I am not an expert but isn't that just the kind of dogmatic viewpoint which the article suggests has little value.
You may believe day-care for two year-olds is fundamentally wrong, but there's little empirical evidence to show that children raised in different ways have different outcomes.
At least you should indicate why you believe those millions are being raised wrongly, rather than merely assert it as fact.
Empirical evidence can't decide on moral issues. To complicate matters further most moral stuff can't be explained very well. For example, 'murder is wrong' is an uncontroversial moral fact which is both unfalsifiable and hard to explain.
In simple everyday terms I'd say small children need love and attention like a plant needs water. They can't get these reliably at day care. But most of us already know this.
You have already elided from fundamentally wrong to not as good as. So this is moving in the right direction.
I would ask you to take the next step with me. Please acknowledge, the points below can be true sometimes:
- Some Day Care will offer more love and attention than some parents
- Some children who attend poor quality day-care as two year-olds will grow to become just as mature or balanced as most of their their stay-at-home peers.
All I wanted to do is to show that this situation is more nuanced than "fundamentally wrong".
I am afraid I don't subscribe to your morality. At best, it puts the perfect in the way of the good. For many parents, at some point, day-care is surely the best choice available to them and we should not be quick to judge them as bad parents for doing so.
No, that's what I'm arguing against. Parenting manuals are arguing minutiae while children are increasingly being brought up by strangers who don't love them. Of course there are exceptions. So what?
So then we have move to a discussion about each child's circumstances on its own merits, rather trying to make one size fit all. And I would argue that this is what parents are already doing in their millions. If so many parents are deciding that their kids' best option is day-care I believe this must be correct in the majority of cases.
I'm not arguing that one-size-fits-all; there are many legitimate parenting styles. The books argue about these, and the article is right, we shouldn't worry. But daycare just isn't one of them, as I've explained. It's the opposite of parenting.
>I believe this must be correct in the majority of cases.
'At least you should indicate why you believe those millions are being raised [rightly] rather than merely assert it as fact.'
> Empirical evidence can't decide on moral issues.
It can, depending on whether the moral question is one of fundamental axioms or applications of axioms to objective conditions. That is, if you take as a moral axiom that it is wrong to raise children in ways which cause certain harms, empirically showing day care does not cause those harms would answer whether (under that rule, at least) day care was morally wrong.
OTOH, if you take “day care is morally wrong” as itself axiomatic, it's true that empirical evidence has no role.
> In simple everyday terms I'd say small children need love and attention like a plant needs water. They can't get these reliably at day care.
The first sentence is very loosely true (empirically, even); in the sense in which it is true, however, the second is not in the general sense (that is, it is not true that there is no way care choice for which it is true), though it may be in a naive sense (if one assumes that all parents have I'd a binary choice between day care and Monday care, and then the children are blindly sent to something meeting the definition of “day care” if that option is chosen.)
Good people already know that daycare is bad, even those who use it, even though they can't explain. So yeah, it's axiomatic.
>however, the second is not in the general sense
Au contraire, it's a perfectly true general statement that children can't get love and attention at daycare. From minimum wage, high-turnover staff looking after a large number of kids in a bureaucratically-controlled environment? No way.
Actually I guess most people wouldn't want or expect employees to love their charges anyhow. It would likely be construed as 'inappropriate', as when a teacher hugs a pupil.
Good lord, are you wrong. Just no. Good people investigate daycares and send their kids to a good one, rather than spreading harmful lies on the internet.
A bad daycare is bad, a good daycare is good. Do your homework as a parent. It's possible you live in an area where there are no good daycares, but you need to understand that your situation is not universal. But instead of just badmouthing people who are making responsible choices for their children, you could also help create a market for better daycares, you could join the parent committee for the daycare to help improve it, or petition the government to better regulate or fund daycares.
Maybe you need to try a bit harder to find a better daycare.
Small children need love and attention, but they also need social interaction. They can get both at a daycare. And a daycare doesn't have to mean they never see their parents again. I consider 3 days of daycare and parents each working 4 days to be a perfect balance, and I notice a lot of parents doing exactly that. Although different people may have different situations and needs and find a different balance. But the benefits of daycare shouldn't be too lightly dismissed.
'Uncontroversial statement' if they prefer. I'd be happy to nitpick with them provided they aren't murdering people or sending their babies to preschool.
> while often getting fundamentals wrong, e.g. there are millions of two year olds in day care.
You suggest there's something wrong with that, but I'm at a loss as to what it could be. Of course two year olds go to day care. Do you want to deny them their social development? I recommend starting daycare around 6 months.
I'm personally really happy with our arrangement: I work 4 days, my wife works 4 days, and 3 days of daycare. We get to spend plenty of time with the kids, but we also have a (practically) full-time job and the kids get lots of time to play with other kids.
I'd be more worried if millions of two year olds were not going to daycare.
You may believe day-care for two year-olds is fundamentally wrong, but there's little empirical evidence to show that children raised in different ways have different outcomes.
At least you should indicate why you believe those millions are being raised wrongly, rather than merely assert it as fact.