One important decision (maybe the most important) in raising children, in shaping a family, is "who will care for the children."
Whose needs should be met first? A (supposedly) mature, competent woman or a helpless baby? Everything changes when you consider the baby's needs first instead of "all mighty mamma."
Parents Responsibility
A good article detailing why it is so important for children to be raised by their own parents.
Daycares Don’t Care Dr Laura comments about a site I have refereed to many times in my writing. This site quotes many publications about daycare written over the last 40 years, including Dr Laura's book "Parenthood by Proxy."
I have read many of the books quoted from on this site and they quote them accurately and in context.
Please, Please Please, before you even think about putting your child in an institution,
read this site. Go to my sidebar and click "Daycare." Your child's entire future depends on it.
Honestly, go look at a prison and a daycare and tell me the difference.
“Specifically, according to the study by the SP Swedish National Testing and Research Institute, children in daycare had an increased risk of 23 percent for asthma, 75 percent for hay fever, 33 percent for wheeze, and 27 percent for food allergy. In addition, daycare children showed a 56 percent increased risk for cough, 15 percent for rhinitis, and 49 percent for eczema. The study appears in the journal Allergy.”
Reason enough alone to keep your children far away.
(Disclaimer: I believe women who find themselves single moms through no fault of their own, or because they choose the hard path of single motherhood, instead of abortion, after a moment’s indiscretion (we all goof up sometimes) are given a special grace by God for their children. He becomes the Father to the fatherless. Nothing I say here is to these single moms. It is to the typical, married, American woman who “can’t afford to stay home” but can afford houses (as opposed to tiny apartments), cars, vacations, etc. in greater than bare poverty levels, or the “single woman” who is single because her hubby wouldn’t pick up his dirty socks. These children are not fatherless and their parents have no reason to expect God to fill in the gaps they choose to leave.)
Are other people better at raising our children than we are?
“… when children are born reality hits: Who will be this child's mother?
Not surprisingly the government's answer is more bureaucrats paid by more taxpayers, trained and certified by other bureaucrats. …
… Where is the mother who has found she's too bright for the task of honing her child's mind and nurturing his heart?”
An excellent article discussing the burden placed on women today to be both a man-type executive AND a mother; an impossible task.
Can’t Beat This Argument for Moms-At-Home
Is motherhood important? That is the real question. Does it matter that a mother cares for her own children or will any ole’ person do? Does a child NEED a mommy’s love or just dry diapers and warm bottles?
Most of our society looks at a baby as an empty vessel; something that needs filling and is waiting until they are old enough for anything that happens to them to make a difference or be important. They are not really viewed as human beings with their own thoughts and opinions much less needs.
No one argues that where an eight year old child is educated (read that “spends the majority of his waking hours”) is not important. Homeschoolers say he does best at home. The biggest union in the country (National Education Association) says he has to be in a government institution in order to grow up “normal.”
No one says it doesn’t really matter.
Yet when you read parenting books and magazines it actually sounds like the authors think it doesn’t much matter where a child spends his first three years.
“It might be better for you to stay home with your baby because daycare children get sick more often but most people can’t (without lowering their standard of living, but of course they leave that part out,) and daycare kids are more independent anyway.”
Does this even make sense? The only issue is where he gets fewer sniffles?!?
A child’s personality is formed by the time they are five but where he spends the majority of his time won’t affect who he becomes? (The “independent” argument is so much none sense. No baby can learn to change his own diaper or warm his own bottle. Physical independence is impossible. They are talking about emotional independence and treating it like it was a good thing. It is not. These are the children that are mentally ill, learning disabled, angry kindergartners and become alcoholic gangsters and eventually divorcees.)
What do you think? Did God create a redundancy? Did He rob Israel of prosperity by not having the Levite women raise, errrr, babysit, everyone else’s children so moms could accomplish more? Did He mess up by making babies need to nurse so often and for so long? Why didn’t He allow Israel to invent formula or at least bottles? Are children ok spending the majority of their time- having the greatest influence in their lives- be someone who can’t get a better job than minimum wage for changing dirty diapers?
No one can do a better job with your child than the mommy God gave him.
Studies have shown that unless you are druggy, negligent, irresponsible people, your children will do better academically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually being cared for at home by someone who will be in their life forever and who actually loves them (otherwise known as parents).
God designed little kids to need their mother for physical survival until at least one if not three or so (everyone but us nurses their babies until well into toddlerhood.) This, however, requires sacrifices on the part of parents (standard of living issues) to achieve. They must be willing to live in lesser housing, drive lesser cars, wear lesser clothes, and take lesser vacations and put at least one career on hold. Some believe this is too much to ask of parents.
Now, single parents don’t have a lot of choice (and my heart bleeds for them:-(. This is the fault of the church. The Bible says it is our job to care for the widow and fatherless. We, the church, should be paying the single mom’s rent and food bill so she can raise her children according to God’s design (Hey, breastfeeding wasn’t MY idea!)
Europe obviously values this important time of motherhood much more than we do. We mandate six weeks to three months of UNPAID maternity leave and will give financial support only to extremely poor moms and then at the price of being labeled a charity case and a leach on society. European countries range from three months to three YEARS of PAID maternity leave for EVERYONE!
Now, I am very against such government “daddy” programs (this is the family and church’s job and the government has no business meddling in it), but I do believe it demonstrates a far greater valuing of mother’s importance in a child’s life. We American’s seem to think a generic, minimum wage worker is just as good as mommy; in other words, we don’t think mommies are important.
Let's Not Institutionalize 3, 4, and 5 Year Olds
It doesn't have to be this way. You afford what ever is important to you. How you spend your time and money tells what that is.
Two different posts along the same line.
http://restoringtheyears.blogspot.com/2008/01/lock-step.html (and No, it doesn't have to be that way)
http://ccostello.blogspot.com/2008/02/woman-who-has-it-all.html
This is what modern life has brought us; children raised by strangers and parents too exhausted to care.
"Rubies, Silk and Chocolate Covered Peanuts."
An exert from my book,
"What I see when I see an “independent child“ is someone who knows they can't depend on anyone else; that they must care for themselves because no one else will. I don't think that is the lesson I want my child to learn.
Though nannies and hired babysitters would have better numbers (fewer cases of mental illness and learning disabilities as well as physical illness) than daycares, they still would not be able to give a child the love and attention his own mommy would; they are still hirelings.
A child equates time with love. If they love someone they want to be with them. Period. They do not understand economics and "Fulfillment." So, in their way of thinking, if you are spending nine to 12 hours (remember to figure commute time) away from them you must not love them very much. No amount of arguing on your part will ever change that.
Instead of a child being taught at the feet of their mother, who has known him since birth; he is educated at the government schools by some one who doesn't know him from Adam and won't know him a few months from now. He is given a government regulated, factory run, one size fits all schooling. No one really cares in a school what the child thinks; only what he can regurgitate onto the test.
There was a time in this country when each child received a tailor made education designed by their parents, consisting of what their parents knew they would need in the future. This time period, 1776 to the late 1800's, had the highest literacy rate in America’s history. Why?
“But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them (the sheep), and scattereth the sheep.” (
John 10:12)
What does a stay-at-home-woman do all day?
1. The childcare you pay the sitter to do.
2. The teaching the sitter doesn’t have time to do. (Common manners, common sense, thinking skills, a work ethic, self worth, self control, discipline, etc).
3. The housework and errands that a dual job family does in the evening and on weekends.
4. The housework and errands that just don’t get done because there is no time and everyone is too tired.
5. Cook meals from scratch (cheaper and healthier!)
6. Plant a garden.
7. Minister to the community (weed the elderly neighbor’s garden, paint the invalid’s house, take them shopping, bring them food, visit the rest homes, etc. SAHW have to be careful not to get too much going though. There is so much that is not being done it is too easy to neglect your family trying to fix it all.)
8. Better yourself (Learn art, music, nursing, history, science, etc. The library is free. Use it!).
Our families need us, as women, not paychecks. And we will not regret spending time with our children when we are old. We WILL regret wasting time earning mere money."
Young moms work for free. An all to frequent occurrence.
The value of time
Today’s link is LAF
- Ladies Against Feminism. I have found many of my other links through this site. It is a site to support women in their traditional roles of wife and mother and homemaker. It is worth the time to check in here every so often to read the new stuff they post occasionally. It is refreshing to not be being told how much happier I would be running a cash register at wal-mart than caring for my own babies; to be encouraged that I am not the only one who thinks making a home is important.
Remember Paul tells women not to teach men, and Titus 2 tells older women to teach younger women to be “love their hubbys, love their children, be keepers at home.” This is a ministry. One not being done in way too many homes (even ones with stay at home moms often don’t see it as a ministry.) :-(
This is not to say I don’t see a place for women in the church leadership. Our own church has a “women’s pastor.” She is a woman responsible for shepherding the females in our church, something not appropriate for our senior pastor to do directly (The “women’s pastor” is the senior pastor’s wife.) There are other places a woman can work also. But I whole heartedly believe that the most important thing a woman can do for God is minister ato her family; show God’s love to her children and hubby by providing a little bit of heaven on earth for them. If we don’t, who will?
http://www.daycaresdontcare.org/Web/WebArticles_1997/WebArticles_1997_page_4.htm
Yep, Bo really cares about women.
