|
Book |
Quote/Comment |
Ships Without A Shore: America's Undernurtured Children by Anne
Pierce,
©2008, p. 50
|
Thus, the interest
groups which, for various reasons, wanted federally funded and guided day
care, knew they needed the public perception of a crisis in order to achieve
it and the press willingly fulfilled that need.
…Opponents of national day care legislation were portrayed by the press as
enemies of both children and progress. Reporters precluded the question of
whether day care is harmful to children by keeping the question of when
government would “solve the crisis” in the forefront, and then by
transfiguring those who questioned their proposed “solution” into
mean-spirited reactionaries.
Category = Politics |
|
Ships Without A Shore: America's Undernurtured Children by Anne
Pierce,
©2008, p.
52 |
The political precedent of
treating day care as the method of child care preferred by parents and as
the best solution to the child-rearing problems of society as a whole
continued on after ABC*. With this rationale, the…administration proposed a
(multi) billion program of new spending and tax breaks to subsidize day
care. In an unusual journalistic move, a January, 1998 edition of the Wall
Street Journal criticized the administration’s use of misconception to
advocate and fund the program:
…the multibillion-dollar child-care industry have a specific
idea in mind when they talk about “quality care.” They don’t mean finding
better baby-sitting in the home, or even, heaven forbid, staying home one’s
self with a lonely child from time to time. No, they envision building great
numbers of brightly lit centers where child experts stimulate infant brains
by waving flash cards before their cribs.
With billions (of dollars) to offer, it’s likely that parents, politicians,
academics, trainers and corporations will take the money and run.
*Act for Better Childcare
Category = Politics |
|
Ships Without A Shore: America's Undernurtured Children by Anne
Pierce,
©2008, p.
52-53 |
Overall, the press
was tremendously supportive of the (proposed) day care policy.
…we did not hear about the many reputable studies
and mountains of evidence which show a negative correlation between day
care, even “high quality” day care, and just about ever essential aspect of
a child’s development.
Category = Politics |
|
Ships Without A Shore: America's Undernurtured Children by Anne
Pierce,
©2008, p.
53 |
Focus upon the slogan “quality care”
combined with inadequate attention to what actually goes on in day care
centers and to the actual results of day care studies distorts our vision.
Most of us have never been inside a day care center. We therefore have
little recourse from the imagistic* slogans with which we are presented.
*Imagistic = relating to a movement in poetry advocating free verse and the
expression of ideas and emotions through clear precise images.
Category =
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Ships Without A Shore: America's Undernurtured Children by Anne
Pierce,
©2008, p.
53 |
The use of labels is highly effective.
One congressional staffer confided that congress people are “scared to
death” to oppose day care legislation. “They’re afraid of being labeled
anti-woman in their campaigns.”
Category = Politics |
|
Ships Without A Shore: America's Undernurtured Children by Anne
Pierce,
©2008, p.
54-55 |
Many academic researchers…have been
unwilling to inspire a thoughtful and thorough discussion of children’s
issues.
…those who did not fit the (day care) ideology often suffered the
consequences.
For example, Otto Weininger, one of Canada’s premier psychologists, was for
many years unable to publish in any professional journal a watershed work on
the effects of day care.
…Some academicians have actually suggested that any information leading to
negative conclusions about non-maternal care be suppressed. Cummings and
Beagle-Ross argued that the issue of whether day care is good or bad for
infants is “useless from a social policy perspective…
Category = Politics |
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Ships Without A Shore: America's Undernurtured Children by Anne
Pierce,
©2008, p.
55 |
In an article entitled “Abandoning
Research on Consequences of Non-maternal Care: A Disservice to the Science,”
Dr. Hojat criticizes a similar article by Louis Silverstein suggesting that
“psychologist must refuse to undertake any more research that looks for the
negative consequences of other-than-mother care” and must “interrupt” all
research in which the hypothesis of risk factors associated with
non-maternal care is being tested.
Category = Politics |
|
Ships Without A Shore: America's Undernurtured Children by Anne
Pierce,
©2008, p.
56 |
Hopeful signs of unbiased research are
still outweighed by slanted reporting and repression or distortion of
findings. There is a reason Landesman Ramey, in a publicly reported
statement regarding the large-scale NIH study showing a link between day
care and poor behavior of which she was a co-author, commented: “I have
accused the study authors of doing everything they could to make this
negative finding go away, but they couldn’t do it. They knew this would be
disturbing news for parents, but at some point, if that’s what you’re
finding, then you have to report it.
Category = Politics |
