The Pittsburgh Press (March 1, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
The ‘sitter’ blight
By Florence Fisher Parry
The War has given us still another new word: Sitter. You hear it everywhere you turn. Sitter: Someone who comes to sit and presumably guard a baby or child while its parents go out for the evening. There is such a demand for this dubious service that there have sprung up thousands of professional sitters who hire themselves out by the hour, to “mind” other people’s children.
This occupation was a natural outgrowth of the War, I dare say. Many women occupied with War work, some on night shifts, had to provide caretakers for their children; but the practice does not confine itself to parents whose occupations require their absence from home. It has spread to others until it has become the fashion for young parents to indulge all the freedoms of childless couples, leaving the safety and care of their children in the hands of pad but untrained strangers.
We all have heard stories about the tragedies that have occurred through the neglect of these sitters. Kidnaping, murders and horrible accidents are common reading. Just the other day we were horrified over the murder of a little three-year-old girl by a young boy, known to the child’s parents, and who had been a neighborhood sitter for some time. I hope all young parents who read of it resolved to abandon this dangerous practice of handing their babies and little children over to anyone, young or old, whose character and proficiency has not been well and long established.
Call for a sitter
It is shocking to me how lightly young parents are coming to regard the responsibility that parenthood has placed upon them. These young people seem willing and anxious enough to have children, but in their very willingness betray a total lack of realization of what having babies means. They want babies, but they want their freedom, too.
A remark I overheard just the other day is typical. “I can’t see why children should tie you down. All you need to do is to get a sitter.”
The one comforting aspect of this new pernicious vogue among young parents is that sitters cost money. They come high. Even a dollar an evening can represent quite an item to young people struggling along, and is likely very soon to become an extravagance which they simply will not be able to afford. For the standard of living indulged during the War and now, cannot long continue.
And I can think of nothing so unfair and so unsafe to children as for them to be entrusted to young, inexperienced, incompetent help. The young mother who will leave her little baby with a young grammar or high school girl ignorant of infant care and “trust to luck” that nothing will happen, is risking her baby’s health if not its life. For anything, ANYTHING can happen to a young child.
And quite aside from the mere safely consideration, there is the child’s own well-being to consider. It is hard on little children, after they are a year old, to be left alone with strangers. It fills them with a vague insecurity. They don’t know what’s the matter with them when they cry and become inconsolable.
There is more than meets the eye in a child’s acting “strange” with strangers and turning for reassurance and comfort to those it knows and loves. Babies and little children thrive only in an atmosphere of complete security which to them ties up strictly with the actual physical presence of those familiar and close to them.
Repeat performance
When World War II broke upon us and our young 17 and 18-year-olds were being screened for service in the Army and Navy, we were shocked at the great percentage of boys found unfit for service. Examination revealed not only shocking physical unfitness, but mental and spiritual maladjustments which were directly attributable to the depression years. At that time these boys were little children, and suffered the inevitable neglect which any depression engenders. Their infancy and childhood was insecure and left its sear upon their psyches.
Far more serious than malnutrition of the body was found to be the malnutrition of spirit.
What we need and must have somehow, somehow, is the return of young parents’ sense of responsibility for their little children. We had it in our day. We did not know of such a practice as sitters. If we could not afford competent nurses. we took care of our own children, prepared for the social sacrifices we knew we would have to accept.
It used to be that our motion picture neighborhood theaters were full of poor young couples and their little children, even their babies, whom they would drag with them wherever they went, and lamentable as was this necessity, depriving children of the sleep and rest they should have in the evening, it was far less harmful for them, it was far, far safer, than for these parents to leave them at home with young incompetents, or, even worse, left all alone.
The sooner young parents recognize the responsibilities and sacrifices they must accept if they are to have children, the better it will be for the future of our country and its new generation, which is indeed, as always, our only hope for the future!