"Why wouldn't she want to leave her child in the church childcare?" My questioner, and cousin, sounded like this mother aimed to get rolled over by a two-ton truck.
I told my cousin of "Jessy" feeling hurt and criticized after an older woman complained about the noise Jessy's two-year old made. The three were in the church library watching a video of the worship service. The silver haired lady was huffy. "We can't hear the sermon with the noise your son is making!"
Jessy felt humiliated as well as shocked that a Christian would not kindly receive her little one.
When Jessy told mer her story, I felt sorry for her, but my cousin, also a mother of a two-year-old, felt astounded. Why would anyone would want to keep her child with her when a church nursery was available?
Different backgrounds bring different assumptions. My cousin in a brunette whose great grandparents were born here. She was dropped off at a church nursery weekly as an infant. Jessy has black hair and came here from Taiwan for college and settle into marriage and home with an American guy.
Jessy's decision to avoid child-care seems nomal to me. Once I would have reacted like my cousin.
I teach ESL (English as a Second Language) to many Asian mothers of two-year-olds and younger. They are with their kids day in and day out. Grandmothers who would joyfully offer babysitting aid are far off. The displaced young mothers receive help only from husbands who go shopping with them on weekends to aid. If the husband keeps the children by himself, it's a remarkable event. The couples have no date nights.
All in all, these are quite different patterns for family life than what I and many of my American friends developed. We left frequently left our children with husbands and babysitters.
The young Asian mothers I know are very present to their chidlren. They do get tired, annoyed or want time by themselves just like American mothers, but they suck it in and endure patiently with only a few quiet complaints. The little recoup time they get comes late at night.
Their actions and lifestyle have puzzled me, especially that they do not ask friends with children to take care of their own at times. Or the reluctance of a mother to leave an 18-month old boy in a well-supervised church nursery so that she can attend a woman's meeting. A stranger would be too frightening implied the mother when I questioned her.
Recently I e-mailed them: "Let's discuss child care at our next meeting. When is it okay acording to your culture to leave your child with someone else." Their answers surprised me.
Several had left their infants with child caregivers when working full-time in Japan. One Taiwanese woman had left her child during the weekdays with her parents living in the countryside while she worked full-time in the city. On weekends parents and children were reunited. One Japanese woman told me that in rural areas child care was only available in a very limited way. Full-time workers had first priority and so a part-time worker could not get child-are. No one hires high school babysitters in the American fashion. Child care comes through an institution.
One woman told us that though the younger woman may feel it's okay to leave their child in short-term child care to allow time-off or a date, her mother or mother-in-law would probably criticize. The old way says, "Don't waste your money that way."
At the end of our discussion, one woman said, "I think we Asian women are too protective of our children. I want to start a baby-sitting co-op. Who would like to come to a meeting?"
The Next Generation:
It didn't surprise me, but it did the older women, when "Ling," Chinese-American, showed up with her five-month-old baby with her at a one-time church women's event.
After all, until she started back to work, Ling used to come with her babe in a stroller come to the weekly mother's group at church. If an infant coos or whimpers, no one says anything to her. The surrounding mothers tolerate quite a bit and the a mother knows when it's too much and takes her baby out.
Ling leaves "Irene" in childcare while she works thirty hours a week. The little time she's home she rushes to make meals, wash laundry, clean house, and answer e-mail as well as change diapers, soothe a tired baby, breast-feed or pump milk. Why not bring this mild-tempered, smiling infant to join some twenty women in eating dinner and listening to a speaker? The ladies, mostly gray-haired and white, did oo and ahh over the sight. When the baby fussed, one woman eagerly relieved Jessy by holding the little one.
Watching this, I was happy. It was a sharing in the stages of life with a dear mother and child. But not all were. Later, I heard concerns. "The baby distracts. Our agenda is too tight to lose time." These words seemed a particularly white complaint. We are used to sending our little distractions off to a nursery when they interrupt our concentration in a church service. I did it two decades ago myself.
But I've seen a three-year old escape her mother's arms and run up the center aisle of a church to her father who was preaching. In Tokyo, no big deal. The breach of stillness and quiet was rare. A few minutes lost, that's all, and all of life is seen and embraced in the congregation.
Are we Presbyterians of Silicon Valley in so much of a hurry that we cannot tolerate a three-minute hiatus? I wonder if this is the idol of productivity breathing flames of agitated worry. Perhaps an issue of control is as much as an issue of protecting people's time
Wouldn't it be better to try on a different way of thinking? Perhaps we might find goodness, even validity in that. Probably Jesus' followers did after he told them to let the little children come ot him. And since the God of the Jews repeatedly told his people to welcome the stranger, we need to make an effort to understand and respect this different way of treating children in the gathering of God's people.
If you'd like to consider a discussion among American church-goers re whether children should be in an actual sanctuary service, go to: http://donteatthefruit.com/2011/11/the-iphone-shaped-body-earthen-vessels/ and see especially the comments.


