Stop Trusting Day Care to Do What Only Parents Can



By Jim Brown and Jenni Parker

An author and former university professor of economics says there is no such thing as a single parent.

Dr. Jennifer Morse, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, says when individuals talk about a single parent, what they really mean is an unmarried parent. Morse believes that no one can raise a child completely by himself or herself.

Pointing out that most so-called “single” parents have the help of an employer to provide income and the help of a daycare to provide child care, Morse says the difference between a “single” mother and a married mother is only in the nature of their relationship with their helpers.

“The difference between the unmarried parent and the married parent is that these two people who are helping the so-called single mother take care of her child are commercial relationships &#0151 businesses that have no personal, individual relationship with the mother. They don't have any commitment to her and have no particular reason to care how she and her child are actually faring,” she says.

Morse says since single mothers are dependent on their employers and daycare providers, they are not really any more free or independent than a married stay-at-home mom would be. In fact, the researcher often tries to point out the fact that people are never as independent as some would like to believe.

Dr. Morse is the author of Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work. In that book, the author notes that the human race could not survive beyond a single generation if every person truly acted as if he were unconnected to any other person. But she is critical of the tendency of many modern parents to ignore the all-important issues of relational connectivity with their own children.

The former university economics professor says when unmarried parents or married parents who both work outside the home search for a professionally run daycare to provide their child-care needs, they fail to realize that those needs can and should be met at home.

Morse finds it somewhat hypocritical when some parents voice concerns about daycare's child-adult ratio, which is regulated carefully by most states, but still choose that option over the home situation, where the parent-child ratio can allow a parent &#0151 who has a relational bond with the child rather than a financial one &#0151 to concentrate on giving children the attention they need and deserve.

“The fact of the matter is that most families have far fewer children than the average day-care center,” Morse says, “so it's kind of crazy if you think you're going to have one or two children so you can give them lots of individual, personal attention, and then you go and pop them off into a daycare, which has far more kids in it than any family would ever have,” she says.

Morse feels this reasoning is “a little bit contradictory,” and yet she says that is what a lot of modern parents end up doing &#0151 allowing day care centers to address children's needs that could be better met at home.

(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)

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