Warehousing Children

The front page photo in this morning's Republic newspaper sent a shiver down my spine. The image showed a baby lying in one of those infant carriers in the foreground, with a rank of infant cribs and a daycare worker sitting in a rocking chair with another infant in her arms.

The photo was intended by the newspaper to depict a positive image of the local daycare center that was the subject of the article. That made me shudder every bit as much as the image itself - most people seem oblivious to the terrible implications of these child warehouses.

The article itself decried the fact that this daycare center, perhaps the largest in Columbus, was closed indefinitely because of the recent flood. How were these mothers going to find "quality daycare" to replace what had previously been provided by the center?

My fervent hope is that at least some of these mothers will come to their senses and realize their children need them more than the big house and new car and fulfilling career.

I've blogged before about the epidemic level of narcissism we've reached in this country. This article hit me like a bolt of lightning with the primary root cause of our societal illness; children raised by minimum-wage workers in baby warehouses.

If there's one thing I know from my life experience, it's this simple fact. Children need their mothers. They need their mothers to feed them, teach them, protect them, love them.

What's the lesson a child learns when their mother races back to work within a few weeks of giving birth?

That Mom's car, the nice house, her career, the resort vacations, her social status, are all more important than you, her child. So you grow up ingrained with the idea that life means getting all you can for yourself. Children are inconvenient, so they must be warehoused in daycare, then preschool, then school, so you can be free to be, and get, all you can.

Relationships are fleeting, because there's no such thing as lifetime commitment to anybody else. Sacrificing for somebody else is unnecessary. Why commit to a husband (or wife) when somebody better might come along?

I grew up before this sickness took hold, but I fear my generation may be the the first to become infected with the narcissism virus. We were given prosperity by our parents and grandparents, who learned the importance of family and morality from the hard times of the Great Depression and WWII. But like the rebellious children we were, we rejected and ridiculed the lessons they tried to teach us and spawned the amoral "me first" disease with which the majority of Americans are now infected.

Those who run the child warehouses are nurturing the disease by teaching the children how to be good little narcissists so they can grow up to protect and nurture the virus for the next generation. These factory babies learn less about traditional skills like reading and math and history, and much more about celebrating diversity and Darwinian evolution and hatred for religion, capitalism, and the white male.

All the while their parents trade partners and pursue their next big house, nice car, expensive vacation, and are irritated that their children come out of the warehouse so unruly.