What would help me as a working mom is fair treatment from politicians and the media. I enjoy my life, and wouldn’t have it any other way, but it would be way cool not to have quite so many people thinking that I am doing something wrong and looking down their noses at me. (1) Quit it with the “it’s better if young children are home with one parent.” Pfui. Americans like the idea better, that’s all. Show me some legitimate research that shows this (there isn’t any). Really, both ways are fine. Kids like daycare and thrive there. Kids like to be at home and thrive there, too.
(2) Quit comparing childcare jobs with some impossible ideal of stay-at-home parenthood. I represent women getting restraining orders, and I’ve seen plenty of stay at home parents who have had their parental rights terminated. I’m *not* saying this is typical: it isn’t. But neither is the perfect mom (the image *is* a mom, not a dad) who takes her children out for interesting educational field trips every day, never loses her temper, never sticks her kids in front of the TV so she can get something done, gives her children only educational toys and nutritional food. Compare daycare to the *average* stay at home parent, not what you’d like to believe she is like.
(3) Quit it with the “some women *have* to work.” It is fine to work, even if you wouldn’t starve otherwise. (4) Bring some coherence to the treatment of poor women and middle class women. Poor women are supposed to “get off their butts and work”. Middle class women are supposed to quit their jobs and stay home, even if they’d much rather not. (5) Quit it with the working moms versus stay at home moms attitude. I know that U.S. likes to view everything as a big fight (preferably akin to pro wrestling), but this shouldn’t be a fight. We are all moms who love their kids, and we should be on the same side.
I’m in somewhat the dilemma. My son is 2 1/2yo, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to keep him home with me since he was seven months old. I recently tried putting him in daycare part-time, for the social experience, but also to give me a chance to do some of my work-at-home during the day. However, he has had one illness after another since he started, and after going through rosella followed directly by pneumonia, I decided that this was not a great idea right now.
In general, they pay very poorly, have Teacher-child ratios at the max, and have high turnover (and probably less-trained staff.) It is rare for a chain center to have the NAEYC credentials or to have much representation at conferences. Look for things such as sending teachers home and combining classes if numbers are low (a very poor policy, for the children’s sake, and contributes greatly to staff turnover), Staff members working more than 8 hours (same problems-occasional overtime is fine, but not habitually), and teaching staff doing jobs which shouldn’t be in the job description (the teaching staff shouldn’t be pulled away from the kids to clean bathrooms, for example.
The parents determine the quality of the school. All of our teachers have degrees in early childhood education; most of them has a master. We have ratio of 4:1 in the toddler room (age 18 mo to 3) and 6:1 in the preschool room (age 3-5). Other than the professional teachers, we get interns who are in early childhood education majors in colleges. So the ratio is actually somewhere liked 3:1 and 4:1. We pay our teachers very well. During the 3 years we have been with the school, only 2 teachers left in the whole school. One left to go to medical school, the other left to be a better paying kindergarten teacher in a public school. Each class gets new toys on the on going basis. Every few weeks, the parents are organized to fix any broken or need to be painted or need to be replaced things in the classrooms. It is a very tide circle among the families involved in the school. We often spend the weekend with one or more families from the school.
My daughter is also twelve and has demonstrated the ability to care for children in babysitting situation. One of the ways we’re giving her experience sitting w/o having her bear the whole responsibility is by working for the church. There are groups that have got together at the church and hire small groups of teens to babysit. By being part of that she gets a chance to be in charge and if anything came up that was beyond her ability she could get the parents. If a family that we knew & trusted with 2 or 3 children hired her for childcare jobs, we would allow her, but for the first couple of times I would make sure I was going to be home so that if she needed assistance she could call for it.
Here are just a few of the despicable practices I have witnessed over during the course of mychildcare job with the company: 1. allowing abusive caregivers to continue working after receiving several reports from other staff members who have witnessed the abuse. Most times, these caregivers are never given any written or verbal warnings of the witnessed abuse. Staff members working alongside these abusers are instructed to “keep an eye” on these people, thus creating a hostile working environment for them. Administration has been known to “stick up” for the caregivers in question, saying things like “I could never imagine ‘So and so’ acting inappropriately toward the children.”, or “‘So and so’ has been with the company for years and we’ve never heard of this before.” or some other excuse. Most of the time, the staff members who are witnessing the abuse either resign for moral reasons, or are reassigned to another position in a different classroom.
