Housebroken by David Eddie

Author:David Eddie [Eddie, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36904-8
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2000-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

8. THE POLITICS

OF DRUDGERY

In any case, since when do we turn to studies to tell us everything about how to live our lives? It’s a curiously twentieth-century phenomenon to think a study can tell us how to raise children, conduct marriages and other relationships. One hundred and fifty years ago, if you wanted someone to believe in the truth of a statement, you would have begun it with “Poets say…” Now it’s “According to a recent study…”

For me, it’s a gut feeling. You bring a helpless little creature into the world, you take care of it, you hold it in your arms. I’ve since visited the daycare centre across the street. I looked around, got a pamphlet, even interviewed the director, shamelessly posing as a parent hoping to secure a place for his child. But what I was really seeking was self-justification, some sense that I was more than a superannuated, hyperexpensive babysitter.

I found what I was looking for. The daycare staff were obviously a caring, qualified and nurturing crew, and, as advertised, there were numerous learning toys, not to mention a tunnel the kids could crawl through and the famous disco ball. But as I was touring the facility, I saw one of my friend’s babies crying. The daycare worker was rocking her in her arms, comforting her, doing a good job of it, but staring off into the middle distance with a blank expression on her face; it was obvious she didn’t love the child in her arms. “That’s why I’m getting paid the big bucks,” I said to myself. “For my love. I’m getting paid for my love.”

I’m not criticizing people who put their kids in daycare. Everyone makes their own decisions, for their own reasons. Obviously, throughout human history, whenever anyone could afford to avoid the drudgery of caring for kids, they opted for it: governesses, wet nurses, boarding school, farming out, whatever. Out of twenty-one thousand babies born in Paris in 1780, for example, fewer than two thousand were kept at home. The other nineteen thousand were farmed out, usually deported to foster homes in the countryside, where many of them were fed a diet of wine-soaked bread and mashed chestnuts. And they survived—well, actually, they didn’t. More than half of them died before the age of two from scurvy, dysentery and other diseases. But my point is: farming kids out is nothing new.

I’m aware that many people feel they can’t afford to stay home with their children, although I would point out that in 1933, the average per capita income was less than half what it is today, and food, clothing and shelter accounted for almost 80 percent of the average family’s income. When was the last time you wondered which cut of meat to buy, let alone whether you could afford meat at all? Anyone with a sense of domestic history, of how our grandparents lived versus how we live, knows the truth: we work harder because we spend more. In fact, we’ve never been richer.

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