Raising children and daycare
 

Mike, I've heard you mention this before and Arch is quoting you. Can you share your information with us?

It's definitely counterintuitive from what I've heard and believed for years.

It seems everything I ever hear from the mental health profession reinforces the idea that early childhood development and bonding with both mother and father is essential to a mentally healthy person. And it seems to be the more bonding the better, not just a minimum standard that needs to be met.

I've never read a news story that showed daycare children did better than with a stay at home mom, but I have seen several that claimed the opposite.

Purely from an anecdotal standpoint, my wife spent a lot of her childhood in daycare and hated it and that was a major driver in her desire to be a stay at home mom once we could swing it financially (although it was very tough financially at first). I realize that's a sample size of one, so FWIW.

Like much else in life it depends on the "day care." I like Montessori, though not the pretenders (it's not a copyrighted term nor is there a patent on the system). Do you need everything boiled down to you in a neat little generailization? I've seen some preschools that deliver more to a child than even the best of mothers could; of course, even the best preschools can't supplant a competent mother. Mother and father and "day care" need to work in tandem. I've seen some mother's I'd less rather have raising their kids than any licensed "day care."

The problems with day cares at their worst are identical to the evils of putting small children in front of the TV (electronic baby sitter). Do you do that?

Personally, I'd rather my kids have a happy and highly intelligent and educated mother. This often entails the mother working outside the home.

Those who condemn mothers working outside the home are caught in a mid-twentieth century time capsule in a relatively microscopic geographic location. Why none of this should be intuitively obviouse to you is beyond me. But hey, I could say that about a lot of stuff.

SU lecturing me on how to raise my kids. This is rich.

Well there is a rule and there are the exceptions to it. If you're going to address people generally, like in a GENERAL CONFERENCE, you should be concerning yourself with the rule, rather than the exceptions to it.

If I'm an oddsmaker, I'm going with a stay at home mom over daycare. After a billion trials or so, I'll come out ahead.

Zowey ... I guess we could call such a statement enlightenment and not the least bit offensive

lol

To bad your kids will never be able to benefit from their "highly intelligent and educated mother" because she is never at home to teach them. So hopefully in your case they have a "highly intelligent and educated nanny"

I didn't listen to the story. Maybe I'll listen from home tonight. I would think there is mountains of research on this kind of stuff. Any other studies?

I'm afraid this issue might be too emotionally charged for us to discuss. I can see why it's so tough for the church. Everyone was either daycared or not. Everyone either puts their kids in daycare or not. It's such a huge issue because everyone loves their kids and no one wants to feel like they're blowing it or have someone tell them that. We feel immediately condemned before the discussion can even start.

He says, completely oblivious of the irony in his statement.