Questions about this website:
|
|
Question: |
Answer: |
|
Why did you start this website? |
Although the creators of this website never felt comfortable with the
whole idea of daycare, they kept their opinions to themselves.
As time went on, however, they became fed up with people continually hounding
them to
place their kids in day-care.
They began to collect information to defend their decision...
The last straw came after a close relative's eldest son suffered multiple compound fractures and his little sister almost died from a
severe infection while attending daycare at a state-of-the-art facility
at a prestigious university!
Afterwards, the authors decided to build a website from the information they
had collected on
the Web, so that parents could easily find out about the serious problems
with day care. |
|
Why
are you trying to make parents feel guilty about their decision to use
day-care? |
“Ultimately…guilt is not the issue. (This) has nothing to do with whether or
not (this) make(s) parents feel bad; what we all really want is the truth
about what's best for our children. …(People) have a right to know if there
are problems with daycare".
-- Mothering Magazine,
“Talking about Childcare: What's the Research Really Say?”, Issue 112,
May/June 2002 by Diane K. McHale
|
|
If you're against daycares, you must be against
women working outside the home, right? |
No, this has nothing to do with the so-called
"Mommy Wars". The purpose of this website is to state the
truth about day cares...they're just
not good for children.
"...(parents) have a right to base decisions (about working or staying at
home) on factual information about real-world child care."
-- Mothering Magazine,
“Talking about Childcare: What's the Research Really Say?”, Issue 112,
May/June 2002 by Diane K. McHale
As Brian Robertson, author of
Day Care Deception,
explains:
"What we owe to all parents — working outside the home
or not — is the truth about day care. That's just not
getting through because the cultural gatekeepers don't want it to get
through..."
-- Brian
Robertson, as interviewed by Kathryn Jean Lopez, Who's Minding the Kids?
Opening the Day-care center doors., NRO's Q & A, nationalreview.com,
01-Oct-04.
Here is another
way of he has of looking at it:
"It really has more to do
with a preschool child's place
rather than it does a woman's place. And we don't think that child's place is in commercial, group care, thrown together
with a bunch of other infants and toddlers..."
-- Brian
Robertson, as interviewed by Kathryn Jean Lopez, Who's Minding the Kids?
Opening the Day-care center doors., NRO's Q & A, nationalreview.com,
01-Oct-04. |
|
Do you get a lot of angry "hate mail" disagreeing
with your website? |
No, except for a few daycare industry
owners*, most e-mail has been quite supportive.
*Interestingly, we get almost every one of these during working hours, which
makes one wonder who is watching the kids while these daycare folks are surfing the
Web?
On a more disturbing note, the e-mail from these few daycare folks that
don't agree with this website also express quite a bit of hostility to the
parents of the children they care for. |
|
Are you against daycare workers? |
No, we're not against daycare workers -- they have
a tough job. The purpose of this website is to let people know
about the serious problems with day-care.
Helen Blank, director of child care for the Children's Defense Fund, says
problems with child care are (universal). "You can't blame the
child-care providers themselves -- they work long hours with incredibly
small salaries"*.
*Excerpt from "Daycare Nightmares" by Laura
Higgins, The Riverfront Times, August 9, 2000 |
|
Why is this website so one-sided? Why are
you saying day care is bad? |
OK, just what is the other side
you're referring to? That daycare is good for kids?
If you think that day care is
good for kids, is more daycare even better?
What's the next step? Keeping children and babies in day-care 24 hours
per day, 7 days a week? That's ridiculous!
Author Anne Manne illustrates the absurdity
of the 'daycare is better than parent care' stance taken by child-care
advocates:
"Come to think of it, why not...orphanages for the first few years of
life? If it is truly only 'the quality of care that counts', why not?"
-- Anne Manne, Motherhood - How should we
care for our children?, ©2005, page 232 |
|
Why doesn't your website offer any solutions to
fix the problems with daycare? |
No amount
of legislation, government funding, money, early childhood training,
regulations, or inspections can fix the
problems with daycare.
Raising small children in substitute care is an
experiment that has failed. |
|
How do I reference your website for a research
paper I'm writing for school? |
Our website is a collection of quotes.
You wouldn't cite our website any more than you would cite your Library for
its collection of books.
(By the way, there is a full citation under every quote in our website.) |
|
Why isn't the information on daycare in your website
organized by subject, author, etc.? |
Try using the website's
SEARCH function to find the information you need. |
|
Does your website contain information about child
abuse in daycares? |
It seems that almost every week, the news media
carries sensationalist stories about children being abused/molested/neglected/hurt
or even dying in
a daycare.
(Unfortunately, this has become big business...in June 2009, searching the
terms "daycare abuse lawyers" resulted in over 158,000 hits on Google!)
While these awful incidents seem to occur far too frequently, we don't put
these daycare horror stories into our website because they're usually
restricted to a particular daycare.
Instead, we prefer to concentrate on problems that are inherent to daycares
in general. |
|
Why do you only quote *selections* from
publications? Why don't you post complete articles? |
We would love to post entire articles, books,
etc. on our website, but unfortunately we are limited by space and copyright
laws.
If you are interested in reading the original materials in their entirety,
you should be able to find them at your public library. We always list
the source of our information in the left column of each quote. |
How can you say there's no such
thing as good daycare?
Have you ever been to my child's day-care? |
This website is hardly about what
We
say....it is mainly a collection of what other people have
said about the inherent limitations of daycare.
And no, We haven't been to your child's day care...
(By the way, have YOU been in your child's day-care ALL
DAY to see what your child really goes through? Will your
child's daycare even allow an all-day visit?)
Note: Visiting can be difficult once your young child realizes she is going
to be abandoned all over again.
back to the top
|
Questions about Daycare
|
|
Question: |
Answer: |
|
Don't children learn social skills in day care? |
"Kids do not learn social skills
through interacting with other kids, any more than children learn to play
the piano through interacting with other musically illiterate children.
Children learn social skills through observing and emulating adult
behavior".
-- David Mills, "Myths of Parental Convenience", from the
book, Science Shams & Bible Bloopers, 2000 |
|
Isn't daycare good for children because they
participate in stimulating and educational activities? |
"The typical
daycare center provides the stimulation and
educational opportunity of a
day in prison -- and
spreads far more infection and communicable disease than the
county jail."
-- David Mills,
"Myths of Parental Convenience", from the book, Science Shams & Bible
Bloopers,
2000 |
|
How can you say day care is bad? My
kids went to day care, and they turned out OK.
|
That's like saying some kids went to
orphanages, and they also turned out OK.
But who would want to deliberately put their kids through that?!
|
|
What about single mothers with no other childcare
options? |
Our
sympathies for what must be an extremely
difficult situation. You do what you gotta do, but this doesn't make
daycares any better for kids. |
|
My kid's daycare is licensed, so it's OK, right? |
- "Even for facilities that are licensed and
inspected, breaking the rules usually means little more than a slap on
the wrist.
- The unfortunate truth is that even demonstratably
bad daycare centers are unlikely to be shut down.
- Though criminal-background checks are
required of workers at licensed or subsidized child-care facilities,
even
a jury's conviction doesn't necessarily put someone out of the child-care
business.
- Child-care inspectors...bend over backward to
give (daycare providers) a chance to correct a problem -- sometimes they bend too far
-- but it is very hard to take someone's license away once it is
granted.
- Never leave your child in the custody of a
stranger. The fact that a daycare center is "licensed" or "state
approved" is meaningless. Even child abusers can easily craft
neatly-typed resumes with impressive-sounding references."
For more detailed information,
click here.
Excerpts from "Daycare Nightmares", by Laura
Higgins, The Riverfront times,
August 9, 2000;
Science Shams & Bible Bloopers, by David Mills © 2000
|
|
Isn't my kid OK in our religious institution's
day-care (Bible Daycare)? |
Whether it's in a church, synagogue, mosque, or
temple, it's still a daycare!
Even worse, many states exempt* religious child care programs from
inspections and regulations that other daycare programs are subject to.
*"In God's Name:
As Exemptions Grow, Religion Outweighs Regulation", by Diana B. Henriques,
New York Times, October 8, 2006
(By the way, are you sure the day-care is
really part of your church, or is your church just renting space to your day
care?) |
|
Why isn't there more publicity about the
inherent problems with daycares? |
Although We think most people know in their hearts
that daycare isn't good for kids, like the citizens in the fable of
The Emperor's New Clothes,
they're
afraid to say it for fear of being perceived as "politically incorrect". |
|
Are you against daycare for sick children? |
"Sick daycare" is inhumane -- it's the worst!
|
|
Are you against daycare in the workplace?
|
On-site day care is just a sneaky way for
businesses to keep parents working longer hours.
That's why many don't charge "late fees".
David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values has pointed out that
a lot of these trendy, family friendly policies when looked at more
closely are far from family friendly.
They're designed, not to free up the employee to take care of family
responsibility at home, but to free up the employee from their family
responsibilities so they can spend more time at work, which is hardly a
family friendly solution.
--
firstvoicebooks.com/robertson.html |
How do I report a daycare to the licensing
authorities?
-My kids were hurt or mistreated in daycare.
-My child's daycare is in violation of health or safety regulations. |
In the USA, contact your local Child Welfare
Office of your state's Department of Human Services (DHS) to register a
complaint about a daycare. The name of this organization varies by state.
Here are some typical names:
-Office of Children & Family Services
-Department of Public Health |
|
What about abusive parents? Aren't children
better off in daycare if they have abusive parents? |
What about abusive daycare
workers?
Statistics comparing the two types of abuse are impossible to find, but common sense tells
us that a harried daycare employee, surrounded by demanding and whining
children unrelated to her,
is more likely to explode in harmful ways than a parent with his or her own
child. Additionally, the daycare's larger adult-to-child ratios mean more
children can be hurt by an adult's abusive behavior. |
|
What are the Warning Signs of Daycare Abuse? |
-Physical symptoms of daycare abuse
include crying or fighting to get out of going to daycare, unusually scared
behavior when not at daycare or unusual or multiple bruises with no
explanation.
-Emotional symptoms of daycare abuse include lack of affection,
extreme behaviors, less communication, acting overly adult-like or
infantile, delayed physical or emotional development, or unexplained
headaches or stomachaches.
-Sexual symptoms of daycare abuse include, pain, itching, bleeding or
bruising in or around genital areas, difficulty walking or sitting, urinary
tract infections, bed wetting, demanding to wear extra clothing, or sexual
behavior or curiosity beyond the child's age. |
|
Are you against "doggie daycare"? |
Dog day-care? Oh, who cares? It's just a dog...
But why did you get the dog if you weren't going to take care of it?
(To their credit, however, at least doggy daycares don't take in puppies
before they are weaned.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for human daycares...) |
|
back to the top |
