Is daycare a societal good? Or a necessary evil?

Thanks to conservative pop-culture commentator Alex Clark of Poplitics, conservative moms are having the much-needed debate.

Clark recently interviewed author Suzanne Venker on her podcast, The Spillover, to talk about all the myriad problems with daycare. Venker argues that daycare should be a last resort for families, but in the current culture, it's become a default for many moms.

And boy let me tell you, moms are mad about her take.

Here are some of the clips from the episode:

In past generations it seemed obvious to most people that the ideal was to have a mom home with her kids, and if that wasn't possible, to look at other options. But that doesn't seem to be as obvious to parents anymore.

Daycares as we know them are a relatively new concept, but parents today seem to have forgotten that children have been cared for in their homes for most of human history. The idea of socializing a 6-week-old baby with 17 of their peers is the new idea here.

Current research on child brain development and attachment theory only seems to confirm what past generations knew instinctually; nevertheless, many moms, including conservative pro-family women, return to work just weeks after giving birth, leaving their newborns to the care of a revolving door of daycare employees.

While Clark and Venker acknowledge that daycare is necessary for some women, especially single moms, or those without family support, they argue that it should absolutely not be the default for moms.

In the interview, they cover societal misconceptions, like the idea that young children require lots of socialization with peers and that outsourcing childcare has no impact on parent-child relationships.

Call it a ministry, or call it an essential service, but in my humble opinion daycare is a necessary evil. Especially so for young babies who have not yet developed a healthy attachment to their parents to be separated from those parents for the vast majority of their waking hours daily.

While there are as many reasons for utilizing daycare as there are for working parents, there are some major questions that need to be raised, from how daycare impacts a child's brain development, to what kind of message it sends to a child. Or worse, that taking care of them is not personally fulfilling to you.

Good for Alex Clark for starting the conversation and raising the questions that many women have been conditioned not to ask. Let's keep the conversation going.

Here's the full episode: