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