Daycares Don't Care
How Can a Daycare Love?

Daycares
Don't Care
Store

Search 
Daycares
Don't Care

ß Previous

 Quotes from magazines about daycare - 2010, p2

Magazine articles 2010: 1 | 2 |

Article

Quote

There isn’t much talk about...whether daycare is good or bad for children. That’s because, despite study after study to the contrary, daycare has simply been accepted as acceptable. Which takes us back to why daycare wasn’t reported on deliberately and fairly in the first place.
Off-Limits Topic
When I was a producer for CBS This Morning, covering family issues, we sometimes partnered with Parents magazine. So one day I had lunch with the then-editor to talk about possible future projects. I suggested working together on a series about daycare. Before the word was barely out of my mouth, she stopped me by saying that Parents magazine chose not to cover daycare “because parents suffer enough guilt already.”
It took a while for the full implications of that statement to sink in. Parents magazine put parents’ potential guilt above children’s potential welfare. And of course there was the not small matter of selling magazines.
Category = Economics, Politics

Saubier, now a mother of two, told me that within the first two weeks of her first job at a daycare center she knew she would never use daycare for her own future children.
I can remember sitting in the middle of the room and taking it all in and thinking, “How can anyone think this is okay? Or think that this is a nice way to grow up?” I was looking around me at many children who needed much more than all the nice women at the center could possibly give them.
Category = Caregiver, Quality

A Poignant Story
When Saubier and her fellow daycare workers learned that a new child would soon be coming, “we braced ourselves for the tormented cries of a confused child who would soon be spending his or her days with us.” She stresses that crying in daycare is not limited to the child’s first few days. “Children are continually crying in daycare,” she writes, “because there is often no one available to pick them up when they fall, wipe their noses when they have a cold, kindly show them that hitting and biting is wrong, or tenderly change their diapers.”
I found one of Saubier’s stories especially poignant:
"One winter, while on the playground, I passed by a group of two-year-olds. One was stumbling around in the cold, crying, and I put out my arms to him to see if he wanted to be held. Not knowing me at all, he still came to me and I stood there holding him a bit. He put his head on my shoulder and I regretted having to put him down. Soon there were three others at my feet asking to be picked up. I remember thinking that it was really pathetic that these little ones were begging to be held by someone they did not know. I held each one quickly before returning my attention back to the infants in my care."
Category = Caregiver, Quality

The Wrong Kind of Socializing
...Parents, experts, and even politicians often defend and promote daycare with the claim that it helps children learn how to socialize. But based on her firsthand experiences, Saubier has a different take on the kind of socializing daycare cultivates. “Socializing in daycare fosters aggressive behavior simply because children are forced to go into survival mode once deposited among so many other children who are at a self-centered, ‘me’ stage developmentally,” she writes.
And while biting may not be exclusive to children in daycare, it is a serious, prevalent problem there. Saubier describes many incidents of biting, with the results clearly evident in the numerous bruised, swollen, and teeth-indented marks one sees on the children, sometimes even on their faces. One especially sweet little girl in Saubier’s care became a habitual biter. “Wherever she was, she simply did not want another child to crawl on her, touch her, pull themselves up on her, push her out of the way, etc. And who can blame her? She learned she could survive by biting them.”
Category = Caregiver, Danger, Development

Part of the Landscape
When May Saubier sent out query letters to agents and publishers in an effort to publish Doing Time, she was directed to women who were in charge of parenting publications. On the occasions when she actually heard back, she was told that her book was too pessimistic and would make mothers feel guilty. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one would publish it. Undeterred, she self-published the manuscript, and Doing Time is available as an eBook on Amazon.
As for the studies that showed increased aggressiveness and stress hormones in daycare children, the editors of Child Development delayed publication of those findings for several months, seeking out commentaries from child development experts. When finally published, the studies’ results were accompanied by nine commentaries from various researchers offering their perspectives, and, in some cases, rebutting the findings. As Saubier notes, had the studies shown how wonderful daycare is, it’s doubtful the journal would have felt compelled to publish differing views.
On the rare occasions when the media does any reporting on daycare, it’s usually along the lines of NBC’s recent Dateline expose of daycare centers run by women with criminal records. The more serious issue of the downside of daycare itself long ago became unmentionable, especially in female company. Sanctioned by the media, and now by the masses, daycare is part of the modern feminist landscape, children be damned.
Category = Economics, Politics

ß Previous

 Quotes from magazines about daycare - 2010, p2

Magazine Articles from:  1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000

Home Page