There is another sentence by our (Bavarian) Prime Minister I keep recalling:
He wants to perfect the “child-friendly Bavaria“ and soon open enough child-care centres.
That makes me wonder:
Is Bavaria “child-friendly” at all?
I know quite a few grown-ups who wage war against children’s playgrounds, football fields, basketball fields, schools and kindergardens because of the noise. That does not give me the impression that Bavaria is “child-friendly”.
And observations in the public area of our beautiful state support this impression. In many Mediterranean countries, also in India, Africa, and Asia, I witnessed a more “child-friendly attitude” than in Bavaria.
Are child-care centres really “child-friendly”?
As I see it, child-care centres are neither mother-friendly, nor child-friendly. Both what I hear from women who lived in the GDR and what I know from my own experience in the BRD shows the situation of mothers who leave their not-yet-three-year-old offspring at the child-care centre rather early in the morning and pick them up again rather late at night. That is a five-days-a-week routine. Despite hardships during the very trying post-war period in Germany, this kind of behaviour was hard to imagine. Neither was it an option when my children were that small.
I do not believe that being separated all day long from the mother is good for a child at this early age, nor do I think it is good for the mother. To me, it seems that this is likely to traumatise the children and make them constantly afraid of loss. And I doubt that it is nice for any mother to leave her child every day at 7 a.m., rush to work, and then have to be back in time to pick the youngster up.
Why do parents or does a single parent need a place in a child-care centre?
I can see three reasons:
Both partners or the single parent has to work full-time in order to earn their living.
In my opinion, that is a very unfortunate scenario. In an intact social system this should not be necessary.
Both partners or the single parent has to work full-time in order to maintain their upper-class life-style.
In my opinion, this is rather bad, because in my book this reflects the wrong attitude towards priorities. I doubt that such a ranking of priorities increases personal happiness.
Both partners need to work full-time in order to feel fulfilled. That is also something I am not happy with – do you need children at all with this kind of attitude?
It is a fact that, for most people and families, children mean consumption renouncement, along with less independence and liberty. A wrong interpretation of liberty and the desire for a maximum of consumption mean less personal happiness than experiencing and witnessing every day how your child grows up. And child-care centres are a poor compromise.
When I went to grammar school, they taught us in Sociology that the GDR needed women as full-time workers because of the highly inefficient system. And that the country wanted to take the education of children into its own hands away from the parents as soon as possible for ideological reasons.
A short time ago, I read in the “Süddeutsche” that one of the few early accomplishments from the GDR shall now finally be realized in our country on a nationwide scale.
Now the former family party CSU is in favour of child-care centres in order to make Bavaria child-friendly.
Quo vadis, BRD?
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
Here is my theory – open for discussion:
Child-care centres manifest a derailed system and are essential in making it possible.
And: I took the picture from National Media Museum via flickr.com.
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