By Chris Fahrendorf
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 22, 1998

Lost in the shuffle of day care

Thinking about sending your child to day care?

Maybe you should think again.

The day care issue has been very prominent recently in the national news. In an article originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, writer Kathy Boccella discussed the problems astronaut Eileen Collins is having arranging child care for her daughter. Collins is the first woman ever to command a space shuttle. Her husband is a pilot for Delta Airlines. He is out of town almost half of every week. She works 12-hour days and more when training for a flight.

The Collins' two-year-old daughter, Bridget, gets lost in the shuffle. Her average week is spent shuttling between the day care center, the nanny and various relatives.

A young girl like this needs the stable love and attention of her mother and father. "The power and importance of parents to persist, even into late adolescence," says University of Minnesota professor Michael Resnick, the lead author of a survey studying the bond between parents and their children. Eating together as a family was a great predictor of good parent-child relationships. As common sense would seem to show, both the quantity and quality of time spent together also served to strengthen these ties.

I have seen the negative effects of a lack of sufficient parental contact personally. A cute two-year-old that I know was watched by various relatives while both her parents worked. she would immediately scream and cry if she thought her mother was leaving. She rarely spoke and her fear of others was evident.

Then her mother decided to quit working to watch her three children. In only a matter of months, the same little angel has become much more outgoing. She loves working puzzles and she tries talking much more than in the past. This change in behavior can clearly be attributed to the increased contact with her mother. This does not mean that the mother is constantly catering to her children's every whim, spoiling them materially as so many parents do today. Her children feels secure knowing that their mother is present and available.

Another issue relevant to the day care issue is the problem known as "shaken-baby syndrome." The San Diego Tribune recently described this phenomena: "The inconsolable infant is swept up and shaken so violently that the fragile brain slams repeatedly against the skull like Jell-O in a bowl. The crying stops, sometimes forever."

It is notable that many of the cases in which a baby has been shaken to death involve the caregivers responsible for the children and not the child's parents. In San Diego, 53-year-old Suzanne Johnson is currently on trial for shaking a 6-month-old to death. Licensed day-care provider Manjit Kaur Basuta, herself a mother, is being tried for the death of a 13-month-old. The death of a 9-month-old boy at the hands of nanny Louise Woodward drew worldwide attention.

Who is more likely to remain patient with a screaming child who refuses to be comforted, a day-care provider or a mother? The mother might get annoyed. The father might become angry. This agitation and anger, however, is much less likely to lead to physical violence against one's flesh and blood.

A final example of the present-day risks of day care comes in the story of the Jonesboro, Arkansas tragedy. It has come to light that one of the young boys who opened fire on his elementary-school classmates, Mitchell Johnson, 13, was sexually abused by "a family member of the day care where he was placed." Surely this abuse contributed to his confused mental state. Once again, this would not have occurred had he been in the safe care of his mother and father.

Day care will continue to be a hot topic. Hillary Clinton is calling for a national dialogue on the subject. More regulation may come out of this discussion. True to form, the Clinton administration will most surely mandate the use of tax dollars to pay for working mothers to place their children in the care of strangers.

Here's an alternative idea. Maybe the government should give a tax break to families in which the mother works in the home. Make it equal to the cost of a "top quality" day-care center.

In the home with his or her mother is the ideal environment for any baby. Every child deserves to be cared for by someone who truly loves him.

Chris Fahrendorf is a junior majoring in accounting. His column,"The Bottom Line," normally appears every other Tuesday.