I certainly do enjoy the interactions on this blog. I like when new people stop by, but I must admit I’m glad things aren’t too busy over here. This blog is sorta… down the dirt road, past the abandoned gas station, and I like it that way. Seems like the bigger you get, the more crazies you have the potential to attract—psychos and crazies and trolls, oh my! Real Live Preacher is about as big as you get among the God-blogs, and he actually gets hate mail, frequent and virulent hate mail, from conservative Christians and rabid atheists alike, including one quasi-threat involving a 38-caliber hollow point. Um, that’s disturbingly specific, eh?


Then there are the trolls, the drive-bys, the people who drop in and make toss-off comments that add nothing substantive to the discussion. A blog I read today (a pretty popular one if the page count is any indication) brought up an issue I think about constantly—parents who work outside the home. The blogger made some blanket statements about children’s being better off with a parent at home. We’re all about the grey areas over here at reverendmother’s place, so I have issues with such a bald generalization, but at least it was reasonably well articulated. In response, one person commented that the kids are actually better off in day care if the parents are liberals. Another person tried to drum up a little class warfare, with reference to middle-class parents who “squirt out trophies [they can] cart around from activity to activity.” Nice. Can’t wait to wade into the fray over there.

But there’s also some intelligent conversation going on over there—although the prime example that’s been given so far of working parents is a couple who puts their kids in day care for 10 hours a day, then they come home and spend the evening gaming. Would it surprise you to discover that that example has been proferred by someone who’s pretty adamant that young kids need a full-time stay-at-home parent? Shocking.

It’s a shame. I’m passionate about this issue and would love to talk about it, about the complexity of this decision and how blanket pronouncements don’t make sense in the cases I’m familiar with; about how the stay-at-home role as we understand it is a relatively new (and rare) phenomenon in human history anyway; about how R and I have made an intentional decision to share the breadwinning role so that we can both spend as much time with our child as possible. But I’m not interested in a conversation populated with one-liners and strawmen. (Can’t we ALL agree that parents who work all day and game all night instead of spending time with their kids aren’t exactly parents of the year? We can, can’t we?)

I look at my kid, my daughter, with her bright observant eyes, and her relaxed, dimpled grin which is constantly in evidence; her perfect fingers that count the butterflies on the page, accurately, mostly; and I listen to her songs, her funny observations; and I feel her exuberant hugs, punctuated with a “Squeeeeeeze!”; and our own patented “family kiss” which is a quick three-way smooch on the way out the door. And I look at us together—the time we spend together in the morning, snuggling in bed with a cup of milk before we start the day; the happy reunion every afternoon; the hours we spend together in the evening; the Fridays, the Saturdays, the Sunday mornings with Daddy.

I look, I listen. Closely. And I really, desperately want to know: Where is the deprivation? What is she missing? How could she be better off? In what way could she possibly be thriving more than she is now? Would she eat green beans more enthusiastically if I were home with her? Would she be solving quadratic equations?

Would she love me more? Well, I don't know.
Would I love her more? Impossible.

Here is the issue, the crux of it for me: It seems to be accepted as a foregone conclusion that kids are better off with a parent at home, rather than being in day care. So, OK. I am willing to grant that, for the sake of argument, it’s better for a child to be home with a parent.

The question that the stay-at-home advocates don’t ever answer is:
HOW MUCH BETTER?

10%?
30%?
85%?

So much better off that I am putting my seemingly well-adjusted kid in dreadful peril by working a job I love?

Or, somewhat "less better" than that?

Now that would be an interesting discussion.