There is a downside to practically everything. So if a mother shops her kids off to daycare and does not realize this, she is just not facing reality. I see them racing by me in the morning with their kids all bundled up in their child seats, and I say “I don’t want to go to work, I KNOW that they really don’t.” It’s got to be pure hell parting with those kids every morning, especially to the conditions which you describe. [I am sure there are notable exceptions, of course, but these do not disprove the general rule.]
And people who do not want to be parents such as you described in part of your post ought not to do so. People who do want to be parents ought to insist on changes in the community and society that will optimize the parenting. The problem is not just that family who cannot afford what you might consider *Quality* childcare jobs is having to put their children in non-quality… (Is this also *cheap* daycare?)….gee whiz….the point is that DAYCARE is not a quality concept. We tell ourselves it is so we can justify that we are doing it.
For single parents…we have a difficult issue here…one that includes considering that it is cost effective to support mothers to be home and stop criticizing them as “on welfare”. We do not live in an enlightened society…anyone who thinks we are ….needs to contact you off list!! (You are a psychiatrist and they need help with reality orientation) The real economic issue is that we are a consumer society and the only real purpose we have is to have consumers and we think we have to have everyone going home with a paycheck so they can go spend it on stuff they will throw away or didn’t need anyhow!!! I love to shop and spend money and buy stuff. I love my children and grandchildren MORE. Change the priority. Re-engineer the marketplace and send a parent home!!!
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.
We have a couple of girls here in our neighborhood who are 12 and 13 that baby sit. One has been through the baby sitting class and is quite good from what I hear. I don’t use her because my DD doesn’t like her. (lol I am afraid that if I ever hired her, it would turn into a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip around here. Remember the ones where Calvin locked the sitter out of the house?) The sitters that I do use are 14 year olds that I have worked with at the community theater. My children both love them to pieces! I think that has to weigh in heavily on which sitter you pick too. I also have a 15 year old boy on my sitter list. Again the kids think he is the bee’s knees. And he is great with them. He will wrestle and rough house, or kick a soccer ball around in the yard, but at the same time I have seen him sit on the floor and tie my son’s shoes. The whole time he was asking if they were too tight, and showing Andy how he was tieing them. (It was just far too cute to sit and watch!)
On top of that, a recent NPR program described a case where a group of boys is regularly asked to spend a portion of each week taking care of small babies. He announcer also mentioned that the boys now look forward to it. Unfortunately, I don’t have any more details on this, but it certainly sounds good. Indeed, very good! Those boys can now go out and get babysitting jobs or childcare jobs, moving in on the girls who monopolize it, and preparing themselves to be involved fathers.
Our Youth Group has an annual slave day at the church. Actually we’ve changed the name to rent-a-kid. We have members of the congregation sign-up with chores they need done, or babysitting jobs, or errands to run, whatever. Then the members of the youth group are assigned childcare jobs to do one Saturday (or whatever day hire-er needs) and are paid in a donation. The money gets split evenly between all who work because some people may pay like $75 for a car wash just because it’s for a youth group kid while another person may pay just $20 to have all their windows washed.
Since 1988, Congress has created four child care programs for low-income families. Two of them subsidize child care for welfare recipients who are trying to become self-sufficient through education, training, and childcare jobs. Two others provide child care subsidies to working poor no welfare families. GAO found that reducing child care costs increases the likelihood that poor, near-poor, and no poor mothers will work. This effect is strongest for the poor and near-poor mothers.
