Children deserve to spend their days in the company of peers, having fun, and discovering the world with the help of loving, well-compensated adults.
小孩们应该在同伴的陪伴下度过他们的日子，享受乐趣，并在充满爱心的，被好好补偿的成年人的帮助下探索这个世界。
我知道我必须承担风险，这只是因为我在一个高质量的纽约非营利组织为青年和家庭项目工作了三年。
When I’d started in 2012, our preschool had a two-year wait list. By the time I left, the wait list had swelled to almost four years, which meant that most children who had been added to the list never got into the program. We had at least twenty applications for children in utero, and two for children who hadn’t yet been conceived. Sometimes mothers mentioned to me that they’d miscarried, but would like to keep their application open, and did in fact conceive again before receiving an offer of admission. One baby died while on the list.
当我在2012年开始时，我们的幼儿园有两年的等待名单。 当我离开时，等待名单已经膨胀到将近四年，这意味着大多数已被添加到列表中的小孩从未进入该项目。我们在至少有20份还在子宫内的儿童的申请，还有2份尚未怀孕的儿童的申请。有时母亲向我提到他们已经流产，但是希望保持他们的申请公开，并且在收到录取通知之前确实再次怀孕。 一名婴儿在名单上的时候死了。
My program was unusual in that it featured a first-come/first-serve “need blind” admissions process and substantial tuition assistance to families who could prove that they needed it — but its $37,000 a year price tag was all too typical for American childcare.
我的项目的不同寻常之处在于它以先到先得的“支付能力无关”的入学流程为特色，并为能够证明自己需要服务的家庭提供大量学费援助—但每年37,000美元的价格标签对美国儿童抚养来说太典型了。
For the Church, life begins at the moment of conception. For an American baby, life starts much sooner — the moment a parent (almost always a mother) begins to think about how and when she can afford to have a child, and who will care for the child when she returns to work, as the vast majority of parents must do. If she has been in the same job for a year and worked at least 1,250 hours for an employer who also happens to employ at least fifty people within a seventy-five-mile radius of her workplace, then she will be eligible for twelve weeks of unpaid time off and continuation of health benefits under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). She may be able to extend that slightly further with unused sick time — assuming she has any.
对于教会来说，生命始于受孕的那一刻。 对于一个美国婴儿来说，生命开始得更早—在父母（几乎总是母亲）开始思考如何以及何时能够生育小孩，以及在她重返工作岗位时谁将照顾小孩， 绝大多数父母必须这样做。如果她在同一份工作中工作了一年，并且至少为在工作场所七十五英里范围内雇用至少五十人的雇主工作了至少1,250小时，那么她将有资格在家庭医疗休假法（FMLA）下获得十二周的无薪休假和继续享受健康福利。她可能会用未使用的病假稍微延长一点—假设她有。
FMLA is an accommodating piece of legislation passed during the labor-punishing Clinton era, which applies to a little over half of US workers. It was the Democrats’ polite throat-clearing sigh, a gentle nudge in the general direction of our bosses, asking “Please sir, can I have my job back after taking care of my dying daughter?” when working families needed a paid family leave program comparable to the rest of the world’s, and a universal, federally funded childcare program. Since 1985, the majority of mothers of preschool children have participated in the workforce, and in the thirty years since, unprecedented growth in wealth inequality has transformed an urgent need into a moral and economic crisis. Now, as Baby Boomers age and a smaller percentage of the population has young children, there are fewer adult advocates for their needs.
FMLA是惩罚劳工的克劳顿时代通过的一项适应性立法，适用于美国一半以上的工人。这是民主党人礼貌的清醒叹息，在我们老板的大方向上轻轻推动，问道：“先生，在照顾我快要死去的女儿之后，我可以找回工作吗？” 当工人家庭需要带薪的家庭假时，这能与世界其他地区相当的计划，以及由联邦政府资助的全球儿童保育计划相提并论。自1985年以来，大多数学龄前儿童的母亲都进入了劳动力队伍，在此后的三十年里，财富不平等的空前增长将迫切的需求转变为道德和经济危机。 现在，随着婴儿潮一代的长大，拥有小孩的人数比例越来越低，成年人的需求也越来越少。
At the time of its bipartisan passage in 1993, the Chamber of Commerce warned that FMLA set a “dangerous precedent,” and John Boehner muttered something about “the light of freedom growing dimmer,” but twenty-five years later, a vast majority of employers report that complying with FMLA is easy and has had a positive or neutral effect on their workplaces. It is the sole non-means-tested federal provision for American families in the first few weeks of their children’s lives. Still, the burden is on parents to obtain doctor’s notes and coordinate it — and even it can hardly be called universal.
在1993年两党通过法案时，商人联合会警告说，FMLA设置了一个“危险的先例”，John Boehner嘀咕着“自由之光越来越暗淡”，但二十五年后，绝大多数雇主报告说遵守FMLA很容易，并且对他们的工作场所产生了积极或中立的影响。在小孩生命的最初几周内，这是美国家庭唯一的免入息审查的联邦供给。尽管如此，父母仍有责任获得医生的记录并进行协调 —甚至它也很难被称为普遍的。
Employers approve, but how has it turned out for families? Many of those who are eligible can’t actually afford to take it. A full quarter of American mothers return to work less than two weeks after giving birth. Marissa Mayer aside, those who return soonest are most likely to be working class. Mothers who do not have housekeepers or nannies are constrained in their parenting choices, such as whether and how to breastfeed, and are more susceptible to depression.
雇主接受了，但对于家庭来说结果如何呢？ 许多有资格的人实际上无法负担得起。四分之一的美国母亲在分娩后不到两周就重返工作岗位。除了Marissa Mayer，那些最快回来的人最有可能是工人阶级。没有管家或保姆的母亲在育儿选择方面受到限制，例如是否以及如何进行母乳喂养，以及更容易患上抑郁症。
One factory worker described breaking down in tears of exhaustion while pumping in a parking lot after a twelve-hour shift. The cheerful slogan “breast is best” is more likely to produce heart pangs than an eye-roll in the 88 percent of women who have no paid time off.
一名工厂工人描述了在十二小时轮班后在停车场抽水时，在精疲力竭中崩溃了。在88％没有带薪休假的女性中，令人振奋的口号“乳房是最好的”更容易产生的是心脏痛而不是吸引眼球。
Nurri Latef, an early childhood teacher who I spoke to about her experience returning to school when her son was two months old, says, “I hated it. I felt like I was leaving my child at such a critical bonding time for the two of us, and he was premature. He spent a month in the hospital, so … I was only at home for one month with Nasir before I had to jump back into toddler-teacher mode so I could keep a roof over our heads.” No parent in any job should have to feel this way, but there’s a unique cruelty to forcing women to leave their own children before they feel ready to take care of other people’s children.
Nurri Latef是一位幼儿教师，我和她讨论了她在她的儿子两个月大时回到了学校的经历，“我讨厌它。我觉得我要在我们两个人的关键时期离开我的孩子，这为时过早。他在医院度过了一个月，所以……在我不得不重新回到幼儿教师模式以保住头顶上的瓦片之前，我只在家里待了一个月。“无论做什么工作，没有哪个父母应该遭受这些，但是在她们准备好照顾别人的孩子之前强迫女性离开自己的孩子是一种独特的残忍。
Meanwhile, Apple and Google employees get eighteen weeks of paid leave and backup or on-site day care. Googlers are awarded $500 cash referred to as “Baby Bonding Bucks.” Of course, not every worker shares in the benefits even at these seemingly enlightened firms: tech companies often outsource security, food service, and janitorial work by hiring private contractors, who are not eligible. Overall, about a third of American workers in management and other professional jobs have paid parental leave, while just over 5 percent in service occupations do.
Here’s how Julia Roitfeld, the daughter of the editor of French Vogue, describes impending motherhood: “It was like a detox — I ate healthy, I slept a lot, and I didn’t drink. All of my hormones were at the perfect levels. I was super-happy, and I really didn’t give a shit about work. Usually I’m so on top of work, but I was in a little cloud. But in August I thought, ‘Okay, I need to go back to work and start making a living again.’”
以下是French Vogue的编辑的女儿Julia Roitfeld如何描述即将到来的母亲生活：“这就像一个排毒—我吃得健康，我睡了很多，而且我没有喝酒。 我所有的荷尔蒙都处在完美的水平上。我非常高兴，我真的没有对工作嗤之以鼻。 通常我是在工作之上，但我在一点点阴云中。但在八月，我想，“好吧，我需要回去工作并重新开始谋生。“
How long can a parent stay in that “little cloud” and “not give a shit” about the cost of diapers, formula, and rent? That depends both on one’s class and nationality. Brazilian mothers get seventeen weeks of leave to take care of their little ones at their full salary; Canadian parental leave was recently extended from one year to eighteen months at about 55 percent pay; Russia offers mothers twenty-four weeks paid. I could go on. The United States, Papua New Guinea, and Lesotho are the only countries in the world that don’t guarantee all workers paid time off to care for a new child — here, parental leave is a luxury reserved for the rich.
如果父母在尿布，配方奶粉和租金的成本方面停留在“小小的阴云”和“什么都不给”，他们能维持多久？ 这取决于一个人的阶级和国籍。 巴西母亲得到17周的假期，以全薪照顾他们的小孩; 加拿大育儿假最近从一年延长到十八个月，薪酬约为55％; 俄罗斯为母亲提供二十四周的报酬。我可以继续 。美国，巴布亚新几内亚和莱索托是世界上唯一不保证所有工人都有时间照顾新生儿的国家—在这里，育儿假是为富人保留的奢侈品。
At the same time we thrust new parents back into the labor market, we also insist that they comparison shop for childcare in a country with no national standards for quality, accessibility or safety. Nearly 11 million children, including over half of children below the age of one, spend an average of twenty-seven hours a week in some kind of childcare setting, yet the burden is on individual parents to assess the risks and benefits of a confusing, unaccountable, generally private system pieced together state by state for the care of our littlest and most vulnerable children. In essence, giving birth or adopting a child in America means you also take on the job of government regulator. It’s an impossible task, with occasionally tragic consequences.
与此同时，我们将新父母扔回劳动力市场，我们也坚持他们在一个没有国家级别的质量，可获得性或安全的标准的国家比较购买儿童照料服务。 近一千万儿童，包括超过一半的一岁以下儿童，平均每周在某种儿童照料环境中度过二十七小时，但让个体父母去负担评估风险和好处是令人迷惑的，不负责任的，通常是由国家将私人系统拼凑在一起来照顾我们最小的和最脆弱的小孩。本质上来说，在美国生育或收养小孩意味着你也要接手政府监管机构的工作。这是一项不可能完成的任务，偶尔会产生悲剧性的后果。
In 2013, a day-care worker in Mississippi handed a ten-week-old baby boy over to his father at pickup time without noticing that the child’s skin was blue and he was unresponsive. The father directed the staff to call 911 while he performed CPR — none of the staff knew how — and his son was finally rushed to the emergency room, where he died. After an investigation, the state concluded that the childcare center met all legal requirements for operation. It remains open.
2013年，密西西比州的一名日托工作人员在接送时间将一名10周大的男婴交给他的父亲，却没有注意到孩子的皮肤是蓝色的并且他没有反应。当父亲指示工作人员拨打911时，他进行CPR—没有一个工作人员知道如何做—他的儿子最后被送往急诊室，在那里他去世了。经过调查，该州得出结论，儿童照料中心符合所有法律要求。 它仍然开放。
In 2014, Kellie Rynn Martin suffocated at the age of three months in a day-care center run out of a middle-class suburban home in South Carolina, where her mother suspects she was put to sleep in a bassinet with a blanket or even another infant. When forensics searched the house, they found fourteen children playing “the quiet game” in the eighty-five-degree basement under the supervision of the owner’s daughter. In an interview, Martin’s mother stressed that the day-care owner’s home had appeared clean and the owner appeared competent when she toured the program only a few weeks earlier.
2014年，Kellie Rynn Martin在南卡罗来纳州一个中产阶级郊区住宅中运营的一个日托中心里窒息了，在那里她的母亲怀疑她是被毯子包裹然后被丢在摇篮里或者甚至是和另一个婴儿一起。 当法医搜查这所房子时，他们发现有十四个小孩在主人的女儿的监视下，在八十五度（这是华氏温标，换算成摄氏温度是29.4度）的地下室玩“安静游戏”。 在一次采访中，Martin的母亲强调说日托所有者的房子看起来很干净，而且主人在几周前她参观这个项目时表现得很有竞争力。
On March 22, 2016, three infants died in three different unlicensed and illegally operating day-care programs in Connecticut, one from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), another from an overdose of Benadryl, and the third from a blunt injury to the head. One of the providers had had her license revoked by the state the previous year for failure to comply with safety regulations — and yet continued to operate her center. The Connecticut assistant child advocate Faith Vos Winkel blamed parents, telling the Hartford Courant that they have ample opportunities to find licensed providers through the Office of Early Childhood’s website and the 211 Infoline.
2016年3月22日，三个婴儿在康涅狄格州的三个不同的无证和非法经营的日托项目中死亡，一个是因为婴儿猝死综合症（SIDS），另一个是因为被使用了过量的镇静剂，第三个是因为头部的钝伤。其中一家供应商因前一年因未遵守安全规定而被政府吊销许可证—但仍继续经营其中心。 康涅狄格州助理儿童权利倡导者Faith Vos Winkel指责家长，告诉Hartford Courant他们有充分的机会通过早期儿童办公室的网站和211 Infoline找到有执照的提供者。（明明是政府失职，由着奸商无证经营，却指责家长？那么是不是买到假货了也是因为消费者没有自带质检实验室？）
The death rate of children enrolled in home-based day care — which is far more likely to be unlicensed than a center-based program — is twelve times that of center-based care. But home-based and unlicensed childcare is simply more plentiful and affordable. Licensed childcare centers are either geographically or financially out of reach for the majority of families.
参加以家庭为基础的日托护理的儿童的死亡率——比基于中心的护理计划更可能没有执照—是基于中心的护理的12倍。 但是，以家庭为基础的无证儿童保育服务更加多且可承担。有执照的托儿中心在地理上或经济上都不适合大多数家庭。
Nearly half of American children under five live in areas where the demand for openings in childcare centers surpasses availability. (Spots for infants and toddlers in childcare centers are even more limited than those for three-to-four year olds, since the low teacher-to-child ratio necessary to ensure safety also make them difficult to profit from.) Where licensed, high-quality care is available, individual families shoulder most of the cost — and it is often prohibitively expensive.
近五分之一的五岁以下的美国儿童生活在对开放的儿童保育中心的需求超过供应的地区。 （儿童保育中心的为婴儿和幼儿的提供服务的机构甚至比为三到四岁儿童提供服务的机构更有限，因为确保安全所需的低教师—儿童比也使他们难以从中获利。）当有执照的，高质量的照料服务可以获得时，个人家庭承担了大部分费用—而且往往极其昂贵。
Nationally, the average cost of tuition at a childcare center is over $10,000 per year — nearly 20 percent of the median household income. In the majority of states, childcare costs more than college tuition. Because it is largely private, our system is deeply inefficient, placing parents in competition against each other for coveted spots, instead of allowing them to negotiate prices collectively. Families in the United States spend 25.6 percent of their income on childcare, compared to an OEDC average of 13 percent, while getting significantly lower quality care.
在全国范围内，儿童保育中心的平均学费每年超过10,000美元—几乎占家庭收入中位数的20％。在大多数州，儿童保育费用高于大学学费。 因为它主要是私人的，所以我们的系统效率非常低，让父母相互竞争以争夺令人垂涎的地方，而不是让他们集体谈判价格。 美国的家庭将其收入的25.6％用于托儿服务，而OEDC国家的平均数据为13％，同时获得的护理质量显着降低。
Further, the grossly inadequate twelve weeks of job protection offered by FMLA means that many American children start day care at the exact time that the risk of dying from SIDS is highest: two to three months of age. Experts theorize that the reason why day-care deaths often happen in the first week or so that a child attends a new program is because children whose parents practice safe sleep practices at home are especially susceptible to SIDS when they are moved to unsafe sleep environments.
此外，FMLA提供的十二周工作保护严重不足意味着许多美国儿童在SIDS死亡风险最高的确切时间开始日托：两到三个月大。专家推测，日托死亡经常发生在小孩参加新项目的第一周左右是因为父母在家中实行安全睡眠操作的小孩在被转移到不安全的睡眠环境时特别容易感染SIDS。
Derek Dodd relied on the recommendation of a friend when looking for childcare for his eleven-week-old son. But despite having been cited by the Department of Health just ten days earlier for unsafe sleep practices, the home-based provider “put our child in an unbuckled car seat on the floor, swaddled, where he wiggled down until he lost his airway and suffocated to death.” The baby was left unmonitored for two hours behind a closet door before the provider checked on him and found him blue.
Derek Dodd在为十一周大的儿子寻找托儿所时依赖了朋友的推荐。 但是，尽管在十天之前因为不安全的睡眠习惯而被卫生部提及，但基于家庭的服务提供者“把我们的孩子放在地板上的一个未扣紧的汽车座椅上，被包裹着，一直抽搐，直到他失去呼吸并窒息。”在服务提供者检查他并发现他是蓝色的之前，婴儿被丢在衣柜门后面两小时没人照看。
Amber Scorah, whose son died on his first day in an unlicensed program in New York City, writes, “It’s possible that even in a different system, Karl still might not have lived a day longer; but had he been with me, where I wanted him, I wouldn’t be sitting here, living with the nearly incapacitating anguish of a question that has no answer.” Neither family wanted their child to be in day care so young — both were refused additional unpaid leave by their employers, and could not afford to quit.
Amber Scorah的儿子在纽约市一个无执照项目的第一天死了，他写道：“即使在不同的系统中，卡尔仍然可能不会再活一天; 但如果他和我在一起，我想要他，我就不会坐在这里，和一个没有答案的问题生活在一起，这是一种几乎无能为力的痛苦生活。“两个家庭都不希望他们的孩子在如此年幼的时候被交给日托机构—他们的雇主拒绝了额外的无薪假，他们也无力退出。
Simply put, the deaths of these children must be counted as casualties of capitalism, an economic system which prioritizes profit over human life, especially those who do not yet add tangible value to the societies in which they live.
简而言之，这些儿童的死亡必须被视为资本主义的牺牲品，资本主义是一种利润优先而非人类生活的经济体系，特别是那些尚未为其所生活的社会增加有形的价值的人。
It’s easy to imagine negligent and abusive providers as monsters, but childcare is an exceptionally difficult job, demanding patience, creativity, compassion, self-control, and sometimes, selflessness. To consistently provide safe, quality care requires serious social investment in the well-being of children. For the most part, childcare workers and day-care directors devote an extraordinary amount of time and energy to filling in the immense gaps left by lack of federal guidance, funding, and support. The first year I worked as a teacher, I subsisted entirely on Red Bull and smoked-turkey slices I kept in my purse, so I could use the twenty-five minutes students were given for lunch to talk to them about things other than “content.” I do not know a single teacher who hasn’t routinely given up lunch breaks or taken work home to do into the wee hours of the morning, after putting their own kids to bed.
将疏忽和虐待的服务提供者视为怪物很容易，但儿童照料是一项异常艰巨的工作，需要耐心，创造力，同情心，自我控制，有时甚至是无私。 为了始终如一地提供安全，优质的护理，需要对儿童的福祉进行认真的社会投资。 在大多数情况下，儿童照料工作者和日托主任投入了大量的时间和精力来填补由于缺乏联邦指导，资金和支持而留下的巨大空白。我作为一名教师工作的第一年中，我完全依靠红牛和存放在我的包里的烟熏火鸡切片，所以我可以利用二十五分钟的学生午饭时间与他们谈论“内容“以外的事情。 我不认识一位老师在自己的小孩上床睡觉之后，没有经常放弃午休或将工作带回家做到凌晨。
It’s a hell of a lot to demand of people making $20,320 a year, the national median wage for early childhood teachers, which is below the poverty threshold for a family of four. These working-class women and men are increasingly being required to pay thousands of dollars out of their own pockets for college classes and state exams, while receiving wages far lower than the value they are providing — and lower than those of teachers who work with older kids. In essence, we are subsidizing our current system of early childhood education on their backs. It’s unfair, and it leads to high turnover — which can be dangerous. It’s also inefficient: there is a strong and well-documented relationship between higher teacher salaries and higher childcare program quality.
对于年收入20,320美元的人来说，这是一个很大的问题，这是全国幼儿教师的工资中位数，低于一个四口之家的贫困线。 这些工人阶级的女性和男性越来越多地被要求自费支付数千美元用于大学课程和州考试，同时获得的工资远低于他们提供的价值—并且低于和年龄较大的小孩一起的教师的工资。从本质上讲，我们正在补贴我们目前的幼儿教育制度。这是不公平的，它导致高流动率—这可能是危险的。这也是效率低下的：更高的教师工资与更高的儿童照料项目质量之间存在着明确的且记录良好的关联。
Yet all human beings are fallible, which is why we need consistent federal regulations in place for the protection of both children and the day-care workers who care for them. Systems like those used effectively in the community-based early childcare center I ran are critical to ensure that no child experiences the tragic negligence endured by Dodd’s son.
然而，所有人都是会犯错误的，这就是为什么我们需要一致的联邦法规来保护儿童和那些照顾儿童们的日托工作者。 在我所运作的以社区为基础的早期儿童照料中心有效使用的系统对于确保没有小孩经历Dodd的儿子所遭受的悲惨疏忽至关重要。
Our infant/toddler classroom consisted of ten children cared for by four teachers, who supported each other and kept each other responsible with extraordinary grace and effort in a demanding job. Every single teacher was trained annually in CPR and safe sleep practices, even though it meant closing the school for a couple days a year. We hired two substitute teachers who showed up every day to enable us to meet the child/teacher ratios suggested by experts, even when teachers were out sick. The presence of a program director and assistant director — as well as regular unannounced visits from the state — ensured that teachers followed guidelines at all times. Infant/toddler teachers kept a log (as required by New York state law) in which teachers initialed that they had checked on a baby in its sleep every fifteen minutes. The inspectors always examined the logs when they came to visit.
我们的婴儿/幼儿教室由十名由四名教师照顾的儿童组成，这些教师们互相支持，并在一份要求很高的工作中保持彼此的非凡的优雅和努力。每年都有一名教师接受过心肺复苏和安全睡眠训练，尽管这意味着每年会关闭学校几天。 我们聘请了两名代课教师，他们每天都出现，以便我们能够达到专家建议的儿童/教师比例，即使教师生病了。项目主任和助理主任的出席—以及政府的定期暗访—确保教师始终遵循指导方针。 婴儿/幼儿教师保留了一份记录（按照纽约州法律的要求），教师们每隔十五分钟就会在检查一个在睡眠中的婴儿。检查员在访问时总是会检查日志。
Unfortunately — and contrary to the suggestion of Connecticut’s assistant child advocate — even regulated childcare in America is not uniformly high quality. In a recent report on childcare quality and oversight of regulated centers compiled by the advocacy organization Child Care Aware of America, not one state earned an “A.” The only program to earn a “B” was the Department of Defense’s, which is run by the federal government. Ten, including New York, earned a “C,” twenty-one states earned a “D,” and nineteen failed.
不幸的是—与康涅狄格州助理儿童倡导者的建议相反—即使在美国受到监管的儿童照料服务也不是一贯的高质量。在最近由倡导组织Child Care Aware of America编制的关于儿童照料质量和监管中心的监督质量的报告中，没有一个州获得“A”。唯一获得“B”的项目是国防部的，该项目由联邦政府运作。包括纽约在内的十个州获得了“C”，二十一个州获得了“D”，十九个州失败了。
It was a simple survey: the organization used fifteen basic benchmarks representing research-backed criteria. It revealed that only thirty-one states plus the dod require a fingerprint check for childcare center staff, and just twenty-three require a check of the sex-offender registry. Thirty states plus the dod inspect centers two or more times per year, but nine states do not require any type of annual inspection. Only sixteen states addressed each of ten basic health and safety requirements recommended by pediatric experts in their licensing requirements. Just thirty-nine states in the wealthiest country in the world even have a program that rates the quality of day-care centers.
这是一项简单的调查：该组织使用了十五个代表了基于研究的标准的基础标准。据透露，只有三十一个州加上dod需要对儿童照料中心的工作人员进行指纹检查，而只有二十三个州需要在性犯罪者登记处进行检查。30个州加上dod每年两次或更多次检查中心，但9个州不要求任何类型的年检。 只有十六个州要求了儿科专家在许可要求方面建议的十项基本健康和安全要求。世界上最富有的国家中只有三十九个州甚至有一个项目来评估日托中心的质量。
Privatized Care
被私有化的照料服务
No wonder day care has a bad name in this country. But why do we fault the idea itself, rather than the well-documented failures in executing it?
难怪日托在这个国家有一个坏名声。 但是，为什么我们责怪这个想法本身，而不是在执行它时有效记录失败？
When a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) study found a link between long hours in day care and behavioral problems, some headlines crowed with perverse joy, “Sorry Working Moms, Daycare is Bad For Your Kid.” The New York Times took a more concerned tone (“Poor Behavior is Linked to Time in Daycare”), and then there was the gleeful, literary, “A generation of ‘little savages’ raised in nurseries as daycare is linked to aggression in toddlers.”
当国家儿童健康与人类发展研究所（NICHD）的一项研究发现长时间的日间照料与行为问题之间存在联系时，一些头条新闻中充满了不正常的喜悦，“抱歉工作妈妈，日托对你的孩子不好。”纽约时报采取了更为关注的语气（“不良行为与日托时间相关联”），然后有一种欢乐的文学修饰，“托儿所养育了一代’小野人’，日托与幼儿的侵略有关。”
What few reporters stopped to mention was that the quality of childcare is an essential piece of the puzzle. It was children in low-quality care who experienced behavioral problems later in life — and even those problems seemed to disappear over time. In fact, by middle school, researchers were able to detect little difference between kids who went to day care and those who didn’t. Not a single one wrote about the fact that the percentage of childcare-center classes observed by the NICHD meeting guidelines for adult-to-child ratio was 36 percent for children aged six months, 20 percent for children aged 1.5 years, and 26 percent for children aged 2 years.
几乎没有记者提到，儿童照料的质量是这个难题的关键部分之一。被低质量护理的小孩在以后的生活中经历过行为问题—甚至那些似乎随着时间的推移而消失的问题。事实上，通过初中，研究人员能够发现去日托的小孩与没有上过日托的小孩之间的区别很小。没有一个人写过这样一个事实，即NICHD观察的儿童照料中心课程中的达到指导标准的成人与儿童比例的对于6个月的儿童为36％，对于1.5岁的儿童为20％，对于2岁儿童为26％。
More significantly, and equally underreported: family characteristics such as income and access to “emotionally supportive and cognitively rich” environments where “mothers experienced little psychological distress” — in other words, social class — were far more predictive of developmental outcomes than who cared for a child and for how long. And of course, no one questioned the long hours parents put in at work, which necessitated those long hours logged by kids at day-care centers in the first place.
更重要的，同样不被报道的是：家庭特征，如收入和获得“情感支持和认知丰富”的环境，其中“母亲经历过很少的心理困扰” —换句话说，社会阶级—比谁照顾儿童和照顾多久更对发展结果具有预测性。当然，没有人质疑父母的工作时间太长，这决定了日托中心记录下了这些关于儿童的长时间工作。
Well, not exactly no one. The Norwegians were on it. In a study of 75,000 children, researchers from the United States and Norway not only found zero link between childcare and behavioral problems, but noticed that when they examined their sample using the same methods as the NICHD researchers, their own results were skewed as well. “Norway takes a very different approach to childcare than we do in the United States and that may play a role in our findings,” one of the report’s authors delicately noted.
好吧，不是完全没有人。 挪威人做了。 在一项针对75,000名儿童的研究中，来自美国和挪威的研究人员不仅发现儿童照料与行为问题之间没有任何联系，而且注意到当这些人使用与NICHD的研究人员相同的方法检查这些样本时，这些人自己的结果也是有偏差的。 “挪威对儿童照料的态度与我们在美国采取的方式截然不同，这可能在我们的研究结果中发挥作用，”该报告的一位作者明确指出。
Children are legally entitled to early childhood care in Norway, like most advanced capitalist countries. Where childcare programs are seen as a universal right, austerity measures cannot erode them into oblivion as has happened with the means-tested Head Start program in the United States.
与大多数进步资本主义国家一样，儿童在挪威依法有权享受幼儿照料。 在将儿童照料项目视为普世人权的情况下，紧缩措施不能像美国的经过经济状况调查的“头部启动”计划那样将儿童照料项目扔进湮灭中。
Congress doesn’t hesitate to use the full power of the state to force fathers to pay child support. Child protective services commonly takes unsupervised children into custody and deems them “abandoned” — which happened recently to a South Carolina mother who could not afford the cost of summer camp and left her nine-year-old daughter to play in a park while she worked at a local McDonald’s. (The mother was jailed.) Already this year, a Chicago mother has been arrested for allowing her children to walk to the Dollar Store alone while she was at work — as well as for allowing her family to live in “deplorable conditions.” In other words, for being poor.
国会毫不犹豫地利用政府的全部权力迫使父亲支付子女抚养费。儿童照料服务通常将无人监管的儿童拘留并认为他们“被遗弃”—这最近发生在南卡罗来纳州的一位母亲身上，她无力承担夏令营的费用，并让她九岁的女儿在她在当地的麦当劳工作时在公园里玩耍。（母亲被判入狱。）今年，一名芝加哥母亲因为允许她的孩子在她工作期间独自走到美元商店而被捕—以及允许她的家人生活在“悲惨的环境中”。 换句话说，因为穷。（把被剥削压迫的人扔进监狱，资本主义，呵呵。）
Meanwhile, the federal government owes practically nothing to children younger than five or any child outside of the school year. The result of this system is clear: young children in America are more likely to live in poverty than any other age group.
与此同时，联邦政府几乎没有对五岁以下的孩子或学龄以外的任何孩子付过任何责任。该系统的结果很明确：美国的儿童比任何其他年龄组的人更容易生活在贫困中。
In contrast to Europe, where unions agitated for and won comprehensive, federally subsidized social programs, the weakness of unions in the United States meant that the only social programs on offer here were those offered by bourgeois nongovernmental institutions. Instead of solidarity, the poor got sympathy; progressives were more concerned about vagrants running wild in the streets than they were about the suffering kids experienced as laborers in factories.
与工会凶猛的争取并赢得了全面的联邦补贴社会项目的欧洲相反的是，美国工会的衰弱意味着这里提供的唯一社会项目是资产阶级的非政府机构提供的。与团结相反的是，穷人得到了同情; 进步右派们更关心在街头狂奔的流浪者，而不是在工厂工作的童工遭受的苦难。
The plight of mothers whose children were taken from them in Chicago and South Carolina is an echo from a time when “child savers” rounded up children off the streets and forcibly sent them away to labor on western farms on “orphan trains,” whether or not they already had homes. In the nineteenth century, poverty was viewed as a contagious disease, and being poor was justification for having your children taken from you.
在芝加哥和南卡罗来纳州的被带走孩子的母亲的困境是从“儿童拯救者”围捕街头儿童并强迫他们通过“孤儿列车”去西部农场工作的时代的回音，无论这些小孩是不是已经有了家。在十九世纪，贫穷被视为一种传染病，而贫穷是让你的孩子从你身边被带走的理由。
This viewpoint began to shift in the 1970s when Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have provided federally funded, universal childcare and education. But conservatives echoed Progressive-era private charitable organizations in their objections: Nixon vetoed the bill, coming down on the side of “the family-centered approach” rather than committing “the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches.” Nixon continued the conservative viewpoint of earlier reformers like Lydia Maria Child, sentimentalizing mothers, while denying them economic support.
这种观点在1970s开始转变，当时国会通过了“综合儿童发展法案”，该法案将提供联邦政府资助的普世儿童照料和教育。 但是，保守派反对进步时代，主张私人慈善组织：尼克松否决了该法案，采取了“以家庭为中心的方法”，而不是将“国民政府的巨大道德权威置于公众的一边。 “尼克松继续比如Lydia Maria Child这样的早期改革者的保守观点，对母亲情感化，同时拒绝对她们提供经济支持。
In the famous “kitchen table” debate, in which he debated Khrushchev while they toured a model American suburban home, Nixon points to a dishwasher, “built in thousands of units” because, “In America, we like to make life easier for women.” Khrushchev shuts down this line of thinking with a simple, “Your capitalistic attitude toward women does not occur under communism.… We build firmly, we build for our children and grandchildren.” Actually, that’s the point, Nixon responds: consumption drives the economy. But, says Khrushchev, “In Russia, all you have to do to get a house is to be born in the Soviet Union. You are entitled to housing. In America, if you don’t have a dollar, you have a right to choose between sleeping in a house or on the pavement.”
在着名的“厨房餐桌”辩论中，尼克松在他们参观模范美国郊区住宅时和赫鲁晓夫进行了辩论，尼克松指向洗碗机，“这建造了数千个单元”，因为“在美国，我们希望让女性的生活更轻松。 “赫鲁晓夫用一种简单的方式关闭了这种思路，”在共产主义下，你们资本主义的女性态度不会发生……我们坚定地建设，我们为子孙后代建设。“实际上，这是关键所在，尼克松的回应是：消费驱动经济。但是，赫鲁晓夫说，“在俄罗斯，你为了得到住房所要做的就是在苏联出生。你有权获得住房。在美国，如果你没有美元，你有权选择在房子里睡觉或在人行道上睡觉。“（赫鲁晓夫说美国说对了，但他并没有在苏联做到这一点。）
Most women took on work outside the home in the 1970s not because their values had changed, but because it became economically necessary to do so. But mainstream feminists did little to challenge the idea that having children is an individual choice, which must be paid for individually. In contrast to Europe, where women’s emancipation was spearheaded by workers, many liberal American second-wavers ignored or were openly hostile to mothers. Little urban zines called them “oppressors”; others viewed them as retrograde traditionalists or bad role models for their kids.
在1970s，大多数女性在家外工作并不是因为她们的价值观发生了变化，而是因为经济上有必要这样做。 但是，主流女权主义者几乎没有挑战这样的想法，即生孩子是个人选择，必须被单独支付。与女性的解放是由工人带头的欧洲相比，许多自由派的美国第二波人士忽视或公开对母亲怀有敌意。 小城市的杂志们称她们为“压迫者”; 其他人认为她们是逆行的传统主义者或小孩们的坏榜样。
Wages for Housework, an international campaign which was far more grounded in economic demands and challenging the family wage than say, Ms. magazine, brought visibility to cooking, cleaning, and caring for children as labor and sparked debate. But it failed to successfully transform itself into a broad working-class movement. Mainstream Americans were never forced to reckon with the fundamental reason women are devalued and discriminated against in the public workplace, or stuck at home: we are the presumed primary caregivers of children. Whether we plan on having children or not, until we live in a country with adequate social provisions, we will walk into any job interview with the weight of the expectation that we will one day become less productive workers or leave the workforce altogether.
争取家务劳动的工资是一项国际运动，它更多地基于经济需求和挑战家庭工资，而不是像杂志女士那样，将烹饪，清洁和照顾孩子变得可见，作为劳动和激发辩论。但它未能成功地转变为广泛的工人阶级运动。 主流美国人从未被迫考虑女性在公共场所的被贬值和歧视，或被困在家中的根本原因：我们是被假定的儿童的主要照顾者。无论我们是否计划生育小孩，在我们生活在一个有充分社会条件的国家之前，我们都会参加任何面试，期望我们有朝一日会成为生产力较低的工人或完全离开劳动力队伍。
Some American feminists even shared Nixon’s predilection for constructing private solutions to collective problems. They may not have been moving to suburban houses and stroking their dishwashers fondly while thanking the free market, but they did retreat into private enclaves, founding parent cooperatives on college campuses with volunteer schedules that were doable for artists and the self-employed, but not for the vast majority of parents with full-time work schedules. While these programs may have been personally necessary, they were certainly not political — and access to them was limited by race and class.
一些美国女权主义者甚至认为尼克松偏爱建立私人解决集体问题的方法。 他们可能没有搬到郊区的房子，并且在感谢自由市场的同时深情地抚摸他们的洗碗机，但是他们确实撤退到了私人飞地，在大学校园里建立了家长合作社，其中志愿者时间表对艺术家和自雇职业者来说是可行的，但不是针对绝大多数有全职工作的家长的。 虽然这些计划可能对个人来说是必要的，但它们肯定不是政治性的—而且对他们的采纳受到种族和阶级的限制。
Historian Christine Stansell quotes one woman whose son was enrolled in a feminist center: “one Black mother did join the group,” but left “because she didn’t feel at ease with the other mothers who seemed like hippies to her.” If, as Stansell writes, hostility towards motherhood was “a white woman’s sentiment,” obliviousness to the pressing need for subsidized day care was a rich woman’s privilege.
历史学家Christine Stansell引用了一位女人，她的儿子参加了一个女权主义中心：“一位黑人母亲确实加入了该组织”，但是“因为她对其他看起来像嬉皮士的母亲感到不安。而离开。”如果， 正如Stansell 所写，对母亲的敌意是“白人女性的情绪”，那么将补贴日托的迫切需要的遗忘是富裕女性的特权。
Recollecting that heady time, Ellen Willis writes in an essay about finding a nanny for her daughter, “as feminist activists we, along with the thousands of other young, childless women who dominated the movement, had of course understood that sexual equality required a new system of child-rearing, but the issue remained abstract, unconnected with our most urgent needs; as mothers in the political vacuum of the eighties, along with millions of working parents, we pursue our individual solutions as best we can. The political has devolved into the personal with a vengeance.”
回忆起那段令人兴奋的时光，Ellen Willis写了一篇关于为女儿寻找保姆的文章，“作为女权主义活动者，我们和成千上万的其他年轻无子女的女性一起主宰这一运动，性别平等需要一个新的养育儿童的制度，但这个问题仍然是抽象的，与我们最紧迫的需求无关; 作为八十年代政治真空中的母亲，以及数百万工人父母，我们尽最大努力追求个性化的解决方案。 政治已经转变为个人的报复。“
How to Build a Public Day-Care System
如何建立一个公共日托系统
Today, Americans are finally beginning to understand that our seemingly personal struggles in finding childcare are actually a political problem. Universal childcare is wildly popular among the entire electorate, regardless of political affiliation, and people are willing to pay for it. At least 70 percent of Americans favor using federal money to make sure high-quality preschool education programs are available for every child in America. Eighty-two percent say mothers and 69 percent say fathers should receive paid family leave upon the birth of a child.
今天，美国人终于开始明白，我们在寻找儿童照料服务方面看似是个人的斗争，实际上是一个政治问题。普世儿童照料服务在整个选民中广受欢迎，无论其政治派别如何，人们愿意为此付钱。至少有70％的美国人倾向于使用联邦资金来确保为美国的每个儿童提供高质量的学前教育课程。82％的人说母亲和69％的人说父亲应该在孩子出生时领受带薪的育儿假。
It’s certainly feasible. We’ve done it before when it became necessary to prevent working-class revolt or to go to war. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) opened “emergency” nurseries in 1933 under the control of local and state agencies (and sometimes, the public school system) through the Federal Emergency Relief Agency. Their explicit function was to serve first as a jobs program for teachers, nutritionists, janitors, and nurses, and second, to educate children. The women who became teachers observed profound improvements in those they taught, such as the disappearance of a stutter in one child, as well as their own lives (“I never knew before that it was fun to work,” historian Barbara Beatty quotes one staff member exclaiming). Enrollment by race reflected the general population at the time, but because it was primarily working-class families who used them, the stigma of the schools as anti-poverty measures meant that most of them did not endure beyond the Depression, despite the best efforts of many.
这当然是可行的。我们之前已经完成了它，以防止工人阶级的暴动或开战。工程进展管理局（WPA）于1933年在地方和州机构（有时是公立学校系统）的控制下通过联邦紧急救济局开设了“紧急”托儿所。它们的明确功能是首先为教师，营养师，门卫和护士提供就业计划，其次是教育儿童。成为教师的女性观察到他们所教导的人的明显的进步，例如一个儿童的口吃的消失，以及他们自己的生活（“我以前从未知道工作很有趣”，历史学家Barbara Beatty引用一名工作人员的感叹）。基于种族入学反映了当时的一般人口，但由于主要是工人阶级家庭使用它们，将学校作为反贫困措施的耻辱意味着尽管做出了最大的努力，但大多数学校并没有在大萧条之后被继续保持。
When women flocked to factory jobs during World War II, the federal government approved funding for 3,102 childcare centers under the Lanham Act. These programs were even better than the centers, with teachers trying out various responsive pedagogical approaches, and administrators ensuring that teachers and families worked together to ensure the happiness and success of the children enrolled. They hoped the schools would serve as models for a free, public, universal early childhood education program that could continue after the war, but the government shuttered it when men returned from overseas and took back their jobs. Beatty records one government official justifying the closures: “To some it connotes an inability to care for one’s own; to some it has a vague incompatibility with the traditional idea of the American home; to others it has a taint of socialism.”
当第二次世界大战期间女性蜂拥到工厂工作时，联邦政府根据“兰哈姆法案”批准了3,102个儿童照料中心的资金。这些项目甚至比中心更好，教师尝试各种启发式教学方法，管理人员确保教师和家庭共同努力以确保入学儿童的幸福和成功。 他们希望这些成为免费，公开，普世的早期儿童教育项目的模板的学校能在战争之后继续存在，但是当男性从海外归来并收回工作时，政府就关闭了它。 Beatty记录了一位政府官员合理化关闭的理由：“对一些人来说，它意味着无法照顾自己; 对某些人来说，它与美国家庭的传统观念模糊不清; 对其他人来说，它有一种社会主义的污点。“
More recently, we have the example of the military’s childcare centers — consistently the highest-rated program in the United States — and the only non-means-tested program that is federally subsidized and regulated. In the 1980s, when a report found that Department of Defense centers were failing to meet safety codes, Congress took action, passing the Military Child Care Act, which raised teacher salaries and provided funding for increased training, subsidized tuition, and rigorous and quarterly inspections — assessing teacher qualifications and pedagogical approaches as well as health and safety.
最近，我们举了军队儿童照料中心的例子—一直是在美国评价最高的项目—也是联邦政府补贴和监管的唯一经过非经济状况调查的计划。 在1980s，当一份报告发现国防部中心未能达到安全法规时，国会采取了行动，通过了“军事育儿法”，该法提高了教师工资，并为增加培训，补贴学费以及为严格的季度检查提供资金—以评估教师资格和教学方法以及健康和安全。
我在国防部儿童照料中心与一个拥有两个小孩的家长交谈时告诉我，她最初根据费用选择了该计划。她的家庭成为其滑动的学费规模的最高级别，每个孩子每月支付600美元，低于全国平均水平，远低于她所居住地区的平均水平。 她也被宣传其可靠的报道所吸引：该计划全年开放，周一至周五，早上6点至下午6点，并且仅在联邦假期时关闭—在儿童照料领域闻所未闻。 但除了这些实际的好处之外，她还欣赏老师们的经验，技巧和交际能力。他们保留了小孩的工作组合，并讨论了他们在常规会议中达到的发展里程碑。 一位老师深受小孩们的喜爱，当她到达教室时，小孩们“爆发出快乐的喊叫”。
Teachers provide daily reports of children’s activities, which are developmentally appropriate and play-based, and the school has a nutritionist who coordinates meals with whole grains, vegetables, and healthy snacks like hummus.
教师每天都会提供有关儿童活动的报告，这些活动在发展方面是合适的，基于游戏，学校里有一名营养师，他们用全麦，蔬菜和例如鹰嘴豆泥的健康零食协调膳食。
If we can offer this high-quality, affordable program to military families, why can’t we offer it to all families? Aside from the benefits to her children’s well-being and her family’s finances, the parent notes:
如果我们能够为军人家庭提供这种高质量的，价格合理的计划，为什么我们不能将它提供给所有家庭呢？ 除了对儿童的幸福和家庭财务的好处外，家长还指出：
It has drastically improved my mental health and marital health, which I didn’t foresee. I am no longer losing sleep or spending the same mental energy coordinating not just my own work schedule but my children’s care schedule also. I’m not constantly wondering whether I need to choose between my job and my family.
它大大改善了我的心理健康和婚姻健康，这是我没有预见到的。我不再失眠或花费同样的心理能量以配合不仅仅是我自己的工作时间表，还有儿童的照顾时间表。我不是经常想知道我是否需要在工作和家庭之间做出选择。
She also adds, if paid parental leave and universal childcare were available nationally, “I’d probably be pregnant with a third child.”
她还补充说，如果在全国范围内有带薪育儿假和全民托儿服务，“我可能会怀有第三个孩子。”
New York provides an interesting case study of what can happen to teachers’ working conditions — and children’s learning conditions — when early childhood programs are integrated into the public education system. Recently, the state-subsidized, free, universal pre-K system went from serving a tiny number of families, to being open to all families in New York. In the next few years, coverage will expand to include all of the city’s three year olds, rich or poor. Now, certified early childhood educators can share in the higher wages, benefits, and collective bargaining powers of unionized K-12 educators, which has led to an exodus from lower-paying private or nonprofit community centers to the public system. Program directors at lower-paying private schools have accused the Department of Education of “poaching” employees.
纽约提供了一个有趣的案例研究，说明了当幼儿教育计划融入公共教育系统时，教师的工作条件——儿童的学习条件会发生什么变化。最近，政府补贴的，免费的，普遍的学前教育系统从为少数家庭服务，到向纽约的所有家庭开放。 在接下来的几年里，覆盖范围将扩大到包括所有城市的三岁儿童，无论贫富。现在，经过认证的幼儿教育工作者可以分享和组合工会的K-12教育工作者相同的更高工资，福利和集体谈判能力，从而从低薪私人或非营利社区中心迁移到公共系统。低薪私立学校的项目负责人指责教育部“偷猎”员工。
What if this happened on a national level? I asked Nurri if and how America’s early childcare could improve. “It will take some backbone,” she said. “We need to ask more questions and not be afraid to defend ourselves respectfully and professionally without fear of losing our jobs. The more educators become aware of how powerful we are, the more we can band together and fight for fair and equal wages, emergent curriculums, and make access to receiving certifications and degrees more accessible to employees. We need to feel like our work matters to people and makes a difference.”
如果这发生在全国范围内怎么办？ 我问Nurri美国早期儿童照料服务是否需要改善以及如何改善。 “这需要一些支柱，”她说。 “我们需要提出更多问题，不要害怕在尊重和专业方面为自己辩护，不必担心失去工作。意识到我们有多么强大的教育工作者越多，我们就越能团结一致并争取公平和平等的工资和紧急课程，并使员工更容易获得接受证书和学位。 我们需要觉得我们的工作对人们很重要并且有所作为。“
Banding together is key. Recently, when parents at one NYC childcare center advocated for an increase in wages for their children’s teachers, the center warned them that tuition would rise — an obvious attempt to divide the interests of the parents and teachers once they united against management.
联合在一起是关键。 最近，当一个纽约市儿童照料中心的家长们主张增加孩子教师的工资时，该中心警告他们学费会上升—这显然一旦他们团结起来反对管理就分裂父母和老师的利益的企图。
History reveals that paid parental leave and universal childcare will not be won on the basis of liberal appeals to fairness, equal opportunity for women, or demands for a more diverse elite — and that Sheryl Sandberg’s benefits do not trickle down to factory workers, garbage collectors, and the nannies and early childhood workers whose underpaid labor keeps our society running. Corporations may offer these benefits to attract highly educated and skilled workers, but they will not provide them for all workers at the expense of their bottom line. By definition, capitalism seeks to maximize profit, not the quality of life of workers.
历史表明，带薪育儿假和普世儿童照料不会在自由派诉求公平，女性机会均等或要求更多元化的精英的基础上被赢得——而且Sheryl Sandberg的好处不会渗透给工厂工人，垃圾收集者以及那些用过低的工资使得我们的社会保持运转的保姆和幼儿工人。公司可以提供这些好处来吸引受过高等教育的和技术熟练的工人，但他们不会以牺牲自己的利润为代价为所有工人提供这些福利。 根据定义，资本主义寻求最大化利润，而不是工人的生活质量。
But having a child is not just a personal choice — it’s a matter of reproducing the species. It is not an act of selfishness that one should pay for, but an act of optimism and investment in society. Until the United States can do what the rest of the world has done and commit its vast resources to child welfare, the ties that bind families together will be as tenuous as their employment status.
但生孩子不仅仅是一个个人选择—这是一个再生产这一物种的问题。 这不是人们应该为之自己付出成本的自私行为，而是一种乐观的表现和对社会的投资。 除非在美国能够做到世界其他地方所做的事情并将其巨大的资源用于儿童福利之前，将家庭联系在一起的关系将与其就业状况一样脆弱。
It doesn’t matter whether early childhood education would make the American economy stronger. What matters is that we need it. Parents need to know that their children are safe and happy while they’re at work, without spending a fortune. They deserve to enjoy their children, not lie awake at night worrying about how to afford them. And children deserve to spend their days in the company of peers, having fun, and discovering the world with the help of loving, well-compensated adults.
幼儿教育是否会使美国经济更加强大并不重要。 重要的是我们需要它。 家长们需要知道孩子们在家长工作时是安全的和快乐的，不用花钱。他们应该享受他们的小孩，而不是在晚上醒着担心如何负担他们。小孩们应该在同伴的陪伴下度过他们的日子，享受乐趣，并在充满爱心，得到良好补偿的成年人的帮助下发现这个世界。
Some liberals try to justify the expense of childcare as a social program that will save us money down the line. Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania notes on his website that early childhood education is “critical to our nation’s economic strength.” Invest in children today, exploit them as toothless workers with no collective bargaining tomorrow.
一些自由主义者试图用将会节省金钱作为对儿童保育费用作为一项社会项目的合理化。宾夕法尼亚州的参议员Bob Casey在他的网站上指出，幼儿教育“对我们国家的经济实力至关重要。”今天投资于儿童，将他们剥削为明天不会进行集体谈判的无牙工人。
This is a mistake. Evidence abounds that redistribution is a far more effective way of reducing poverty and improving academic outcomes for children from low-income families than childhood education.
这是个错误。 有证据表明，与儿童教育相比，再分配是减少贫困和改善低收入家庭儿童的学业成果的一种更有效的方法。
And when education is seen as compensatory — when it is directed at poor children and intended to make up for the inadequacies of a child’s background — it becomes a thing that we do to children, which must be quantified, rather than a lifelong process that they get to be part of. These types of programs teach children that they are beneficiaries, not citizens, and they have no place in a democracy.
当教育被认为是补偿性的—当它针对贫困儿童并且旨在弥补儿童背景的不足时—我们对儿童做了一件必须被量化的事情，而不是他们成为其中一部分的终身过程。 这些类型的项目教育儿童们是受益者，而不是公民，儿童们在民主中没有地位。
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/a-blueprint-for-universal-childhood