THE GOBLIN QUEEN also has a post about child care, responding to me. She points out that excellent day care can be better than parenting under stress (surely), adds that stay-at-home motherhood is not economically feasible for lots of families (yes, and I should have been clearer that my points were directed at people who are in a position to choose to take a do-able if sacrificial financial hit in order for Mom to mother full-time or more-time), and cites studies that found that government regulation greatly improves non-parental child care (which may be right, but I’d need to know what the standards for safety, personal connection and so on were, what factors were controlled for, and all that fun jazz). There’s quite a bit there, all well laid out (OK OK, I’ll add you to the blogroll!), so please do click and read if you’re interested in this topic.

I have to say that although I may well have misestimated the differences between (say) decent day care and leaving the kids with Grandma, GQ’s post (and her comments, in which she noted that parents were likely to think their kids were getting better care than was in fact the case, since the parents weren’t there to watch) did not leave me thrilled about non-parental care in general.

The stuff about learning how to mother–for example, “She [GQ’s mother] would work with a lot of illiterate parents who were convinced that since they couldn’t help their children read they couldn’t do anything for their education, and when my mom would show them the kinds of learning activities they could do with their kids that didn’t involve any reading, they’d get so excited. It wasn’t that they didn’t care; they just didn’t know.”–was totally moving, and in line with what we see at the pregnancy center. As Eloise Anderson said, “This is what families used to do for each other, but now you’ve got to pay someone to do it.”


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