Why shouldn day-care workers be held to “mother” standards?
They are, in a sense, acting as mothers. I think what needs to be recognized is all mothers are held to standards that are too high. Clearly, the standard needs to be high enough so children don’t end up dead or hurt or neglected, but we have these unrealistically high standards and they’re contradictory. You’re not supposed to be too self-sacrificing, you’re not supposed to live through your kids, but you’re also supposed to be almost entirely self-sacrificing — you’re never supposed to be tired, bored, fed up, angry. Well, if we acknowledge that mothers get tired, bored, fed up and angry, as do child-care workers, then we could look for ways to deal with that rather than denying it. Every mother feels at wit’s end at some point, every nanny does, every day-care worker does. The perfect child-care worker is going to be no more perfect than the perfect mother. Good enough is what we’re looking for. Do you think that movies like “The Hand that Rocked the Cradle” and videotapes of nanni
