Research Paper by: Bryan Harrison
Subject: Women's Liberation, Childcare, Working Mothers, Children

Families Pay the Price for Women’s Liberation
Works Cited

    In the days of "Leave It To Beaver," a popular television show from the fifties, women had a place in society. "Society operated on the assumption that women would carry out certain indispensable functions such as child rearing and household care, and the entire process of living reinforced the assumption" (Chafe). According to Alfred Lord Tennyson, women are merely objects that are lesser forms of life than men.

        Man for the field and Women for the hearth:
        Man for the sword and for the needle she:
        Man with the head and woman with the heart:
        Man to command and Women to obey;
        All else confusion (Morgan 33).

    In Tennyson’s time, commonality promoted male domination. Men were thought to have more brains and strength. Cato the Elder had a different view of women. Cato did his best to warn his fellow men about being overtaken by women. "Suffer women once to arrive at an equality with you, and they will from that moment become your superiors" (Morgan 32). Sometimes thought of as humorous advice, Cato’s words were true. Women did take over when they could. First, the issue was the right to vote. As time went on and as women’s rights activists got more powerful, the fight was for equal opportunity in the work place. Women, have indeed discovered their power and found that they are not just the brain-dead objects they were thought to be. Now, women are our mayors, bosses, supervisors, professors, and leaders.

    Even though women have gained their power, leadership, and political standpoint, the movement has caused more than we realize. Children are growing up in the daycare by people who do not have time, or the compassion, to provide the love and direction that kids would get from a parent. Women are out earning money while their children are being thrown back and forth between the home and the daycare. "Seemingly, when their children need them most, millions of mothers are deserting the cradle to rock the labor force" (Reische). With no consistent parent to depend on, or go to for questions and comfort, children have found their own ways to entertain themselves and keep busy.

    Where did the women go? The majority of the absent mothers are found toiling away in the work force, earning more money so their families can be better off financially. Seventy-nine percent of these working mothers put their child in a place other than home when they go to work (Pharos). Such a large percentage of children is growing up with strange people. Some women just want to get out of the house. Many mothers can’t stand to be "trapped in the house with their kids". What kind of mother would admit to that? Although these neglectful mothers seem to think it normal to want to get away from the "screaming and yelling" by throwing their kids in a daycare, they should be ashamed of themselves. Women should be more responsible about their decision to have children. The same goes for men.

    "I want my Mommy!" Cries a child of two. "I’m sorry dear. Mommy is at work. She’ll be back at about six o’clock." Replies the daycare provider who is currently held up with four other two-year-olds. "But I want Mommy now!" The child repeats, tears running down her face. The woman is fed up: "Stop it! Your Mommy left you here because she has chosen to be a capitalist rather than a mother. And so have I." Devastating, is it not? How can someone have the audacity to leave their children with someone they have never conversed with for more than an hour? Who raises kids nowadays?

    When parents don’t do the most they can in terms of educating their children, education often comes from the wrong places. Even though total educational control is impossible, children can be helped by their parents to get the right facts when they need them. When little is done by the parents, other sources come into action. Peer influence is very powerful in giving children common misconceptions. "Evidence indicates that susceptibility to group influence is higher among children from homes in which one or both parents are frequently absent" (Howe 140). Children converse mostly amongst themselves, therefore, they get information that is absolutely erroneous. Daycares do a large percentage of this work as well. Many of these out-of-home institutions are not concerned with the intellectuality of their patrons. Education is sometimes ignored completely by nurseries and daycares. Today, more and more parents rely on the television to be responsible for child rearing. "Although television could, if used creatively, enrich the activities of children and families, it now only undermines them" (Howe 142). All too often are children left at the television watching whatever pleases them. Whether caught up in a movie left on by the parent or a Disney video, I’m sure children can find something more constructive.

    Think before you have kids. The process of procreation should be one of extreme importance and consideration. When a couple chooses to have children, they also choose to give up their time, and in some cases, their career in order to nurture the child to the best of their ability. "The care of children is a profession in itself - the noblest and most important of all human work, and not to be lightly undertaken and bunglingly struggled through by every female who can bear young" (Kraditor). When considering having children, certain factors exist that cannot be disregarded. Financial status is a very large factor in the choice to have children. If you lack the finances to feed a child, you should either improve your situation, or forget about having children. Money should also be plentiful enough so that only one parent should have to work while the other tends to the child. The most important factor in deciding to procreate is your purpose of having a child. Why do people have kids? Many couples decide to have kids mainly because, "Everybody else is doing it." Reasons such as this are causes of very bad mistakes. The ability of having children rests on the feelings, maturity, status, and decision of the parents, not what everybody else is doing. People are very susceptible to peer pressure at all ages. If all of your friends purchased yo-yos, would you not also purchase one to fit in? The same principle applies to everything, even children. If I found out that my parents had me to gain status in a social group, I would shun them and loose all respect for them. I would consider myself a mistake! When all factors are considered in this respect, the result is usually a happy family.

    Visible effects arise when there is a problem with one's family. Harmful problems such as unordinary behavior can develop when one is subject to being raised by people other than one’s parents. When thrown back and forth from place to place (from home to the daycare and back) every day, children often feel large amounts of stress. The child’s stress is usually given off in fits and tantrums. "Effects of distress can stay with children throughout their whole lives, therefore care is very important when introducing young children to strange circumstances" (Peredo). If one parent is devoted to raising the child, many of these harmful effects could easily be avoided. In my experience, I have personally witnessed a child reject her true mother, and refer to the daycare provider as mother. The child cries when her mother comes to pick her up because her favorite toys are at the daycare. She also cries because she is saying goodbye to the person who spends the majority of the day with her. A week or two later, the daycare provider finally got the child to refer to her true mother as mother. Now, the child cries when she is dropped off as well as when she is picked up. When children go through extreme stress twice a day, a parent should consider the well-being of the child. The psychological damage that occurs from such incidents is not forgotten easily. Harsh repercussions often develop later on in children’s lives when they realize what their parents did to them in their youth.

    Benefits are large and numerous when a child is supplied with one parent at all times. When both parents are present, even more benefits are seen. Unlike daycare providers, education is always on the parents’ minds. Everything the child goes through is explained to them, if possible. If a child can be with a parent at all times, the child forms a relationship with this parent. You could say that a deep friendship is present. As we know, friends trust each other and depend on each other. A good friendship is what is needed if a parent wishes to gain the child’s respect. "When a child trusts, has respect for, and depends on his or her parent, the child will follow the teachings of this parent. The child grows up to be like the parent" (Wilson). Along with the good child-parent relationship that is caused by togetherness, other benefits come from a present parent. With all of the inappropriate material in media such as television and the internet, a present parent can make sure that the child is not exposed to material that they disapprove of. The parent decides what the child can watch and cannot watch. Because this lack of supervision exists so often, the government has intervened with microchips for television sets and child protection software. Measures such as these should not be necessary. If parents don’t have time to spend with their children, then how can the government expect parents to set up all this equipment. The children will figure out how to operate the software before the parents.

    How bad off are we? Modern day activities can give us a clue to the answer to this question. Today’s children are sometimes engaged in completely different and intolerable activities in the view of the older generation. The reason behind this is the fact that younger people have been exposed to more terror and destruction when they are children. Kids grow up with the worst around the corner. Younger people are being brought up in a society where pestilence is an everyday issue. The effect of this is extreme desensitization. Young people, when faced with divorce, domestic violence, murder, and such atrocities, are able to dismiss them and put them in the past because bad stuff is an everyday occurrence. "Killing people doesn’t have the effect that it used to" (Flesch).

    If the parents today would use common sense and logic in child rearing, fewer problems would remain. Although many factors contributed to the degradation for the American family, the root of the problem lies in upbringing, which many women abandoned.