I agree that each of us can and should be able to share his/her opinions publicly, but, in my opinion, the May 19 letter, “Women with underage kids should stay home,” goes too far.

We cannot make an individual perception into a command. Mandating that women with children under school age “must” stay home would not cure the ills about which the writer speaks. I feel that my children did not suffer because their mom worked. Nor do my friends, also working mothers, feel that their children were adversely affected.

Susan Newman, a social psychologist in Middlesex County, N.J., and author of several books, states in an article in the July 21, 2011 edition of WebMD Health News, “There are no concrete, definable negative effects on young children if you are a working mom.”

In healthychildren.org sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics, an article says that “no scientific evidence says children are harmed when their mothers work.”

And in a survey conducted by the AAP, “The majority of pediatricians thought that children of working mothers have health or psychosocial problems about as often as children of non-working mothers.”

A loving and nurturing family, along with a qualified daycare situation and/or preschool education, helps in the development of the young child, working mother or not.

Hopefully other readers will discuss the writer’s other comments: Women enter the workforce for personal gain; women of preschool children should not work so that available jobs would go to others; “regulations must eliminate the use of chemicals by agribusiness” which would lessen problems of drug abuse, among other benefits; the current downturn in our economy is related to vanishing family ties; and, to have our economy become robust, “money interests must take second place” to the above concerns.

Bonnie Chamberlain

Skowhegan

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