The Daycare Dilemma

Should your kids be put in day care?  It is a question that many sets of parents must answer in the United States.  Many people will say that abandoning your kids and putting them in someone else’s care can have negative or harmful effects on the children.  However, studies have shown that this is not true.  Many studies will say that daycare can have many positive effects on children.  So what is really the question that is being asked here?  Are we really asking about whether or not the kids should be at home or are we really asking about whether or not the mother should be at home?  In Kimmel’s text that we read in class titled “The Constructed Problems of Contemporary Family Life”, he says that the real question being asked is whether or not women should be working outside of the home.  Why is this?  We have also seen in class in the Rosie the Riveter movie that women were thought of as being workers within the home, unless something such as a war would prove otherwise.  After the war was over, women were supposed to go back to the home and work just as they were before the war.  The fact that we are still battling this issue in today’s world is baffling.  It is very common for women to work outside of the home in today’s world.  In the article that I have read on my own by Melinda Moyer, she says that “It’s impossible to predict how day care is going to affect an individual child, like, you know, your actual kid”.  Although it is impossible to know what the outcome of daycare will be for your child, we know that there are some positive and possibly some negative effects.  However, according to Moyer’s article, the negative effects such as being slightly more aggressive, are negligible and barely measurable at all.  So, in my opinion, the choice of daycare is not about the child’s health.  We all know that mothers want the best for their children, and that includes health.  But if the mother is working and is unable to be in the home to adequately care for the child, then daycare seems to be the best option.  Our world has turned this question on the children, when in reality, it is really questioning the mother’s care for the child and whether or not she feels she should not work outside of the home in order to be there for the child.

The Daycare Dilemma

Article link posted above.