Disservice with a Smile
People often use delicate language to obfuscate harsh realities. For example, it is now common to speak of "terminating a pregnancy." In recent judicial testimony, one abortionist spoke of "separating the fetal calvarium from the fetal body" – otherwise known as cutting off the child’s head. Euphemisms are a sure sign of a pricked conscience.
Even parents who would never want their little Jacobs or Ashleys decapitated sometimes need help soothing their consciences when the kids get a little older. For instance, parents who put their children in institutionalized daycare often do so with a fair amount of guilt and anxiety.
Fortunately, the daycare centers themselves do their part to help ease the pain. Consider: When’s the last time you saw a daycare center named "Infant Warehouse"? It doesn’t happen. "Hepatitis Haven" is not a popular choice, either. Ditto for "The Romanian Orphanage." Names like that would only exacerbate parental guilt. What we see instead are reassuring names like "Gingerbread Manor," "Cheer for Kids," "Happy Hearts," and "In Grandmother’s Arms" (actual names of daycare centers here in Oklahoma). Youthemisms, we might call them.
Family historian John Sommerville has rightly suggested we need a modern-day Charles Dickens to give us a "child’s-eye view" of daycare. Picture a room with crying babies in cribs, their arms outstretched, desperate to be picked up and held. Picture downcast toddlers with vacant looks on their faces, feeling abandoned and lonely and stressed. Picture a little girl who would love to sit on the floor and play quietly with her mother, but instead is surrounded for 10 hours a day, five days a week, by a dozen or more babbling and screaming children, one of whom has a penchant for biting her on the shoulder. What would we call such a place?
"Comfort Zone," of course!
Or "Just Like Home." Or perhaps "Grammy’s," "An Angel’s Touch," or (cruelest of all) "A Mother’s Love."
A mother’s love? Here is a tiny, helpless human who wants nothing more in this world than to be close to her mother. She cries and clings every morning, yet mom pushes her into the arms of Michelle, the caregiver du jour. Of course, just when baby starts to feel secure with Michelle – poof! – Michelle suddenly, inexplicably disappears from her life forever, just as Brittney and Jennifer have done. Baby just wants to be with mommy, but mommy has important things to do, you understand, like producing actuarial schedules.
How about "Noah’s Ark Day Care"? Yes, the name has a certain charm about it, but even Noah had the good sense to take his children with him on the boat.
Some names are tinged with ironic melancholy, such as "First Step Daycare" ("That’s where I took my first step – mommy missed it, of course") or "Golden Rule Day Care" ("That’s where I learned how to do unto others; I wonder how mom and dad will feel when I put them in a nursing home").
It doesn’t matter what you name the place – the disquieting truths about daycare persist. As Brian Robertson documents in his book Day Care Deception: What the Child Care Establishment Isn’t Telling Us, "evidence has been accumulating steadily for decades" that institutionalized day care can have harmful effects on the emotional, psychological, and even physical development of youngsters.
You can sugarcoat it all you like (did I mention "Lollipop Daycare" or "Peppermint Palace"?), but the conscience is not fooled. Mothers know what they know.
"Welcome to the world of working mothers," Suzanne Venker writes in her book 7 Myths of Working Mothers. "Their guilt and stress is of their own making, and they get through their day with rationalizations." ("How bad can it be? After all, the place is called ‘Freckles ‘N Grins’!")
The late theologian R. J. Rushdoony, never one to hide behind euphemisms, observed that the concept of kindergarten caught on because of "the desire of women to get rid of their children." He called ditching your five-year-old "a polite and oblique form of infanticide." Yowch. One can only imagine what he would say of handing over your five-week-old, even to the good folks at "Giggles & Wiggles."
Even parents who would never want their little Jacobs or Ashleys decapitated sometimes need help soothing their consciences when the kids get a little older. For instance, parents who put their children in institutionalized daycare often do so with a fair amount of guilt and anxiety.
Fortunately, the daycare centers themselves do their part to help ease the pain. Consider: When’s the last time you saw a daycare center named "Infant Warehouse"? It doesn’t happen. "Hepatitis Haven" is not a popular choice, either. Ditto for "The Romanian Orphanage." Names like that would only exacerbate parental guilt. What we see instead are reassuring names like "Gingerbread Manor," "Cheer for Kids," "Happy Hearts," and "In Grandmother’s Arms" (actual names of daycare centers here in Oklahoma). Youthemisms, we might call them.
Family historian John Sommerville has rightly suggested we need a modern-day Charles Dickens to give us a "child’s-eye view" of daycare. Picture a room with crying babies in cribs, their arms outstretched, desperate to be picked up and held. Picture downcast toddlers with vacant looks on their faces, feeling abandoned and lonely and stressed. Picture a little girl who would love to sit on the floor and play quietly with her mother, but instead is surrounded for 10 hours a day, five days a week, by a dozen or more babbling and screaming children, one of whom has a penchant for biting her on the shoulder. What would we call such a place?
"Comfort Zone," of course!
Or "Just Like Home." Or perhaps "Grammy’s," "An Angel’s Touch," or (cruelest of all) "A Mother’s Love."
A mother’s love? Here is a tiny, helpless human who wants nothing more in this world than to be close to her mother. She cries and clings every morning, yet mom pushes her into the arms of Michelle, the caregiver du jour. Of course, just when baby starts to feel secure with Michelle – poof! – Michelle suddenly, inexplicably disappears from her life forever, just as Brittney and Jennifer have done. Baby just wants to be with mommy, but mommy has important things to do, you understand, like producing actuarial schedules.
How about "Noah’s Ark Day Care"? Yes, the name has a certain charm about it, but even Noah had the good sense to take his children with him on the boat.
Some names are tinged with ironic melancholy, such as "First Step Daycare" ("That’s where I took my first step – mommy missed it, of course") or "Golden Rule Day Care" ("That’s where I learned how to do unto others; I wonder how mom and dad will feel when I put them in a nursing home").
It doesn’t matter what you name the place – the disquieting truths about daycare persist. As Brian Robertson documents in his book Day Care Deception: What the Child Care Establishment Isn’t Telling Us, "evidence has been accumulating steadily for decades" that institutionalized day care can have harmful effects on the emotional, psychological, and even physical development of youngsters.You can sugarcoat it all you like (did I mention "Lollipop Daycare" or "Peppermint Palace"?), but the conscience is not fooled. Mothers know what they know.
"Welcome to the world of working mothers," Suzanne Venker writes in her book 7 Myths of Working Mothers. "Their guilt and stress is of their own making, and they get through their day with rationalizations." ("How bad can it be? After all, the place is called ‘Freckles ‘N Grins’!")
The late theologian R. J. Rushdoony, never one to hide behind euphemisms, observed that the concept of kindergarten caught on because of "the desire of women to get rid of their children." He called ditching your five-year-old "a polite and oblique form of infanticide." Yowch. One can only imagine what he would say of handing over your five-week-old, even to the good folks at "Giggles & Wiggles."
