I enjoyed that last line Neo.
Thanks for the imput so far everyone, another thing I’d like to bring up though. Is accents really going to be a big thing for the initial 3 years of childhooh? We plan to be living in Australia by the time our child begins to speak fluently, in either language.
In that case, the whole argument is moot – there’s not a hope in hell that he or she’s going to have a proper accent. 
Did you know that when you cradle your newborn baby in your arms while holding him or her on your lap and he or she looks up into your eyes, that distance, from your baby’s eyes in its head nestled in your arms, to your eyes, in your head tilted downward looking into your baby’s eyes, is the precise distance at which your newborn baby’s eyes can best focus.
Holding your baby and looking into each other’s eyes is when much of the initial bonding between a parent and baby take place.
Its a personal choice, and for my wife and I, language really didn’t enter into our decision to raise our boy by ourselves.
We simply didn’t want our baby bonding with someone other than us.
And as he develops, we are there, all the time, as his pillars of support or his helping hand up when he falls, and to encourage him when he hesitates and to congratulate him when he succeeds, and to teach him when he fails or is otherwise confused. And we are there when its time to play.
I think those are all pretty important things, and we didn’t feel it was best to entrust some stranger to be there to take our place in those instances.
Heck, we want to be there in those instances.
One of my dearest friends back home spent the first 11 years of his life in Slovakia. He said when he arrived in my homeland he spoke passable English with a heavy Slovakian accent. Now, at the age of 26, he speaks like a native speaker of my country. It’s only after a couple of beers and a shot of brandy that his homeland accent gently creeps back in.
I doubt that 3 years with a nanny will have irreversible repurcusions on your little one’s accent.
That said, the parental bonding your child will miss out on for those three years may be far more important then any accent he/she may end up with.
Excuse me, but many of you are arguing about the topic of having a maid being the main caretaker of someone’s child, and the issue of the child’s accent is all you can focus on? Has everybody been so focused on learning Chinese that it dominates their decision making to this extent?
Two (I assume) educated adults are considering having someone else become the prime caretaker of their (I assume) very young child–and by default the main parental figure. I and a few others are asserting that there is an irretrievable benefit in having this child’s own parents invest their time in raising him/her.
Why is it that the majority of you don’t see the value in this?
[quote=“Neo”]All this theory is all well and good, but all I can say is I wouldn’t bet my child’s language skills on some study done by some assistant professor churning out another paper so he/she can get tenure. I have met real people with real language problems, but the only linguistic problem they were born with was parents who didn’t know any better raising them.
[/quote]
The obscure assistant professors would include the entire faculty of Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, NTU etc… It is not some fringe theory. A child will acquire language. Language is an incredibly complex and subtle system tied to the way the brain works. If you deprive children of this - say by raising a child exclusively in a pidgin language (pidgin is an amalgam of languages constucted from two or more languages) which does not have all the features of established human languages those children will turn it into a language (known as a creole) with all the features of case marking, syntactic binding and trace movement etc. of established languages. If a child has language going on around them they will get it.
Granted some people can have poor language skills. They are inarticulate and badly educated. These people though have command of a language - if you have a functioning brain you have a language. They may not have your vocabulary (poor education/ environment) and their grammar might be non-standard: “He don’t never do nothing;” “He be my bro” which I agree could cause problems in society. But your claim was you met someone who “never learned much English” and “couldn’t speak Chinese either” Unless he acquired another language you didn’t mention this is not credible.
If you have found such a person - write the paper, totally overturn modern linguistics and get instant tenure as a full professor at the university of your choice.
[color=red]
Child raised by maid!
[/color]
Finally, someone who recognizes my genius. I’ve been underrecognized all these years and resent the hell out it. That’s why I have a three foot long beard and make a living in a cabin in the woods building explosives and selling them at black market rates to Al Quaida. They shall recognize my genius when the jihad arrives and cleanses their infidel souls of that blasphemy taught in the liberal ivory towers of the west!!
I personally know a phd who has published all kinds of stuff on language acquisition. Great guy (he’s my brother). But could he ever master a foreign language himself? Tried but never come close. For all the theory in the world, he doesn’t know jack. Many language learners, however, have been to the other side of hell and back successfully and they know what it takes. Theory is cheap, results are money.
By the way, being able to speak babble English, while it may fall within the MIT linguist’s technical definition of “knowing” a language, isn’t worth a subway token in my book. Give me Shakespeare or give me death!
reason.com/9711/col.olson.shtml
"Civil rights enforcers admit there are some circumstances where employers may legitimately consider accents. They just take an ultra-narrow view of what’s legitimate. Consider the controversy that engulfed the town of Westfield, Massachusetts, a couple of years ago.
The town’s school system had assigned instructor Ramon Vega to an experimental program where he’d teach language skills to first- and second-graders. Some parents had trouble understanding Vega’s conversation themselves and worried that their kids might have the same problem. Four hundred of them proceeded to sign a petition asking that instructors in early grades be proficient in “the accepted and standard use of pronunciation.”
When word reached Boston, all hell broke loose. The state education commissioner charged the parents with “bigotry.” The National Education Association rushed through a resolution at its annual meeting decrying disparate treatment on the basis of “pronunciation”–quite a switch from the old days when teachers used to be demons for correctness on that topic. A foundation voted a $100,000 grant to be sent to the town for more bilingual programs to enlighten the populace.
Experts popped up and were quoted saying expert things. Donaldo Macedo, described as “director of graduate studies in bilingual education” at a local university, accused the parents of “linguistic racism” and declared to the Boston Globe that “there’s not a single piece of research in linguistics that shows children who are raised by someone with a heavy accent acquiring that accent”–a curious assertion that would seem to raise the question of how kids ever happen to grow up with heavy accents at all (as well as sidestepping parents’ concerns, of which the actual transmission of accent was probably not the most important).
Globe columnist Alan Lupo took the lead in the condescension derby, calling the parents “know nothings” who yearn for a “homogenized” world and “fear changes they cannot or do not wish to fathom”; he advised them to “educate themselves about change and help their kids prepare for it.” Lupo pegged the parents as the kind of chillingly competitive overachievers “who begin tracking their kids’ educational and professional careers when the children are barely out of diapers.”
All of which suggested he hadn’t spent much time in Westfield, a rather gritty mill town heavily populated by first- and second-generation ethnics. In fact it should come as no great surprise that immigrants are often strong supporters of setting high standards for English proficiency: Not only do they see fluency as crucial to their children’s success, but they keep running into that arch-frustration: dealings among novice English speakers whose original languages are not the same.
Westfield Mayor George Varelas, himself a Greek immigrant with a marked accent, backed the parents. “Persons like myself–and I cannot be confused with someone from Boston or Alabama–should not be” in charge of 5- and 6-year-olds’ first language skills. “I would only impart my confusion and give them my defects in terms of language.” Varelas got sacks of supportive mail from around the country. But it was Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger who had the last word. Harshbarger’s office quickly ruled that it would be unlawful for the school system to consider Vega’s accent, threatened to sue if they transferred him to another job, and that apparently was that."
All the kids in our family were raised by nannies. Mom and pop were usually busy all thru the day. They wouldn’t have time for us. I stayed with my nanny all weekdays and came home during the weekend. My nanny’s home environment is not truly perfect. She has a delinquent child. She makes cookies and sells them in the street to make a living while having a small pig ranch at her backyard. I learned a lot of her things with her children, now my brothers and sisters. I learned how to gamble at early age. We play dice everyday. We played poker cards and all kind of gambling. I copied how they speak and the teaching in their house, but I also learned that I was loved.
Today, I don’t gamble and I hardly have a chance to speak hakka 
my native tongue, the tongue I learned during child development.
I think selecting a good nanny that love your children as her own is the most important. All others are arbitrary.
ax
Ax you cut to the core.
Well, yes, if you decide to get a nanny, much better that she love, than hate, your children. No disagreement there.
But my question remains, why would you want someone else to love your children as her own?
Well, yes, if you decide to get a nanny, much better that she love, than hate, your children. No disagreement there.
But my question remains, why would you want someone else to love your children as her own?[/quote]
But why not, El Tigre old chap? The more people there are around to love and care for the child, the better off it will be – as long as it is properly disciplined and not allowed to be spoilt.
If Mum and Dad can give the kid a full quotient of parental love and attention during early mornings, evenings, weekends, holidays and whatever other time is available for doing so, then they surely need not fear that the nanny will displace them in their offspring’s affections, or that the child will unduly miss out on interaction and bonding with the two most important people in its life.
[quote=“Flicka”][quote=“MaPoDoFu”]
It’s worse because some employers look negatively on weird accents for many positions involving contact with customers – reception, sales/marketing, and so on. Some may also take it as a sign that the speaker is uneducated.
…
Impressions matter. This is called reality. Deal with it.[/quote]
This is the silliest bunch of crap I’ve ever seen. I suppose my Valley Dude-meets-Southern Oregon Hick accent would, in your eyes, make me a Hick Bimbo. Add to that my Philippine upbringing, and I’m a regular whore. Let’s not even get even get started with my Faggot Lisp.
You can deal with the fact that I’m successful despite sounding like a Bimbo Hick Whore. That’s called reality.[/quote]
And later . . .
[quote=“Scuba”]unfortunately there is quite a large body of evidence that indicates that accents do matter to average people (not just morons).
We are all victims of our prejudices wether conscious or sub conscious.
Sorry I’m going off thread here !
[i]Researchers found that a job seekers accent can affect the type of job they get[/quote]
Thanks, Scuba. Much appreciated.
Flicka, congratulations on succeeding despite your bizarre accent(s) and affectation(s). You may now osculate my posterior. 
Incidentally, you might also be happy to learn that in the U.S., there is a correlation between an MBA’s height and his salary level. Some dwarves might get fortunes, and some basketball-couldabeens might get peanuts, but on average they get paid by the inch.
Reality. Go figure. Deal with it.
Tigerman,
Love as it turns out is limitless. Didn’t you learn anything from those Monks?
Well, yes, if you decide to get a nanny, much better that she love, than hate, your children. No disagreement there.
But my question remains, why would you want someone else to love your children as her own?[/quote]
But why not, El Tigre old chap? The more people there are around to love and care for the child, the better off it will be – as long as it is properly disciplined and not allowed to be spoilt.
If Mum and Dad can give the kid a full quotient of parental love and attention during early mornings, evenings, weekends, holidays and whatever other time is available for doing so, then they surely need not fear that the nanny will displace them in their offspring’s affections, or that the child will unduly miss out on interaction and bonding with the two most important people in its life.[/quote]
Yes, Omni, perhaps the arrangement you describe above would be OK, but it seems to me that what you have described is the best-case scenario with respect to other (non-parental) care-givers.
I suppose I am fearful of anything less than the best case scenario you describe.
I guess too, that I have observed many cases far less wonderful than what you describe above… and truthfully, cannot think of any cases as ideal as the one you described.
Maybe I’m just too damn stubborn on this point… I just don’t see the need for a nanny… when balanced against the benefits of parents as primary care-givers.
[quote=“Fox”]Tigerman,
Love as it turns out is limitless. Didn’t you learn anything from those Monks?[/quote]
But a parent’s love for his/her child is more limitless. 
Yeah, I learned about the Gnostic Gospels and lots of cool stuff like that!
Dear Omni:
Why is it that so many of have no problem with abdicating the position as parent to a minimum-wage employee? If any professional needed somebody to take over their job-related responsibilities they’d pay big money and go over their qualifications, certification, etc. But when it comes to hiring somebody to take care of their child, suddenly the standards drop. Why is that? Why is it that so many people feel that their value as a parent can be so easily replaced?
Is it that you define parenthood differently? I define ‘parent’ as something that qualifies you by what you do. If you’re are raising the child, you’re the parent. Why is it that you would put that awesome responsibility into the hands of another? What was the whole point to having a child in the first place?
Do you honestly think that any employee can give the same amount of love, care, attention, and protection to your child that you do?
There are single parents who need to hire a maid out of necessity. I have nothing but sympathy for their position. But when there are two parents who wish to return to their full time jobs and let somebody else raise their child (and please don’t give me that line about the preciousness of ‘quality time’ on nights and weekends–That premise was trashed years ago) I have to admit that I am bewildered by their choice.
You want your child to be raised by a maid? Why didn’t you just get a pet instead? Why doesn’t anybody want to address the issues I’ve brought up? Why is it that so many of you prefer work to parenting? Why is so little value given to that job? Why is raising a child given such low priority by so many of you?
Come on, Dahudze – you’re overdoing the loading of guilt onto working parents here.
Take out the 40-some hours of a full-time work week, and you’ve still got 120 hours left – three times as much – for the parents to spend with their child. That’s a fair enough ratio, I’d say. And if one of the parents just works part time, or maybe even both of them do, then it’s even better.
What’s more, why the assunmpton that the hired carer will inevitably be unfit for the job? If you can find yourself a middle-aged mama who has raised a large family of her own, you’ll probably find that she can do a better job than you in many ways, teach you all sorts of invaluable things, and, in combination with the much greater amount of time that you spend with the child yourself, provide it with the best possible care and upbringing that it could possibly receive.
Oh, and one more thing, Dahudze:
Are you opposed to sending kids to nursery school, kindergarten, and even primary and high school? How is that different from entrusting them to any other kind of properly qualified paid carer or carers for a certain number of hours each week?