Eberstadt overstates her point and makes major errors in logic. If you keep reading and try not to bash your head against your desk when you hit her methodology problems, you’ll find some truths in here. It is good for kids to have their parents around. But what do you do about it?
Shame more women to stay at home with their kids? That won’t work. There is no return to the magical days of the fifties. A mother who is home because of shame will not be an improvement over daycare.
Eberstadt offers no solutions. To her credit, she also recognizes that many families can’t afford one income.
Mothers who work do it for two reasons: either they have to for financial reasons or they have to for sanity reasons. If you want more parents at home, you’re going to have to pay for it.
Subsidize mothers (and dads) to stay at home. Provide more part time work opportunities. Provide a stronger community life for mothers at home, so they don’t loose their marbles in the solitude of a home. Reward parents who raise their kids themselves. Provide free marriage classes for those who need it. Reward businesses that promote family-friendly policies. Subsidize low cost housing.
There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. No return to the magical days of the past, which, by the way, weren’t so magical. If you want a return to Jeffersonian America, you’re going to have to use Hamiltonian means.
Apt. 11d 
I’m sort of responding to this, and sort of the Dave S’s comments below. Look, there’s a reason why certain goods are much more expensive than they used to be — elite college tuition, housing, etc. Its because most families are two income families. There’s simply much more money chasing certain ‘positional’ goods. I’m inf avour of paying people to stay home with their kids. But I’m more in favour of measures that discourage people from earning in general. The more we (all earn) the more the price of certain scarces goods rises. IN other words, we’re cuaght up ina certain kind of collective action problem. Another collective action problem is indicated by your comment about staying at home making you lose your mind; there’s no way of providing community for people who stay home with kids except by getting others to do the same. This may be particular problem for men, by the way, who are somewhat excluded from ‘stay-at-home mom’s’ networks, without any intent or ill-will.
Also it is going to be hard to pay people to stay home with children because in doing so the government rduces the tax revenues it is depending on for the benefit it is providing. When teaching about this I use the following example: if you all pay each other to look after each other’s children the government gets a lot of income tax. If you each look after your own it gets none. I think its no accident that we subsidise paid childcare but not stay-at-home parenting.
Thanks Laura, its been a great help, even though you wouldn’t answer my earlier question!
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I apologize because I haven’t read through all the comments to the other posts (no time right now) and this may have been mentioned by someone already, but just quickly: how about provide subsidies for better daycare options? Do we really have the evidence to suggest that kids staying at home alone (with or without a parent) is the best way for young people to grow up into a social world? I can think of lots of benefits of going to daycare where kids spend time with their peers. In all these discussions – mostly anecdotal – there seems to be an inherent assumption that staying at home is the best way to go, but I don’t recall seeing much empirical evidence based on rigorous methodologies to back up such claims. Also, one way to test some of these things would be to do some cross-national studies to compare the situation with nations where there is much more widespread daycare.. probably at least in part thanks to significant subsidies.
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There is no return to the magical days of the fifties.
Bear in mind that the magical days of the fifties never actually existed.
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Whoops. Sorry. Closing that italics tag…
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Laura: “If you want a return to Jeffersonian America, you’re going to have to use Hamiltonian means.”
Harry: “I’m more in favour of measures that discourage people from earning in general.”
Wow. From my point of view, these two comments put the central philosophical issue about as starkly as possible. Given a shared interest in preserving ways of life which prioritize the familial and the communal–because of the enormous and obvious goods which come from such, despite the failure of people like Eberstadt to put together much of a coherent account of such–we have to ask ourselves exactly how, and how much, we want to challenge the living habits and economic presumptions of modern life. Using Hamiltonian means to accomplish Jeffersonian ends has been preferred approach of liberal egalitarians over the years: setting up rules, laws, and incentives that make it in the interest of individuals to see their resources redistributed and their choices subjected to social tests. But maybe this strategy is a dead-end, or at least insufficient on its own; perhaps it must be supplemented by more explicitly collective measures that which will both disincline people, and perhaps even prevent them in some cases, from trying to maximize their own individual economic growth. (Outlaw certain kinds of suburbanization, and to be sure, you will have killed certain homeowners’ dreams; but then again, you will have also made it possible for communities and families to turn their resources and choices away from the sort of anti-Jeffersonian infrastructure–the second or third car, etc.–that otherwise may have proliferated.)
Heavy stuff, and not exactly on-point to this review. But it wouldn’t have come to mind without this review. Thanks Laura!
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It was going to be one of my posts during “Constructive Advice For The Democrats Week” that this could be tricked up into a wedge issue for the socially conservative Right. Surely there’s some play to be made in arguing for a minimum “living” wage set at a level that would allow a single male wage-earner to support a family? Henry Ford certainly thought there was.
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Family Values
Ever wonder why Republicans abandoned their ‘Family Values” rhetoric in favor of “Moral Values”? Maybe its because the best way to promote family values is with government programs…
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I am a working woman in third generation. I grew up in middle class family in Russia. I was in school 1981-1991. Most of my friends were from similar families. Both of our parents worked. And some of my friends were proud of what their moms did professionally. We all turned out OK (and nobody was significantly overweight).
I think the problem is not childcare, but how limited and expensive and not very caring it is in United States. For example the fact that children take a nap in kindergarden on the floor and not in the bed (as we did back in Russia) is something to get used to. Also in Russia we had a lot of affordable or free after-school programs: there were sports sections, art sections, etc. Everybody was doing something after school. Boys were mostly in sports. Girls – in sports, arts and crafts. I am sure the picture is different in Russia now, but this is something I miss from the socialist times. So there is a solution, and this is not a stay at home mom. Because one mom can’t do and know everything the society can provide. What is needed as affordable child care for preschool kids and affordable after-school programs for school-age kids.
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You spelled “genie” wrong. Unless you want to put more than one genius back into the bottle (perhaps referring to newly working women?).
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Home Alone America
It’s a happy day when the first blog you check out links to a multi-entry review of a book relevant to your dissertation. On a personal, anecdotal level books that argue that daycare screws you up make me suspicious. Because,…
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I’m with Anna. The benefits of immurement in a nuclear family (with a virtually absentee father) have never been very clear to me. There seems to be an idea afoot that children would prefer to stay at home. I’ve seen very few examples of such a preference; most of the children I’ve known in the past twenty years were enthusiastic about their social lives in day-care. As Anna suggests, day-care ought to be improved, not deplored.
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I can’t believe ANOTHER of those books is being written, in the year 2004. Another book that blames mothers for what’s going wrong with society. We had that in the last century too. Next Monday, I’m going to the Belgian Senate for a sort of “memorial” of a law of 1934, which tried to discourage married women to work. Unemployment was high, and fertility rates were dropping in the 1930s. The solutions: use all legal, moral and social means to make it very hard for women to hold a job. Great.
Here’s some empirical evidence from Europe (sorry but I am in a hurry so can’t look up the exact references and figures):
1) the worse the child care facilities, the lower fertility rates, all other things equal;
2) A study on Great Brittain showed that the additional tax revenue generated by mother’s employment is greater than a 100% subsidy of child care; hence in budgettary terms in makes a big differences whether we pay parents at home or provide them with child care (what Harry pointed out indeed)
3) the country with the highest percentage of part-time working fathers (the Netherlands) is at the same time on of the countries where part-time working jobs get pro ratio the same benefits as full-time jobs. I think the fact that so many benefits (pensions, health) in the US only come with (certain) full time jobs is a big problem
4)there are forms of child care possible that do not cause any negative effects on children, indeed, that have possitive effects as they allow children a wider range of experiences. I read a book (unforunately in Dutch) that gives a literture survey on the effects of day care for children, and the only negative effects ever found where in the US for specific types of very low-quality care. Europe and the other forms in the US were perfectly fine. But it shouldn’t be too many hours – hence you can’t be working towards partnership in a legal firm (say, 60 or 70 hours a week) and have your child in day care and expect no negative effects to happen.
I haven’t read this book, but my first guess would be that obesity and other social ills are caused by the particular type of US capitalism, including the enormous commercialisation of the media. It’s just unbelievable how much more food-related adds you see in the US. And of course, all schools should have compulsary sport, and voluntary after-school sport programs. Again, there are societies where this exists right now, so this is not as utopian as it sounds. It it doesn’t need to keep women home if they don’t want to.
My own views on this, is that most jobs should be accessible in large-part-time fashion. If both parents work 80% of a 38 hour work week, i.e 4 days a week, there is more than enough time for the kids. In the Netherlands, this is possible for most jobs. In fact, it is the dominant family form in our street, and among my friends.
I would love to write more but I am should rather go back writing my paper on the value of paid work for women that I’m giving in the Belgian senate next week. As I see it, that value can be much more than only money or staying sane – for both women and men, in fact.
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A short window of time here, so let me just respond to Eszter’s comment now about real studies that have compared daycare to at home care.
Studies have shown that kids in daycare are more aggressive than kids raised at home. Studies also show that daycare kids are better prepared for school. After a couple of years, those differences evaporate.
But these studies only measure things that can be measured. There is no study of the happiness level of kids in two environments. Or all benefits of all sorts of intangibles that exist in those two environments (more social opportunities in daycare or more hugs when you’re sick from mom).
It’s also so hard to make generalizations about daycare v. mom, because there is no standard. Daycares vary greatly, as does at home care. And some parents more attentive to their kids needs after daycare than others.
I am hundred percent behind making daycare better. That’s a given. Not everybody can stay home with their kids. But, if you can and you are able to do it well, I am very certain that the kids will benefit.
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I tend to think that we should just let people do what they want. There is no massive damage shown to individual children whose mothers work outside the home. Kids are pretty resiliant. Short of real abuse they tend to come out OK.
The transition from a society where mothers stay home to a society where mothers work outside the home has some downsides to go with the upsides, but it just isn’t worth while sitting around feeling guilty about it. Without alot of ill-advised social engineering things are not really going to change much.
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daycare v. mom
Apologies if this has already been addressed, but is dad-as-caregiver simply unthinkable? Does Eberstadt’s book presume that the one and only alternative to day care is “mom”?
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I think Ingrid’s comment suggests, and I certainly would intend to (but don’t explicitly) an alternative model: we actively try to get men to do more caregiving. My view is that the ideal world is one in which the mix of caregiving is roughly equal between men and women, and that the same is true for paid labour. I always say this in these discussions; increasing the use of paid daycare does not decrease the gendered character of the division of child-rearing labour. Daycare is almost exclusively provided by women — just (in the US) low paid women who are not the mothers of the hildren they are caring for. And I have to confess I am part of the problem here; I am a down-the-line feminist in most ways, I have female family doctors (2!), I do more than 50% of the domestic and childrearing labour, etc, but, I confess, I would have a harder time putting my kids in daycare with a man than with a woman. I imagine that is a very common tendency.
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as to the dads/guys…
Eberhardt says “mothers and fathers are not interchangeable units. It is the mother more than any other adult in a child’s life, who experiences the need to police what her children eat and to cajole and order them to eat as she believes they should. It is the mother, no others, who generally has the strongest opinions about such things, whether she is home with her children or not.”
But it is not just a conservative belief that women do it better. I’ve heard a lot of liberal feminists say that they’ve given up on the men in the parenting department.
I haven’t. I’m with Harry.
Harry, loved your first comment. It’s the Warren argument. 2 incomes have created this mess of high priced housing and college tuition. It’s a downer though. I liked my simplist solution of just pumping the gov’t for more money, but you dashed my hopes. So, what’s the answer then? Are we just screwed? I’m not sure people are going to go along with your plan of persuading them to be poorer.
And thanks for the link. It was so fun to come home after a trip from Home Depot and Wendy’s (yes, we at home parents eat like crap, too) to see all the great comments. Esp. after a young boy had a wardrobe (diaper) malfunction at Wendy’s. Sigh. Yet another establishment that I can no longer show my face.
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Quickly on caring fathers:
Vincent Duindam, a Dutch sociologist, finds that caring fathers (i.e. who do not work full time) have better relations with their children, but encounter much prejudice and resistance from “society”; it also improves their marital relations;
About the same results from a study in Reykjavik (excuse my bad spelling), the capital of Iceland, but there fathers who took paternity leave also noted that they had never thought that full time caring for a small child would be so hard; it increased the respect they gained for this work.
If only for the last reason alone, I think all fathers should take paternity leave. I don’t think that this should be the state’s business, but at the very least one could defend it in one’s own household and among friends.
we don’t just need better organisations and govt policies, we need a cultural revolution too.
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Interesting that caring fathers are defined above as those who do not work full time. Why can a father not be caring once he knows that his child is in good quality child-care? Rhetorical, of course, but I see an inconsistency in the argument that daycare is fine for the child, but that if a father really cared then he would be at home.
We all pretend we want the best, but in fact we put ourselves very often first. Which is fine as long as we are honest about it.
(If daycare does produce more aggressive children isn’t this a plus for hegemonic powers?)
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I work part-time and I think one of the saddest things about our current workforce situation is that part-time opportunities don’t seem to be as available to men.
And why is it that the arguments and analysis all seem to be “100% work” vs. “100% home” – I think there are more of us part-timers out there than people suspect.
I think our kids are better off – MUCH better off – with me working part-time. My husband is involved with the kids on a level he wouldn’t be if I were home all the time.
He is the one who needs to get everyone out of the house on Monday morning. He knows where to find the matching socks….how to stock the diaper bag…which snuggle thing is necessary for preschool nap time…what days the fieldtrips are….etc.
And is it better to have one parent home all the time if the other parent is away 50-60 hours/week at a stressful job?
Why not split those same hours between 2 parents – and give them each a chance both to enjoy their children and contribute to the world through a career?
Even with my husband working full time, we have friends in which the father works more hours than the two of us put together.
I’m incredibly lucky to have a flexible employer who lets me set my schedule and work at home as much as I like. But for some reason, I think if I were a man – I might not have the same perks. Or have no men asked for the perks? I honestly don’t know.
Of course, there is that benefits thing. Most places only give healthcare to full time workers…..
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On birth of first child I (father) asked for a 4 day week at a major US multinational with a self-promoted record as a best practice employer and was denied the opportunity.
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“Studies have shown that kids in daycare are more aggressive than kids raised at home. Studies also show that daycare kids are better prepared for school. ”
This is incorrect. *One* longitudinal study has shown that kids *not raised by their mothers at home* are more aggressive than kids *raised by their mothers at home*.
“Not raised by their mothers” includes children raised by stay at home dads, children raised by nannies, grandmothers, and grandfathers.
The “more aggressive” is a canard, given that only a small percentage of the children were in the abnormal realm. What, after all, is wrong with being more aggressive? More aggressive than what?
Take this study at its word and it only means that children raised at home by their mothers will be meeker and cognitively behind by kindergarten. If you don’t find that palatable (and I certainly don’t) then don’t spout the opposite as “studies show”.
If you aren’t aware of what the studies are, then don’t cite them.
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“Shame more women to stay at home with their kids? That won’t work. There is no return to the magical days of the fifties. A mother who is home because of shame will not be an improvement over daycare.”
Do you have any evidence to support this? I can’t imagine why you would think that a mother who is encouraged to stay home by a government subsidy would be a better mother than one who stays home because she is shamed into doing so. Shaming seems like a perfectly good solution to me. It doesn’t require any government intervention or taxation. Private groups can do it just as effectively as government.
BTW, I’m not saying that stay-at-home mothering is something that society should be encouraging. I don’t really have an opinion on that issue. I’m just saying that if we do want to encourage mothers to stay home with their children, shame is by far the least objectionable method of doing so.
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Ingrid – I would love to read your speech when you’re done. Could you send me a link if it’s on line?
Here’s an article discussing the study that linked aggressive behavior with daycare. And, Cal, could you please moderate your own aggressive attitude?
I think daycare is sort of like stuffing. The Stove Top boxed stuff is okay. It won’t kill me if I eat it. Sometimes I get into prepackaged stuff. And it frees up time to do other stuff. It certainly won’t kill me, but the real stuff is soooo much better.
I’m wonder if parents are more concerned about a child’s well being than non-parents. Post kids, I am a sobbing mess everytime the news reports that a kid gets killed. I also wonder if parents with experience both at home and with daycare are less gung-ho about institutionalizing kids full time? I have stories about Jonah’s daycare experience…
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***And is it better to have one parent home all the time if the other parent is away 50-60 hours/week at a stressful job?***
I completely agree with this statement. The children of a stay-at-home mom who depends on a workaholic husband (or one who is required to be a workaholic as a condition for keeping his job) are not in a better position than children of parents who both work, but who are both completely available in the evenings and weekends and take reasonable vacations from work. Part-time for one or both parents is even better. The solution is not more extremities of division of labor, with Mom always available and Dad never available. If the price of Dad being more available is that Mom work, I think that’s the better choice(and something I doubt Eberstadt considers, if she’s committed to traditional male and female roles).
Personal note: my husband was raised by a workaholic father who came home at 10:00 every night and work Saturdays, took no vacations, etc. It had a tremendous impact on him. The family wasn’t really a family: they did nothing together.
We are both educators (he is a high school teacher; me a professor). I didn’t go in on Tuesday and Thursdays for much of my children’s early years (two of them just turned three, and started 5-days a week), and we keep them out all summer, May-June-July-August. I know that my kids would not be better off if I was home all the time and he was a workaholic in business or law; they wouldn’t have that amazing relationship with him (and the self-esteem that a good relationship with Dad produces)! I would also be worse off (hey, I’m a person too) if my life were completely unbalanced and focused on only one thing.
Isn’t it better if we all live balanced lives, instead of going to the extreme division of labor that Eberstadt seems to recommend? The solution is not for women to stop working; it’s for the American workplace to change. Period.
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My initial, admitedly rather simplistic, reaction is that I’d like to move my family to the Netherlands! Thank you Ingrid for sharing what I think is a brilliant solution.
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Your rebuke about my “aggressiveness” pretty much proves the point about the so-called “damage of daycare”. Aggressiveness is in the eye of the beholder. I merely think you should be accurate, particularly when you are purporting to give a reasoned analysis. Pointing that out is hardly aggressive behavior.
Salon piece
“To wit: The NICHD, in its ongoing study — launched in 1991 — of 1,300 children at 10 research sites around the country, found that the more time a child spent in any kind of child care away from its mother, including in the care of a father or relative, the more likely the child was to demonstrate aggressive, disobedient and/or defiant behavior — both as a preschooler and as a kindergartner. ” (emphasis mine)
Instruments for the study
I note at least that you’ve backed off of “studies”, at least.
One thing that this discussion misses out on entirely is the need for both parents to be able to support their children and themselves throughout their lives. Dropping out of the workforce has a usually severe impact on one’s career and lifetime earnings. It’s not just a matter of materialism, but ability to provide.
Never mind the family’s immediate income. Consider the family as the lifetime income of two adults. If one of those adults drops out of the workforce, she (it’s almost always a she) has taken a severe hit in that lifetime income, her retirement, and her ability to provide for her family or herself in times of economic need. Read any articles during the recession about the man being out of work and unable to find a job? Notice how many times the wife was a stay at home mother, who couldn’t find a job worth taking after five years out of the work force?
What about retirement? How many kids whose mothers dropped out to coo at them instead of sending them to daycare will be spent supporting that same mom–or a set of two parents–because they put the mom at home instead of working towards financial security? How many forty year olds are going to appreciate supporting Mom at the same time they’re trying to save for their kids to go to college? How many will think their parents did right by them?
There’s simply no way that government safety net can offset the lifetime damage done to earnings. Leaving the workforce is a huge risk that results in a number of bad outcomes that cost society a huge sum every year.
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I am a big proponent of the solution that Ingrid and others have proposed. Where both parents work part time or 3/4 jobs with some daycare. I have said that since Day 1 of the blog. However, part time or 3/4 jobs are very hard to come by in this country. And trying to get one of those jobs with health benefits is impossible.
Lisa, you sound like you have a very flexible academic job. Lucky duck. But getting an academic job is tough and getting one that is family friendly is even harder. (we talked about this before.)
Why are there so few of these PT job opportunities? I’m not sure. Is it because businesses have a hard time changing? It’s not in their interest? Unions don’t like them? Government likes everybody working as much as they can to collect more income tax?
As to Cal. What you said about the price that women pay for dropping out of the workforce is very true. See Crittenden’s Price of Motherhood.
But that’s not we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the price that kids and society pay for their parents working full time.
Maybe the financial security and material things that the kids gain by the parents’ work will offset other problems. Maybe there are no ill affects on the child from having both parents working full time. If you want to make that argument, that’s fine. I just want to keep the focus on the kids for this post.
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“See Crittenden’s Price of Motherhood. ”
Oh, please. Crittenden’s book is sheer garbage. The idea that women are doing anything of financial value by staying home is ludicrous.
Look! I mowed the lawn! Where’s my money? Who’s paying?
So if you think that my point has anything to do with Crittenden, you ducked to miss it.
“We’re talking about the price that kids and society pay for their parents working full time. ”
No, actually, we were talking primarily about the price that kids pay. Society is a different issue. However, in both cases, I was talking about that, too.
The risk that women take is one that primarily affects their children. Women will always find someone else to pay their way–and they’ll have the family courts helping them find a wallet. But children will pay their price for their mother’s bad choices–and the price may keep coming due long after they’ve moved out.
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Cal,
do you think that parents should have anything at all to do with their children? At what point does the imperative of growth in the economy give way to the desirability of people spending time with their family members? I, Ingrid, and Laura all agree with you that people shouldn’t have to endure a finanacial hit for staying home with their kids, and that men and women should spend more equal time doing child-rearing work. We may agree with you and each other for different reasons (I think in this case Ingrid and I have more adult-centerd, and Laura more child-centered, reasons).
But I disagree with your implicit suggestion that there has to be some financial value to people’s choices. No. Better that people spend time with their children not because its better for the children, or society, but because its better for the parents (there may well be side-effects for the children and society, but let’s put that aside).
Even if you decide to remain in the workforce by the way, full time, it is just about impossible to have a satisfactory family life (for parents or kids)unless one parent is willing to put children before job, in a systematic way. Kids get sick, someone has to stay home with them; or their daycare provider is sick; they have dental and doctor’s appointments; working-hours parent-teacher conferences; they have to be ferried from one play date to another (or not have playdates?). Someone has to take on this role, and employers don’t, typically, accord the person with that role the same status as employees who don’t.
You sound as if you think women (and men?) who want to spend time with their children are self-indulgent or lazy. Is that really what you think?
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Every once in a while, I run across someone whose political and social viewpoint is so radically different from mine that I’m not sure how to carry on a conversation with him/her.
The idea that women are doing anything of financial value by staying home is ludicrous.
Look! I mowed the lawn! Where’s my money? Who’s paying?
Are you really equating the work of raising children with the work of raking a lawn? In your mind, is raising a child a mechanical, untrained, thoughtless, meaningless task like cleaning up your lawn? Is so, I’m not really sure what to say next.
I am worried that this belief is widespread. That would explain why we pay our childcare workers and teachers so badly in this country. And why our standards for their instruction are low. Really sad.
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Laura, you said this:
“Mothers who work do it for two reasons: either they have to for financial reasons or they have to for sanity reasons.”
Can I add a third reason? Because if it’s of high quality, daycare is good for kids.
Yes, you read it here first. I think putting my son in high quality daycare three days a week not only saved my sanity and allowed me to keep the job that I love, it actually did him a huge favor. He just adores it.
He’s learned a ton of social skills, he’s made friends and he knows all his colors, can count to 20 and can say the alphabet, with only a few omissions (he’s 2.5, and no, we’re not flashcard parents). Is that true learning? Maybe not, but he loves going to daycare. After missing two days this week due to illness, he said, ‘Mommy, I wanna go to daycare.” He missed his friends and his teachers.
There’s been some talk about how community works in all this — the days of kids playing outside in the neighborhood with varying degrees of supervision — to a certain degree, that’s kind of over. Except when it’s warmer outside (we’re in the midwest) and the other moms in the neighborhood who work part time wander by our house.
Otherwise I can hear the tumbleweeds blowing down the street some days in my neighborhood. And playdates with friends can take weeks to arrange.
But at daycare, no matter the weather, my son gets to learn how to interact with his peers three days a week, gets loving attention from teachers who reinforce every positive behavior we’re trying to encourage and gently correct the behaviors we’re not so fond of, and his mind is stimulated and challenged. And he has fun.
As for daycare promoting obesity, has anyone ever seen a collection of preschoolers sit still for more than 10 seconds?
Everyone should have access to quality daycare, and the government should subsidize it. It’s not just good for moms, it’s good for kids.
Sorry if I’ve gone on a bit, it’s just that in all these periodic flareups about daycare (alarmist studies, alarmed news stories, cultural wars, etc), it just tends to get demonized.
Excellent daycare is a great thing for kids.
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Harry, thanks for your comments to Cal! Two thumbs up.
The other night I was lamenting to my husband about the guilt and angst I experience as a working mother and how it’s not fair that I can’t afford to stay home with my young son. (Yes, I know, the world is not fair!) This most recent inner turmoil was the result of a very dear friend choosing to take on the role of stay-at-home mom–a trend that I’m reading is on the rise again.
At which point my partner in crime looked down at our son (who was laughing while playing with the dog) and said, “do you really think that he’s lacking in love and attention?” Truthfully, the answer is no. He’s a very bright and happy kid. We’ve been careful to pick out the best childcare that we can find and lucky to be able to pay for it! (Harry, we had a male co-teacher at his last pre-school who was awesome.)
However, what I’m struggling with is defining just where the scale tips. There is obviously no easy answer. We could become a one-income family, but it would mean selling our four-bedroom house and moving into a much smaller one in a questionable neighborhood. It would also mean no trips to the children’s museum or explorers into Boston or Manhattan, no van, and certainly no home internet. We would eat lots of macaroni and cheese and significantly less fresh fruits and vegetables (have you seen the prices lately? Man!) So I ask myself, are we sacrificing our child’s success for our own quality of our life? Or is my child benefiting because he is growing up in a home where he’s eating (mostly) fresh healthy food, where learning is valued, and he is exposed to as much of the world as possible. I’m desperately hoping it’s the later.
Our friend, by the way, is married to a workaholic who puts in 100 hour weeks. I agree with LisaSG who stated, “Isn’t it better if we all live balanced lives, instead of going to the extreme division of labor that Eberstadt seems to recommend? The solution is not for women to stop working; it’s for the American workplace to change. Period.”
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By the way, I in no way meant to denigrate anyone else’s choices by saying day care can be great for kids.
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don’t worry, Mo. It’s great that you and your son have worked out great daycare. And he’s happy, and you’re happy. You’ve working out a good deal with your job that allows you to be in the office for three days. It’s a job that you like. I think you should talk about it a lot. It’s a model that should be replicated. And excellent daycare should be replicated.
We’ve seen the good and the bad in daycare. One story:
My son was in at-home daycare part time for two and a half years. Juana had between four and eight other young kids in her 12X12 living room. The children were given “pow-pows” if they touched any of her breakables. When I picked up my son at noon, the other children would ask me when their parents would be coming. (Six hours later.) The kids were well fed and clean, and they had other children to play with. But they were neglected. Juana spoke no English, and the children never learned Spanish from her despite forty plus hours under her care. When I potty trained Jonah at three, she refused to let him wear underwear, because she feared an accident on her floor. This led to a blow out fight (with her teenage daughter translating), and Jonah never went back. Surprisingly, the other parents never asked me what happened.
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Cal wrote:
“Never mind the family’s immediate income. Consider the family as the lifetime income of two adults. If one of those adults drops out of the workforce, she (it’s almost always a she) has taken a severe hit in that lifetime income, her retirement, and her ability to provide for her family or herself in times of economic need.”
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But I would argue that my *husband’s* career took a hit when we decided that I would continue working part time.
He left work at 5 pm every night for 5 years. So we could all have a family dinner and he could help with the evening routine of getting ready for the next day. He stayed home with sick kids. He missed meetings due to daycare schedules. He didn’t work late.
I guarantee that none of that would have happened if I’d been home 100%
He just got a big promotion, and is working more and traveling more. If he’d had this current job when the kids were infants – I would have *had* to stay home. There’s no way we could have managed his career with me working.
I think careers take a hit when you have children. period. Mostly it’s the mother’s, yes. But often it is the father – especially when you have both parents working.
And I don’t think that dropping out of the workforce for 5-10 years is necessarily a death sentence. My mother dropped out for 10 years and came back to be a very successful computer programmer. She is still working and makes 3x what I do!
Honestly, after an exhausting day mothering young children – working at an office is a piece of cake. If I had to drop out of the rat race for a few years, I’d get back in. Sure, it might be hard to get that first job. But I’d get it, eventually. And once I was there, they’d remark, “Where in the world did she learn to do 10 things at once like that?”
When I leave work, they say “Enjoy your day off!” (I work every other day), and I turn to them and say, “This day at work, – this *was* my day off!” ( :
Anyway, my point is that logistics might very well be the deciding factor to the 1 vs. 2 careers decision. Money isn’t always the deciding factor. And keeping a healthy, happy marriage is another factor. For our particular relationship, having both people work full time or having one stay home full time woudn’t work (for a million personal reasons), so we do what we have to do to keep our current work schedule going. A career sacrifice here, a financial sacrifice there….
For other couples, having one person home is what works in their marriage. I have friends who home school and adore being home with their children. It works for them.
Will incomes suffer? maybe. But maybe not. And do we even care? When we celebrate our 50th anniversary in 40 years, (hopefully surrounded by our 6 perfect grandchildren), I’ll let you know….
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1. Cal’s lawnmowing example merits a bit more attention. Cal does get “paid” for mowing his lawn and doing other home maintenance, since if he sells his house, he will benefit financially. The social dimension of lawnmowing is that his neighbors benefit from the absence of decaying demolition derby cars on his lawn, just as society benefits if our kids grow up to be honest, law-abiding taxpayers. But there is an immense difference between childrearing and lawnmowing, because in our culture we aren’t allowed to SELL our kids.
2. Cal’s use of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s study also deserves some more scrutiny. If you’d like to play along at home, google “daycare aggression” and read the CNN story from April 19,2001. As Cal correctly points out, this study does not compare maternal care to daycare, but maternal care to other varieties of non-maternal care, including care by relatives, nannies, etc. The results were striking. “Researchers found that 17 percent of the children who were in care for more than 30 hours per week were regarded by teachers, mothers, and caregivers as being aggressive toward other children. That compared with 6 percent for the group of children in child care for less than 10 hours a week.” Children who spend over 30 hours a week in non-maternal care “scored higher on items like ‘gets in lots of fights,’ ‘cruelty,’ ‘explosive behavior,’ as well as ‘talking too much,’ ‘argues a lot,’ and ‘demands a lot of attention,'” said Jay Belsky, the main researcher for the study. 17% may not seem a lot (one in six), but each of these aggressive kids is surrounded by many potential victims, one of whom might be your child. Furthermore, common sense suggests that daycare (if analyzed separately from other forms of non-maternal care) probably generates rather worse aggression problems than care by dad, grandma, or a nanny, so the figure of 17% may actually be low for the daycare population. I would love to see a study comparing levels of aggression in daycare groups of varying size. Intuition (and playdate experience) suggest that larger groups with lower levels of adult supervision encourage greater aggression.
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My experience has been that kids are better off in a caring environment– be that parents, older siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, family friends, or ideally all of the above– than in an uncaring one. And the commercial nature of daycare is a big minus: paying someone isn’t the same level of caring.
It’s like the difference between the sense of community on a corporate campus and the sense of community in a *REAL* community (neighborhood, church, political/social organisation): the commercial, competitive, and at-will nature of a monetary relationship takes away from the nurturing and solidarity.
I’ve discovered through my own experience that the problem isn’t women stepping up to join the work force, it’s that men haven’t stepped up to take care of their kids! Someone has to pick up that thankless, grueling, all-consuming task.
I’ve been a full-time daddy for nearly 4 years now. It’s been the most difficult time of my life. It’s gotten more manageable over the years, but it’s still the hardest work I’ve ever done. And I have it relatively easy: I have only one (1) kid, she’s a girl, and my housekeeping is of the “typical disgusting slob man” variety, which means my wife takes care of the house. I used to love cooking, and still do it well, but the monotony has turned it into a chore that I dread. I’m amazed by the moms who have 2 or 3 kids, cook, and keep house too. It is eminently clear to me why 1) they resent their husbands, and 2) they have agitated for generations to get out of that role. Unsurprisingly, the overuse of meds is as rampant among them today as it was in the “Little Yellow Pill” days.
I believe that the problem is that parents (and civic participants, and teachers, and intellectuals, and a score of other social roles) are undervalued in a purely monetary, competitive, production-and-consumption-oriented economy. There are many ways to solve that problem, and I think we’ve picked the wrong one. I wish we could have found a way to highly value what moms do, rather than encouraging them to abandon that role to go play Monopoly with the boys instead. The only solution I see is for more of us gentlemen to step up and put on the damn apron ourselves. I’m sorry, someone’s gotta do it.
Another side benefit of men staying home is reducing the supply of workers out there in the competitive market, and thus driving our wives’ salaries higher. Or rather, reducing the damage done by having husbands and wives competing with each other for scarce jobs. I have to admit that the Neanderthal anti-feminists were onto something when they howled about this in the 60’s. Turns out they were right.
Today, too many people complain about how difficult it is to survive on one salary; not enough realise that having men and women compete for jobs reduces the salaries of both, and thus *requires* that both of them work in order to survive, in a kind of economic death-spiral. Women aren’t leaving the workforce anytime soon, so the only “free-market” solution I can see to this problem is for *us* to leave it instead.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s bedtime.
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Brilliant, publius.
Amy, I’m one of those people who assumes (without evidence) that lots of daycare is worse than lots of parental care, even though my reasons for wanting more parental care are not child-centered. But there is a causation issue with these kinds of study. Could the children in daycare be more aggressive because parents with aggressive children are less likely to want to stay home with them? Or because more aggressive people (who produce more aggressive children) are more likely to be materialistic (and so determined to earn money) or more likely to want to be in the workplace than at home)? I haven’t followed the link (because todays my day home with my duaghter, and I want to do things with her) but this is a standard methodological flaw. I have a little anecdotal evidence of women who self-consciously re-entered the workforce because they found they enjoyed spending less rather than more time with their uncontrollable kids.
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Yay, men!
Thanks everyone for the ongoing great discussion. Like everyone else, children care duties are calling.
How would you design a good study to look at the effects of dayccare on children?
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I have to take issue with this: “the commercial nature of daycare is a big minus: paying someone isn’t the same level of caring.”
The teacher’s at my son’s day care are loving, and he loves them. Several have cried when he’s moved on from their care. I know I’ve cried — the women who were in the infant room became very good friends.
So just it’s a commercial transaction, that doesn’t mean there’s not necessarily any love or care there. There can be. Perhaps we’re just very lucky. But I also spent a summer as a nanny once, and I loved those kids — and was being paid. The two things can coexist.
It just bugs me that people just assume that daycare is most likely a bad environment. Regarding that study on aggression — I have no doubt that too much bad daycare is bad for kids. By bad I mean, a non caring, non learning environment with too many kids and not enough teachers (all of whom are stressed out).
Yes, the fast-food version of daycare is probably bad. But there is a gourmet version. And it’s wonderful. It bugs me a lot when they’re all lumped into the same category. Is the food at Daniel the same as the food at Burger King? Which place is more likely to give you salmonella?
It doesn’t sound to me like anyone has ever proved that day care is necessarily worse than any other kind of care. How many other kids in *other* care situations are aggressive, due to bad parenting/nannying/etc?
By the way, I know 4 couples where the man stayed home for a significant period of time — one of them is still home with his daughter. And I just think that is great.
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“I have a little anecdotal evidence of women who self-consciously re-entered the workforce because they found they enjoyed spending less rather than more time with their uncontrollable kids.”
Harry,
I’m one of them, and proud to own up to it!
Seriously, I have to agree with the posters who see the good in daycare. A good preschool stimulates, educates, socializes, entertains, challenges, and supports children. I have a child who (from practically day one) has needed to be independent. Life is about proving she doesn’t need Mom. She *adores* preschool, adores her teachers, responds beautifully to the challenges they give her. She wants their help and is glad to get it. My relationship with her simply isn’t about that: she doesn’t want me showing her how to do things. Maybe it’s a matter of losing “face”; maybe she needs me for unconditional love and support, for downtime, mental health, and a moment’s peace, not instruction.
(And I’m not talking about flashcard instruction; this is a child who learned to walk, dress herself, feed herself, pick up a crayon, etc. in daycare. No way she would even try it for me until she had nailed it at preschool. This probably says something terrible about me, though my experiences with my other kids have not been the same)
Whatever the reason, I am so grateful to be able to put her in an environment where she can take instruction and enjoy the process of education, without it having to be a battle. My other children aren’t like this; they don’t seem to need to be in a structured environment outside the home as much — and they aren’t.
But it makes me question whether daycare makes children aggressive, or whether more aggressive, independent children thrive in daycare. I don’t know how you answer that question.
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“I believe that the problem is that parents (and civic participants, and teachers, and intellectuals, and a score of other social roles) are undervalued in a purely monetary, competitive, production-and-consumption-oriented economy. There are many ways to solve that problem, and I think we’ve picked the wrong one….Women aren’t leaving the workforce anytime soon, so the only ‘free-market’ solution I can see to this problem is for us to leave it instead.”
Publius, that was a fabulous post. One question though: if you think (and I think you’re right!) that trying to equalize participation in a “purely monetary, competitive, production-and-consumption-oriented economy” is the wrong way to solve the problem of childcare and gender justice, then why do you embrace a “free-market” solution in the end? Of course, maybe you’re just grabbing the most readily available rhetorical tool for making your (very important) point, but still: why conclude with an attempt to address the delimma which leaves undisturbed the reality which forces the delimma upon us? Why not go Harry’s route, as he originally put it: “discourage people from earning in general”? Attack the Hamiltonian economy itself, in other words, not just the particular (and manifestly unjust, that I don’t deny) compromises which many families feel obliged to make on the altar of our participation in such.
For what it’s worth, I know two families where the husband is the primary homemaker, and has been for years; they both seem to be doing fine.
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I love daycare. I had both my kids in high-quality daycare, I attended a Montessori pre-school and my mom attended daycare (in 1930s India!!). While I work full-time, as does my husband, neither my mom or my grandmother worked at all.
I agree with Mo. Good daycare, with friends, trained teachers, cleanliness and plenty of outdoor play isn’t something to dismiss as a worst case scenario. Some parents recognize their own limits and put their children into a place where they will thrive. Many times that place in not the home.
I also seem to recall a study of European children (either Denmark or Holland) and of Kibbutzim (sp?) which found a positive effect correlated with daycare. I’ll try and find these.
Finally, I also think it’s important to act as role models for kids WRT adult behavior. For me and my husband that means sharing responsiblity for childcare and housework and managing expectations at work. If I stayed home, I’d be sending my daughter the message that “girls shouldn’t work after they have kids” and sending my son the message “better make a lot of money because if you ever want kids you’re going to have to support your kids AND your wife”.
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Just some late night Friday thoughts. This thread is probably over, but I can’t resist.
Why is that when dads stay at home, we pat them on the back? They are hip, alternative, cool, progressive, but when women do the work, they are portrayed as backwards, simple minded, and lazy. Why the double standard?
Harry, I want to hear more about your adult-centered reasons for parents spending time with kids, as opposed to my child-centered reasons. I need to hear more, but I’m worried that framing the argument in that way leads to other problems. It could lead to the misconception that raising kids isn’t work, but self improvement. Have you seen the recent happiness survey? People rate raising their kids very poorly on the happiness scale. Got to get the link for that.
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Bloggy Stuff
I’ve come across several things lately that I think are of special note:
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Solutions to two working parent families?
How about paying living wages to one working parent?
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Laura,
just to let you know I’m still readingl and will answer your question when I have more time (really — I’ll also write about Juliet Schror’s new book then!). I ahve the same worry as you about my defence. I’d appreciate the link to the survey — I’ve read similar studies, though with slightly different questions.
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Terrific discussion. I’ll post a longer response on my blog later today and I’ve put the book on hold at my library. I did want to say that I think the NICHD study actually did look at kids’ personalities, and found the negative effects of long hours of care were concentrated among shyer kids. Which makes sense. I can try to dig up the cite if you want.
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The Day Care Debate
There’s an absolutely terrific discussion about child care going on in the comments section over at 11d.
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MG wrote, “I also seem to recall a study of European children (either Denmark or Holland) and of Kibbutzim (sp?) which found a positive effect correlated with daycare.”
However, the “Daycares Don’t Care” website contains a lot of less-than-flattering information on European day care…
It also has an interesting summary of day care in the early Israeli Kibbutzim in its History section:
http://www.daycaresdontcare.org/History/IsraelKibbutz.htm
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There’s a lot more to that huge anti-daycare website besides just history, here’s a link to more daycare info.
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yukhj
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mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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Satin Evening Gowns
Boned princess Strapless. Approximately 57\” from top of dress to hem.
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