A young mother at church told me last Sunday what she pays to have her little boy looked after while she works. She said it in a low voice, the way people mention a diagnosis. I congratulated her. She did not understand at first, so I explained, and I want to explain it here too, because I think it is good news that has been mistaken for bad.
I believe a child is best raised at home, by his own people. Most of my readers believe that too. We believe it because we were raised that way, and because the Bible puts the family at the center of things and not the state or the daycare center. A mother’s arms are not something you can rent by the hour.
So when the price of daycare climbs, I see the hand of providence in it. It is a fence around the family. A fence does not keep you in out of cruelty. It keeps you in because the pasture is where you belong. When the cost of leaving your child with strangers grows larger than what you would earn while you are gone, the question answers itself. Mother comes home. That is not a hardship. That is a homecoming.
Now, some families tell me they cannot afford for her to come home, either. The rent is due and the car note is due, and both of them have to work. I understand that. In those cases I would say there are grandparents. There are aunts. There are older children who can learn some responsibility. My own mother watched my sister’s children for years and never asked for a cent. If a family has none of those things, I am sorry for them, but I do not think it is the business of the rest of us to step in where the family has fallen short. The family is supposed to carry itself. That is what makes it a family.
The young mother at church mentioned that she and her husband had wanted another child and had decided they could not manage it. I told her I respected that. Too many people have children they cannot afford. A family that waits until it is ready is showing exactly the kind of prudence the rest of the country could use. If the cost of childcare is what taught them that, then the cost has done its work.
I know there are people who want the state to help pay for it, so that young parents can work and raise children at the same time. I think they mean well. But a family that leans on the government for its children is not raising them alone anymore, and I would rather they raise fewer of them alone than more of them with help.
That is a large part of why I will vote for the Republican for Senate this fall. The way I hear it, the other side wants to bring the cost of childcare down, and I would hate to see that fence come down with it.
I am for the family. I have always been for the family. I just believe it ought to be able to take care of itself.
D. M.