Dear Adele,

I think I’m on the verge of being able to tell the truth–that is, how I feel–about daycare. When your brother was an infant, I thought I was clear on the whole idea of bringing children to daycare full time, but I wasn’t. I do feel the same way about the lack of support parents have in caring for their children. But I was at that time worried about how I sounded (and I still am), about whether I was supporting women and mothers and parents in my answer, and now that I have two children, a 3 month old (that’s you, Petunia), and a nearly 3 year old, and now that I’ve read more and seen more places that care for our children, I feel differently about parents involvement in this U.S. daycare system than I did a few years ago. (When adults change their minds after getting more information, Adele, or when they can say that they were worried about what their peers might think of them if they explained how they really felt about something but now they were going to simply be honest–well, this is called character. This is called building your character. This is called coming to know who you are. And it’s a damn good thing to do, even though it can be uncomfortable and embarrassing, especially for girls. I think some people would say that being truly honest about anything is somewhat impossible. But we can try. We can share our thoughts as they develop and mature.)

Going to several day care centers with your father and your brother the other day, while you were sleeping in your carseat (could you do that more often, by the way?), I was quite upset. There was only one place that had what I thought was a reasonable child/teacher ratio (6 to 1); our state only mandates 12 to 1. The place we decided on, because for obvious reasons the first one was full, has a ratio of 8 to 1. And I don’t like that. I don’t like that because I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but when your brother hollers through the house or comes to find me and your father or asks us to build a train track with him or work on a puzzle with him or sit at the table with him or read him a book or help him with his airplane or when we have two friends over brings the drum into the middle of the room and bangs on it (and all this need for attention is despite of the fact that we dote on him, all the time–we smile and wrestle and talk and take walks and go to the park and bake cookies and swing and kick a ball in the backyard), toddlers and children need a lot of attention. Maria Montessori was right in her theories, sure, but they still need a reliable, positive, adult presence and attention nearly all the time. And even though I like the day care we’ve decided to take your brother to–they’re very nice, positive, attentive, caring–I’m not happy about it. Some of this unhappiness is because I’m attached to him. But some of this is because I’m unhappy with the state of child care in this country for “ordinary” working people who have to put their children in day care full time. The state of child care in this country is shit, Adele, and the state of child care in this country demonstrates how little adults really care about children–about their own children, in some cases, but more accurately, the giant community of children in this country.

A general standard of living for an entire country that requires parents to work full time and place their infants and toddlers in full time day care centers is ridiculous. Re-read the previous sentence. Read it again. (Replace the word “parents” with “single mothers.” Now consider how single mother make up a huge percentage of parents who need child care and how they don’t have the options that I do, or that you might have, because child care is too damn expensive. This subject is for another entry, but I couldn’t possibly sleep without at least mentioning it.) This lifestyle that we’ve all embraced–like it or not, a lot of us have–is cold-hearted and it ignores and places secondary the bond that every child should develop with her parents. This lifestyle is counter-intuitive to the idea of a family as a support system. And it probably keeps parents from getting to know their children and vice-versa. When I was watching Ian at his soon to be new daycare yesterday, I was comfortable with it, but only because he will be there only in the mornings. The afternoons, too? No way. It’s just too long for such a little guy to be away from his parents, away from his home. And I was very upset when I thought about how all these other children were going to be there all day long, some from 7am to 6pm, without their parents. It just doesn’t feel right to me, Adele. Thinking about it, I get sad. I watched all those children vying for the attention of the teacher–yes, this is what kids do, Anna, an adult might say, but I would say to that, yes, this is what kids do because they NEED ATTENTION, not because they should get over this need–and I thought about them there all day, doing that in one way or another, and I felt sure that something was wrong. Someone has missed something here, if we–all of us parents–think that it’s okay to let someone else take our children all day, 5 days a week, so we can pay our bills. And of course, Adele, paying your bills is VERY important, especially your mortgage and your groceries, but somewhere along the way toward this consumerist vaccuum that is our country, parents have simply become resigned to dropping their children off and doing so in order to pay their bills.

Sure, there’s vocation, Adele, and you’ll have one, I’m sure–a calling to some kind of work that a lot of us have to fulfill if we want to be good parents. But a lot of parents I know are simply going with the flow of capitalism and consumerism and dropping their kids off and exhausting themselves and picking them up and dropping them off and picking them up and off and up and off and exhausting themselves and trying to be good parents. And they feel they have no other choice. They’re sort of resigned to the way of things. And I’m here to say fuck that. There has to be another way. And there is. There are people working on this.

I’m not talking about studies here, Adele–there was one in the Times a few years ago that showed that children in full time daycare are fine. I’m sure they are, as fine as ones who stay at home, and I know they are, because I’ve met plenty of them. Your friends are all fine. What I’m talking about is how we need to think about who we are and how much shit we’re going to take. In Bulgaria, parents get a year of maternity leave. In Europe, the new “model” for maternity leave is 18 weeks paid, and there are many arguments that take issue with how LITTLE that is. But what, may I ask, about toddlers? Can’t someone come up with some kind of a model where toddlers and even children and even teenagers (for god’s sake, they need us more than ever) have parents who work part time simply because they’re parents, and because we as a country want strong communites infused with character and family bonds? Think of it this way: Hi, I’m Anna and I work part time because I’m a parent. Hi, I’m Anna’s husband and I work part time or 3/4 time because I’m a parent and my children need me at home, volunteering in their schools, doing projects with them, and playing with them.

Okay, so that’s a little over the top. You’re right, Adele. I’m absurdly idealistic here. I guess everyone is just too busy to march to Washington over child care issues. Over health care issues. And this is a women’s issue, is it not? So it gets marginalized and ignored by the mainstream media anyway. People are too busy judging us as mothers to fix the problems with the systems we have to navigate. I guess we don’t think you’re worth it–not all of us, not all together. We’re too tired and busy. Look at me. All I’m doing is writing about it. All I’m doing is saying, We need to pull back and look at the picture of ourselves as a culture of parents and see if we can live with what this country has turned us into.

But I love you, Adele. And we do love our children. Parents do. (Not Dr. Laura, though. She’ll only love you until you’re 18. Then you’re on your fucking own.) I think the bigger picture here is just too disturbing for us to comprehend. And then there’s me, of course: Motherhood for me is a chore. It is very hard. Because I’m emotional, because I’m self-absorbed, because dammit, Adele, I just love you and your brother so much it hurts. Like, kind of all the time? Know what I mean? I feel pulled between the two of you every minute and conflicted about it, and worried about how it affects you if I pay more attention to him and affects him if I pay more attention to you, and I feel guilty when I stick your brother in day care an extra day a week to get things done, and when he looks up at us after we tell him “No!” to something and his lip quivers and he says, “Because kids don’t yike to cry,” and I feel so intensely for each of you so much that I can barely stand it sometimes. So I do see to some extent that all these problems with how we think about you and about children and about what loving them should be like is my own perspective. Sure. I’d like an emotional break. And there aren’t any.

But most importantly, Adele, I think that parents everywhere have simply resigned themselves to this shit. And I’m here to say, stop it. We have agency. Let’s start making our own alternatives. Let’s start figuring this out. I have a job that enables me to devote some time to this, so I’ll get started. (More on this very soon, Petunia.)

And Adele, fuck resigning yourself. To anything. Ever.

I love you.

Mommy