Saying Mothers Shouldn’t Work, Church Drops Care

A Baptist church has closed its day care center, saying working mothers neglect their children, damage their marriages and set a bad example.

A letter from the First Baptist Church of Berryville, Ark., told parents that families could get by on one salary if they went without such luxuries as “big TVs, a microwave, new clothes, eating out and nice vacations.”

The closure--and letter--infuriated parents left without a place to take the children in Berryville, a small town 135 miles northwest of Little Rock.

“I don’t think any of us are trying to copy a man’s role, whatever that role may be,” said Katrena Alexander, 44, who runs a manufacturing company with her husband. “I still don’t know what those roles are. My husband does dishes just like I do.”

Her daughter, Keanna, was enrolled at the day care center for a year before it closed March 14. The girl cried when she heard the news.

“I don’t know of too many people here who can survive on one person’s salary, especially if that salary is minimum wage,” Alexander said. “This is just something that shouldn’t have happened in this decade.”

On Feb. 14, members of the First Baptist Church’s Corner Stone Day Care board told parents in a letter that the church would close the center in the spring and reduce tuition until then.

The board said it was sensitive to the plight of single parents but could not continue to run the center because its existence encouraged mothers to work outside the home.

“God intended for the home to be the center of a mother’s world,” the letter said. “In Titus 2:5, women are instructed to be ‘discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good and obedient to their own husbands. . . .’ ”

It also said working mothers “neglect their children; damage their marriages and set a bad example.”

Parents were given refunds worth a week’s tuition plus $50.

The church’s pastor, Clyde Gray, who is also chairman of the day care board, could not be reached for comment.

State officials have hurried to license another church’s day care to replace Stone Day in Berryville.

“We understand that the Baptist church felt women working outside of the house was a sin against God,” said Joe Quinn, a spokesman for the state’s human services agency. “What we did was expedite getting a license for the other church because we know that in this day and age, people are highly dependent on day care.”

Sandra Giles, a 26-year-old bank teller who was forced to find a new place for her daughter, Alexandra, said the center’s equipment should be taken to the new day care center because parents helped pay for it.

“It’s just not Christian what they did,” Giles said. “If they would like to pay my bills, I would stay home. But I can already see that my daughter is being affected by this.”