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Changing Versions of Childhood

The ambivalence that people feel toward children can be heard in Linda Bird-Davies' voice when she talks about her career.

She began a family-child-care program in the mid-1970s so she could be at home with her daughter. Now, more than 20 years later, Bird-Davies is the director of a Los Angeles child-care center--part of an industry that has made it possible for parents to be separated from their children for long hours while they work.

It's a setting where young children--currently viewed as resilient and independent--have been forced to adapt to the fast-paced schedules of families in the '90s. But it's one in which Bird-Davies says she sometimes feels sorrow when she knows a child just wants to be with...