My Plea to Parents Part 1

Love your kids. By love I mean this: Deny yourself (your comfort, standard of living, wishes, etc.) for the best interest of the child. By best interest I mean: That which will nurture your child’s developing soul, mind, and body.

If we are unwilling to deny ourselves for our children, who will we deny ourselves for? Stay at home with your kids. I know it may seem impossible to stay home, but trust me it is possible for any situation that has two parents. It all depends on how far you are willing to go to do what is best for your child. Here are a compilation of quotes demonstrating how unloving daycare is in most situations. I know that some times it is unavoidable, but it should be an extreme last resort.

'Train Up a Child'
Writing for The Daily Mail in London, Colette Douglas Home asked, “How many dog owners do you know who check their pooch into kennels during office hours? I can’t think of any. Time without number I have heard people who would love to own a dog lament their inability. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on the animal because we both work,’ they say. ‘We can’t offer a dog the attention, exercise and established routine it takes to make them a well trained pet’” (Aug. 1, 2003).
Yet, she continued, many of these same people drop their kids off at daycare facilities without hardly batting an eye. “No doubt those parents will gnash their teeth in fury at the implication that using daycare is treating an infant worse than they would a dog. I don’t apologize. If we wouldn’t do it to a dog, it is something we all need to think about.”

7 Myths of Working Mothers by Suzanne Venker, ©2004, P 106
You can't pay someone to do for a child what a parent will do for free. Even excellent child care can never do what a good parent can do.
--Urie Bronfenbrenner

P 109
Psychologists and child experts have acknowledged that even marginal care at home is better than day care. "A home must be very bad before it can be bettered by a good institution," writes renowned psychiatrist John Bowlby.

P 128
It is disturbing that we have become so used to day care...
Children do not raise themselves, and they do not "thrive" in day care. They just get used to it.

Who Needs Parents?
The Effects of Childcare and Early Education on Children in Britain and the USA, by Patricia Morgan, October 1996, p37
...when children were enrolled in daycare before their first birthday, the family made much less difference...
This was something also detected in the Bermuda studies. Early, extensive daycare may mean that parents have little power to shape their children's development; including the ability to compensate for damaging experiences of daycare.


Parenthood by Proxy,
by Dr. Laura C. Schlessinger,
© 2000, p. 83
As I faced an audience of largely younger women hostile to my ideas (Phil Donahue show, 1994), the conversation got to day care. “If you were going to wake up tomorrow morning as an infant, would you choose to be raised by a day care center… rather than by your mother?” I challenged. “If so, stand up now!”
The camera panned the audience. Nobody got up. Nobody even spoke. It was a telling silence.
Nonetheless, people lie about day care. They lie to themselves. They lie to others.

p. 100
Other-than-parent care (day-care) ought to be reserved for desperate situations…
Other-than-parent care ought not to be falsely rationalized as best for either children or parents.

Parenthood by Proxy,
Don't Have Them If You Won't Raise Them by Dr. Laura C. Schlessinger, Harper Collins publishers, New York, NY © 2000,
p. 249-250
“We got in some financial hardship, so I decided to work in a day care center, just so I could stay near my baby. It was a nightmare. Most of the children are depressed, afraid, and they do not understand time or when Mommy is coming back (or is she ever coming back). It seems like the teachers were always trying to make the kids behave and control the crowd. So there is no time for personal attention. I was in the best day care in the region…
This is not a childhood! I quit and am very happy at home…even if we…have many financial troubles.
How many people do you know who would drop a brand-new Mercedes* in a garage for all different people to drive all day long and pick it up at the end of the day?
I bet no one would do that with a (expensive) car, but with a child…?”

Early Childcare: Infants and Nations at Risk by Dr. Peter Cook, ©1996, P 50
Why day care centres seldom meet infants' needs:
Child care was invented for the convenience of adults not the needs or wishes of children. Research has consistently shown that infants of working mothers prefer their mothers to their day-care providers, so if a baby's wants are indeed much the same as its needs, it follows that babies don't need day centre care.
P129
It bears repeating that the term 'high quality' to describe child care is an adult-given label. But so far as the infant is concerned the use of these words prejudge what is requiring to be proved - that the care labeled in this ways does in fact deliver a high quality experience for the infant. If the Swedes, with their best endeavours have not been able reliably to ensure high quality experiences for their infants, then the chances for infants in countries where the expenditure and effort are less must give grounds for concern.
P163
Breastfeeding precluded
Breastfeeding is universally acknowledged to be the best way to feed babies, giving health, cognitive and other benefits. Yet (breastfeeding) is generally precluded* by early day care...
*Preclude = To put a barrier before; hence, to shut out; to hinder; to stop; to impede.

A Schoolhouse Built by Hobbes" by Bryce Christensen, page 113-115, Family Policy Review, Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2003 (The Child-Care 'Crisis' and Its Remedies)

Among the millions of young parents who daily leave their young children in day care, many quell pangs of parental guilt with the thought that such "professional" care will foster their children's cognitive development and thus give their children an educational advantage...
However...day-care researchers--and pliant journalists--carefully control what parents hear about day care and what they do not.
And parents would be deeply distressed to learn just how much day-care education impairs their children's emotional development and their ability to love, give, and share.
(Also, the) putative* intellectual advantages of day care look particularly dubious...