ephemera

jaimeleighfairbrother:

jwisser:

“They’ve understood perfectly well that when you’re raising children, you don’t both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise. This is not a statement against daycare. It’s a statement about their belief in the importance of raising children properly.”

—

Iris Evans, Alberta Finance Minister, reminding me one more time why I’m happy to be out of that small minded province. (via jaimeleighfairbrother)

Really? ‘cause, uh, I have to agree with that. If you’re going to have children, man (or woman) up and take care of them. If you bring a life into this world, you’re damn well responsible for raising it properly.

So everybody working outside the home are raising their children improperly?  Really?  That’s a pretty huge fucking claim.  If you spend eight hours a day without your child you’re not raising them properly?  Really?  Should we also then keep them out of school?

The idea of a nuclear family is a very modern one—historically children were raised by a community—not by one person alone in the home.  And if working to support your kids isn’t taking care of them I’m not sure what is.

No, I don’t think I’d say that… quite. If you’re leaving your children with family members (i.e., their grandparents) or someone else who has a vested interest in seeing that they’re shown proper care—someone who you trust implicitly—I think that’s reasonable.

But if you’re turning them over to a professional daycare? No. That’s not okay. Children in daycares become a number, become one more child with a rope tied around their wrist to keep them in line. Beyond that, you’re not there to teach them to think critically, to teach them what’s right and what’s not. You’re handing all that over to a perfect stranger.

Maybe that’s okay in your eyes, but I’ll keep any children I may have at home until they start school, thanks.

P.S.—School is not the same thing as putting a three-year-old in daycare. School exists for the purpose of teaching a child. Daycare exists for parents’ convenience.

P.P.S.—Whose history? Please be precise instead of angry. In noble European households, children were often raised by tutors and the household staff; in less noble European households, they were often part of a huge extended family who all worked on a farm. Elsewhere in the world, in different societies, they were largely raised by parents, uncles, pederastic philosophers, or, as you say, the whole community. There’s no clear historic standard for raising children—except, perhaps, that they should be in the hands of those trusted implicitly by their parents.