Shattering Myths
Myth #1
Myth
All care is good.
Reality
Care can be caring or uncaring.
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Care provided in early childhood programs is not inherently good. It can be but it also has the potential to be uncaring and even harmful. For example, let’s imagine an early childhood educator who helps children put on their snowsuits on a cold day. This is care given. However, the early childhood educator gave the care in a brisk and impatient way, suggesting that the children should be more independent. Therefore, the care given is uncaring. Similarly, an early childhood educator may intervene abruptly in children’s conflicts to keep the children safe. This is care given. However, the care is uncaring because the children do not have the opportunity to share their perspectives, hear and care about the perspectives of others. Thus, everything in an early childhood program from the ways the environment is set up to the ways a curriculum is shaped can be caring or uncaring.
Since care in and of itself is not inherently good and can be uncaring, early childhood educators need to notice, think and talk about what is caring for others and what it is not. Individual and collective actions of noticing and talking about care are always ethical because they involve deliberation, decision making and critical reflection.
Is it possible to describe care that is genuinely caring? Feminist ethics of care explores what constitutes good care. Care as good, however, is never the “best” way or a set of standardized practices. Good care as a value and practice is more complex particularly because care as ethical always requires thoughtful interpretation of what is needed in specific contexts. Here are some ways of thinking and talking about good care as complex processes:
- Caring about and for others is an everyday value and social good. Good care aims to promote interdependency and interconnectedness.
- Care must be meaningful and finely attuned to those receiving the care. The messiness of children’s lives and ever-changing needs must be recognized.
- As a practice, good care involves many actions happening at the same time such as respect, recognition, tenderness, compassion, dialogue and a commitment to caring over time. Interpreting and discussing what children want, need, and desire requires presence, careful listening and time.
- Persons receiving the care must experience the care as good. In early childhood programs, this means early childhood educators check in and find out from the children if they have experienced good care.
- Good care is do-able so that early childhood educators can be caring without exhaustion and burnout. Early childhood educators always ask sector leaders (supervisors and policy-makers) to provide the resources that enable them to care well for others.
- Good care upholds the dignity and integrity of everyone in a caring early childhood program. Everyone’s inevitable vulnerability and interdependency is recognized and defended.
- Good care generates more good care. Caring is an act of the creation and recreation of caring human beings.
Why is it necessary to insist we talk about care as caring or uncaring? Fundamentally, we have to talk about it so we can assert the value of good care over poor care. When we talk about care as caring or uncaring, we can push for a policy context where adequate resources are in place to support good care.
Inspired by Vosman, F. & Baart, A. (2011). Relationship based care and recognition Part two: good care and recognition. In C. Leget, C. Gastmans, & M. Verkerk (eds.). Care, compassion and recognition: An ethical discussion. (pp. 201-227). Leuven, Belgium: Peeters.
Myth #2
Myth
Caring is not professional.
Reality
Care and professionalism are not contradictory.
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Some might argue that caring is not professional. But, what does it mean to be a professional? How we answer this is very important. One approach is grounded in a traditional masculine view of professional, which is often defined by notions of expertise, exclusivity, objective rationality and elitism. In this view, a professional is often someone who responds abstractly and technically based on owned knowledge. This may, for example, describe some professionals, like doctors or psychologists, who enter into relationships/encounters to offer their ‘expertise’ or ‘diagnosis’. But what of the professionals who work in different ways, like nurses and ECEs? They are required to spend significant time in relations with others making their work different from other professionals. Does the care in which they engage not constitute professional work? As theoretical work has introduced new understandings about truth, expertise, and abstract rationality, there has also been a shift in how we understand a professional, which allows us to see care as professional.
The notion of a professional as the ‘owner’ of one ‘right’ form of knowledge which allows you to proclaim your professionalism is no longer sufficient. Knowledge is transient, contextual, changing, and emerging. It is not right/wrong, all/nothing, mine/yours. So, perhaps we can think of a professional as someone who has particular education, knowledges, and experiences which support them to respond/engage in a particular context, fulfilling ethical responsibilities and making moral judgements on how best to respond. In this way we can see that care, and caring, can be professional.
But what does caring in a professional way look like? Care is contextual. It occurs between individuals in a place and time. It requires a response that is nuanced and reflexive. This means that we cannot look to any notion of ‘abstract rationality’ to respond to caring needs – our response must be made considering the important factors involved in the relation and using our professional judgement to make an ethical decision. This kind of care is not easy – it requires the time and commitment to relations often found in what some consider “soft professions”.
The professional in a caring relation, for example the ECE, will encounter many ethical dilemmas. A significant component of their practice is then to use professional judgement and ethical decision-making, engaging with our professional knowledge(s) and considering how to apply it to the contextual, messy, in-relations situation. As an example, let’s imagine a toddler (who cannot yet express themselves in language) is crying often throughout the day and repeatedly seeking care from you as their primary ECE. In responding to them, will you simply analyze abstractly the symptoms of the situation, or will you consider all the contextual knowledge you have (the histories with the family/child, the context of your program, the moment of their day), alongside your theoretical knowledge, to inform how you proceed? You would likely pursue the latter option. And in this making this decision, you engage in a caring act which is deeply ethical, and deeply professional.
Myth #3
Myth
Care is an individual responsibility.
Reality
Good care is a collective responsibility.
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It is virtually unquestioned today that good care (see Myth #1) is the sole responsibility of individual people. The thinking underlying this idea is simply that caring about other people (or oneself for that matter) is a moral “choice” regardless of the sociopolitical, economic or temporal context (where you are, the times in which you are living, your own access to resources). So whether I decide to care for a person or people as well as how I go about doing this (or not) is entirely my own decision and/or the decisions of individual others.
But here’s the thing: caring for others is extremely time and labour intensive. The structural realities of people’s lives (i.e., the neighbourhood you live in, your work hours, your commute time, if you have a robust extended family/friend etc..) therefore matter. It is extremely difficult to provide good care to others (or ourselves for that matter!) when we are sleep deprived, constantly rushing from one place to the next, worried about the security of our employment or any other stressors. With so many tasks to check off our never-ending “to do” lists, it becomes increasingly difficult (if not impossible) to complete tasks involving other humans in a caring way.
This dilemma is something early childhood professionals struggle with every day. Early childhood educators are individually tasked with establishing and maintaining professional, ethical caring relationships with children, parents and their colleagues amidst environments that are at best challenging and at worst, exploitative. The educator working 9-hour days, earning $14/hour, caring for 15 children with few breaks and no planning time will struggle to provide consistent conscientious, reflexive, ethical care relations.
Furthermore, the circumstances – particularly pertaining to ratios in childcare programs – do not allow the necessary time and space to engage in ethical, responsive attention to children’s ever changing, complex needs. Ethical pedagogical practice requires sector leaders (at the program up to the ministry level) to provide time, including time for educators to reflect on and talk to each other, families and children about ongoing care experiences and practices.
When responsibility for care practices is shared collectively, it becomes possible to pursue meaningful projects with children, enact good care practices and fundamentally contribute to a more democratic, equitable society.
On a basic, practical level, a conceptual shift to collective responsibility for care invokes a fundamental need to invest in the ECE workforce so that they have the time, space and energy to respond to each child and/or each group of children in each moment.
Structural barriers ECEs face in trying to provide good care:
- Lack of decent work (poor wages, precarious work, large groups of children)
- Lack of time to enact caring relations
Myth #4
Myth
Care is natural to ECEs.
Reality
Care is not natural to ECEs.
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The belief that care is natural to (predominantly female) early childhood educators is highly gendered. The logic of the belief goes like this: Women are naturally caring. Most ECEs are women. Therefore, ECEs are naturally caring. This belief conjures up all sorts of stereotypes portraying ECEs as “nice girls”, “softies, “selfless” and/or “people pleasers” who entered the sector “because they love children”.
It is true that women do most care work in the world. And it is accurate to say that girls are socialized to be caring more than boys are. However, this is not because women are naturally more able to care than men are. It is because of how our societies have been, and continue to be, structured. Most contemporary societies greatly minimize the importance and value of care. Instead of seeing care as the most central component of human lives, it becomes an afterthought or an “add on”. In the absence of structures/institutions which facilitate good care for all citizens, it has been not only acceptable but also encouraged for women (increasingly marginalized) to fill the care void for low or no wages.
The truth is that every human being has the capacity to care for others and that women’s disproportionate responsibility for care and their under-or-unpaid care labour cannot be taken-for-granted or assumed anymore.
Like many capacities, we all get better when we practice caring for others. We cannot say that care comes naturally to early childhood educators when, in fact, caring for others is hard and complex. It requires making ethical decisions about the care of others, including frequent reflection on caring values and practices. Further critical reflection on the power imbalances inherent in care is necessary in ethical decision making.
We could say that early childhood educators have an inclination to be caring. Athletes are inclined to be athletic but being an athlete is not just natural. Everyone knows that an athlete practices frequently to get better at sport, or that nurses require a lot of practice to develop their caring abilities. Why is this not true of early childhood educators?
Another barrier to moving beyond seeing care work as natural is the assumption that young children (who are “cute” and “cuddly”) simply invoke maternal feelings in early childhood educators. This notion obscures the important ethical and purposeful type of care (and associated knowledges) that early childhood educators employ in their caring interactions. For example, one would not make the same claim for pediatric doctors, suggesting that the ‘cuteness’ of babies is enough to invoke their caring (and healing) feelings? These stereotypes fail to recognize that children are complex and capable human beings who require care that is equally complex and capable. Further, professionals who care for others must constantly grapple with the meaning of empathy, compassion, attentiveness, responsiveness and trust.
Care as an ethical practice requires sensitivity to different contexts and their nuances. Early childhood educators care for many individual children at one time, which requires an openness to variability in caring responses. These capabilities do not come naturally. Early childhood educators have to practice caring, reflect on it, dig into its complexities and continually deepen their understanding about how to live well with others.
