Is Child-Care really Child-Harm?
In the past, reasons for woman working may have been gender equality or self-actualization. However, at present, though many still work for those reasons, the larger reason would be purely financial reasons. With the rising costs of living, it is only necessary for both the man and woman in a marriage to work, so as to earn enough money for themselves and to raise a family. This led to a problem with the difficulty of a raising children when both parents had to be physically at work. What arose from this problem is childcare, which seems to be the default choice for parents in solving the problem. For the richer class of society, childcare may be a matter of luxury and choice, for the parents to have more time for themselves to pursue their own ambitions and leisure. But for the middle-class in society, it is a necessity to survive. Companies’ have subsidized childcare as some of their ‘family-friendly’ policies. I’d like to look at how ‘family-friendly’ childcare really is, and how it affects the family institution.
Perhaps, in this rat-race society, childcare may have its benefits. The childcare industry can be seen as a ‘specialized division of labor’, whereby the childcare workers are more efficient at doing the job than the parent themselves, applying advanced learning programs or psychological knowledge, thus providing better childcare. However, this changes the whole concept of the word ‘parent’. The joy of raising the child is lost and the term ‘parent’ simply implies a biological relation rather than an emotion relation and a passing down of values and interests. ‘Parent’ in a family institution becomes more of ‘guardian’, one that simply provides materially. The bond between child and parent is lost. In a report by the University of Minnesota, ‘Psychologists believe it is necessary for children to develop a secure, attached relationship with their primary caregiver in order to develop a sense of independence, trust in others, and the ability to form friendships and bonds throughout life.’1 The consequences are dire not just for the family as a whole, but for the child as an individual too.
Childcare also will be unable to provide the type of nurturing that a parent will provide, nor can it teach the moral values that a parent inculcates. In a New York Times article titled ‘Poor Behavior Is Linked to Time in Day Care’, it is reported that ‘A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class.’2 The children inevitably pick up the values of the child carers and most child care centers will not be able to provide the individual attention which a growing child needs.
Not to say that childcare is something to be removed and condemned as a social problem. It is definitely a necessity as no real solutions exist. It spawned as a solution to the original problem, but has spawned its own set of issues. The issues of childcare are only further worsened when children reach the age where they do not require childcare, and the adolescents are left to develop without nurturing parents or parents who are too tired from work to do so. What needs to be addressed is the original problem, which is the need for both husband and wife to work for enough money to survive. The base of this problem has to be fixed and this would require an major change in the structure of society and the way we look at it.
On a side note, after looking at this whole issue. Perhaps, there is innate value in the tradition of a man being the breadwinner, earning enough for his wife and family, with the wife being the homemaker. I think it is good to challenge the assumptions of tradition, but yet, much tradition holds innate value and wisdom. I feel that we need to be careful of how we ‘progress’ and be careful not to see all tradition as a hindrance to prosperity (as modernists would call it).
1 Rose Allen. Child Care: Is It Good or Bad for Children. In University of Minnesota Extension. Retrieved 31 August 2008. http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/familydevelopment/components/7268b.html
2Benedict Carey. (March 26, 2007) Poor Behavior Is Linked to Time in Day Care. In The New York Times. Retrieved 31 August 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/us/26center.html?_r=2&ref=health&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
