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on The Kids are All Right by Faludi
Analysis of The Kids Are All Right by Susan Faludi
Kids are crawling
around in the dirt, screaming, and have not yet had their diapers changed
because the day care provider seems to be in a trance watching the latest
episode of the Montel Williams show. One of the workers strikes a child because
she won’t stop crying about how hungry she is. The other worker just sits in her
chair drinking Jack Daniels with a little Coke mixed in. Not all is well at the
Wee World Child Center. But is this the impression that the public perceives of
our daycare system in America?
Well, most people would say that this is how
only a few daycares are run. But many people would still state that kids who
have not been in daycare have a better chance at a more enjoyable life than
those who have. Susan Faludi, who frequently writes about women’s issues and is
the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, promotes
daycare as an enhancement in a child’s life. In her essay, The Kids Are All
Right, she claims that kids who attend daycare are more social, experimental,
self-assured, cooperative and creative. Faludi’s argument is convincing because
she provides solid authoritative sources, gives personal experiences of other
girls who have been in day care, and refutes other researchers claims.
Susan
Faludi dives right into her argument and hits us with an informative source.
Faludi cites Alison Clarke-Stewart, a professor of social ecology at the
University California at Irvine, who found that social and intellectual
development of children in day care was six to nine months ahead of children who
stayed at home. This source is reliable because the author of the statement is
an expert in the field of social ecology. Therefore this is an opinionative
informative source because the researcher could be biased toward one side of the
argument or the other. This matters to Faludi because audience could question
the reliability of the source.
Susan Faludi also cites personal experience
in the form of interviews done by Delores Gold and David Andres in paragraph
number two. The interviews of the girls provide not only data on childcare
accountability, but also serve to put a personal and more intimate effect on the
argument. The interviews have a great effect on the reader because they are
grounded in reality and have been conducted by experienced researchers. Readers
find this type of persuasive tactic convincing because audiences respond better
to real people rather than statistics.
The final part of Susan Faludi’s
essay refutes and disproves other researchers claims that childcare has negative
effects on children. Her critics state that in day care newborns will suffer
permanent damage. The studies concluded that infants who were taken from their
mothers had tendencies later toward juvenile delinquency and mental illness.
Faludi then goes on to state that these studies do not apply because the test
subjects had not been taken from childcare centers, but rather from orphanages
and hospital institutions. Faludi clearly uses the argumentative tool of
rebuttal. First, she gives a different perspective on the issue that has not
agreed with the rest of her paper. Then she explains to the audience why the
source is unreliable.
The other source she finds to be unreliable is that of
Jay Belsky, once a leading supporter of childcare. Jay Belsky, a psychologist
from Pennsylvania State University, stated that “there were few if any
significant differences between children raised at home and those in childcare
centers.” Then he announced that he had changed his mind: Children whose mothers
work more than twenty hours a week in their first year develop an insecure
attachment towards their mothers. Faludi refutes the previous statement by
saying that in one of the tests the study’s panel of judges found the infants to
be insecure and in the other the panel found just the opposite. The difference
in the results was traced to the judges’ own bias against childcare. In the one
study the judges were not told ahead of time which babies were in day care and
which were not, but in the other study they were.
Both of the previous
paragraphs serve to refute a claim made by a critic of childcare. This way of
argument is most convincing because she provides two good sources on the subject
of the argument then disproves them and finds holes in their reasoning. Faludi
does this to establish rebuttal in her essay. The purpose this serves is to give
the audience another valid viewpoint on childcare, then give reasons why that
viewpoint may not be so valid.
In her essay, Susan Faludi successfully shows
that childcare is beneficial to children of all ages. The essay changed my view
of daycare also. I was a daycare child for most of my youth. Until I read this
essay, I never considered that my days in childcare could have been the reason
for my independent and socially advanced nature. Certainly the daycare I
attended was nothing like the one I described in the opening paragraph. The
target audience, which is working parents, childcare providers, and people who
have doubts about childcare, would be affected in a positive way by this essay.