Dey Care Melody Kilian

Women’s Caucus feels that the issue of day care should be placed in the total
context of women’s liberation, in fact, that this topic cannot be discussed
separate from the issues of women’s right to work, her right to seek equality and
democracy both at home and outside of the home, her struggle to have more
control over her life and to seek fulfillment of her potential as a full human
being. ‘te is :

For this reason, the Women’s Caucus will always see day care as a major
priority of our work. We will strive to have adequate child care facilities —
provided wherever women need them, and most especially to those women who need
them the most. There should be:child care cent®es in every neighborhood, —-
in every place of work, whether factory or office building, where numbers of
women are employed, and in every college and university. The mothers and fathers
and children themselves must have a great deal to say about the operation and
control of such centres, and the major financial responsibility should fall to

government and corporation. ane :

Day care must be a major priority to any women’s liberation group, because
the situation of women as mothers is so central to our analysis of the oppression
of women in our present society. :

In other women’s caucus forums we have discussed the fact that women do
equal work for far less pay than men receive; that women’s work in the home
provides the society, and most especially the corporations which. employ our
husbands, with untold hours of unpaid labour in cleaning, feeding; and comforting
the labour force, We have analyzed the fact that women’s work and women
themselves are regarded by most mon and also most women as inferior.

And through all: of this analysis it is clear that the ideological tool that
is central to keeping us in this position is the mystique of our motherhood,
the powerful idea. that we belong at home with the children, that we deserve
less because we should:not be out working in the first place, that we are ©
hard-bitten and wmfeminine if we want anything but the mother’s role and above
all, that the children will suffer, willbe warped, will grow up into criminals
and monsters if wo are not. there with them at every moment.

The image of the perfect mother, this only acceptable role for women,
like all other images of women in our society, has been Clouded in mystique,
objectified, distorted, and made mattainable. ai |

The image sold in the magazine is that of the patient and perfectly groomed
modern madonna, surrounded by clean and perfectly behaved little children, or
perhaps holding her equally objectified baby in a porfect dreamy moment. —

But regardless of what the magazines tell us, it is with the birth of her
first child that women become inevitably, irreversibly dependent on men or the
state for support, and at the same timo, irreversibly trapped in the traditional
role. So restrictive is this. role that women who do wish to follow caroers or —
who want or need to continue to work are faced with equally unsatisfactory choices:

They can continue to work in the outside world and completely forego a aaa og
children, renouncing forever birth and motherhood, and resigning oneself ‘to: the
subtle questionings and criticisms of those who feel that all women should'bear —
children. we: of ee OMe da | ita Ask

Or they can forget all of their skills and education, allowing them to -
stagnate and die, and desappear into the home, to emerge 15 to 20 years later ~ —
unemployable and with: all confidence lost. oe ; Bremner st Menem

Thore is a third path, and it is cqually ‘unsatisfactory, that is Beare"
followed by increasing numbers of young girls. That is to combine the two, to’
struggle with babies, and job at once, penalized on the job because of the burden
of long hours of laumdry and housework before and after paid work, paying a major
part of the wages for child care, losing seniority and perhaps the job itself
because of matornity leave, and worrying endlessly. The total effect is like that
of a whirlwind. -: ° : an eal

The distressing fact is, that in our society children are a burden, and
chiefly a burden to women. It is a society that provides very poorly for its om _