Accepting the Existing Reality
"...Both mothers and fathers of young children are experiencing significant stress and loss of productivity when high quality care for infants is not available and affordable, and when staying at home to care for an infant is not economically feasible, inadequate care poses risks to the current well-being and future development of infants, toddlers, and their families, on whose productivity the country depends..."
Excerpt from "Consensus on Infant-Toddler Daycare" published by the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs.EditorZero to Three
National Center for Clinical Infant Programs
733 15th Street N. W., Suite 912
Washington, DC 20005 U.S.A.
To The Editor
What a giant step forward to have some DAYCARE DIALOGUE in Zero to Three. For too long it has been construed as treason to discuss the potential hazards of substitute care for infants and toddlers. For too long, too many infant mental health clinicians have been unwilling to pay the price for saying what they see or fear.
Your press release -- "Consensus on Infant-Toddler Daycare bemoans the "loss of productivity" when parents have to look after their toddlers themselves. Producing what? Why do you accept without question a definition of productivity that excludes or jeopardizes so important an endeavour as giving an infant the healthiest possible start in life?
You say that "staying at home to care for an infant and toddler" may not be economically feasible. Why do you accept without question this "reality" for parents in one of the richest countries in the world? What is so striking is the degree of acceptance accorded "the way it is" -- "reality". No mention of how it should be, or could be for infants and toddlers. No hint of indictment of societal values that make it so bad for kids -- the fundamental inequalities forced on women, and unbridled consumerism to mention only two.
How is it that clinicians who can be bold in the treatment of disturbed infants and their families, those who can see daily how the sickness of society finds its inevitable counterpart in the sickness of the child, cannot be brought to deal with society boldly -- or even to indict it clearly?
Whether history will judge infant mental health clinicians as the real Quislings in America for their audible silence about societal values that adversely affect infants and toddlers, remains an interesting open question.
Yours very truly,
E.T.Barker M.D., D.Psych., F.R.C.P.(C)
President, Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
Zero to Three is a bulletin published by the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs (733 15th Street, N.W., Suite 912, Washington, DC, 20005). Daycare Dialogue was a special section of the bulletin set aside for debate over the dangers of daycare. It began after the publication of Jay Belsky's article The Dangers of Daycare in the September 1986 issue. The National Centre for Clinical Infant Programs is, as its name implies, an organization for clinicians treating damaged infants and toddlers.