A lot of good points here, but I want to through my 2 cents worth here, I think there are two major issues that have not been touched on. The first it seems that the level of shocking and violent kid behavior has risen with the increase of various pysho-active drugs we are now putting into them. I am not a parent, but I work with parents who talk about various meds like Ritalin so casually. Do we not stop to think that pumping our kids full of these drugs would not have an adverse affect on their minds at some point? I here about ADD this and ADD that and I will admit that a very few children could use the help but good lord since when do drugs become a substiute for us simply carrying out our duties as responsible adults and providing a framework of wise and correctly applied discipline.

The other thing is daycare. I know this makes a lot of people mad to hear it, but I believe daycare, in general, is a bad idea. I know there are a lot of single parents out there so they have no choice but to use it, but think about it. If we have a child in daycare for 8 hours a day, and they spend only a couple of hours with the actual parents, whose values are the children picking up? In effect are we by utilizing daycare not in essence, paying someone to raise our children for us, at the most critical stage of their development? I have always heard that the first 5 years of a person's life profoundly shapes who they become as adults.

I hear a lot of people say that they need the two incomes and thats why they have to have daycare. I have found however in a lot of cases that most if not all of one of the incomes is almost entirely consumed by daycare and its related costs( supplies, gas to and from, etc) I have seen families whose mothers went back to being at home moms for a few years, and were sucessful at doing so by making a few short term sacrifices in material wealth( Smaller House, older car, less "toys")

Also I have read more than one study that suggests that children brought up in daycare, are more prone to acts of aggression and more likley to develop various emotional and mental issues later in life.