tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post2186055323972235307..comments2024-02-05T05:15:04.759-08:00Comments on Wandering Scientist: This Should Make You Feel Better about Day CareCloudhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09317847285050447789noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post-37969467457392836332011-06-08T06:52:21.304-07:002011-06-08T06:52:21.304-07:00Wow, Dana- I think there is a lot that we're g...Wow, Dana- I think there is a lot that we're going to have to agree to disagree about. But briefly:<br /><br />- I don't consider the wonderful teachers at my daughters' day care "strangers". Some of them have become friends, and come to the kids' birthday parties, etc. There is one teacher who moved away who still sends us Christmas cards. But so what if they aren't like family? They do a great job, and both of my girls love day care.<br /><br />- I don't think I'm handing my daughters to day care to "raise". Mu husband and I are raising our daughters. Day care is just helping care for them part of the time. They spend more time with us than with day care. <br /><br />- I consider the day care providers to be in essentially the same culture as I am. They sing the same nursery rhymes and annoying kids' songs. We chose our day care carefully to ensure that we agreed with the values they teach. SOME of the teachers are of Mexican descent, and they teach some Spanish. I think that is great.<br /><br />Nowhere in my post did I say that my way of raising my kids was "best". It is just best for us, and I posted about a book that counters some of the common criticisms I hear about it. Your way is best for you, and there is no need to get all judgmental about the decisions other people make.Cloudhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09317847285050447789noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post-40338249530742857112011-06-07T22:30:50.637-07:002011-06-07T22:30:50.637-07:00This is great but you're missing one detail: ...This is great but you're missing one detail: Hunter-gatherer bands were families, first and foremost. Or small groups of 3 or 4 families, maybe. But definitely a group where everybody knew everybody else.<br /><br />You don't get that type of experience now unless you live in a small town. Even then you won't know everybody. I've heard that the upper tolerance limit for number of people you know actively in your day-to-day life is about 150. In my parents' hometown the population is somewhere between 1000 and 1500. No way do they all know one another extremely well.<br /><br />So, as often as not, we find ourselves in a situation where we are handing our children off to strangers. That is NOT a normal evolutionary experience.<br /><br />It matters because the evolution of our brain size means that most of what we learn about being human must come through culture, because if we were born with our brains fully developed, we'd kill our mothers coming out. Great for population control, not so great for maternal-child relationships. But to preserve the integrity of a culture, it must be people from within that culture who raise the children. If the children are taken by strangers and raised in some other culture, by definition they have been made into completely different people. They no longer, strictly speaking, belong to their people of origin. For instance, a Japanese family that emigrates to the United States and raises children here will witness their children becoming American (or some version thereof) and no longer being Japanese except in terms of physical appearance. Their Japanese-ness will go away because they're not being raised in Japan and are not steeped in its history and traditions.<br /><br />For Americans, being English and being French and being German disappeared the same way.<br /><br />I have enough trouble maintaining what cultural integrity I might have ever had. If I hand my daughter off to someone else to raise, even for eight hours a day, that is going to take her away from my life the way I was removed from my family's. (Dad was in the Navy and divorced my mom and remarried, and when he got custody of me I effectively lost my extended family. I'm Cajun, so that kind of mattered.) The worst part is it's not even going to be people she can count on seeing, being friends with and being around for the rest of her life, as she would have been able to expect in a tribe. Daycare and school are just taking care of her to get a paycheck, and after she's gone she'll be lucky if any of them remember her.<br /><br />We need to start thinking about what heritage we are passing down to our children when we make these kinds of decisions. And let's please compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges while we are doing so.<br /><br />And no, none of this means I'm xenophobic in the sense that I don't believe any other culture should exist besides my own. But in the sense that I don't want to adopt the culture of every random stranger who passes by me, I guess I sort of am. But that's a kind of xenophobia that allowed different cultures to develop in the first place and become distinct from one another. And there is nothing wrong with that. I bet you go around telling people you respect diversity. Maybe you better think about what that means--it does NOT mean people of rainbow hues all practicing the same culture.Dana Seilhanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11749354913843954242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post-15151334255430825052011-04-23T08:18:13.271-07:002011-04-23T08:18:13.271-07:00Our Babies, Ourselves also summarizes research on ...Our Babies, Ourselves also summarizes research on this topic.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post-37920709172874899202010-05-29T06:04:34.895-07:002010-05-29T06:04:34.895-07:00I don't know whether you are still interested ...I don't know whether you are still interested in updating this post, but here is a great resource, a pdf about 64 scientists who are also mothers.<br />(Or google mothers in science 64 ways to have it all)<br />royalsociety.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=11086<br /><br />Another example is Kate Kirby, executive officer of APS and formerly at Harvard Smithsonian who has 4 kids.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post-12757088638487698152010-02-26T12:55:57.322-08:002010-02-26T12:55:57.322-08:00I imagine (not having read the book) that in those...I imagine (not having read the book) that in those flexible child-care arrangements of long ago, though, women probably saw their children a lot more throughout the day: that it was more like a very large playgroup where mothers could come and go, trusting their children to be watched when they went off for a while.<br /><br />That's my major beef with childcare. (No judging; my son's in daycare full-time right now.) You don't get to see your kid during the day and, if you're nursing, it's an enormous struggle to keep your supply going.<br /><br />I do agree we're evolving more flexible arrangements to support two-income families, and I hope that we'll get closer and closer to that sort of arrangement. I work from home part-time and that does allow me a lot more flexibility: part-time care, mother's helpers for when children are younger (that's what I'm doing with my daughter now), etc. I hope this will become the norm some day.L.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post-80006930212077918662010-01-27T13:25:18.308-08:002010-01-27T13:25:18.308-08:00Very cool. Thank you for sending me this link.
O...Very cool. Thank you for sending me this link. <br /><br />One thing I loved about living in my hubby's small Italian village (pop. 1,500) is old people and crazy people could be "autonomous" in the sense they didn't need to be institutionalized. The village looked out for them. <br /><br />There was this one young guy who was loopy and on meds, but completely harmless. He could be free wandering around town with his routine and he wasn't a danger to himself or others. He was connected and not isolated, which I think would have worsened his depressive problems. He could have regular interaction with normal, supportive people. <br /><br />One day when he freaked out on the street (started tearing off his clothes), people came to his aid and assisted him. They called the right people and docs. <br /><br />Individuals like him and older people with mental problems would be doomed in the city, the US suburbs or any other "modern" living in a bubble community. <br /><br />The bad side (for me as an American used to privacy) was everyone knew your business and if they didn't they'd inquire, pry, spy and speculate. <br /><br />One funny example: I went to the outdoor market one day to buy a large plastic laundry tub to use as a bidet because our small house didn't have one. As I was carrying it home across the crowded piazza a lady stopped me and asked very loudly what I was buying the tub for, "Are you gonna use it to rinse your bits?!" <br /><br />My look of shock and horror told her and every other person watching us it was true. Nothing is sacred. Not even hygiene methods ;)Geeks in Romehttp://www.geeksinrome.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post-40688211203568293402009-07-21T21:29:19.740-07:002009-07-21T21:29:19.740-07:00I'm just surprised that Science had reviews of...I'm just surprised that Science had reviews of books re: parenting. Cool.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15212690454989568626noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post-84785579174217663132009-07-15T10:23:53.124-07:002009-07-15T10:23:53.124-07:00Loved this post — thanks.Loved this post — thanks.Juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08044616990895305984noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29235839.post-80532406359160616712009-07-09T19:03:41.797-07:002009-07-09T19:03:41.797-07:00Fascinating. Thanks for writing up what the articl...Fascinating. Thanks for writing up what the articles (and books) were about. I can see the US and Britain could get around the government support due to the societal approval of working women, the trend to equal partners and work places being more and more flexible about the needs of working mothers and fathers (including flexible schedules, part time work, working from home, extended maternity leave, paternity leave, time and places to pump, etc.).<br /><br />I've often said that if it takes a village to raise children, then why can't daycare providers and nannies be considered part of that village? It's nice to hear someone else say it! :-) <br /><br />Also, when you wrote "might explain the origin of some human interaction behaviors (such as our ability to theorize about the intentions of others)" that made me think about the post and comments on Ask Moxie the other day when everyone talked about the comments from strangers. I suppose if we are programmed through thousands of years of evolution to feel the need to participate in raising all the children around us, no wonder strangers feel the need to comment on how others are parenting. It also explains the phenomenon of why people smile at and seem to love pregnant women and young children and parents of young children.caramamahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02327695885346537321noreply@blogger.com