Reply to NYT article about baby who died first day of daycare

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Horrible story and I do not blame the parents or claim to know better than them.

However, the essay really bothered me (enough to feel the need to comment on it) because I see the issue MORE as poor quality childcare over having to go back to work.  This is probably informed by my own view (I'll admit) but the idea that 3 months is too soon to go back to work seem paternalistic and actually harmful to women to me.  I hate that the death of her child is turned into one more notch on the mommy-wars.  I recognize she feels that way, but frankly I do not.

Instead, to me the failure here was not being forced to work, but the failure of available safe childcare.

Women need better quality childcare to support their ability to go back to work, not to believe that something is wrong with leaving a child at 3 months.  (Would she still feel this way had all of this horribly not happened?)

Her child died not because she went back to work, but first, because of a fluke thing (SIDs etc) and then second, if there is a reason (which there may not be) because the child was in an unlicensed center where possible the child was placed on its stomach, but as a matter of fact (from the essay) the workers did not know how to perform CPR/possibly recognize distress signs et cetera.  I don't blame the parents for choosing an unlicensed center because the fact is there are too few available quality childcare options.  And to me, that is the issue.  Think of what it could do for women, children and our society if we had universally available high quality child care.  Think of how much it would eliminate this mommy guilt.  And why don't we have that?  Certainly economics, but I also think it comes back to paternalism.  [/quote]

PP here.  I should add, I also certainly think longer maternity leave would help too and our current system is horrible.  But its seems to me childcare is way more important in the long run--and seems so obviously to be the bigger issue here.[/quote]

SIDS danger dramatically drops after 4 months. So no, if we are talking about protecting babies from dying at daycare, it's not about childcare only, it's about the timing of said care as well.[/quote]

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