Care is a very different word from love, |
Children need most not trained, expert, professional care, but the passionate partiality of parental love. That love is not reproducible, just as to be a mother is not reproducible. Caring is. Mothering cannot be bought or sold, or reproduced by the marketplace. But caring can. |
I was never a clucky person, |
I was opposed to the New Right when it emerged throughout the English-speaking world in the 1980s. |
To me the early childhood story is an ecumenical one. You take poverty seriously. You take seriously maternal depression. You take seriously children under stress and you take seriously the effects of extended hours participation in poor quality care. Those are the facts I begin with. |