For the record. $60,000 a year price tags are the exact opposite of what Reggio Emilia schools are about. As the author noted, the philosophy started out as a community answer to quality COOPERATIVE child care.

While they certainly do encourage healthy natural food and low child-teacher ratios, Reggio schools also heavily emphasize parent involvement and volunteering. My son attends a fabulous Reggio school in Oregon (granted our cost of living is significantly less than the google neighborhood) for about $10-15K per year (depending on age group). It is very much in line with the cost of other centers in our area (more expensive than some, but way cheaper than the Waldorf and Montessori schools).

Reggio philosophy is all about child centered learning, art and natural materials. It is perhaps the cheapest philosophy you will find, encouraging children to explore the natural world, avoiding all that plastic merchandized junk you see in most daycare centers. Some of the best projects the kids in my school have done involved cardboard, found objects and finger paint. Their latest project, Marvin the Robot (designed and constructed entirely by a group of 4 year olds) was assembled entirely from donated supplies (cardboard boxes, pvc pipe, recycled bottles, etc).

I am baffled at what google could be spending so much money on, because even high quality centers pay their early child educators pathetic salaries. I can tell you, ECE teachers are NOT in it for the money. They do it because they love kids. If they wanted to make more, they could teach almost anywhere else but a daycare facility.

Posh corporations like google really give a grassroots ideas like Reggio a BAD name when they spend so much and have such a high profile. They make a very well thought out and tested philosophy look like the latest fad. Get your $500 Baby Bjorn and your swank designer daycare - yech!!!

There actually IS someone who writes funny stuff about fishing (and camping, and hunting, and married life).

It's Patrick McManus - not a woman, but I've yet to meet a woman who didn't nearly pee herself when forced to listen to his short stories in my car.

As for childbirth not being funny . . . well, men just need to stop being so squeamish. What mother doesn't have a funny (and often gross) story about birth and kids??

Please tell me that you didn't just mean to say that all mothers are prostitutes . . . ?

Let's talk about the human pelvis.

Unlike our closest ancestors (primates) human beings can walk and run upright for very long periods of time and very fast. This evolutionary advantage has served us well. Human beings have spanned the globe, and we did it on foot, long before cars, trains and planes.

The downside it that the tilt of our pelvis that allows us to walk upright with such ease, complicates childbirth. Human babies are born face down. Well, usually. And they are born in sucha fashion that makes it difficult and dangerous for a woman to assist in her own child birth. A mother cannot safely extract her child from the birth canal. So human labor is long, painful and requires assistance. Primates on the other hand have quick relatively painless births without assistance. But they can't scoop up their newborn and run from large predators either.

Our ancestors underwent changes that made assisted birth a necessity, BUT they also had evolved social networks that guaranteed that mothers would never be alone in childbirth. It's only now in our modern era that a pregnant woman would be separted from her family and community.

People love to say that prostitution is the oldest profession, but I assure you that MIDWIFE is the oldest profession. To call unassisted birth a good idea and paint it as natural is incredibly ignorant. As Miss Harris stated, more press needs to be given to providing safe and comfortable birth to mothers. That means a birth that is assisted and balances the needs of mother, child and society. For some women that means drugs and hospitals, for some midwives at home. For many others it is something in between.