I remember mentioning on the list a few weeks ago that there needs to be daycare available EVERYWHERE that women go. I believe childcare jobs should be performed by trained, qualified personnel. Women are no longer at home all day long being SOLELY professional wives and mothers the way they were in the 19th century….therefore, there will need to be safe, affordable daycare EVERYWHERE that women need to go. I say this because the idea of having day care centers attached to libraries, or to the schools with which they are affiliated, is appealing, but there are still questions of staffing, space, and cost which don’t go away just because we say it’s the responsibility of ”the management of the places where women go.”
Someone does have to pay for these services, regardless of whether you’re talking about a not-for-profit entity or a private business. In the case of the former, it’s the tax-payers, usually, and therefore less obvious and painful, except when the tax bill comes. In the case of the latter, it’s the consumers–including the childless and those who actually can handle their kids, maybe even preferring to have them along rather than in professional day care while they are shopping, who pay. We select the place we do our shopping largely on the basis of price and a place that offered such superfluous day care services would not likely be competitive.
The word “affordable” is a key. What is affordable when you’re living at the limits of your budget anyway? Unless it’s subsidized, there’s no way this day care service is going to be provided by professionals. Drop-in day care is virtually impossible to make into a self-supporting enterprise. I’m puzzled at the idea that children would somehow be better served by spending the whole day going in and out of various professionally-run day care centers than spending time with their parents. Have we really reached the point where our children are so unmanageable that we cannot handle them while shopping in a supermarket, standing in a waiting line at a post office or utility company, etc., so we need to have other people paid to do that for is. If so, the fault lies not in the children or in society, but in ourselves, folks.
Let’s say, for sake of argument that the government decides to give a tax break to families like yours. (Or are you simply arguing that the tax break for families like MINE should be eliminated? I think they call those sour grapes.) How would such a break be determined. How much money would you get to save? After all, if I get a really cheap daycare, I would get to save less than someone who has to pay more. And how would Uncle Sam determine if mom is staying home with the kids because they can truly afford to do so because dad makes a good wage, or if they are struggling to pay the bills but feel it is very important for mom (or dad) to be home all day. Or, for that matter, if both parents are indeed employed full time and so making lots of money, but they happen to have been able to take advantage of a free child care provider. (After all, hardly seems right that YOU should get a $500 tax break while paying nothing at all but making two incomes while I get a $500 tax break for paying $2500 a year for child care.)
You are the one having to pay $100 a week for approximately 2 1/2 hours of childcare a week. BUT, if looked at from the daycare provider’s POV, it’s a whole different kettle of fish. In a lot of areas, there is a limit as to how many children you can be responsible for at one time. The last time I used childcare, it was 6 children per adult. So, if there is one person there, they can only have 6 children at a time. That half hour of daycare after school is most likely actually taking up a whole slot for the entire day. So, from the daycare provider’s POV, you will have to pay for the entire slot for the entire day, even if you don’t use all of tho should have explained better what meant by “subsidized” before/afterschool care—you have to refer entire not-for-profit programs that benefit from subsidized supports and thus do not charge “market childcare jobs rates” (such as programs run by the schools themselves, which are great if the school offers them!). I’m intimately familiar with the need-based child care subsidy programs, but no longer qualify.
Some parents are taking advantage of their daycare providers. Numerous parents go through the same cycles. They bring their children to childcare job centers and the first few weeks they have a very difficult time leaving their children, there are tears from both the children and parents. But after getting adjusted the advantage taking begins. Parents start picking up later and later, and dropping off earlier and earlier. They stop feeding their children breakfast in the morning, expectation us to do it. They start showing up without phone calls five to thirty minutes after closing time, with no apologies. Many parents try to fool us and pretend they don’t get off work until five thirty or six o’clock when we know they get off work at three- thirty, why aren’t they spending that valuable time with their children!
Transcribing is not as easy a solution as I thought it would be. The childcare jobs must be turned over in 24 hours. I would have to work all night to get them done. And if I work while Emma is asleep I chance waking her up (we currently live in a one room house). It’s hard to work during naptime since Emma wakes up whenever I work the transcriber. Since we’ve been living off of my savings all this time we’ve gotten a little rhythm going that’s been great for us on all possible levels except, obviously, financially. I’m having a hard time being a stay-at-home mom under my current circumstances and am feeling too pathetic to continue living in such poverty.
I live in London Ontarioand own and operate my own private home-based daycare. It is called Little Hands. I have a Business license simply for there name but I am not a licensed daycare facility. Like Leslie and some of the others had mentioned, you can have up to 5 children in your home and not have to be licensed. IN a licensed home daycare you can only have up to 5 children as well including your own, so if you have 1 child he/she needs to be included in your ratio of kids. Having past 5 children could get you in some deep water as this is actually considered illegal and plus your insurance company will not insure you past the 5 children limit.
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.
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.
Since the investment in good child care pays big dividends in reduced costs for prisons and greater income to municipalities, school boards, states and the federal government. All levels should contribute to the cost; it is in everyone’s best interest, Guillermo. At the same time, I fear relying too much on government for social services. Through our own negligence–or worse–we have allowed the government(s) to replace charity with welfare, and I’m not convinced that government is doing a very good job of it. In fact, quite the contrary: government services are much more effective at buying the votes of recipients, government employees, and kind-hearted people than they are at actually helping the needy. But the principle of subsidiary–that large, impersonal organizations should not do the childcare jobs that smaller, more human agencies can do better–carries a lot of weight.
What you pay your nanny, why she likes working for you, or anything, but let me tell you, nannies long to be APPRECIATED. The First and most important way to do this is with your Checkbook. The Second way is to give her Lots of praise, good feedback, and little tokens of appreciation. She is caring for your BABY, your Child, and Your Investment. She has its life in her Very hands every day. Treat her accordingly. And stop pinching those damned pennies.
