A View of Child Development

...It is said that we are in the midst of an era of entente, detente, and cooperation among the world's major powers, a period which is expected to bear the threshold of a new era...

...No one seems concerned about the t h r e a t explicit in a program built on such an ambiguous foundation...

...Perhaps the most striking example (and never mind the infeasibi]ity) comes from the final report of the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children (Fall, 1969) wherein the Commission states t h a t among other rights, the infant has the "right to continuous loving care...

...the barbed wire and brick walls...

...A progressive society relies upon its varied components...

...Yet their actions belie another motive...

...It stands as a monument to the Cold War...

...Their recommendation will stand as the rule...

...That is, controversy over the program has centered not around the threshold question of whether or not the United States should have a national child development program, but rather on the routine bureaucratic questions such as how much it will cost, how it will be administered, what delivery system will be used, and whose children will use it...

...Indeed, within the concept is the culmination of two of the most disturbing trends of twentieth century America: the achievement of a totally equalitarian society where each member harks from a common background, holds the same ideas, and has identical thinking patterns...

...What indications do we have that there is more hospitable sentiment between the powers of East and West...

...Like so many other people living in the city of West Berlin (one-fourth of the city's 2.2 million population came as refugees from the Soviet occupied terri10 The Alternative October 1973...

...By the age of two the infant is very actively looking for models, and help in dealing with aggressive feelings such as hurting, hostility, as well as violent ways of creating movement in other people...

...Research indicates that early ,'~trance to school does result in lower achievement throughout the grades when compared with the achievement of later entrants with similar abilities...

...The concept advocates the turning of government from its proper bailiwick of regulation of the extrinsic conduct of its citizens to the regulation of their intrinsic nature...

...Debate on the program has suffered from what columnist James J. Kilpatrick has described as the "Phenomenon of the Vanishing Threshold...

...The idea attempts to governmentally "insure" a happy married life ---or, more precisely, to "insure" against an unhappy divorced life...

...It has survived, virtually intact, since antiquity in a myriad of societies as the basic living arrangement, with primary responsibility for meeting the requirements of its component members for food, shelter, recreation, and what we now must call child development...

...The times they are a-changing," go the words of a Bob Dylan song...

...Healthy human development is related to many interwoven factors--biological, social, emotional, and intellect u a l - a n d is largely shaped by the events which occur from the time of conception until the age of two...

...No one will stop the standardization of a chain of child care centers from coast to coast...

...I lived in Berlin for many years, and I was there on that fateful August 13, 1961, when the Berlin Wall was first erected...

...A child's selfcontrol, learning abilities, and cooperation are by-products of the emotional stability that come from being loved and needed...

...Assuredly the concept of child development holds serious legal and social implications for the future of a free society in this country...

...If such a mob had descended on Philadelphia in 1785 to initiate our first American government, James Madison would have thrown in with the Redcoats, Patrick Henry would have bound himself over to the benevolence of crazy George, and General Washington would have burned Philadelphia to the ground...

...Should the federal government subsidize miracle computer dating and marriage programs...

...The state overflows with blood and gore...

...The *elevision waves in both countries are ~'.rong enough to be received on either side of the border...

...The family group as a basic social institution is very nearly universal...

...Over the course of the last forty years Americans have seen increasing government involvement in their lives...

...But such communal and sterile child rearing could have devastating effects upon the infant...

...It is a travesty of politics that the lives of individual persons are so often overshadowed by the general course of history...

...Somehow the threshold vanished leaving only methodology to argue...

...Watergate is one of those rare historical episodes where not one of the participants distinguishes himself, not even a vagrant wit...

...But this is the first time it has set a hand to the task of determining what kind of people we are...

...And despite all their talk of a better tomorrow, not one participant in the Watergate pageant has suggested a philosophy of government to replace the amalgam of notions they have all so furiously fallen upon...

...A second social implication of child care programs is the substantial effect they will have upon the children involved...

...These questions are of no small judicial concern in a free society...

...There is simply no good substitute for a mother's presence...

...and, the complete and final submission to the imperatives of a science-centered age where every aspect of human life is monitored and controlled by specialists, technicians, and computers...

...It is a spectacle of extraordinary excess...

...If it is true, _~s we have so often been told, t h a t the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world, it should give us pause to reflect on the prospect of a single hand in Washington rocking cradles across the country...

...Raskin, director of the Children's Orthopedic Hospital Psychiatry Service in Seattle, Washington, stated: "Give a child two or three years of love, and he's going to make it in life...

...See Joseph W. Hatliwell, "Reviewing the Reviews on Entrance Age and School Success," in Reading in Educational Psychology, Victor H. and Rachel R Noll, eds., 2nd ed...

...Yet, lurking behind all these glittering promises lies a number of fundamental, philosophical issues raised by a massive federal program of this nature...

...The times they are indeed a-changing if the East German government found it necessary to justify its actions on national television...

...Child care advocates argue that each center will remain locally controlled by community policymaking boards made up of parents and neighbors and thus each will be unique...

...The program, so the advocates state, promises to solve a host of individual and social problems which plague contemporary American society--from juvenile delinquency through mental illness and tooth decay...

...As Dr...

...Though contemporary American political etiquette, lib~,ral interest-group politics, the Nixon Administration, and the reputations of countless administrators and politicians are being disfigured, the worthies of the Ervin committee are no closer to knowing the truth today than they are to understanding the evil...

...The entire concept builds upon the basic and false postulate t h a t banks of computers and batteries of trained technicians and "experts" can somehow substitute for the traditional family institution...

...the field mines and miles of no man's land between East and West Germany...

...The social implications of such a program are manifest...

...The child development program is, however, of a very different kind from all t h a t has gone before...

...Even on the local level, necessity dictates that participating parents will relic heavily upon the judgemnt of the "experts" who administer the program...

...An awesome bureaucratic machinery inevitably arises, crushing any lingering elements of creativity or uniqueness or eccentricity...

...Yes, and supposedly each American adult has the right to a happy married life...

...It is in these early years that the child is the most flexible (and the most vulnerable to programming...

...the watchtowers and concrete dugouts with armed guards, dogs, and military vehicles...

...Considering the importance to future generations of the establishment of a child development program, this is a tragic omission...

...But on that night of August 13 the erection of the Berlin Wall became a very real and personal experience for me when a young woman arrived at our doorstep with the proverbial child in arms...

...it is unthinkable t h a t any man is going to advance any lasting improvement in a system of laws without first possessing some coherent philosophy of govermnent, and what passes for a philosophy of government amongst the participants of the Watergate pageant is indistinguishable from the razzle-dazzle rdchauffd of the public relations hack...

...That a change of such massive proportions is contemplated points out the imminent need to debate t h a t threshold question, to analyze the root assumptions behind the new child development concept, and to consider the grave legal and social implications for American society...

...Any tendency to reduce human variety reduces the amount of experimentation in the conduct of human affairs, which in turn slows progress and decreases the interest that life holds...

...May the parent assert it for the child against the government...

...And indeed they are...

...To tamper with t h a t l~e Alternative October 1973 9 institution (of such hardihood and proven worth) is to invite social chaos--to rend the delicate fabric which weaves a society together...

...But the continued shoot,~ngs at the Berlin Wall...

...And the cold, mechanical efficiency of child development centers will serve but to fold, spindle, and mutilate the lives of thousands of American children...

...August 13, 1973, marks the twelfth anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall...

...Pr.p-nents of child care centers argue that, yes, indeed, the program will have a substantial effect upon the i n f a n t - - and it will be a positive one...

...A third social implication is the effect of "growing" thousands of individual children from thousands of individual families under identical hothouse conditions...

...If Watergate has proven nothing else, it has proven that the greatest democracy on earth is presently in the hands of public relations men, ambulance chasers, and porch climbers...

...Yet they ignore the painful lesson recent history teaches us: vast federal programs have an instinctive tendency toward uniformity...

...The finest and most elaborate day care center in the world can not begin to compete in this regard with even the average mother...

...Mistakes parents would have made can ~, avoided with a host of trained psychiatrists, dietitiark% pediatricians, educators, and the like...

...The sanctioning by the state of a vague "right to happiness" of this nature holds explosive legal implications...

...May the government assert it for the child against the parent...

...Hopefully it shall not be America's destiny to discover that brave new world...

...Thus in the last few years a new "inalienable right" has emerged from the copious and redundant child development rhetoric (Tom Jefferson negligently omitted it from the Declaration of Independence...

...Proponents of the child care program argue t h a t they wish only to supplement the family institution and not supplant it...

...The pro~am would squarely put Washington into the business of raising the nation's :hildren through federally funded and )perated child care centers...

...Child development proponents have made only one thing perfectly clear: they desire to take a long stride down the path toward standardized federal programs governing the development of American children...

...they propose the creation of a force paramount to the family and advocate direct federal involvement in the growth and training of American infants through providing a full panoply of services...

...Duke J. Armstrong A View of Child Development In recent years the hue and cry has 3een raised for a national child development program by a plethora of liberal social workers and educators...

...Washington has, to a greater or lesser extent, undertaken a role in determining how we are housed, how we are clothed, how we eat, how many cigarettes we consume, and so forth...

...Thus, ironically enough, my remark (which I intended as purely absurd and rhetorical) is actually being considered by certain feminists, lawyers, and legislators Peter Hughes Wall No Barrier to Memories...

...It is the erratic early years that cause future problems...

...First is the obvious detrimental effect upon the family i n s t i t u t i o n - - t h e basic unit of social organization in society...

...And all the while the machine will grind on, stamping out its products from a common mold and programming them with identical data...

...The media mullahs, the ritualistic liberals, the bright boys of the Nixonian Era and the Senate's sages are all sweating and groaning in an enormous Gordian knot of humanity, straining to destroy each other and doing a pretty formidable job of self-destruction...

...With a y,,ung, flexible child, needed remedial services will prove faster and easier...

...Yet, these questions have never been raised, much less answered, in the present controversy...

...East Germany's Pankow regime promptly responded by putting the "criminals" Ithose attempting to escapel on national television to refute the insidious capitalistic s l u r s Not to let events stand with that, they then expelled one of the "criminals...

...It is America's equivalent to the Cultural Revolution...

...They propose more than mere advice and counsel...

...New York: Macmillan, 1968], p.65...

...government in drawing guidelines for the personalities of U.S...

...Child development advocates propose to wreak just such havoc with American society...

...citizens...

...Meetings of the community policymaking board will become little more than wrangles over trivial financial matters such as whether or not to install a new sink in the kitchen...

...Granted, all government programs have an indirect effect upon the character of those subjected to them, yet this still marks an ominous beginning for the involvement of the U.S...

...Well, for one thing, when East German refugees recently attempted to scale the Berlin Wall and escape to the West, there was an uproar of public opinion in West Berlin over the "alleged" shootings...

...If the child care program were merely to be another in a long line of absurd social services dished out by HEW and doomed to a bureaucratic fate, one could perfunctorily remonstrate those responsible for the waste of federal revenues, and then proceed to ignore the monstrosity...

...The executive branch in carrying out an ambitious new program created by the Congress finds it necessary to set guidelines, draw up directives, and write statutes in order to deal with this vast new grant of power...

...May the child assert it against the parent and the government...

...Since writing this parenthetical remark I have been apprised of a proposed program of divorce insurance, to be taken out immediately before or after marriage...

...these are hardly monuments to peace, cooperation, and freedom of travel and thought between East and West...

...Of course no intelligent observer expects a better tomorrow...

...As their strategy, child development advocates chose the old-line liberal tactic, successful since the 1930s, of ex nihilo manufacturing a right and then pressing the federal government to guarantee it (through expenditure of vast sums of money and use of legal sanctions...

...And these issues have not been adequately discussed...

...Child care personnel can never provide that essential component in the child's life...

...One need hardly subscribe to the doctrine that a child is nothing more than a product of his environment to concede that any individual or program in prolonged contact with the child during his first formative year~ will be a substantial factor d e t e r m h , - ; the type of adult that child beconle...

...Who exactly possesses this right...