The Childcare Comfort Level

24 thoughts on “The Childcare Comfort Level”

1. It took me a long time to become comfortable with utilizing child care services, even though I was lucky enough to afford them. For some reason, like many women, I needed permission to “work” – which I finally received from my therapist who asked me what I thought I was trying to achieve by “doing it all by myself?”
   Many of us feel this pressure. We WILL work, while the kids sleep or on weekends or as long as it doesn’t take us away from our mommy duties. I know I was raised to believe that a “mom gives up everything for her kids.”
   I am luckier than most in that I can also work from home with a flexible schedule because I am a freelance writer and independent filmmaker. But it was ridiculous for me to think that I could commit any serious time to my own career if I wasn’t willing to utilize childcare services.
   Anyway, I think most of us feel as if there just isn’t enough of us to go around. We were told we “could have it all,” but nobody told us what that meant. Nobody told us how much juggling we’d need to do.
   I know men feel similar pressure, but it’s not the same as what the mommy feels — somehow the buck always stops with us. Somehow we’re the ones being selfish if we go off to work while the baby has a fever or our kid has a soccer game. Men don’t feel this guilt because they are expected to leave the home each morning and go out and “support their families.”
   My kids are both in school full-time now, and you would think it would get easier for me to now work during school hours. Except there is so much pressure put on moms to be involved and volunteer during school, after school, and all weekend. When does the juggling stop?

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2. My daughter (22 mos) is in day care 3 days a week, 8-5 or thereabouts (usually a half-hour on either end depending on our schedules). We are lucky in that we found a high quality day care walking distance from the house. And yet I still had guilt. Until the day I picked her up and during my “how did she do today conversation” one of her teachers was talking about finger painting on bubblewrap. Before my edit function kicked in, I asked “why in the world would you do that?” which resulted in a short but informative lecture on brain development, sensory integration, and learning experiences. In my academic snobbery, I had always assumed that certifications in early childhood development were glorified courses in diaper changing. Or maybe it was the kind of subtle racism that says since these jobs are mostly held by low-paid women of color, it’s little more than glorified babysitting. Anyway, guilt no more and no. 2 (when it gets here) will start day care much earlier (probably at 5 or 6 most) than number one did (14 mos).

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3. The childcare situation in this country could be so much better. On-site childcare is one obvious solution. A parent who can take a ten-minute break mid-morning to check in with (or breastfeed) a child will worry less and be more productive. For many young children, just ten minutes of sitting on a parent’s lap and talking can provide an important emotional re-fueling. Childcare providers who can expect surprise visits from parents at any time are held responsible for their behavior.
   Cooperative childcare arrangements, situations in which like-minded parents watch each other’s kids, are also ideal.
   Sadly, most communities don’t consider childcare a problem that the community must deal with. It’s the parents’ problem. (And usually that means — it’s the mother’s problem.) For example, where I live, the elementary schools are released one hour before the high schools. That means no one can use high school kids as afterschool babysitters. I have a sixteen-year-old who is very responsible and would make the perfect babysitter for his younger sibling, but gets home one hour later than the younger sibling. Repeatedly, at school board meetings, parents bring this issue up. It would be a fairly simple matter to flipflog the elementary school schedule with the high school schedule so that the high school students would get home in time to be babysitters in their families and in their communities. Whenever the issue is brought up, conservative school board members get outraged. “Women who want to work shouldn’t expect high school kids to help raise their kids” or “It’s not up to us to worry about babysitting.” The general consensus among the old guard is that a good mother *should* be home with her children and the school board should do nothing to encourage these dreadful feminist mothers to abdicate their responsiblities.
   The childcare situation will improve only when communities finally realize that it’s an issue we all need to care about.

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4. The childcare situation in this country could be so much better. On-site childcare is one obvious solution. A parent who can take a ten-minute break mid-morning to check in with (or breastfeed) a child will worry less and be more productive. For many young children, just ten minutes of sitting on a parent’s lap and talking can provide an important emotional re-fueling. Childcare providers who can expect surprise visits from parents at any time are held responsible for their behavior.
   Cooperative childcare arrangements, situations in which like-minded parents watch each other’s kids, are also ideal.
   Sadly, most communities don’t consider childcare a problem that the community must deal with. It’s the parents’ problem. (And usually that means — it’s the mother’s problem.) For example, where I live, the elementary schools are released one hour before the high schools. That means no one can use high school kids as afterschool babysitters. I have a sixteen-year-old who is very responsible and would make the perfect babysitter for his younger sibling, but gets home one hour later than the younger sibling. Repeatedly, at school board meetings, parents bring this issue up. It would be a fairly simple matter to flipflog the elementary school schedule with the high school schedule so that the high school students would get home in time to be babysitters in their families and in their communities. Whenever the issue is brought up, conservative school board members get outraged. “Women who want to work shouldn’t expect high school kids to help raise their kids” or “It’s not up to us to worry about babysitting.” The general consensus among the old guard is that a good mother *should* be home with her children and the school board should do nothing to encourage these dreadful feminist mothers to abdicate their responsiblities.
   The childcare situation will improve only when communities finally realize that it’s an issue we all need to care about.

   LikeLike

5. The childcare situation in this country could be so much better. On-site childcare is one obvious solution. A parent who can take a ten-minute break mid-morning to check in with (or breastfeed) a child will worry less and be more productive. For many young children, just ten minutes of sitting on a parent’s lap and talking can provide an important emotional re-fueling. Childcare providers who can expect surprise visits from parents at any time are held responsible for their behavior.
   Cooperative childcare arrangements, situations in which like-minded parents watch each other’s kids, are also ideal.
   Sadly, most communities don’t consider childcare a problem that the community must deal with. It’s the parents’ problem. (And usually that means — it’s the mother’s problem.) For example, where I live, the elementary schools are released one hour before the high schools. That means no one can use high school kids as afterschool babysitters. I have a sixteen-year-old who is very responsible and would make the perfect babysitter for his younger sibling, but gets home one hour later than the younger sibling. Repeatedly, at school board meetings, parents bring this issue up. It would be a fairly simple matter to flipflog the elementary school schedule with the high school schedule so that the high school students would get home in time to be babysitters in their families and in their communities. Whenever the issue is brought up, conservative school board members get outraged. “Women who want to work shouldn’t expect high school kids to help raise their kids” or “It’s not up to us to worry about babysitting.” The general consensus among the old guard is that a good mother *should* be home with her children and the school board should do nothing to encourage these dreadful feminist mothers to abdicate their responsiblities.
   The childcare situation will improve only when communities finally realize that it’s an issue we all need to care about.

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6. I’m a real childcare booster, possibly the result of having been in daycare when my mother went back to university for her master’s degree. It’s certainly easier today and more accepted for parents to put their children in childcare, yet a stigma still clings to the mother who willingly “abandons” her child. But I feel no shame at using childcare.
   At the age of three months, my eldest daughter started in childcare: a homebased daycare where the mother watched my daughter, a two-year-old boy and her own school age daughters. I remember feeling blessed to find such a mellow and trustworthy caregiver, whose references burbled over with praise. Even though she lived clear on the other side of town, we felt it worth the long drives.
   After all, what were the alternatives? Many times non-academics urged me to just quit my job so I could stay home with the kids. I don’t think they realize how hard it is to find academic jobs, at least ones that actually pay more than 10 grand a year and come with an office, benefits and a future. Not a single one suggested that husband quit his no-benefits, relatively poorly paid job he’d taken here to be with me. We toyed with the idea, but having found a wonderful sitter, we were happy to go that route.
   Of course, it was also nice that for the first few years, we kept them in daycare only three days a week. That’s a benefit of working around my academic schedule. We were able, two weekdays a week, to keep the kids ourselves. I enjoyed more time with my family although my research suffered a bit.
   But I’m not always completely comfortable with childcare. Our youngest child is autistic and can’t be blithely handed off to the senior high students volunteering at the after-school activity hours at the Y, or put in the care of the newly certified fourteen-year-old babysitter from across the street. Except for school and a few weeks of special needs camp in the summer, she’s with us. So what if I end up volunteering for night classes or staying at a second tier institution if it wins me those extra weekday hours to take care of her or ferry her to the doctor or therapist, guiltfree?
   Now they’re both school age and we’ve juggled matters, yet again, so that one or the other of us is always available in the after school hours to bring youngest home and help the kids with their homework. I don’t think that the juggling will ever stop, at least with a special needs child.

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7. This is a response to both the daily routine and the childcare question…
   I’m as assistant professor in my second year on the tenure track, as is my husband. We had our 2 kids while we were still in grad. school/post docs. Each has been in full time daycare since they were a year old (before that we got by on a combination of babysitters and me part time adjuncting and otherwise staying at home).
   Having kids this early in an academic career has been frenetic. I finished my dissertation while heavily pregnant. Adjuncted while breastfeeding (and leaking) and getting little sleep. I’ve never needed much sleep, which has been a real advantage. But time is always at a premium. We’ve cut out most of the following from our lives: home cooking, exercise, TV, newspapers, reading for pleasure, travel. In work, we hardly ever travel for research (a disadvantage in our fields) and do far less reading in our fields than we should. We teach, we write (some), and we defrost.
   I’ve had few qualms about putting my kids in daycare — it’s always been at university-sponsored nurseries, which were well-staffed, on-campus (easy to visit during the day), provided the meals (no lunchboxes!) and as a fringe benefit introduced us to a supportive community of other academic parents of small children. That’s a huge plus. Daycare also (as opposed to nannies/babysitters) means your house is empty all day long, which is great for writing, and means far less clean up, fewer groceries to buy, etc.
   But this is a solution that very few people can get. At both nurseries, we either sat on a waiting list for a long time (18 months for my first child) or won a lottery to get in. Lots of kids don’t. It’s also hideously expensive. I just finished doing our tax return. We spent over $20,000 on childcare in 2003.
   We had to take (yes, take: they knew we’d probably never pay it back) a lot of money from my parents to pay for daycare until I found a full time job. Without that cushion, I’d never have finished my dissertation, or racked up two years of teaching experience by adjuncting. We’ve only found financial stability this past year, when 1) we both got ‘real’ jobs and thus doubled our income 2) we moved from the east cost to the midwest, where our cost of living is literally half what it used to be.
   In other words, paying for childcare that was far above what a post-doc and adjunct could actually afford was an enormous gamble. In our case it paid off, but we might very easily have ‘bought’ all that time (in an effort to establish our careers) and still not have gotten jobs. The job market in our fields is terrible.
   I don’t feel particularly guilty about putting my kids in such good care. But I often feel guilty about my track to full time employment. I had a huge advantage: money. Without it, I could not have had my kids and stayed in academe. I imagine my husband would have progressed from postdoc to professor while I stayed home with the kids, and I would have either not finished my Ph.D., finished and remained an adjunct, or left the profession altogether. Lack of money drives a lot of people, especially mothers, out of the academy.
   I’m not sure where all this leads except to say that it seems like balancing an academic career with parenting is not too bad so long as you can live without sleep AND you have money AND you don’t mind living in the sticks AND you get a run of extraordinary luck as we have done.
   Two final thoughts:
   #1: as a late 20s/early 30s mother, I have often been at least a decade younger than most of the other parents at the university daycares we have used. The number of tenured women professors in their early 40s toting toddlers in in the morning has been astonishing. They took another gamble — wait until you *are* financially stable and established in your career; and hope that you can still get pregnant. And experience the financial and physical stresses of parenthood at a moment when your career responsibilities are inescapable and your body is not as robust. I’m happy to have had my kids when I was young and the academic world could pretty much take me or leave me; but again, that was a huge gamble, one that many women are very understandably unwilling to take.
   #2: I haven’t said much about how I actually feel about my kids. I adore them. I didn’t love taking care of them when they were tiny, and that’s probably why I never felt very guilty about daycare. Now that they are getting into kindergarten and elementary school, I find being away from them much, much harder. I want to go on the field trips, and be home when they get home from school, and be free on weekends to do things with them. They are old enough now to notice that other mothers can do this, and to ask me why I can’t. Money can’t solve that problem.

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8. We also made the decision to have our kids while we were in grad school and in that first post-doc. It was hard, but it would be no easier to do it now that I’m tenured.
   We also sent our kids off to daycare early. I think it was actually good for them. Staying home with a couple of homebodies who had their noses in books most of the time isn’t necessarily the best environment — I think they were better socialized and better adjusted to have lots of early exposure to other kids and other adults. I’m not just rationalizing here, either: they’re old enough now that I can see they’ve turned out well.
   The one really awful thing about having kids early in your career is that academics are rather peripatetic. We’ve moved from Oregon to Utah to Pennsylvania to Minnesota while the kids were growing up, and have had to uproot them from friends and schools way too often. Our last move pulled our oldest out of his senior year of high school, which we still feel guilty about.
   Another sad thing about having them early is that now that we have some security and a nice home and a stable situation, they’re all moving out. The oldest is about to graduate from college and comes home maybe twice a year. The middle kid starts college next year, and he’s planning to move out of state for it. The youngest has just started high school, so we only have a few years more with her. And my wife has had to take a job 165 miles away, and only comes home on weekends. Empty nest syndrome is going to hit hard and all too soon.

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9. I think it depends heavily on the needs of the child and the relationship s/he as with the available caregivers.
   I’m not comfortable using any child care on an ongoing basis (my older is 4; my younger is 1, and still nursing heavily). I am comfortable with using babysitters for a couple of hours here and there for the older boy—for example, the child care at the gym where I work out.
   I’m not comfortable with leaving my nursling, even for an hour, with anyone that the baby doesn’t know and trust very well. I recognize that if he was in daily care, he would grow to know and trust and perhaps love that caregiver; but given that he is not, I am more comfortable taking him with me when I go somewhere. I’m used to that, and it doesn’t feel like a hardship.
   They will not be little for long.
   I’m working part time from home now. That’s working out ok. If, as time goes on, it gets difficult to get some of the work done with the children underfoot, I would be entirely comfortable with hiring someone to come into my home and take care of them and entertain them while I worked in another part of the house, available to nurse the baby and in emergencies.
   We trade childcare occasionally with some friends who also have small children. Our turn is coming up in a couple of weeks, and we haven’t yet decided whether to have a long “date” and take the baby with us, leaving only the older child, or a short “date” (i.e. just dinner) and go alone. I’m leaning toward the latter.

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10. We use 2 days a week of childcare. Until recently it was a friend of a friend. I trusted her to keep A. safe but I dont think she was doing much to stimulate her, teach her, etc. and A. was bored. She is starting a new place this week – a montessori-style daycare (its not really montessori though, just influenced by it and others). So far it seems very nice – they have music classes, spanish, sign language, fun toys, etc. She has visited 2x and seems to enjoy it. I hope it works out.
    She loves being around other kids so I think she’ll do well but it leaves me with an aching in my heart to know someone else is picking her up when she falls, and wiping away her tears.

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11. Incidentally, there’s probably no *perfect* solution. But IMO the single societal change that would benefit working parents and their kids most (as well as those who must care for elderly parents or disabled relatives—it’s not all about parents) would be a move towards flexible scheduling and benefits, so that part-time work became a viable option for both men and women. Although it was at times crazy—I’m less stressed now that I’m at home—I felt the most *balanced* when both my husband and I were part-time workers (technically, I was in graduate school, but they paid me, so it counts).
    Social Security and other tax credits for caring for one’s own children would also be nice. Why should it only “count” if I care for someone *else’s* kids?

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12. In this country, health insurance is almost always tied to having a full-time job. If we had universal health care here, many parents could choose the option of working part-time. Too many single (and some married) mothers have no choice: they must have a full-time job or their children will have no medical coverage.
    Another model we could take from Europe: in many countries, workers are given a minimum of six weeks vacation by law. That gives parents significant time with their children during school vacations.

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13. My son goes to daycare three days a week. We’re lucky. It’s fabulous daycare and they really do a lot for him, both in terms of learning colors, painting, all the usual stuff, and working on interpersonal stuff (ie, hitting is not a good idea, etc).
    And truthfully, I think quality group childcare is a great thing for kids. Even if I could stay home full time and afford hot-and-cold-running nannies, I’d still choose it. I think kids who are always on their own, whether with a parent or a nanny, just don’t get as much in the way of quality interaction with their peers. The way we’re lucky enough to have it, my son gets to have a day of his own that he can tell me about, friends of his own, etc.
    I just added a fourth day at work, but they were nice enough to let me work at home. So on that day, my son and I hang out in the morning and the 18 year old girl next door comes over from after nap til about 6:30 pm, and I work upstairs. I thought about putting him in daycare a fourth day, but thought that might be too much, considering we drive him all the way into the city (the daycare’s at my husband’s workplace).
    So anyway, that’s us. A combination of luck, more luck and a workplace (his) that thinks enough of employees to give them the perk of great on-site daycare.

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14. Let me tell you about the greatest thing ever for stay at home moms. It just opened in our neighborhood, and when I saw it the first thing I thought of was “Where can I buy stock in this.” We didn’t want to put the kids in daycare because it was expensive, even for just two days, and it seemed like two much for the younger one (12 months now). But, without some sort of daycare, you’re completely stuck.
    Anyway, the place is called Basically Babysitting”, and it’s like a babysitter who’s always there at a moment’s notice.
    For me, the worst part about stay-at-home parenting was the “emergency” (or not so emergency) stuff. The doctor’s appointment I couldn’t bring the kids to. The friend who called out of the blue and wanted to meet for lunch. The flooded basement.
    Now, I can’t take the kids to the “babysitting store” as the kids call it. They charge by the 15 minute ($12 per hour for 2 kids), and you can leave them there for 15 minutes once a month or 12 hours every day.
    I’m telling you, this place was opened by a mother who was frustrated that she didn’t have a place like this when her kids were little.
    It has improved our family’s quality of life by a lot! If there were any government programs that would encourage the development of similar places elsewhere, I can see it helping gobs of SOHMs with child-care dilemmas. Obviously, the free market is not working well, here, otherwise they’d have these places on every street corner!

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15. Megan was born in 1996, when I was only a year into graduate school; Caitlyn was born in 2001, the year I graduated; Alison was born last year, during my second one-year position at Arkansas State. We’ve never used day care, partly because it was an expense that we could work around, partly because we simply didn’t see the need. Melissa worked full-time in D.C. until Megan was born; afterwards she decided she wanted to work part time, and did so for a while. Eventually she quit that job, and after a few months found another that was more supportive of her needs. All while I was in graduate school I scheduled my classes and organized my work responsibilities so I could take care of Megan while Melissa was at work. (The way it usually worked out was I would watch and feed Megan in the mornings, and after 1pm or so Melissa would come home and I’d take the train into school.)
    We were lucky; I know that. But we also lived cheap, and took longer getting me through graduate school than might have been necessary. Since we left D.C., we’ve been able to live off my salary, and Melissa has been home full-time. Again, we’ve been lucky. But we’ve also been willing to put our kids through a lot, a fair number of moves and a lot of hauling around, for one. (Since we’ve only ever had one car, all through graduate school and ever since our girls have taken frequent naps in the car, and been pushed everywhere in strollers, and been taken with us to work and office hours and church and everywhere else if necessary, just so Melissa and I could figure out where we could meet and when to hand off the kids to each other.) I think it’s been, all things considered, a defensible way to handle the kids. I don’t think anyone at any of the schools I’ve been at has ever expressed unhappiness at the baby girl who was frequently my companion or strapped to my back.

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16. You know, this is going to sound cruel but you don’t have to listen to all Jonah’s looong stories. Yes, yes there are 10 seconds of cuteness buried in all that long windedness but my gawd such stories are often — in Anne Lamott’s words– Chinese water torure.
    No one gets to bore someone unconditionally — even cute little kids. That’s life. And no one is going to love your kid like you or feel guilty about not listening like you.
    Raising kids is insanely boring at times. Anyone remotely perceptive knew this pre-kids and knows it with kids.
    The big problem with our high-maintenance kid raising is it’s all based on pretending otherwise.

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17. Both kids have been in organised child care since they were 10 mos. Rebecca (now age 6) started off with two days a week, and Megan (now age 3.5) started off with three. Both kids had a difficult time adjusting to child care, and that adjustment period (about two months) was awful and guilt-filled for our family.
    Their days were 9-5 days, and the care they received was excellent. The centre has caring and trained staff, and low staff turnover. I breastfed both kids while they were in child care. For Rebecca, I went in and fed her at lunch. I went back to work (5 half days) when Megan was 6 mos, while her dad took care of her. She never did take a bottle, so we breastfed around my time away, and this continued when she went to child care (3 full days).
    Two years ago I started full-time work and my partner went part-time. The kids went to child care 4 days. I felt a bit guilty about that, but I think my concern was more the idea of them being at child care so much. The child care centre is excellent and the kids themselves thrived in it. I would have preferred them to stay at three days with child care and four days with us, but they did fine, and so did we. We are fortunate to have been able to locate an excellent centre, and that we could afford it.
    This year Rebecca started school, and Megan goes to child care 5 days. Ironically, she is at child care fewer hours this year than last because we pick her up earlier. She is still thriving. At child care she gets to do a lot of stuff that I would never think of, and she gets to play with her peers. I no longer feel any guilt about it–probably because it’s ‘preschool’ now, and because she loves going so much.
    I think that we should adequately fund child care. I live down under, so our situation is a bit different. We don’t get any tax benefits to offset child care costs. Child care is very expensive, and because gov’t has reduced funding for child care centres, it is extremely difficult to find places. One of my colleagues recently had a baby and was told by several centres that waiting lists were 2 years long! She cannot go back to work without child care, and she is by no means alone.
    I feel really fortunate that I had my kids when there were places available. I hear what you’re saying about child care being not the best solution, but since we live no where near family, it is our only option if we are to work. Given the increased mobility of society, this lack of social support is not unusual. In academic circles you are pretty much expected to go where the jobs are, which is what we did.

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18. I still haven’t gotten my head around someday maybe placing my son in daycare. (Cost aside.) I understand that people love it, they think their children do well in it, it works, etc. It just doesn’t sit right with me to have someone else raise my boy for such a large percentage of his early life, someone who for at least some period of time will be a complete stranger to me and my son, and who will also not be able to be focused on him, because of other children needing equal care. I admit it, I’m terrified of this entire process. Call me irrational if you will…I just can’t help it. Nothing I’ve heard so far has managed to reassure me.

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19. One comment in favor of child care here–though not a mom, I was raised by a working mom, and spent a great deal of time in child care before I started school. My mom is a loving but quick-tempered, impatient woman–not really good with infants. I loved my daycare, it was all play to me, and she preferred going back to work. As I got older, we developed a very strong relationship–which we might not have if she’d been forced to stay home with me when I was little. For some kids and parents, ultra-closeness isn’t always the best thing.

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20. After many anxious months on a waiting list, I was lucky to start my kid at 13 months in a full-time group family day care in my neighborhood. Group family day care is a NY State and NYC term. It means more than a licenced in-home babysitter, but not a full-blown “center”. Where my kid spends from ~8:30 am to ~6 pm M-F is with a mixed-age group of kids (12-15 kids, aged 0-4, multiple races and ethnicities) in an cramped but very tidy apartment that nobody lives in and where the staff uses the kitchen to cook the breakfast lunch and snacks. There are other rooms for play and nap and other impressively stimulating activities. For a while they seemed to be relying a bit more than desirable on DVD watching, especially late in the afternoon. As of September there is no TV whatsoever and everyone seems happier … kids, staff, parents.
    The real stress happens when the day care is closed for something like Veterans Day (when we both work) or when we or our kid is sick. I think that in addition to offering the option of on-site care, including infant care, employers need to begin thinking about contingent day care … for during vacations, illnesses, etc.
    I have few qualms about my kid being in day care so many hours. It is affordable, my kid seems safe and happy and thriving cognitively, it is convenient, and there has been NO staff turnover in more than 2 years. And, it’s a cool bunch of women … two are moms, one with a B.A. in education AND currently pursuing p-t Master’s level work in language/speech and the other an amazing cook. The other two are single women taking p-t community college classes in hopes of eventually transferring to 4-yr colleges. I have as much respect for these people as I have for myself, if not more. They have a very positive influence on my kid, and he is verbal enough to tell me (recently) that he likes “all of his teachers.”
    The staff at the center jokes that once parents are used to full-time child care, they can’t go back to the hard and boring and frustrating work of being a full-time stay-at-home parent. They have also said that kids will not be happy to make a transition back to stay-at-home with mom or dad or a nanny. I think they are right.
    I do sometimes wish I had more of a chance to play hooky. Sometimes, when he has to stay away due to a “contagious illness” that doesn’t make him sick (e.g., pink eye) it is so fun to be with him and make cookies and just hang out. I don’t think I would enjoy doing this all the time.
    My other regrets are relatively minor. First, there are no men on the staff. How are kids supposed to break out of the expectation that caregivers of young children must be female? Second, they have to walk to a nearby city playground for outdoor time. I worry about his safety. Yet I like that it’s the same playground that we visit. Third, I worry that the staff make too little money.
    I’m confident that our situation is exceptional. I can see how people less fortunate than me would feel anxious, or opt for fewer hours of child care per week, and therefore part-time work for longer than one year.

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21. I’ve expressed my unease about daycare as a general matter before; I worry that it is enivtably of variable quality, and that both fathers and mothers would be better off in a world in which we worked much less and spent more time with our kids. But both my kids have been in daycare 4 days a week (never more) most of their pre-school years. To be precise, in a single daycare, run by the same woman in her house, with a few other kids. My younger loves it, and my elder always wants to come with me to pick her up, and has fond memories, and a continuing relationship with Becky, the provider. Becky is a very strong Christian, we’re atheists; she has a rural background, we have urban backgrounds, she didn’t graduate college, we have had excessive education. So they have a different experience there than at home, and I value that, as well as the care they get/got there. If Becky or our kid is sick I stay home (or if it is Becky who is sick, I take the kid to work with me and make do).
    But, our situation is very fortuitous, and not easily replicable. And, although I’m completely confident that our kids have done fine out of it, I think that both of us would have been better off spending more time at home (my wife, who has spent less time at home, in particular).

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22. As a single mom and a professor, I must do this work and put my daughter into care with others, but I have to call it as I see it in my own life. I won’t pretend that my daugther is not suffering. I won’t pretend that her pain doesn’t matter. I won’t try to justify it in terms of her well being, as in claiming that “she is learning to be more independent” or “a happy mother makes a happy home.” I won’t be pacified by the nanny’s comment that “she stops crying the minute you are out of sight.” Does my pain at a loss hurt any less because I can reconcile myself to it? No, of course not. Then, should I disregard her pain because she is learning to deal with it? Because it is short-lived? Is my child’s pain less important than mine? Even though she won’t consciously remember this later, if therapy has taught me anything, it’s that the unconscious forgets nothing.
    I won’t deny the obvious truth: I am rebuilding my career on the back of her grief.
    This is hard to admit. When working mothers are on the defensive, we can’t publicly admit the grief of our children. When we are fighting with each other and against those who demean us, we can’t be fully honest about our own grief. Conversations about motherhood are fraught with issues of self-esteem, value, and power. Like many moms, I want to feel right in whatever choices I have made. And, usually, we don’t naturally feel right because the work/child-care arrangements we have carved out are rarely completely emotionally and spiritually satisfying. So, mothers can sometimes talk about their choices more loudly because they are not only trying to convince others they have made the best choice, but also trying to convince themselves. I know I have made strong talk in favor of being a stay-at-home mom. I know I have spoken with equal force about how mothers need other stimuli and outlets than only their nurturing of others, about the significance of work. My voice has sounded loudly on all sides of the issue.
    I hear so much in the media of the conflict between working mothers and stay-at-home mothers that doesn’t resonate with any of my experiences. I have been a stay-at-home mom and a working mom and a coordinator of a Women’s Studies program and a feminist activist; no one side matches my lived reality. So, I won’t takes sides in the current public debates between SAHM and working mothers because now I know that “sides” are an illusion.
    We are not the stereotypes offered us by the media, or even inadvertently, by mothers ourselves. I have never met a mother who doesn’t think (contrary to what the book title Mothers Who Think suggests). I have met mothers who think differently than I do, and although it is tempting to dismiss them by saying “they don’t REALLY think — because if they did, they would think like me,” I have found, once I get beyond the stereotypes, that they ARE thinking about their children, their lives, and their positions in the world. They just think differently than I do. Perhaps realizing that we are not the stereotypes is what could help us understand each other better.
    I think it is time that mothers and fathers start talking openly about the pain separation causes. We’ll never be able to stop performing childlessness to further our careers if we don’t admit who the real victims are. We’ll also not ever value stay-at-home parents for the valuable nurturing work they do if we don’t openly discuss the separation pain they are making financial and career sacrifices to limit. We’ll never encourage our culture to value the parent-child bond if working and stay-at-home mothers and fathers don’t all get into the debate together. And maybe, just maybe, the point of the mommy wars is to keep the issue appearing as a woman’s issue rather than a man’s. To encoura

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23. I would like to suggest that an international comparison of child care use and child care facilties shows that much depends on how child care is organised in a particular country or state.
    I am a Belgian who lives in the Netherlands. Me and my three siblings were in full-time high quality child care when we were babies and toddlers (that was in the 70s). My parents worked at a Catholic University, and this university had several great child care facilities. My brother and my older sister each have 4 kids, which are/were all in full time child care, as does the child of my youngest sister. They are all happy. The kids love it. Why? Because the quality is just superb. How is that possible? Because the Belgian government has a well-functioning agency that controls the quality, and the prices are low. The organisations might get subsidies too, I’m not sure but it seems likely. In any case the parents get subsidies through their taxreturns and it is relatively cheap. Hence these child care providers are non-profit orgnisations, who can’t just raise the prices and have to meet quite stringent quality norms. Because this whole system works so well, the child minders do this as a career, i.e. your child is very likely having the same child minder for all the years that she is in child care. No problems of high turn-over.
    In addition, (free) schools start from the age of 2,5. It’s compulsory by the age of 6, but more than 85% of parents send their kids to kindergarten by the age of three. For free. And the kids love it, because they learn all sorts of things, and most importantly: they have lots of other kids to play with.
    In the Netherlands, which is (for US standards) only a few miles up north, the government uses the rethoric of free choice for the parents to let them choose what kind of child care they want. The reasoning is that the market will provide diversity and meet the needs of the parents. In reality, child care is expensive, and the whole “industry” is unstable. Between now and next year, the prices can go up with 30 percent.
    The upshot, for me at least, is that the most crucial thing is quality control, as that is needed for parents to trust the care facilities. Given that child care is such a special “service”, the free market is not suited to deliver this. If there is a profit motive in providing child care, you can be sure that this motive will jeopardise the aim to have the highest possible standards. Child care should be a heavily regulated non-profit sector, otherwise there will never be enough quality and trust.
    Back to my international comparison: The difference between Belgium and the Netherlands is not only that the actual price in the NL is more than twice the price in Belgium, and that the Belgians trust their child care while the Dutch are hesitant. In Belgium, it is considered completely “normal” to have your child in care full-time, that is, 5 days a week, about 8 hours a day. In the NL, if you do that, you are seen by many to be a bad parent (actually, fathers can do it, mothers can’t). Going back and forth between these two countries has made it plain that there are many moral and social norms playing out in the area of child care(some of this is also good described in Joan Williams’s book Unbending Gender).
    PS: No, I don’t have children myself (yet), — I am following this conference blog because I am very interested in how a society can simultaneously promote gender justice and justice between parents and non-parents.

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    Apap codeine. Is codeine legal. Tylenol with codeine. Codeine.

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