Who pays the price for feminism?

The most obvious answer is probably “men”.
But I think the most significant costs are being borne by children.
Here are some examples of the negative consequences for children of feminism.

[Cf. Home-Alone America,
pb ed. by Mary Eberstadt]

2010-01-22-WP-shaken-baby-syndrome-Fairfax-County

Woman convicted of shaking infant
By Tom Jackman
Washington Post, 2010-01-22

2012-12-19-WP-Pentagon-begins-worldwide-probe-of-day-care-hiring-after-assault-allegations

Pentagon begins worldwide probe of day-care hiring after assault allegations
By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post, 2012-12-19

2013-01-10-WP-New-abuse-incident-reported

In Arlington, new abuse incident reported at Army day-care facility
By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post, 2013-01-10

2013-10-21-WP-babysitter-guilty-in-toddlers-death

Babysitter guilty in Virginia toddler’s death
By Jeremy Borden
Washington Post, 2013-10-21

2013-11-15-WP-state-report-finds-abuse-at-woodbridge-day-care-center

State report finds abuse at Woodbridge day-care center — Minnieland Academy at the Glen
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post, 2013-11-15

2013-11-25-WP-two-former-woodbridge-day-care-workers-charged-in-child-abuse-case

Two former Woodbridge day-care workers charged with child abuse
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post, 2013-11-25

2014

2014-02-08-NYT-Hymowitz-how-single-motherhood-hurts-kids

How Single Motherhood Hurts Kids
By KAY S. HYMOWITZ
New York Times Opinionator Blog, 2014-02-08

The last few weeks have brought an unusual convergence of voices from both the center and the left about a topic that is typically part of conservative rhetorical territory: poverty and single-parent families. Just as some conservatives have started talking seriously about rising inequality and stagnant incomes, some liberals have finally begun to admit that our stubbornly high rates of poverty and social and economic immobility are closely entwined with the rise of single motherhood.

But that’s where agreement ends. Consistent with its belief in self-sufficiency, the right wants to see more married-couple families. For the left, widespread single motherhood is a fact of modern life that has to be met with vigorously expanded government support. Liberals point out, correctly, that poverty rates for single-parent households are lower in most other advanced economies, where the welfare state is more generous.

That argument ignores a troubling truth:
Single-parent families are not the same in the United States as elsewhere.
Simply put,
unmarried parents here are more likely to enter into parenthood
in ways guaranteed to create turmoil in their children’s lives.
[I think the bigger problem is not the creation of "turmoil",
but the inability of many of these mothers
to provide traditional nurturing and developmental services to their children,
leaving the burden on the larger society.
Sadly, such mothers either cannot or will not give the child what the child needs,
and paid help, whether paid by an employer or the government,
is of uncertain interest and also competence in giving the child what the child needs.]
The typical American single mother is younger than
her counterpart in other developed nations.
She is also more likely to live
in a community where single motherhood is the norm
rather than an alternative life choice.

...

[Continuing her focus on "turmoil":]

[D]omestic churn is really bad news for kids.
The more “transitions” experienced by a child —
the arrival of a stepparent, a parental boyfriend or girlfriend, or a step- or half sibling —
the more children are likely to have either emotional or academic problems, or both.
(My own research indicates that boys, especially, suffer from these transitions.)

Part of the problem is that a nonresident father tends to fade out of his children’s lives if there’s a new man in his ex’s house or if he has children with a new partner. For logistical, emotional and financial reasons, his loyalty to his previous children slackens once he has a child with a new girlfriend or wife. Nor is it likely, from the overlooked child’s point of view, that a mother’s new boyfriend or husband can fill the gap. There’s substantial research showing that stepfathers are sometimes worse than none at all.

...

[T]hose ... realities raise serious doubts about the accept-and-prop-up response to single-parent families.
Increasing government largess could actually incentivize, or at least enable,
parental choices that everyone admits are damaging to kids.
The United States aside,
scholars have found a connection between the size of a welfare state
and rates of both nonmarital births and divorce.
[Hardly surprising. Does one need "scholars" to establish that?]
Even if you believe that enlarging the infrastructure of support for single-parent families
shows compassion for today’s children,
it’s not at all obvious that it shows much concern for tomorrow’s.

Most surprising,
given the likely feminist sympathies of liberal advocates for single mothers,
is their fatalism toward men.
While it’s a safe bet that most in this camp
wouldn’t hesitate to scold married “bastards on the couch”
for not pulling their weight at home,
they seem more than willing to write off unmarried fathers.
Not only does this merely accept
the personal loss suffered by millions of children living without their fathers;
it also virtually guarantees a permanent gender gap —
single mothers are inevitably competing in the labor market
with one hand tied behind their backs —
and entrenched inequality.

So where does that leave us, policy-wise?
Liberal critics of marriage promotion are probably correct that
there are only limited steps government can take
to change the way low-income couples meet and mate.
But that doesn’t mean the status quo is the way things have to be.
Not so long ago, the rise of teenage motherhood seemed unstoppable.
Instead, over the past two decades adolescent births have declined to record lows.
Researchers believe the decline was caused by
a combination of better contraceptive use and delayed sexual activity.
Both were grounded in a growing consensus —
including by the policy makers, educators, the public and teenagers themselves —
that having a baby when you are 16 is just a really bad idea.

[For an area where teenage pregnancy has not decreased, but increased,
see “Teen pregnancies stay stubbornly high in poor D.C. wards”.]

It’s not impossible that Americans could reach a similarly robust consensus
about having children outside of a committed relationship,
which in the United States, at least, tends to mean marriage.
But despite the growing list of center-left writers
willing to admit that single motherhood
is complicit in our high levels of poverty and inequality,
[are there people who do not admit that?]
that consensus still seems a long way off.

[I find discussions like this utterly baffling.
I live in a community largely made up of politically correct upper middle class white people.
That is not just my opinion,
the voting records in elections and the various demographic statistics indicate that.
It is described by newspapers as one of the deepest blue white-majority regions in the country.
But how do the upper-middle class white women treat their own daughters?
I can practically guarantee that they would go ballistic
if their own daughter became pregnant in high school,
and their ire would only diminish somewhat as their daughter moved along into higher education.

But what about girls of color?
The local school system, I have been told,
bends over backward to support students who give birth,
providing day care services for the children of female students.
What seems to be happening is that
if you are a high school girl of color and become pregnant,
well, what can you expect?
But if that happens to one of the daughters of these white women,
the daughter is a “bad, bad girl,”
suffering whatever punishments women can inflict on their daughters.

Perhaps I should state my own attitude on this obviously sensitive subject.
Different families will have different attitudes towards tolerating sexual activity,
depending on their religious beliefs and their general outlook.
But I would hope that all families, of whatever religion, parenting philosophy, and color
can agree that
women should not have children unless
they can provide the child with the support the child needs from the mother.
Traditionally, this has meant being in a married relation
or, in some cases of wealthy women, buying child care
(although that may well be an inferior substitute for the loving care
a mother can provide her own offspring).

But according to the final paragraph of the article,
consensus on that view does not exist.
I remember the 1950s, when that consensus did exist.
What broke the consensus?
Perhaps women might want to address that question.
"Women" because women have been the motive force in driving feminism.]

2014-08-31-WP-in-virginia-thousands-of-day-care-providers-receive-no-oversight

In Virginia, thousands of day-care providers receive no oversight
by David Fallis and Amy Brittain
Washington Post, 2014-08-31

Early childhood education and development

2010

2010-05-21-WP-Stein-child-care-problems-last

Study finds that effects of low-quality child care last into adolescence
By Rob Stein
Washington Post, 2010-05-21

[1]
Low-quality care in the first few years of life
can have a small but long-lasting impact
on a child’s learning and behavior,
according to new results from the largest, most authoritative assessment
of child rearing in the United States.

[2]
The federally funded study,
which has been tracking more than 1,300 children since 1991,
found that
obedience and academic problems
among those who received low-quality care in their first 4 1/2 years of life
persisted through their 15th birthdays,
suggesting the potential for lifelong difficulties.

[3]
The differences between teens who received low- and high-quality care
when they were very young were relatively small,
and the endurance of these disparities startled researchers.

[4]
“The fact that you have this persistent association is pretty remarkable,”
[Just why is it remarkable, Doctor?
Anyone with half an ounce of sense
remembers the old saying
“As the tree is bent, so it grows.”]
said James A. Griffin of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development,
which is funding the research being reported Friday
in the May-June issue of the journal Child Development.

[5]
Several experts praised the findings,
saying they underscore the urgent need
for local, state and federal governments, employers and others
to improve access to high-quality child care.

[Uh, there is another interpretation.
This only underscores
the problems that working mothers inflict on their defenseless children,
about which such a large part of the female/journalist/academic community
has been in denial.
And yes, Jay Belsky was one of the investigators.]

[6]

“I think it is shocking that
we don’t have a much higher proportion of our children . . .
in excellent, quality child care,”

said Sharon Landesman Ramey,
director of the Georgetown University Center on Health and Education.

[7]
For the study, which began in 1991 amid growing concerns
about the effects of parents’ increasing reliance on outside child care,
researchers in Arkansas, California, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin
followed 1,364 infants
of various ethnicities, races and socioeconomic backgrounds.

[8]
The researchers collected detailed information
about the type and quality of care the children were receiving
through age 4 1/2 ,
including whether their custodians were
parents, other relatives, nannies, babysitters
or day-care centers in or outside a home,
as well as the number of hours of which kind of care each child received.
The subjects underwent tests assessing their academic and cognitive skills,
and parents and teachers answered questionnaires about each child’s behavior.
The quality was assessed based on observations of a host of factors,
including the caregivers’ warmth, sensitivity, emotional support
and how much cognitive stimulation they provided.

[9]
The researchers previously reported that
toddlers who received higher-quality care
had fewer behavior problems than those receiving lower-quality care.
The type of care, whether it was inside or outside the home,
did not seem to matter,
although day-care centers appeared to be related to
more acting out among first- and third-graders.
Kids who received high-quality care scored better
on tests measuring math, reading and other cognitive skills
throughout elementary school.

[10]
Researchers had speculated that
the negative effects of lower-quality care would disappear
as the influence of other factors, such as peers, teachers and maturation,
overcame the early childhood experience.

[You know, it’s fascinating that
it is quite acceptable in “elite” circles
to speculate that, maybe, hopefully,
feminism will have no ill effects on our children and our society,
and to condition and predicate all social policies on that assumption,
but that those who suggest just the opposite,
that feminism will and has had
dreadful effects on the areas just mentioned
are challenged and required,
by the same people who accept speculation on pro-feminist theories,
to provide iron-clad, unimpeachable proof for any anti-feminist assertions.]

But in the latest analysis of the data,
they discovered that teenagers who had received higher-quality child care
were less likely to report engaging in problem behaviors
such as arguing, being mean to others and getting into fights.
Those who spent more hours in child care of any kind
were more likely to engage in impulsive and risky behaviors.
And those who received moderately high- or high-quality care
scored higher on tests gauging cognitive and academic achievement.

[11]
“What was the surprise for us was that the effects at age 15
were the same size as we had seen in elementary school
and just prior to school entry,”
said Deborah Lowe Vandell of the University of California at Irvine,
who led the analysis.
The researchers stressed that the benefits of higher-quality care were modest --
a difference of just a few points on standardized tests
measuring reading, math, memory and other cognitive abilities,
and self-reports of behavioral problems.
Other factors, such as the influence of parents and family members,
were clearly more important.
However, the findings held true even after the researchers
took those and other factors into account.

[12]
The researchers plan to continue following the children.

[13]
“The likelihood is these can affect children throughout their lives,
and not just low-income children,”
said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute,
a nonprofit research center.

The deaths of children

I really don't know a good title for this document.
What I want to do is to lament the tragic deaths of so many children these days,
in particular, those who die while strapped into their car seats in the backs of cars
and then forgotten and left there
while the parent who was driving the car goes off
to his or her work or other appointment.

I do not recall ever hearing of such things happening
when I was a child in the 1950s and an adolescent in the 1960s.
Did they happen then? I do not know.
I first recall hearing about them in the 2000s.

As an example, consider this tragic story:

2014-09-05-WP-maryland-father-charged-in-boys-death-in-vehicle

Maryland father charged in boy’s death in vehicle
by Associated Press
Washington Post, 2014-09-05

LEXINGTON PARK, Md. —
A father was charged with involuntary manslaughter
in the death of his 17-month-old son
after he left the boy inside a hot vehicle at a Maryland naval base
for more than six hours, Navy investigators said Thursday.

According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court, John Junek, 40,
told investigators that he was supposed to take his child to day care
at the Patuxent River Naval Station on Wednesday, but didn’t.
Instead, he drove straight to his office on the base
and left his child in a rear-facing car seat
after arriving at 8:50 a.m. that day,
the document says.

...

The document from a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent says
Junek used his vehicle to go to an early-afternoon meeting,
lowering the windows and turning on the air conditioning
because of the hot temperatures.
But he said he didn’t notice the boy inside.
According to the complaint,
Junek realized he might not have dropped the boy off
after his wife called later in the afternoon to ask about the child’s car seat.
Junek discovered the unconscious boy and dialed 911, the complaint says.

By that time, the boy had been in the car for 6 1/2 hours, the document says.
Temperatures at the base reached 85 degrees on Wednesday.
The boy was pronounced dead at the scene
after emergency workers failed to revive him.

Junek had dropped off his 4-year-old son at preschool
before arriving at the base for work and parking his car about 8:50 a.m.,
the document says.

He told the investigator that when he used the car
to get to a meeting in a different building on the base at 1 p.m.,
he was in a hurry and did not notice that his younger son was still in the car seat,
according to the complaint.
He got the call from his wife at 3:20 p.m. and called 911 a few minutes later,
the document says, meaning the boy had been inside the car for about 6 ½ hours.

...

---

For some background, here are some articles and reports:

Most important, the government web page:
Prevent Child Heatstroke in Cars

2014-08-06-USAT-child-deaths-hot-cars-facts

Child deaths in hot cars: 10 key facts
by Lori Grisham
USA Today, 2014-08-06

...

1. An average of 38 children have died in hot cars each year in the USA since 1998.

2. Since 1998, 619 children have died in vehicles from heat stroke in the USA.

3. More than 70% of heat stroke deaths occur in children younger than age 2.

4. More than half of heat stroke deaths occur because a caregiver forgot the child in the car.

5. Roughly 30% of heat stroke deaths occur because the child got in the car without a caregiver knowing and couldn't get out.

6. Nearly 20% of deaths occur because a caregiver intentionally left the child in the car.

7. Cars heat up quickly. A vehicle can heat up 20 degrees in 10 minutes.

8. Cracking the windows or not parking in direct sunlight does not make a car significantly cooler. Heat stroke deaths have occurred even when the vehicle was parked in shade.

9. A car can reach 110 degrees when temperatures are only in the 60s. Heat stroke can take place when the outside temperature is as low as 57 degrees.

10. The body temperatures of children can increase three to five times faster than adults. Heat stroke begins when the body passes 104 degrees. Reaching an internal temperature of 107 degrees can be deadly.

2014-08-06-WP-how-do-you-leave-your-child-to-die-in-a-hot-car-we-examined-some-of-the-21-suspected-cases-this-year-to-find-out

At least 17 children have died after being left in hot cars this year.
A look at how this keeps happening.
By Sarah Larimer
Washington Post, 2014-08-06

---

Finally, some music written to lament the deaths of children past:

Lyrics can be found at Wikipedia.