Hoi Polloi — August 26, 2008 at 12:32 am

That’s easy for you and your upscale blogger buddies to say! I’m a downscale unemployed single dad of a 3-year old, so I don’t have the option of providing my son with NON-state supervised socialization, and I’m certainly not the shining eidolon of parenthood that your friend apparently is either (and I can assure you from plenty of playground observation that, despite WSJ claims to the contrary, I’m not the only subpar parent in this country). It’s just me and him, buddy, warts and all, 24/7, family’s all in other cities, no friends with kids — you think he’s better off than he would be if I could put him in the company of other children in a structured environment under the care of trained childcare professionals? Give me a break!

I will happily try to get him into a Head Start program this year, and if pre-K were available next year, I’d happily send him there. Not to mention, when I do get a job, I won’t be able to afford a preschool — he’ll be spending his days with cheap, state-subsidized caregivers, who, yes, will give him more structure than I do, but who certainly won’t deliver the goods that a preschool program can. Your friend can homeschool all he wants, but why should his worries that his children might not be as socially advanced as mine when they finally do go to school prohibit ME from being able to take advantage of an opportunity that would be a tremendous boon for MY son?

I don’t care if someone wants to call it “culturally conservative” or not — I consider myself “culturally conservative,” and I would jump at the chance to provide my son with something better than what he has! Not every single thing under the sun has to fit into someone’s ideology! Sometimes, an idea is just a good one that will help a lot of people.