Parenting Doesn’t Start at 5:30 at Night

Robin Abcarian asks: “If Our Kids Are So Valuable, Why Aren’t Their Caregivers?” (April 30). And I reply by asking: If our kids are so valuable, why aren’t they being raised by their parents?

I agree that the people raising our country’s children are worth much more money than they currently receive. But let’s stop using Band-Aids on a severed artery.

Child care should not be the critical issue. Parenting is. Children are learning all day long. My children do not wait until after 5:30 p.m. to ask critical questions--questions that will shape their character and nurture the values that will help them be kind and compassionate in an often cruel and confusing world.

Some decisions outweigh others: The decision to bear children must be followed by the commitment to rear them? Sacrifice? Yes. But well worth it. And a valuable lesson to a selfish world.

JULIE HARRISON

Hesperia

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I just had to sit down and write a great big thank-you to Robin Abcarian. Her article on early-childhood teachers was right on the mark.

I, too, am a teacher of preschool children. I studied early-childhood education in college and have 20 years’ experience teaching. After years of working at minimum wage, I have worked my way “up” to $20,000 at year, working in a child-development program in a local school district, one of the better jobs in my field.

Why do I stay? The children. Their families. And because this is what I love.

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