be very confusing at first to an infant, sort of a dailey double betrayal: her
parents give her up in the morning, her daycare worker gives her up in the 
evening.  For, IMHO, we don't betray those we love; we don't build up their trust
and then desert them.  We do our best to create a feeling of absolute safety for
our children; then, as they grow up, we let go little by little.  We help them 
to gradually find security within themselves, from confidence in their own
abilites.  Sorry, but the idea that sticking a baby in daycare at the first 
opportunity somehow builds self-confidence seems patently ridiculous.  It's a sort
of "teach 'em to swim by throwing 'em in the deep water" school of child rearing.
(Remember young Billy Pilgrim in the movie "Slaughterhouse Five," slowly sinking
to the bottom of the pool?)  Eventually, the girl does become a woman, the boy 
becomes a man, and discovers that the secure feeling was a kind of illusion, his
parents are only human with their own needs and petty little desires, and they
can't really protect him from the boogie man.  Indeed, his parents run from 
boogie men of their own.  But, surely, we should spare our young ones from this
kind of angst until they are ready for it.    

|>... I would say that the daycare
|> >kids are starting out with more self-confidence (and actually, didn't someone
|> >earlier refer to an article that confirmed this in school entry-aged
|> >children?), and that self-confident children tend to be happy children.
|> >(seems to go for adults, too...)
|> >
|> 
|> I find it interesting that  while the study I reprinted was attacked for being
|> biased, unscientific, etc., because it said that children in daycare suffered,
|> the study by the SAME biased, unscientific gentleman which stated that daycare
|> chidlren were more self-confident is bandied about so readily as proof of
|> the value of daycare.  (Belsky's study was the most famous and most often
|> recited study about the benefits of day care and the self-confidence of
|> these children - yet his latest study refuted these assumptions saying they
|> were based on the highest quality, not average, daycare).
|>   
|> 
|> -- 
|> "This is just a test.  Had this been a real life, you would have been given
|> further instructions on where to go and what to do."
|> 							Judy Leedom Tyrer

If I'm asked to grade the tests, you'll get an `A.'  (That's how my teachers
always did it: if you agreed with them, they thought you were brilliant. :-)

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Johnny Battle                      Staggering parties of dipsodumb daffodils
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P.S. These are my own opinions.  I don't speak for my employer.
Newsgroups: misc.kids