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 ince
the release of last week's research findings on the dangers of day
care for kindergarteners, the media have been
busy emphasizing
the limitations of scientific research. These are the same folks
who used to scoff at the tobacco industry's claim that the relationship
between smoking and cancer was merely an unexplained coincidence.
Now we're told that a clear correlation between time in day care
and behavioral problems in school can be dismissed until all the
causal arrows are drawn. Are we willing to wait that long?
The limitations
of empirical scientific research on child rearing are legion, but
the media to date has spun them in one direction only. Striking
a pose of above-the-fray scientific detachment, New York Times
reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg had a piece in last Sunday's "Week
in Review" that could have been titled, "A Thousand Reasons
Not To Pay Any Attention To Studies That Knock Day Care." The
silly old public, we were told, ignores the many qualifications
on research findings, and looks instead for a superficial bottom
line. But real scientists, Stolberg said, recognize what research
does not establish, as well as what it does.
Stolberg has
a point. Given the limitations of science, the effects of day care
are unlikely to be precisely as the recent study suggests. They're
almost certain to be worse. So far, we've only learned about the
harms of day care that can be easily measured. But what's easily
measurable and what's real are two different things.
Fifteen years
ago, Jay Belsky, the principal investigator of the new day-care
study, unleashed the wrath of America's feminists for daring to
publish research suggesting that children placed in day care for
more than 20 hours a week were at risk of insecure attachment to
their mothers. "Insecure attachment" is a technical term
for a significant disturbance of relation between mother and child,
as indicated by some very particular empirical psychological tests.
Those tests of maternal-infant attachment are probably the best
scientific instruments we have for making sense of a child's rich
and complex emotional world. But truth to tell, they are very rough
instruments indeed.
A child who
tests out as "insecurely attached" to his mother has definitely
got a problem. But the designation of "secure attachment"
in no way assures that a particular child isn't facing lots of inner
turmoil. Plenty of messed-up little dudes and dudettes register
a technical designation of "securely attached." The best
observational tests on preschoolers reliably pick out only the most
serious problems. That means when a study points to the obvious
negative effects of day care on a few easily identifiable problem
children, others are likely to be suffering in ways that are harder
to verify, but nonetheless real. That's one of the limitations of
science that our detached and scientific corps of feminist journalists
has so far failed to point out.
Stolberg's
story in the Times points to the fact that even though 17
percent of children spending large amounts of time in day care experienced
behavioral problems, "83 percent of them did just fine."
This argument was repeated later that day by reporters like Cokie
Roberts and Gwen Ifill. But Belsky's research did not establish
that 83 percent of children spending most of the week in day care
are doing "just fine." He merely established that 17 percent
of them have a tendency to bullying and disruptive behavior.
Chances are,
if a significant percentage of children in day care evidence clear
behavioral problems, or show up as insecurely attached to their
mothers, then there are plenty of other children in less obvious,
but still significant, trouble. If some kids are responding to chronic
separation from their mothers with anger, surely others are feeling
depressed. Low-level depression is a lot harder to find and verify
observationally than obvious classroom bullying, but that doesn't
mean it's not there.
Meanwhile,
the press has offered up a whole series of one-sided rationalizations
for dismissing Belsky's findings. We're told that it's unrealistic
to expect women to stay home with their children when a third of
America's families will fall below the poverty line unless the mother
works. Well then, how about at least calling on upper-middle-class
women to spend more time with their kids? Or how about supporting
pro-marriage initiatives that might prevent single mothers from
having to choose between day care and destitution? Funny, but none
of these ideas has yet occurred to the phalanx of feminist journalists
lined up in opposition to Belsky.
Belsky himself,
careful scientist that he is, makes it clear that his research establishes
only correlation, not cause. The press jumped all over that one,
turning somersaults trying to come up with a way to explain the
findings that would not indict day care. No one dared connect the
dots on the most obvious explanation. Isn't it apparent when kids
packed off to day care for a huge chunk of the work week begin to
exhibit "cruelty," "explosive behavior," and
"demands for a lot of attention" that they are angry and
bereft at the loss of their mother?
But here's
the catch. This will be almost impossible to prove. Modern molecular
biology may finally have been able to identify the genetic changes
in the lung caused by smoking, but empirical psychology simply has
no equivalent of electron microscopes and DNA research. The sort
of in-depth interviewing that it would take to make sense of a child's
subjective reaction to separation from his mother could never be
operationalized in a testable way, at least not to the satisfaction
of all the contending parties in this dispute. Of course smoking
was causing cancer long before we were able to prove it. Something's
hurting those kids. And it isn't too difficult to see what it is.
Do we really want to wait around for a scientific smoking gun that
will never come?
But there's
something obvious that may be the best evidence of all about the
harmful effects of day care. The one thing every journalist is quick
to acknowledge is that working mothers already feel extremely guilty
about leaving their children. The existence of this free-floating
mass of working-mother guilt is why the very existence of studies
like Belsky's are supposed to constitute a cruel and gratuitous
attack on women. Feminists talk about this working-mother guilt
as though it's been artificially imposed by "society."
But the guilt derives from the process of mothering itself, and
it tells us something tremendously important about what's been going
wrong with America's mothering.
I don't mean
to suggest that the mere existence of maternal guilt proves that
a woman is a bad mother. On the contrary, a certain level of guilt
is a necessary part of being a good mother — or a good person.
Someone who is "conscientious," says the dictionary, is
"obedient or loyal to conscience; habitually governed by a
sense of duty; scrupulous." Of course everyone should be conscientious
about their duties to others, but especially in this age of social
atomization, it's mothers, above anyone else, who understand the
burdens and glories of being obligated to another human being. A
conscientious mother — mother loyal to her conscience —
inevitably knows and struggles with a certain level of guilt. Such
a mother is good. Many of us have forgotten the inescapable necessity
of some reasonable sense of guilt to any human flourishing. Mothers
cannot forget.
But the excruciating
sense of guilt that we're told now dogs working mothers is something
else again. Something like that cannot be caused by superficial
"social messages" like the Belsky study. That sort of
guilt can only come from a deep internal sense that the unique and
loving connection with a child is being interrupted too frequently.
An ability to face and understand the meaning of this guilt is far
and away the most subtle, important, and powerful diagnostic test
of mothering that we have. Do we still have the strength —
as individuals, and as a society — to remain loyal to this
call of conscience?
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