Every day of the working week I see women with groups of children out on the sidewalks or in local parks, most of them small, private daycare services in action. As sweet as the toddlers are, walking along holding hands or riding in home-made multiple-seat carriages, it is the women taking care of them that catch my attention.

It is good that mothers with small children are able to care for a couple more children and supplement their family income. Her own kids can socialize with others and it provides an invaluable service to families with working parents. These small services provide an essential community service.

I also wonder how much personal satisfaction daycare mothers get from their job. Being a parent has its own profound rewards (I've been a single parent myself), but I have heard many mothers remark that they miss the stimulation of adult conversation and the pleasures of pursuing their own interests and training. Taking care of children is all-absorbing, hard work.

On top of this, our profit-driven society discounts activities that are not tied to profits. Staying at home with the kids, even with ten kids, is taken as less important than going off to earn a pay cheque.

We've always resisted calling housework and parenting "real work". We have most certainly refused to pay those who do the housework and parenting a wage relative to the importance of these tasks.

We go on at verbose lengths about motherhood on Mothers Day or on Mom's birthday, but in between parenting gets relegated to the bottom of the economic scale. Parenting isn't a career, although we have no trouble seeing a thousand near-useless jobs as "careers" just because they take place in an office and require business clothes and plenty of make-up.

Of all the things we do, all the jobs we have, which are more important than caring for and shaping our society's future generations?

Diplomats and politicians come and go with their all-so-important self-image, but what do they leave us? What can we point to that most of them accomplish?

They showed up, and, according to Woody Allen, that's the most important part of their work. How can we value this higher than producing the next generation of citizens?

Sports and entertainment stars make millions and win so much acclaim, but what do they leave when they retire? A couple of hit songs, a scoring or rushing or hitting record?

And how are these things of any importance, compared to nurturing and training the generations which will lead our society in the future?

Parenting and day-caring require skills most of us can only envy -- patience, kindness, respect and love, but also an understanding of growth patterns, learning cycles, pre-school education, nutrition and health, mental stimulation, and the care and maturity of our emotions. We become functioning members of society and humane human beings because of this care during our early years.

Wouldn't it be wiser to stop complaining about all that's wrong in our society and make a few things right, like rewarding child care?

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Copyright © 2007 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/06.07