If you see Jennifer, you must feel sorry for her. She is a parent. So is Peter. He also needs your support. Like all parents today, they face a crisis. They do not have adequate day care. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of their parents, for not teaching them about proper family planning.
Jennifer married Peter. They were fashionably late, having devoted their 20s to finding themselves. Then they had to find a career–one through which their newly found selves could be expressed. After having adopted a Saab or BMW and at least one large dog, the couple decided to enter that last orbit of personal fulfillment–parenthood. Having waited long enough to rid the bloodstream of all narcotic residue, they plotted time and temperature. They became pregnant, but only Jennifer began to show. After the birth, the couple, fearing an offspring avalanche, went back to the drugstore and quickly slammed the door on any further conceptions. This unfortunately was the extent of their family planning knowledge. They should have been told the truth.
Adequate day care. That is the key to family planning. This essential is not to be found in the pharmacy, but on the way to work–with flexible hours and not too many other children, with nothing but organic food and politically correct books. Boys play with dolls; girls with dump trucks.
Parents cannot raise children without adequate day care. But no one told them, until it was too late.
It was a conspiracy of silence engineered by the older generationa generation hostile to adequate day care. A generation bent on preserving a system of parental repression–the forced care of children by their parents. If anyone had told Jennifer and Peter how difficult it was to find adequate day care, perhaps they would not have had the one child for whom they painstakingly planned with the help of a pharmacy of contraceptive, and then fertility, devices.
The day-care conspiracy threatens the survival of American society. And today’s parental generation knows about conspiracies. During their youth, it was the communist conspiracy that had them expecting Soviet missiles at any time. Then it was the conspiracy to assassinate JFK, followed by the Vietnam and Watergate conspiracies. Now it is the day-care conspiracy.
While the national challenge was once the combating of communism, today it is the day care of children. Communists may be a little scarce, but children still need somewhere to go during the day. The Cold War has ended; the War on Inadequate Day Care has begun.
In the War Against Inadequate Day Care, everyone is either a parent or a conspirator. There is no neutral Switzerland. There are no draft deferments, and no draft dodgers. It is a war in which all must serve. For now that the Boomers have become parents, so too must everyone else.
Parenthood is the new social status for the ’90s. In the 1930s, everyone was poor; and in the ’40s, they were all patriots. In the ’50s, everybody was normal and happy. A decade later, all the suburban children had turned into campus revolutionaries. In the 1970s, the “Me Decade” witnessed an obsession with self-indulgence. And in the ’80s, everyone was trying to get rich. Now, in the ’90s, everyone can be parents, even those without children. But they must support adequate day care. Those who refuse will be branded as social suspects, conspirators against adequate day care.
The adequate day-care campaign, however, represents much more than a call for baby-sitters. It symbolizes the elusive nirvana, the ultimate quest for a truly egalitarian society. For adequate day care is the great equalizer, representing everything parents must have to offset the unfair advantage enjoyed by their childless colleagues.
Not only is adequate day care the fulfillment of parental rights, it is a vital step in achieving social harmony and the protection of American business. Just as the legalization of drugs promises to end the violence in our nation’s cities, the provision of adequate day care pledges to eradicate the reign of the day-care terrorist–the parent who seeks out play areas in stores where she can surreptitiously leave her unday-cared children. Because when those children tire of the toys, or of confinement to a small space, they will hold hostage the employees and customers of that store with threats of screams and tantrums.
Adequate day care also marks the last front in the battle for sexual fulfillment. It is the final liberator of the libido, the one missing component in the drive for safe sex. Just as today’s parents once had to fight for free love at Woodstock, they must now crusade for adequate day care in their neighborhoods. For without adequate day care, there can be no truly protected sex.
In this age of safe sex, adequate day care is the ultimate precaution. While the birth-control movement sought to ensure everyone an enjoyment of sex without fear of pregnancy, day care goes one step further. For those who used faulty contraception, or for those who accidentally forgot to suit up, adequate day care is a back-up prophylactic–a precaution against the unwanted consequences of sex, an insurance that parenthood will not be imposed without vacation benefits and time off for good behavior. It is the safety net of sex–a safeguard against having to bear sole burden for any children that arrive.
The securing of adequate day care may not be achieved by the gallant yet aging Boomer generation. But at least that generation can end the conspiracy of silence. In the future, lovers and prospective parents must be told about that last great danger of parenthood–inadequate day care. For the facts of life are not complete without the facts of adequate day care.
