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From: cs1@oddjob.UUCP (Cheryl Stewart)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Who's watching the kids?
Message-ID: <868@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Jul-85 12:14:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: oddjob.868
Posted: Tue Jul 23 12:14:25 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 06:03:42 EDT
References: <385@boulder.UUCP> <199@dcdwest.UUCP>
Reply-To: cs1@oddjob.UUCP (Cheryl Stewart)
Distribution: net
Organization: U. Chicago, Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lines: 39
Summary: 


Good news:  no rhetoric today, just a simple observation.

One argument in favor of day care which I have found goes over
really well with grandparents, in-laws and other republicans is 
the following:

Once upon a time, families stayed together in the same town or
county for many generations.  One of the functions of the local
extended family was the care of the younger children.  Aunts and
Grandmothers too old to garden or weave would watch the children
while the young mothers tended to chores.  This arrangement was
far healthier than the current nuclear family arrangement which
can leave young mothers stranded in a suburban wasteland with 
the screaming, colicky brats -- no escape, few chores, and no
extended family to help out (she dutifully followed her husband
to wherever he got the best job, right?).  Day care, if properly
done, performs the task that the extended family once performed.
In the absence of a local extended family, day care is not just
a nice thing for the little lady who wants her little job, or
a social program for the bad lady who has to work because she 
couldn't keep her husband -- it is a phenomenon which answers a
real need of even the most traditional nuclear family, a need 
which was once filled by the extended family, and which now must
be filled by community organizations, because few people live in
the same town as their parents, siblings and cousins.  

Why does this argument work so well?  Because it appeals directly
to the importance of the family in support of day care.  This 
cuts the heart out of any anti-day care argument which attempts to
claim that day care is anti-family.  And just the use of the phrase
"community organization"  can make even the weirdest longhair sound
like a John Bircher.  

Oh, well.  I guess it is rhetoric.  The trick is to sound like
Phyllis Schlafly while building a case in favor of the ERA, to 
appeal to conservative principles in support of liberal policies.

--