I am preparing myself for the shock of childcare jobs costs, but haven’t a specific number yet. Since it is very early for me to be calling places, I was hoping for some input from others in the group who are closer to using daycare, or who have other children in daycare. I’m hearing $175 a week in Mass for commercial day care centers; $150 for at home moms who can take in up to 6 children in their homes (Mass laws allow for 6 in a home, up to 2 who are children of the provider). Are these numbers in the ballpark? If so, I’m thinking au pair, which I HAVE researched, and that is between $190-205 a week. I think it will be worth the extra money (if it is indeed extra per week – obviously the extra household costs are not included in this figure).
I can not stay at home, since I make 2X what my husband does. He just finished a law degree at night, and it is important to us that he starts a legal job ASAP. We feel that if he doesn’t use this degree to change careers soon, that he will have a hard time getting a legal job after a few years off with baby. Despite our healthy income, we struggled for 7 months while my husband took a leave of absence from his job to study for finals, graduate, study for the bar exam, take the bar exam (he passed!), and do some volunteer work for legal aid. This doesn’t mean we can’t do better, but I know our costs will be going up and want to create a realistic budget.
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.
All people who use daycare are ”dumping” their kids… I have no problem with it for older kids, and realize that in some places it’s safe for even the little ones. I’m just frustrated that I can’t find any useful information from anyone I’ve met around here, and that anyone who isn’t berating me for not being a SAHM is ridiculing me for thinking that it matters who’s watching my baby. I actually had two mothers in the area tell me the other day that I “think too much”, “daycare is all the same, they rip you off for letting your kid play on their floor”, and “it really isn’t worth asking them about anything but price, you’ll see that when you aren’t such an overexcited new mom.” I’m starting to feel as if I’m the only person in the world who takes a middle ground. Anyhow, I was commenting on some of the people I’ve met here, not on childcare jobs-users worldwide.
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.
Sounds like you are becoming unhappy and distrustful of the day care staff, or at least with some of the staff and/or management of the staff. Just based on that info you probably want to look into a new daycare situation. I know it is hard to do things like that. If you have other ‘commercial’ day care centers in your area might want to look into them. Also if you have not ruled out home daycare I encourage you to look into it as well. Lastly – don’t rule out ‘church’ based childcare jobs programs simply because you are not of that faith.
If one thinks doing home daycare would be good for her then that might be an option. You can make quite a bit of money while being able to stay home with your children. And since, her kids would be playing with the other kids; her job wouldn’t take her away from being with her own children. For me, this has been the ideal job. Who knows, when my children are in school full time, I may return to work outside of the home, but for now, we are quite happy with this arrangement and it may work for your friend also. Presently, I have 4 full time daycare children. Potential $100.00 per day!! ($500.00) a week!! I couldn’t make that working out of the home and having pay $1000.00 per month for my two children to be in daycare. Mention it to her. You do have to be cut out for this type of work, though. It isn’t for everyone.
Government can provide daycare any cheaper then private daycare – in fact, it will probably cost more, because of the extra costs required to administer it. Trade union, like teacher unions, will then emerge at government daycare centers, which will force costs up even higher as they have done at public schools. Of course, this will all be justified by a requirement for child care degrees, which will help keep down the number of people providing daycare and rationalize the need for higher wages. There is no doubt that cheap but good daycare would be nice to have. It used to be that mothers stayed at home to provide ‘free’ daycare for their own children. This service is considered to be ineligible for payment when you take care of your own children, but not if you take care of another’s!
Well I stay at home with my son who is 14 months old and I cannot imagine leaving him in the “care” of a stranger. I do, however, understand that single mothers do not have many choices in their child care arrangements and have to make do with what they can get. And I do feel for those mothers. But for those two parent families who make good money and choose daycare for an infant rather than having someone stay home, I say shame on you.
