Daycare Info

• Romancing the Mom
• A Critical Review of Daycare for Under 3s
• Considering Day Care or Child Care?
• Some Problems with Daycare for Under 3's
• Can Yuppies Bear Children?
• Social Forces Creating the Demand for Daycare
• Green Party of Ontario Childcare Policy
• Green Party of Canada Childcare Policy

• The Forgotten Sides of Daycare
  (A 48 page booklet)

  Cover Pages - pdf

  Inside Pages - pdf

• Early Childcare - Infants and Nations at Risk (Link to Peter Cook's Book)

• OTHER CSPCC WEBSITES

• Empathic Parenting
• Consumerism
• Online Parenting Course

  The Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
  Box 700, 362 Midland Avenue,
  Midland, Ontario, Canada,
  L4R 4P4
  Email:
  
  
  
  Fax: 705-526-0214
  Phone: 705-526-5647
  Charitable Donation Number 11921 9962 RR0001

• Social Forces Creating the
• Demand for Daycare
• Other Social Forces

• Five Major Industries
• Romancing the Mom
• Consumerism, Arbitrary Male Dominance and Daycare
• Another Warning
• Accepting the Existing Reality
• Overreliance on Social Science for Proof
• The Problem of Professional Anxiety
• Cruelty and Kindness: A New Look at Aggression and Altruism
• Well Connected Politicians, Bureaucrats and Lobbyists
• Is This A Culture We Can Afford to be Complacent About?
• What Keeps Us From Trying
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Well Connected Politicians, Bureaucrats and Lobbyists

There's a big difference between parents who have formed a strong attachment to their babies, and parents who have not. Attachment (love), as those who are able to experience it appreciate, is a very irrational and powerful thing. Someone has even gone so far as to define love as "the extent to which we are willing to be inconvenienced". Love makes you happy to do a lot of things with and for the person with whom you are in love. What is so important about parents falling in love with their baby (becoming attached), is that the hard work of looking after their child feels much less like hard work, or an imposition, or an unjustified intrusion into their lives.

For parents who aren't attached, caring for their baby tends to be felt as mostly work and duty. For this reason unattached parents often fall back on quick-fix formulas to be good parents -- like hugging (even when it's not wanted or reciprocated), and repeated "I love yous" (when actions speak differently). Unattached parents are often strong believers in fashionable rationalizations (unconscious excuses) to legitimize delegation of the "work" of nurturing their babies: "We need two salaries just to keep up" (in one of the wealthiest countries of the world!) or, "All the baby needs is some quality time each day" or, "I'm burned out" or, "I'm not happy staying at home to look after my baby, so it's better for my baby to be looked after by someone else" or, "The trained experts at a daycare centre can provide my baby with a more stimulating environment" or, "My baby needs the opportunity to socialize with other children." And all the other 'reasons' to get someone else to do what they feel is the unreasonable "work" of looking after a baby with whom they haven't fallen in love.

We should recognize and accept the fact that there are people who, because of their own seriously inadequate nurturing as infants and toddlers, simply cannot easily fall in love with babies. Such people should be encouraged and admired when they decide not to have children.

More importantly, such affectively handicapped persons, often capable of achieving high status and much power in our consumption addicted, patriarchal society, should be encouraged and admired when they declare themselves ill-qualified to influence childcare policy.

May the day come soon when all those shaping legislation affecting childcare have a background of strong attachment to both their parents and their children.

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