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MOTHERING IS CRUCIAL TO CHILD DEVELOPMENT
The Liberal government's decision to establish
a national day care plan costing billions of dollars, gained
momentum with a report released on October 25, 2004, by the
Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), which chastised Canada for its child care system.
The report stated that child care in Canada is a "fragmented,
money-wasting patchwork of programs that provides babysitting
for working parents, but disregards … global research
that shows educating preschool minds provides lifelong dividends."
In short, it accuses Canada of languishing in its duty to
provide the expensive single option for child care - a government-operated
day care system. Day care advocates and lobbyists in Canada
were ecstatic with this shot in the arm for their cause, which,
if implemented, would result in increased salaries for them,
as well as a permanent government job with benefits, rather
than their having to rely on the sometimes unreliable private
system for work and recognition.
The OECD's report ignored, however, the fact
that parents want options to child care, not forcing all children
into one-size-fits-all government-operated programs.
As stated by the National Post in its editorial
on October 26, 2004
… the OECD seems irked by the lack
of government involvement in the lives of Canadian children.
This reflects the now-fashionable view among elites that
the job of raising children should be taken as much as possible
out of the hands of mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents,
neighbours and friends, and transferred to government regulated
and subsidized professionals with graduate degrees in early
childhood education.
The editorial further stated:
Instinctive, loving interactions between
parents and their children are the best way to ensure healthy
mental and physical childhood outcomes. These are things
that cannot be taught at a teachers' college. … Parents
should have a wide range of options in regard to their children's
care and education. Our priority should be to preserve existing
options - whether provided by the free market or social
networks - not to shut infants into one-size-fits-all programs.
It's not that the world hasn't experienced
the disaster that a national day care system can bring to
a nation. The Soviet Union, under communism, required all
mothers to join the paid workforce with all children placed
in state-operated child care. The USSR became a dysfunctional
society for many reasons as evidenced by its high rate of
crime, alcoholism, divorce, abortions, extremely low birth
rate, etc. One of the reasons for this tragic dysfunction
was cited by former Soviet Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, in
his book Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and
the World (1987), in which he claimed the dysfunction
was due, in part, to the separation of children from their
mothers in their early years, by placing them in the state-operated
child care facilities. This, he claimed, was a major contributing
factor for the breakdown of Russian society.
It is true that parents in Canada would not
be forced to put their children in the proposed government-operated
child care system, but the increased taxation resulting from
the establishment of this system will make homecare for children
a diminishing option for parents.
A National Day Care System is Outdated
Recent scientific research has made clear
that a national child care plan is an out-of-date concept,
reminiscent of the 1960s, but not suitable for the 21st century.
It is a strange coincidence that the Prime
Minister, Paul Martin, is promising billions of dollars for
a government-operated child care system, at this time when
science is making stunning advances in knowledge about the
intellectual and emotional development of children. These
advances indicate that the growth of the child's brain does
not happen automatically, but rather according to the degree
of stimulation that the child receives during its main growth
phase: the first six years of its life. This explains why
gifts and aptitudes so often "run in families:"
musicians' children are better at music, trapeze artists'
children have a gift for the trapeze, and children who are
taught to ride or ski at a very early age do it better than
others. Small children exposed to many languages learn them
all and do not confuse them. The reason is that the brain
adapts to the demands of the stimulation and axons and synapses
are produced to respond to it.
But there is more. Much more important than
a child's skills -- in fact vital to the child - is the development
of the limbic system in the brain, which is that part which
controls moods and attitudes and governs the sense of self,
including emotions, self-control and a host of elements of
the balanced and happy individual. The limbic system lies
near the center of the brain. We now know, considering its
size - about that of a walnut - that it is power-packed with
functions, all of which are critical for human behaviour and
survival.
We have also learned that this part of the
brain develops in response to stimulation. And that stimulation
is, in fact, the love and caresses of a child's mother from
the moment of birth. The main development of the limbic system
takes place in the first four years and is an absolutely fascinating
subject.
This has been discovered only during the past
several years, when studies converged with psychological resources
and neurological research. A remarkable interdisciplinary
work on these two streams of developmental research has been
done by Dr. Allan Schore, who has collected the most significant
new data involving the human brain and human emotions, in
an important work entitled "Affect Regulation and the
Origin of the Self" published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
Inc. New Jersey.
The review of the marvellous discoveries synthesized
by Dr. Schore in his book was presented at the World Congress
of Families III held in Mexico City last March, by Madame
Christine de Vollmer, founder of the Latin American Alliance
for the Family, Caracas, Venezuela. Mme. De Vollmer stated:
Just to give you a glimpse into this
extraordinary new field, I will mention the importance of
those hours that mothers gaze at their babies. It is now
determined that a detectable energy flows from the mother's
brain through her eyes, into the baby's eyes and stimulates
the baby's brain. The stimulation inherent in this "transaction"
as they call it, causes neuro-chemical reactions, involving
secretions similar to endorphins, which as well as causing
growth of the cortico-limbic lobes, are very pleasurable!
The baby loves the feeling and responds, with looks and
soon with smiles. Bonding takes place and the eyes of each
are imprinted on each other's brain. A result of this process
is that the mother learns to know exactly how much stimulation
to give and the studies indicate that there is an uncanny
understanding on the part of the mothers to know just how
much to stimulate and when to calm. The tactile stimulation
of her kisses, cooing and caresses stimulate cortico-limbic
growth, also. As the baby grows, the mother continues to
require ---with a sure sense---an increasing level of responses,
which the baby loves to grow into. The bonding, and the
mutual understanding of how much, how long and so on, seem
to be somehow connected to all that mutual gazing from birth.
Science now tells us without a shadow
of a doubt, that mothers, in constant contact with their
babies, are actually forming the baby's brain … particularly
in the right hemispheric orbitofrontal cortex … those
cortico-limbic lobes and intricate connections which will
determine his or her emotional well-being and sense of self
for the remainder of earthly existence. She does this with
her eyes, her voice, her reactions. It is a transfer, if
you will, of creative energy---of love-- from her brain
to the baby's brain through their senses, mainly their eyes.
When we see the extensive studies since
1990 so brilliantly collected by Dr. Schore, it becomes
obvious that the age-old fascination with motherhood has
not been misplaced. It is not new. What is new is to know
that it is brain growth, not just fun. The second discovery,
and rather alarming, is that it cannot be achieved by part-time
caregivers. These caregivers can attend most excellently
to the bodily needs of the child, but not this early brain
growth. (Emphasis ours.)
Science has also learned that if this
stimulation is not given, and the cortico-limbic lobes are
not produced, the individual will grow up seriously deficient
in all those areas of self that make him or her able to
interact with others in an appropriate way. It was recently
disclosed that the author of the Columbine massacre had
spent many years in Day Care. This young man suffers from
a cortical disability as identifiable as one who suffers
from lack of development of the vision center or whose mobility
is impaired by damage to the mid brain. And we all remember
those tragic PET scans of the orphans of Bucharest, whose
brains were in large part inactive, where no stimulation
had been given.
So, part of our new paradigm of development
must certainly be to listen to the latest in Neurology and
to allow and facilitate mothers to be with their children
during those first 6 years. We must grow children with healthy
emotional systems.
It is a tragedy for Canada that we are ignoring
this vital new information. Already 71% of Canadian mothers
are in the paid workforce (second only to Sweden at 76%),
not because many necessarily want to be there, but because
they have to be there for their families' financial survival.
Heavy taxation, which will only increase under Mr. Martin's
expansive plans for a universal child care system, will not
be helpful to the emotional growth of our future citizens
since it will drive even more mothers into the paid workforce.
Scientific knowledge on human development has taken a back
seat to the socialist approach that the government can fix
everything.
Government's Current Initiatives to Establish
a National Day Care System
The federal Social Development Minister, Ken
Dryden, an enthusiastic supporter of a national day care program,
met in Ottawa on November 1, with the provincial social service
ministers, with a government-operated child care system at
the top of the agenda. It should be noted, by the way, that
since the names "child care or day care system"
have acquired such an often deservedly bad name in Canada,
it has now been renamed, at the urging of feminist organizations
and child care advocates, "Early Childhood Education"
programs. Don't be fooled, it is the same thing, only under
a more euphemistic title.
Who is Pushing for a National Day Care
Plan?
It is significant that the push for a national
day care program comes not from parents but rather from two
organizations that have the most to gain from such a program.
They are:
- Child Care Lobby Groups
The
Women's Program, Secretary of State, has funded over the
years, to the tune of millions of dollars, Child Care Advocacy
associations to push for this program. The child care advocates
have the most to gain as they will then receive guaranteed
financial security for life by being placed on the government's
payroll with secure income and benefits.
- Unions
Canadian unions
have experienced a major decline in membership, reaching
a low of 30% in 2003, continuing this long-term trend. Consequently
unions are looking for new sources of membership. This is
why the unions are lobbying so hard for a national day care
plan. They anticipate the plan will provide a vast, growing
army of unionized day care workers across the country, which
is what they want. In this regard, it should be noted that
the constantly-expanding costs of child care in Quebec are
driven almost entirely by union demands for salaries for
unionized day care workers. In the past three years, day
care workers' wages in Quebec have risen by 40%.
We cannot allow a national government-operated
child care to be installed in Canada. We can't afford it financially,
but more importantly, we can't afford it for the sake of our
children.
i Allan N. Schore, 1994, Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Inc. Publishers, 365 Broadway, Hillsdale, New
Jersey, 07642
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