Putting Parents Back In Charge 
By Robert Maynard

As many on our readers are aware, the Vermont House has already passed its version of a Pre-K education bill: H.534. The bill starts out on the right foot by acknowledging:

1)  The first five years of a child's life are crucial to a child’s development.

(2)  The family plays the most important role in the life of a young child.  Families have the primary responsibility and right to nurture and provide for the early childhood development and education of their children.

It also is correct when it notes that:

(3)  Approximately 70 percent of Vermont parents are employed in the workforce.  At least 70 percent of Vermont’s three- and four-year-old children are in "out of the home" child care for up to 50 hours per week, while their parents work to provide for the family’s needs.

From there it goes on to assert that "The broader community has a vested interest in assuring that all children and families have access to the care and support needed for the growth and development of children."

Finally, the bill makes that claim that:

5)  A child’s growth and development occur best in integrated environments.  Early nurture and development opportunities are best provided in locations that are convenient to families and minimize transitions for children.

(6)  The provision of early care and pre-kindergarten education through high-quality private providers is one of the most crucial elements supporting the strength and stability of the system serving young children.

So, in a masterful slight of hand, they go from acknowledging that "Families have the primary responsibility and right to nurture and provide for the early childhood development and education of their children", to claiming that the solution to the problem is "The provision of early care and pre-kindergarten education through high-quality private providers". (How long those providers will remain "private" once the government gets involved is a question we should all be asking) What is wrong with this picture?

First of all let us turn to the Child Care Fund of Vermont’s own study from October 1^st 2001 entitled "Perceptions of Early Child care and Education of Young Children in Vermont". One of the study’s major conclusions was:

"Deeply ingrained in the hearts of all respondents is the feeling that very young children are best cared for by their parents, because parents are most in tune with their individual needs. It is believed that young children should be spending most of their time with their parents and then with extended family members. Thus, paid child care is viewed as a compromise."

The study further notes that:

"The reality is that child care providers are often spending more time with these young children than the parents do. Parents feel they have less influence over their children, especially in passing on their own values, and they are missing out on a vital period of their growth and development. As a result, they feel anxious, frustrated, and guilty…"

We should take notice of two points here. First, "the provision of early care and pre-kindergarten education through high-quality private providers" is FAR from being "one of the most crucial elements supporting the strength and stability of the system serving young children", in fact, it is viewed as a compromise. Secondly, if the bill acknowledges that "Families have the primary responsibility and right to nurture and provide for the early childhood development and education of their children", why are their concerns not being addressed. Not only does this bill fail to address the core concerns of parents and families, it moves in a direction that is guaranteed to further aggravate the situation.

The study by Child Care Fund of Vermont is not alone in noting that children are better off when cared for by their parents. A recent 16-year study financed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has found that children that spend a lot of time in day care, apart from their parents, have developed behavior problems. This was noted in this site’s last edition in an article entitled "Pre-K schooling worth not proven" by Jerry Oppenheimer. A more detailed look at this from can be seen from another report.

A report from THE COMMISSION ON CHILDREN AT RISK makes the claim that humans are biologically hardwired to make connections to a transcendent source of moral meaning and to "Authoritative Communities" that transmit that sense of moral meaning. The Commission is a group of 33 children’s doctors, research scientists, and mental health and youth service professionals. Their mission is to investigate empirically the social, moral, and spiritual foundations of child well-being, evaluate the degree to which current practice and policy in the U.S. recognize those foundations, and make recommendations for the future. The Commission is an independent, jointly sponsored initiative of YMCA of the USA, Dartmouth Medical School, and the Institute for American Values. The commission’s principal investigator is Dr. Kathleen Kovner Kline of Dartmouth Medical School.

The title of the report is "Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities" and a summary of the report can be seen at: http://www.josh.org/download/HARDWIRED_TO_CONNECT.pdf

The report claims that a breakdown of connections to a transcendent source of moral meaning and purpose and to the authoritative communities that transmit such meaning is at the heart of the deteriorating mental and behavioral health of U.S. children. They cite such factors as rising rates of depression, anxiety, attention deficit, conduct disorders, thoughts of suicide, and other serious mental, emotional, and behavioral problems among U.S. children and adolescents.

The key to both types of connections is the bonding that takes place between parents and children. This bonding is absolutely crucial to a child’s future development. This is further empathized by Dr. Stanley Greenspan, a distinguished child psychiatrist, and Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, a distinguished pediatrician in their book "The Irreducible Needs of Children: What Every Child Must Have to Grow, Learn, and Flourish". Their conclusion is quite interesting.

"We do not recommend full-time day care, 30 or more of care hours [per week] by nonparents, for infants and toddlers if the parents are able to provide high quality care themselves and if parents have reasonable options"

As H.534 notes "At least 70 percent of Vermont’s three- and four-year-old children are in "out of the home" child care for up to 50 hours per week, while their parents work to provide for the family’s needs". This is a problem that Child Care Fund of Vermont’s report clearly indicates has parents worried. They have every reason to be concerned about such issues as having less influence over their children, especially in passing on their own values. The connection to parents and the values they pass along is the cornerstone of child development. The state pays lip service to recognizing the parent’s primary role and responsibility in raising children, but does everything in its power to usurp that role in deference to its own utopian agenda. Instead of trying to find ways to empower parents and give them the primary role in the education and raising of their own children, our political leaders are heading us down a course that will take even more influence away from the parents as they come up with a taxpayer supported scheme to further increase the already too high amount of time that children spend away from their parents with child care providers.

We need to radically change course and go in a direction that will put parents back in charge of educating and raising their own children. An obvious first step is to introduce parental control and open market competition into our education system. Another approach is to keep more resources in their hands so that at least one parent could stay home with their children if they so choose. (Contrary to what some may think, a large number would choose that route if it was financially feasible) This would mean less of our tax dollars going to government to fund utopian schemes that do little more than usurp the proper role of parents and thus cause more problems that the government in turn taxes us yet even more in an effort to fix. Beyond keeping our tax resource base at home with those who earn it, we need to pursue a general policy of economic growth. Economic growth would mean higher paying jobs so that more families could get by with just one parent working. In conclusion, our political class needs to ditch its anti business, class warfare approach that makes successful wealth producers avoid this state like the plague, but it also needs to stop taxing away our future on utopian schemes that usurp the role of parents.

Robert Maynard is an Editor of TrueNorthradio.com