One of the most extraordinary things Progressives can do better than almost anyone else is deny reality even in the face of facts.

Yet another study has emerged demonstrating the long-term negative effects of daycare on children. This is just one many studies demonstrating the same thing. Yet Progressive working women will deny the conclusions of these studies to the point of irrationality.

The widespread use of daycare to raise our children has a deeper, more insidious and – dare I say it – more sinister purpose than merely a desire by women to stay in the workforce.

“Since just after the Second World War, parents have felt increasingly marginalized by educational and psychiatric ‘experts’ in the whole project of raising their children,” notes Brian C. Robertson in Day Care Deception. In other words, after untold eons of women successfully raising their kids, we’ve been assured in the last thirty years that we’re really too stupid to do it ourselves and that “experts” can do a better job.

And, gullible sheep that we are, we’ve swallowed it.

Which leads to an interesting question: what happens to the children raised in daycare who have never been exposed to the full-time mothering necessary to raise a well-balanced child? In other words, if children do not grow up learning by example how to parent children – if they are first put in daycare, then preschool, then school – then where in the hell do they pick up the skills necessary to raise their own children?

It’s the classic vicious circle. Never having learned the skills that are one of the fundamentals of humanity – learning how to parent – and insecure in their abilities to raise their own children, these products of daycare will unquestioningly hand over their own children to be raised by a succession of strangers. And then (get this) they’ll defend to the death the benefits of doing so. After all, they don’t know any better. They never learned any differently.

Sheep, it’s been said, are one generation away from being unable to mother their own lambs. It is a common occurrence for a mother sheep to reject her offspring. Someone must almost force a sheep to nurse her lamb because she simply does not know how. And the rejected lamb, unable to learn how to mother from her own mother, is statistically more likely to reject her own future lambs. As a biologist, I’ll note that this does NOT sound like an intelligent survival strategy for the species.

In other words, if left to themselves without the forced assistance of humans, sheep might well breed themselves out of existence from sheer stupidity. As a wise friend pointed out, there’s a reason we are called “sheep” in the Bible. It sure seems like we’re about as dumb as the proverbial flock.

Lobbying groups are always pushing for radical daycare “reform,” citing statistics of crisis proportions that are largely manufactured. (Follow the money.) Rather than emphasize the importance of marriage in providing necessary parental care for children, politicians on both sides of the political spectrum look at the appalling number of illegitimate births and stump to help “victimized” women by using tax dollars to let a succession of strangers raise their kids for them, thus perpetuating yet another generation growing up without parenting skills. And on and on it goes.

“Of all the explosive subjects in America today,” social critic Mary Eberstadt has written, “none is as cordoned off, as surrounded by rhetorical landmines, as the question of whether and just how much children need their parents, especially their mothers.”

I find this astonishing. She’s right, of course. Questioning this most basic of human needs should be preposterous, yet it astonishes me how many mothers will deny that their own children need them. These mothers think their bosses, their clients, their office, or their communities “need” them more than their own flesh and blood. Wow.

Here is where I insert the distinction between women who must work (divorced or widowed) vs. women who want to work (career advancement or not “wasting” their education). There is a world of difference between the two attitudes. For former feel guilt for working. The second do not…or at least deny that they do.

Child development authority Dr. T. Berry Brazelton noted, “Never before has one generation been less healthy, less cared for, less prepared for life than their parents were at the same age.” See? Like sheep, we’re one generation away from losing our parenting abilities and being unable to parent our own children. With relief we hand them over to “experts” and then congratulate ourselves at our cleverness.

The funny thing is, deep down parents know this. Parents know their kids are better off being raised at home rather than in daycare. (That’s why feminists can be so hostile toward any criticism of daycare – guilt breeds hostility.) Given their druthers, many working parents (by some accounts two-thirds) would rather be home with their kids. So why do the benefits of daycare over mother-care continue to be trumpeted to the skies even when most people know it’s a lie?

It’s because the feminists, the mainstream media, and “Progressives” in general (this is progress?) have jumped on the bandwagon to the point where questioning the established “facts” about the benefits of daycare is virtually prohibited.

As Brian Robertson notes, pointing out the evidence that daycare is bad for kids is the “third rail” of social politics: touch it and you die. Oppose daycare and you are branded as an enemy of women, a product of the Stone Age and (if you’re a man) a misogynist.

The bottom line is, we have whole generations of children growing up who are not learning how to parent because they’ve never been parented. Like sheep, we are one generation away from losing it, folks.

Fortunately even Progressives can occasionally see the light. A self-described liberal feminist wrote in the Reviews section of Robertson’s book, “I am a graduate student researching the negative effects of maternal absence on infant biology and psychology. I have been approached numerous times by fellow grad students and a few professors, warning me that my research might make some moms ‘feel guilty,’ and therefore maybe I shouldn’t do the research. My response is that moms are adults who can take care of their own emotions and make their own choices. Infants and toddlers are stuck with the choices their mothers make.”

Mothers have raised their children for thousands of years with great success. Institutionalized day care as a preferred alternative has been around for about thirty years. Are our children really better off now? Have we “progressed”?

The L.A. Times article suggests, “The latest study results echoed and extended the network’s past findings on the importance of good-quality child care — of attentive, trained and well-compensated caregivers, clean facilities and stimulating activities.”

Putting aside the study which demonstrated 92% of all United States daycare facilities are “poor to mediocre,” try wrapping your mind around this concept: parents should raise their own kids. That’s the best kind of “good-quality” child care there is. That way the presence of “attentive, trained and well-compensated caregivers” in “clean facilities” with “stimulating activities” is virtually guaranteed.

Or…you could be a sheep, raising another generation of orphaned lambs. Your choice.