Response to Mommie Dearest's Post "Bad, Bad Working Moms!

Today, Mommie Dearest wrote a post called “Bad, bad working moms!” about how Idaho legislators killed legislation that would have set higher standards for daycares. She says in her post, “Some of the lawmakers who rejected the bill said us moms should be at home with our kids instead of putting them in daycare.”

She then goes on to share from nightmare experiences about her experiences with daycare.

I looked up what Betsy Russell wrote about the bill on Eye on Boise, and Sylvia Chariton, who testified in favor of the bill on behalf of the American Association of University Women of Idaho said exactly the same thing I was thinking…

“It’s ridiculous—those men live in a time warp, when 60 percent of all mothers of children under 6 years of age take them someplace to be cared for.”

I think we need to get away from the thinking that if we set standards for our current system of daycare, this won’t necessarily mean we will be luring other mothers to use the daycare because of the higher standards. How can this be a harmful thing if we are helping better care for our children?

It reminds me of an essay I once read by Barbara Kingsolver in her book “High Tide in Tuscon: Essays From Now Or Never.” This essay was called “Somebody’s Baby” and tells about the differences she sees in the United States versus other countries regarding our view of children.

Here are a few excerpts:

“If we intend to cleave like stubborn barnacles to our great American ethic of every nuclear family for itself, then each of us had better raise and educate offspring for itself, then each of us had better raise and educate offspring enough to give us each day, in our old age, our daily bread. If we don’t wish to live by bread alone, we’ll need not only a farmer and a cook in the family, but also a home repair specialist, an auto mechanic, an accountant, an import-export broker, a forest ranger, a therapist, an engineer, a musician, a poet, a tailor, a doctor, and at least three shifts of nurses. If that seems impractical, then we can accept other people’s kids into our lives, starting now.

It’s not so difficult. Most of the rest of the world has got this in hand. Just about any country you can name spends a larger percentage of its assets on its kids than we do. Virtually all industrialized nations have better schools and child-care policies. And while the U.S. grabs headlines by saving the occasional baby with heroic medical experiments, world health reports (from UNESCO, USAID, and other sources) show that a great many other parts of the world have lower infant mortality rates than we do—not just the conspicuously prosperous nations like Japan and Germany, but others, like Greece, Cuba, Portugal, Slovenia—simply because they attend better to all their mothers and children. Cuba, running on a budget that would hardly keep New York City’s lights on, has better immunization programs and a higher literacy rate. During the long, grim haul of a thirty-year economic blockade, during which the United States has managed to starve Cuba to a ghost of its hopes, that island’s child-first priorities have never altered.

Here in the land of plenty a child dies from poverty every fifty-three minutes, and TV talk shows exhibit teenagers who pierce their flesh with safety pins and rip off their parents every way they know how. All these punks started out as somebody’s baby. How on earth, we’d like to know, did they learn to be so isolated and selfish?”

To see the whole essay, go here.

When my daughters grow up, I hope they will be fortunate to have the choice, like I did, to work if they want, or stay home if they want, or maybe do a combination, whatever works best for them. And I hope that they don't have to make their way through a maze of daycare providers, like Mommie Dearest, playing the "Day Care Lottery" as it were, in order to find suitable care.

Because, maybe by then, some standards will be in place.