-Caveat Lector-
Daycare Bombshell Hits The "Village"
May 2, 2001 by: Phyllis Schlafly
The advocates of "it take a village to raise a child" are having a rough
month. They are scurrying around trying to come up with arguments to
refute the new study showing that children who spend most of their time
in daycare are three times as likely to exhibit behavior problems in
kindergarten as those who are cared for primarily by their mothers.
Children who spend more than 30 hours a week in daycare were found
to be more demanding, more noncompliant, and more aggressive. They
scored higher on things like gets in lots of fights, cruelty, bullying,
meanness, talking too much, and making demands that must be met
immediately.
The study found a direct correlation between time spent in daycare and a
child's aggression, defiance and disobedience. The findings held true
regardless of the type or quality of daycare, the sex of the child, the
family's socioeconomic status, or the quality of the mother care.
Why is anybody surprised that social science research is confirming
reality? True science always verifies reality; it's only junk science that
manufactures illusions based on ideologies.
The new study followed more than 1,100 children in ten cities in every
kind of daycare setting, from care with relatives and nannies to preschool
and large daycare centers. The study was financed by the National
Institute on Child Health and Human Development, a branch of the
National Institutes of Health that produced a daycare-friendly report in
1996.
The "village" advocates are swarming all over the media with their feeble
rebuttals. They argue, without evidence, that better quality daycare might
produce different results, that the real problem is that employed parents
are tired and stressed, and that the study hasn't undergone rigorous peer
review.
Of course, there are other variables, including viewing television, the
divorce of parents, and the amount of father care. But this new study is
the most comprehensive to date and its findings are by significant
margins.
The new study corroborates the 1986 findings of one of its principal
investigators, Dr. Jay Belsky, who shocked the child development world
with an article entitled "Infant Day Care: A Cause for Concern?" Belsky
reported on the evidence then piling up that infants who spent long hours
in daycare were at risk of behavioral problems later.
At that time, the daycare industry and the "village" advocates in the child
development field were preparing to launch a national advertising
campaign for federally funded, federally regulated daycare as a new
middle-class entitlement. They felt threatened by this article by Belsky,
then just a young associate professor at Pennsylvania State University.
So, the daycare industry lowered the professional boom on the upstart
professor who dared to challenge the then prevailing feminist notion that
commercial daycare was what infants really needed so that their mothers
could be fulfilling themselves in the labor force. The word went out: don't
buy Belsky's textbook, shun him at professional meetings, label him a
misogynist.
The reason the daycare issue arouses such bitter antagonism is not only
that it challenges the liberals who want to expand government social
services by having the "village" take over raising children. The daycare
issue also strikes at the heart of feminist ideology that it is oppression of
women for society to expect mothers to care for their own children.
Feminist ideology teaches that equality for women depends on the
government relieving women of the burden of child care so they can be
advancing in the labor force. Any evidence that shows commercial
daycare inferior to mother care, therefore, must be destroyed and the
messengers vilified.
Remarkably, Belsky didn't kowtow to the Politically Correct gestapo as
so many academics have done. He is now a professor at the University
of London and this time he was joined in his research by some of the
country's most respected child development experts.
In 1988, the daycare industry, with lobbying help and media access from
the Children's Defense Fund, went ahead with its lavish national
advertising campaign, proclaiming the lack of sufficient daycare a
national "crisis," and offering the ABC Child Care Bill sponsored by
Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) as the solution. Their three-year
congressional and media battle failed; the American people are not
willing to provide tax-paid baby-sitters for other people's children.
Hillary Clinton made another attempt to peddle the notion of a daycare
"crisis" as her "frontier issue" in 1997. She hosted an exclusive shindig
at the White House featuring all the usual suspects of those who want the
"village" to raise children, such as her friend Marian Wright Edelman of
the Children's Defense Fund, but the American people turned a deaf ear
to her cries of "crisis."
The conservative solution to child care needs has always been tax
credits, i.e., let the parents spend their own money for the child care of
their choice, and don't force mothers taking care of their own children to
subsidize babysitters for employed moms. Fortunately, we've made
some progress in legislating child credits into the income tax code.
Phyllis Schlafly column 5-02-01
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Read this column online:
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2001/may01/01-05-02.shtml
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