Day Care

I saw a sign out in front of a local day care the other day. It said, "You see messes, we see Michaelangelo." The next day it read, 'You hear noise, we hear Mozart." Cute, right? Well, perhaps I'm just in one of those funks where everything, no matter now innocent, seems to rub me the wrong way. But it was like a slap in the face to me - here I am, being a stay-at-home parent, working my butt off to make ends meet and manage a household while providing my children with a perfect childhood full of love, adventure, educationally stimulating experiences and opportunities, etc, only to be told that parents don't know how to appreciate their children's talents, but a bunch of minimum-wage daycare workers are going to be better at raising, appreciating and nurturing my kids than I am? Give me a break! I'm sure that if I were a parent who needed to use a Day Care for whatever reason, I would want to find one whose staff loved and appreciated my child as much as I do, as if that were possible. But the notion that a Day care could do a better job than a parent can is ludicrous. To imply so is more offensive to me than comforting.

This may be an irrational belief in this day and age, but I believe that if you don't want to raise a child, you should not have a child in the first place. If you would rather have a career than parent a child, then do so by all means, but don't have a child as casually as one might adopt a pet, or because you want to have someone's picture on your Christmas card. A child is a responsibility; parenting IS a full-time job. If one parent or the other is not willing to sacrifice career for a decade or so, maybe it's not time to breed just yet. And I don't even want to hear that you will raise your child while working from home. What will your child be doing while you work? Watching TV? Children pretty much require 99% of your attention, 99% of the time.

To back up a bit, I'm not talking about the parents who have to work because their spouse died, they got divorced, became disabled, etc. But I do mean the parents who claim they can't get by on one income. My parents told me to go to college and major in something that would provide me with a secure job and benefits, BEFORE taking on the responsibility of having children. Didn't everyone's parents teach them this? If you can't get by one one income, perhaps you or your spouse should go back to school or move forward with whatever career ambition it is that you have, BEFORE adding a dependant child to the mix. Or, what about the parents who only need that second income to support their 3000 square foot home and their 2 new car payments and their fancy vacations, kids' private school tuition, or hockey dues, or whatever? Kids don't need all that stuff - but they do need parents to guide them and instill their values apon them. But wait, they did instill their values on them - the value that material possessions are more important than time spent with them. What message does this send children?

For those who claim that they got pregnant and had a child before they planned to and thus were not financially ready to be a parent, see my other blog on birth control...