All this to say that babies need their mothers. Something that humans across all cultures have known since the dawn of time. One thing that this article leaves out is that mothers also need their babies. The connection between mother and infant is the closest relationship that exists, and it is very detrimental to mothers to be parted from their infants for long stretches of time every day. I would be curious to see if the mother's cortisol levels were similar to those of the babies they left in daycare.
Wow, you are brave to publish this. I have been reading the tentative studies on this for years. I say tentative because you have to tiptoe around this if you want to keep your job. Everyone focuses on the increased tax revenues associated with the Quebec tax experiment (which "paid for itself plus some") but few will go down the road of asking if it was good for the kids.
Aug 13, 2023·edited Aug 13, 2023Liked by Laura Wiley Haynes
Don't forget the importance of grandparents. At one time, the 2 sets of experienced grandparents with completed parenting skills were available to assist and advise the new parents in raising a child/family. Job mobility and working parents has too often left child development in the tender hands of strangers such as child care, public schools, mass media and university with disastrous results. Undoubtedly a major force in the disfunction of so many young people today.
Wow. Thanks for writing and publishing this. I've been wondering for years, as someone who grew up (I'm 59 now) watching this way of raising children unfold, what the impacts were going to be. My most basic question (or concern really) was what would be the effect of separating children from their mothers at such early ages for anywhere from eight to ten hours a day while the kids are at their most aware and awake and curious and then uniting them for a few hours (typically rushed and a little chaotic based on the families I saw doing this) before putting them to bed. Essentially, my concern was that someone other than the mother, for whom I believe there is an attachment and bond like no other, was caring for and raising the child. I also wondered how this would affect the mother - most of her baby's 'firsts' would be seen, recognized, affirmed and celebrated by someone else (if at all).
Even 30 years ago, to voice concerns like these could get a man or even a woman howled out of the room. I haven't seen anyone willing to analyze the possible effects that a few decades of raising so many kids this way has had. Even with all the 'crises' young people seem to be having today, nobody is willing to go here and at least look at the data that's available after so many years and posit a connection, at least in part.
I lived with a tribe in West Africa. The shock of the experience that *never left my consciousness* was the deep humanity, mutual affection, and conscious embodiment I witnessed. Factors I noted were: cosleeping, extended breastfeeding, baby holding and wearing, alloparenting, deep spirituality/religion.
This begins with feminists denigrating motherhood. "Women are so much more than that" blah blah blah. Well for most women, they are now less than they were. Just a teacher. Just a data entry cog. Just a nurse. Not a mother.
Children growing up in daycare as opposed to close to their natal mothers could also be combined with single mothers to result in the instability we see today.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s. My mother tells a story of sending me to daycare. Since she was a housewife, I gather this was to get a break. In any case, she yanked me out after noticing a VERBAL DECLINE. I was already speaking in complete sentences, she says, and after two days in daycare reverted to baby talk. So it figures (this is merely anecdotal I realize) that there would be a NORM in the daycare center to which children would conform (just as they are conforming to being transgender these days). Also, the day care personnel very likely insist on CONFORMITY in this large group, rather than allowing individuality to emerge, because nurturing individuals is simply impossible when shepherding a large group of strangers. This also might explain the insistence on ideological conformity today, the temper tantrums to get their way, and the unbridled sense of entitlement as when they were at home they probably got whatever they wanted because mom was too tired to negotiate or regulate them. I'm thinking of a tempter tantrum I witnessed where the parents immediately capitulated rather than acclimating the kid to that the picture had been moved upstairs. That's all it would have taken -- hey look your picture is here -- instead they moved it immediately saying "It's just easier." These are parents whose careers come first, their children second, they just do what's "easier" and the result is an unregulated kid.
A single mother is also going to capitulate and not stand her ground as opposed to working with a partner who would push back on her spinelessness. And this could go the other way around, except that women generally are more agreeable. In the trans mess, it's much more often the father who pushes back and the mother who's zealously getting on the bandwagon.
The question is, how can feminism actually renew celebrating motherhood, which is women's unique and vital contribution to the world? There's no greater feat, if you ask me, than a well-rounded adult raised in a solid home, launched successfully, who feels supported, and whose mother was there during their formative years -- and these are the memories they carry all their lives? Even though my mother narcissistically resented motherhood, she was THERE, and she absolutely nurtured us as individuals. Each of us is given to speaking glowingly of the things she made, her humor, her fortitude. Someone said to me, as if this were a deterrent, "It's hard work." So what's your point, I asked. People shouldn't work hard?
This is great stuff, but often hard for me to read because I had the OPPOSITE experience: cared for by a loving and attentive stay-at-home mother...and then homeschooled by her with my siblings until I was 11. I have very, VERY strong reservations about homeschooling (even though there were amazing things I got to experience and wonderful, beneficial opportunities, perspectives and privileges I gleaned from it!). Interestingly, I believe my mother did this partly because her mother had a health condition that resulted in my mother being separated from her for some time right after birth. My mother was also a latchkey-kid, so that generation tends to overcorrect in favor of hands-on parenting to the point of helicopter parenting. So of course I agree that prior to toddlerhood, children need their mothers pretty much constantly, and I’m privileged to have gotten that.
But where does that lead us? We need some sort of social structure to make that happen. And children also need their fathers. There seems to be no data here about aggression, hyperactivity and criminality in boys that were in daycare, and whether they did or didn’t have dads in their lives. A conversation about women and childcare is automatically ridiculous when it doesn’t address fathers (the second voice they should have been hearing in the womb for nine months), and grandparents (the third and fourth voices they should have been hearing in the womb for nine months), because it is impossible and ridiculous to expect women to spend 100% of their time with their children for years. Like my grandma- you could get sick. Or you could get postpartum depression. Or you could just need a break. Women should be able to take their baby into work with them in ALL fields that aren’t physically dangerous, and society should accept and tolerate babies screaming, crying, and needing milk AT WORK. Society needs a reset and remembering that children come first before ALL ELSE is that reset. It also brings women up to equal status with men. You should be able to legislate, do a presentation, write emails, talk to clients with children nearby at all times. The fact that this is considered unnatural is itself unnatural. At no point in human history prior to patriarchy/civilization did anyone ask women to not hand her baby to the elders and STOP hunting and gathering, STOP exploring that riverbank with a baby on her back, STOP painting that cave wall with her baby wrapped up near her, STOP performing that religious rite with her child watching, STOP butchering and preparing that aurochs carcass while her child is nearby, STOP cleaning and sewing that hunter’s leg wound shut while her child is propped against a tree watching. The expectation that society extricate all children from men’s presences and women must cease living in order to “properly raise kids” is ridiculous, and a patriarchal ploy to keep women oppressed.
While I fully support scientific accuracy about motherhood and childrearing- I don’t support an over-correction from the mainstream sex-denialism-we’re-the-exact-same-as-men feminism to a sentimentalized, sexist woman-on-a-pedestal “the-fairer-sex” feminism. Daycare has obvious problems. I’m lucky to have not experienced those problems. But so too does this notion that “proper parenting” involves specifically AND ONLY a mother spending literally every hour of every day with her child until the child is ready to start school (well past toddlerhood). That is not healthy either.
“Being calmed by a well-regulated mother habituates the infant to the experience of calming down through slowed breathing and soothing talk.” What if your mother is a human, and not some magical angel who is “well-regulated” all the time, or for some- ever well-regulated? I support traditional child rearing, aka pre-modern, pre-patriarchal, hunter-gatherer-style child rearing where the child is raised by both the mother AND the father and grandparents and friends (aka it takes a village).
Childcare will never be healthy for mother and baby unless the mother is able to hand off the child to a variety of close and trusted family and friends when she needs a break, and when she has stopped breastfeeding and it is time to start to detach a bit from the child. The problem is that it’s all-or-nothing for women: complete separation at too early an age (developmentally-inappropriate), or stay-at-home mothering 24/7 only her with the kid until the kid starts school- or even way past that if homeschooled (developmentally-inappropriate as well). Everyone knows there’s problems with daycare- but I don’t hear any solutions.
And I’m just going to float out there a warning to the “gender-critical” response I tend to see flavoring discussions of things like daycare a lot like “I’m going to helicopter parent my child forever so they don’t become trans.” Just FYI: that style of parenting is just as psychologically and developmentally harmful as the opposite.
I'm for exploring all potential causes in the growing rates of chronic conditions. I'd be curious how this maps out across different countries with different timelines on the amount of daycare. I believe Qatar may be the most recent nation to face a dramatic spike in autism diagnosis. So that may be an interesting place to start such a comparison.
Something else I’m questioning, simply anecdotally, is whether increased drug use in this country has an effect on babies’ brains? Perhaps, and especially, with the rise in autism? (https://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/2023/07/18/marijuana-use-linked-to-epigenetic-changes/) But I suspect it’s a combination of effects: Instability of care due to the breakdown of the family, exposure to media violence at too early ages, less time outside, less free play time, less modeling and structure, less sleep, too many choices, too much focus on the externals as opposed to the internal (look v quality of character). Toss in the pandemic with two+ years of online school (and a completely digital social life) and now you have kids completely unmoored and unable to cope.
If you want to make yourself really unpopular, state publicly that daycare is bad for babies. There is so much evidence out there that this is true, but many choose to ignore it because mothers are only valued in patriarchal capitalistic systems when they are operating as employed women. Here is one man who really knew the value of that human society fundamental relationship, which is the mother/baby dyad. https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/donald-woods-winnicott
The concerns raised bear deeper analysis. Feminism unquestionable adopts the view that what’s best for the mother must be best for the child - it’s an adult, ego/centric view and dangerous to question it. Dangerous because one risks being labelled anti-women. Sadly, this closes off the discourse needed to analyze objectively. The tax burden on families plays a big role in leading to ever-more moms feeling they must “get back to paid work.” This whole topic needs to be opened for thoughtful, non hysterical discussion. Thanks for the article.
In my experience what's good for the baby is often left completely out of the equation. I teach at a community college and was asking a female coworker the other day whether she believed that if our outreach was perfect and women were encouraged to go into whatever field they wanted, if we should expect to see proportional representation in all fields. Her response was, "not in our society". She went on to say that what we really need to close equity gaps is 100% childcare, including weekends. The question of whether childcare is actually equal to the traditional alternative remained entirely unexamined. Frankly I think the reason it remains unexamined is that they wish for it to be true and the process of examining it might make it impossible for them to continue ignoring the needs of the child.
The other thing worth noting is that there are no solutions, only trade-offs. Let's say that we go with the author's closing idea of providing developmentally appropriate leave for the working mother. Even if this is paid leave it will result in the loss of work experience, which will show up on the statistical level as a "pay gap" between men and women; a man and woman who got hired at the same time for the same job likely won't make the same amount in the long run, because the woman will have less experience and will probably lag behind on the promotion ladder. This will be seen as just another example of the toxic patriarchy, when really it's just a mundane fact that people with less experience get paid less.
Aug 13, 2023·edited Aug 13, 2023Liked by Laura Wiley Haynes
Yes, extended kin groups and aunties are still common in small towns and rural areas. However for those young adults that leave and form families in cities distant from home, the value of extended kin groups is often lost to distance.
All this to say that babies need their mothers. Something that humans across all cultures have known since the dawn of time. One thing that this article leaves out is that mothers also need their babies. The connection between mother and infant is the closest relationship that exists, and it is very detrimental to mothers to be parted from their infants for long stretches of time every day. I would be curious to see if the mother's cortisol levels were similar to those of the babies they left in daycare.
Wow, you are brave to publish this. I have been reading the tentative studies on this for years. I say tentative because you have to tiptoe around this if you want to keep your job. Everyone focuses on the increased tax revenues associated with the Quebec tax experiment (which "paid for itself plus some") but few will go down the road of asking if it was good for the kids.
Don't forget the importance of grandparents. At one time, the 2 sets of experienced grandparents with completed parenting skills were available to assist and advise the new parents in raising a child/family. Job mobility and working parents has too often left child development in the tender hands of strangers such as child care, public schools, mass media and university with disastrous results. Undoubtedly a major force in the disfunction of so many young people today.
Wow. Thanks for writing and publishing this. I've been wondering for years, as someone who grew up (I'm 59 now) watching this way of raising children unfold, what the impacts were going to be. My most basic question (or concern really) was what would be the effect of separating children from their mothers at such early ages for anywhere from eight to ten hours a day while the kids are at their most aware and awake and curious and then uniting them for a few hours (typically rushed and a little chaotic based on the families I saw doing this) before putting them to bed. Essentially, my concern was that someone other than the mother, for whom I believe there is an attachment and bond like no other, was caring for and raising the child. I also wondered how this would affect the mother - most of her baby's 'firsts' would be seen, recognized, affirmed and celebrated by someone else (if at all).
Even 30 years ago, to voice concerns like these could get a man or even a woman howled out of the room. I haven't seen anyone willing to analyze the possible effects that a few decades of raising so many kids this way has had. Even with all the 'crises' young people seem to be having today, nobody is willing to go here and at least look at the data that's available after so many years and posit a connection, at least in part.
Again, thank-you.
I lived with a tribe in West Africa. The shock of the experience that *never left my consciousness* was the deep humanity, mutual affection, and conscious embodiment I witnessed. Factors I noted were: cosleeping, extended breastfeeding, baby holding and wearing, alloparenting, deep spirituality/religion.
I'm reminded of Ceaușescu and the Romanian orphanages, and all the problems so many of the children had because of them.
This begins with feminists denigrating motherhood. "Women are so much more than that" blah blah blah. Well for most women, they are now less than they were. Just a teacher. Just a data entry cog. Just a nurse. Not a mother.
Children growing up in daycare as opposed to close to their natal mothers could also be combined with single mothers to result in the instability we see today.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s. My mother tells a story of sending me to daycare. Since she was a housewife, I gather this was to get a break. In any case, she yanked me out after noticing a VERBAL DECLINE. I was already speaking in complete sentences, she says, and after two days in daycare reverted to baby talk. So it figures (this is merely anecdotal I realize) that there would be a NORM in the daycare center to which children would conform (just as they are conforming to being transgender these days). Also, the day care personnel very likely insist on CONFORMITY in this large group, rather than allowing individuality to emerge, because nurturing individuals is simply impossible when shepherding a large group of strangers. This also might explain the insistence on ideological conformity today, the temper tantrums to get their way, and the unbridled sense of entitlement as when they were at home they probably got whatever they wanted because mom was too tired to negotiate or regulate them. I'm thinking of a tempter tantrum I witnessed where the parents immediately capitulated rather than acclimating the kid to that the picture had been moved upstairs. That's all it would have taken -- hey look your picture is here -- instead they moved it immediately saying "It's just easier." These are parents whose careers come first, their children second, they just do what's "easier" and the result is an unregulated kid.
A single mother is also going to capitulate and not stand her ground as opposed to working with a partner who would push back on her spinelessness. And this could go the other way around, except that women generally are more agreeable. In the trans mess, it's much more often the father who pushes back and the mother who's zealously getting on the bandwagon.
The question is, how can feminism actually renew celebrating motherhood, which is women's unique and vital contribution to the world? There's no greater feat, if you ask me, than a well-rounded adult raised in a solid home, launched successfully, who feels supported, and whose mother was there during their formative years -- and these are the memories they carry all their lives? Even though my mother narcissistically resented motherhood, she was THERE, and she absolutely nurtured us as individuals. Each of us is given to speaking glowingly of the things she made, her humor, her fortitude. Someone said to me, as if this were a deterrent, "It's hard work." So what's your point, I asked. People shouldn't work hard?
This is great stuff, but often hard for me to read because I had the OPPOSITE experience: cared for by a loving and attentive stay-at-home mother...and then homeschooled by her with my siblings until I was 11. I have very, VERY strong reservations about homeschooling (even though there were amazing things I got to experience and wonderful, beneficial opportunities, perspectives and privileges I gleaned from it!). Interestingly, I believe my mother did this partly because her mother had a health condition that resulted in my mother being separated from her for some time right after birth. My mother was also a latchkey-kid, so that generation tends to overcorrect in favor of hands-on parenting to the point of helicopter parenting. So of course I agree that prior to toddlerhood, children need their mothers pretty much constantly, and I’m privileged to have gotten that.
But where does that lead us? We need some sort of social structure to make that happen. And children also need their fathers. There seems to be no data here about aggression, hyperactivity and criminality in boys that were in daycare, and whether they did or didn’t have dads in their lives. A conversation about women and childcare is automatically ridiculous when it doesn’t address fathers (the second voice they should have been hearing in the womb for nine months), and grandparents (the third and fourth voices they should have been hearing in the womb for nine months), because it is impossible and ridiculous to expect women to spend 100% of their time with their children for years. Like my grandma- you could get sick. Or you could get postpartum depression. Or you could just need a break. Women should be able to take their baby into work with them in ALL fields that aren’t physically dangerous, and society should accept and tolerate babies screaming, crying, and needing milk AT WORK. Society needs a reset and remembering that children come first before ALL ELSE is that reset. It also brings women up to equal status with men. You should be able to legislate, do a presentation, write emails, talk to clients with children nearby at all times. The fact that this is considered unnatural is itself unnatural. At no point in human history prior to patriarchy/civilization did anyone ask women to not hand her baby to the elders and STOP hunting and gathering, STOP exploring that riverbank with a baby on her back, STOP painting that cave wall with her baby wrapped up near her, STOP performing that religious rite with her child watching, STOP butchering and preparing that aurochs carcass while her child is nearby, STOP cleaning and sewing that hunter’s leg wound shut while her child is propped against a tree watching. The expectation that society extricate all children from men’s presences and women must cease living in order to “properly raise kids” is ridiculous, and a patriarchal ploy to keep women oppressed.
While I fully support scientific accuracy about motherhood and childrearing- I don’t support an over-correction from the mainstream sex-denialism-we’re-the-exact-same-as-men feminism to a sentimentalized, sexist woman-on-a-pedestal “the-fairer-sex” feminism. Daycare has obvious problems. I’m lucky to have not experienced those problems. But so too does this notion that “proper parenting” involves specifically AND ONLY a mother spending literally every hour of every day with her child until the child is ready to start school (well past toddlerhood). That is not healthy either.
“Being calmed by a well-regulated mother habituates the infant to the experience of calming down through slowed breathing and soothing talk.” What if your mother is a human, and not some magical angel who is “well-regulated” all the time, or for some- ever well-regulated? I support traditional child rearing, aka pre-modern, pre-patriarchal, hunter-gatherer-style child rearing where the child is raised by both the mother AND the father and grandparents and friends (aka it takes a village).
Childcare will never be healthy for mother and baby unless the mother is able to hand off the child to a variety of close and trusted family and friends when she needs a break, and when she has stopped breastfeeding and it is time to start to detach a bit from the child. The problem is that it’s all-or-nothing for women: complete separation at too early an age (developmentally-inappropriate), or stay-at-home mothering 24/7 only her with the kid until the kid starts school- or even way past that if homeschooled (developmentally-inappropriate as well). Everyone knows there’s problems with daycare- but I don’t hear any solutions.
And I’m just going to float out there a warning to the “gender-critical” response I tend to see flavoring discussions of things like daycare a lot like “I’m going to helicopter parent my child forever so they don’t become trans.” Just FYI: that style of parenting is just as psychologically and developmentally harmful as the opposite.
I'm for exploring all potential causes in the growing rates of chronic conditions. I'd be curious how this maps out across different countries with different timelines on the amount of daycare. I believe Qatar may be the most recent nation to face a dramatic spike in autism diagnosis. So that may be an interesting place to start such a comparison.
Excellent, important piece! The Australian maternal feminist Anne Manne covered very similar territory in her book Motherhood from 2005.
Something else I’m questioning, simply anecdotally, is whether increased drug use in this country has an effect on babies’ brains? Perhaps, and especially, with the rise in autism? (https://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/2023/07/18/marijuana-use-linked-to-epigenetic-changes/) But I suspect it’s a combination of effects: Instability of care due to the breakdown of the family, exposure to media violence at too early ages, less time outside, less free play time, less modeling and structure, less sleep, too many choices, too much focus on the externals as opposed to the internal (look v quality of character). Toss in the pandemic with two+ years of online school (and a completely digital social life) and now you have kids completely unmoored and unable to cope.
Thanks for publishing this. Reminded me of this piece from Mary Harrington: https://open.substack.com/pub/reactionaryfeminist/p/denying-my-existence?r=885e3&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
If you want to make yourself really unpopular, state publicly that daycare is bad for babies. There is so much evidence out there that this is true, but many choose to ignore it because mothers are only valued in patriarchal capitalistic systems when they are operating as employed women. Here is one man who really knew the value of that human society fundamental relationship, which is the mother/baby dyad. https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/donald-woods-winnicott
The concerns raised bear deeper analysis. Feminism unquestionable adopts the view that what’s best for the mother must be best for the child - it’s an adult, ego/centric view and dangerous to question it. Dangerous because one risks being labelled anti-women. Sadly, this closes off the discourse needed to analyze objectively. The tax burden on families plays a big role in leading to ever-more moms feeling they must “get back to paid work.” This whole topic needs to be opened for thoughtful, non hysterical discussion. Thanks for the article.
In my experience what's good for the baby is often left completely out of the equation. I teach at a community college and was asking a female coworker the other day whether she believed that if our outreach was perfect and women were encouraged to go into whatever field they wanted, if we should expect to see proportional representation in all fields. Her response was, "not in our society". She went on to say that what we really need to close equity gaps is 100% childcare, including weekends. The question of whether childcare is actually equal to the traditional alternative remained entirely unexamined. Frankly I think the reason it remains unexamined is that they wish for it to be true and the process of examining it might make it impossible for them to continue ignoring the needs of the child.
The other thing worth noting is that there are no solutions, only trade-offs. Let's say that we go with the author's closing idea of providing developmentally appropriate leave for the working mother. Even if this is paid leave it will result in the loss of work experience, which will show up on the statistical level as a "pay gap" between men and women; a man and woman who got hired at the same time for the same job likely won't make the same amount in the long run, because the woman will have less experience and will probably lag behind on the promotion ladder. This will be seen as just another example of the toxic patriarchy, when really it's just a mundane fact that people with less experience get paid less.
Yes, extended kin groups and aunties are still common in small towns and rural areas. However for those young adults that leave and form families in cities distant from home, the value of extended kin groups is often lost to distance.