|
Ask the Nanny Recipe of the Month Articles Poetry
The Daycare
|
Author's Note: This article was written in 1987 and only briefly edited for this publication. This means that the comments about my local and state government are outdated, though I encourage you to investigate the current situation. I've left it intact to show how deplorably little has changed in the last two decades. Mine is sometimes called "the oldest profession." Throughout history, women have done for free what I get paid to do. People have a hard time believing that my job is really work and wonder how I can charge so much for my services. If they realized how much I was needed, they would support my profession instead of making laws to force us out of town. Laws will not stop the need. If they must, my customers will sneak into and out of my house. They will deny that any money changes hands. Laws won't take away a woman's right or need to work. And while women work, they need people like me who will take good care of their children. I am a woman who does "women's work" so that other women can work. This puts me low on the totem pole of the business world. To make matters worse, I work at home, the "woman's place." Most people view home child care as a sweet, but dumb, housewife who " watches" a few of the neighbor kids for "pin money" while she goes on about her normal household chores. However, legislative departments of society see these same ladies as annoying entrepreneurs, in need of regulation. Time has muddled what caring for children is all about and in the midst of misunderstanding works the home day care provider. Sharing the responsibility of child rearing is nothing new. Children need the influence of a variety of adults to have a well rounded childhood. Adults, likewise, benefit from the presence of children and also benefit from being relieved of that presence. Throughout time and in almost every culture, family and tribal members have shared the duties of child care. In many cultures women even share the job of nursing a baby in order to free the mother to work in the fields, market place or, in affluent families, to just be free of the baby (Fox, 103, 202.) Although I draw the line at suckling other people's infants, I do carry on the tradition of opening my home to children who are not my own. But I don't work on a barter system. I expect cash for my generosity. The exchange of money for my services puts me in the business of child care and this is where all the misunderstanding begins. Some people don't understand how I can even accept money for caring for children. Frances Alston, author of Caring For Other People's Children, explains: Not only do many people think that caring for children is easy, but some have the notion that one should not make money doing it. They have the feeling that loving children should be enough and not discussed in the same breath with making money (5.) I guess the logic here is that, because mothers don't get paid for their loving care, then anyone who takes a mother's place shouldn't need payment either. Motherly love is sacred and to put a price on it seems to cheapen it for some people. Mom is on such a high pedestal that hiring someone to relieve her of mothering seems unthinkable and immoral. The other misunderstanding here is that child care is easy. It's a cruel joke of nature that human babies are so easy to conceive and so difficult to raise. Caring for children calls on the talents of at least ten different professions As I greet the sleepy eyed children and parents at my door I am a social worker who assesses the family situation and smooths out the rough edges each day. I am a nutritionist and cook at meals and a janitor afterward. Since the children spend the majority of the their waking hours with me I am responsible for guiding their development in all areas. This requires me to be a teacher, child psychologist and a diligent student of human development. To tend cuts, scrapes and runny noses I must be as knowledgeable as a nurse in the area of childhood infections and as sure as a paramedic in an emergency. I must be strong and energetic for to supervise a group of small children requires lifting, carrying, bending down, getting up, running, reaching and being on my feet for most of the day. I must develop a marketing approach for my business and I am the bookkeeper and tax expert. I am the human resources department if I hire an assistant. And finally, I must be a model citizen wherever I go; I never know when I might be in line behind my next client at the bank or the grocery store. Because caring for children is difficult work that mothers were not paid to do, the women's movement fought for their right to be free of it. They worked energetically to give women an equal place in the working (man's) world, which confused their self-esteem about the (women's) work they already did at home. Experts encouraged mothers to work outside the home, in order to grow and fulfill themselves. A psychological study, done in 1963, advises, Women who work... have a better chance of raising children headed for maturity than do women who are supported and who devote themselves 168 hours a week to motherhood. No human being can hope to maintain emotional equilibrium with such a grueling assignment, no matter what the appearances are, or the good intentions... the mother can only transmit her despair about her own life to her children (Pearce 235.) So apparently, even if you love staying home with your kids and everything appears to be wonderful, there is simply no hope of staying sane there. The blatant message to full time home makers was that their work was impossible and they owe it to their children to find fulfillment somewhere else. Unfortunately, these misconceptions saturated modern thought so thoroughly that they carried over into professional child care (especially when it is conducted in homes.) Psychotherapist Elaine Heffner writes It can be a humiliating experience to be with career-oriented women who tend to look down their noses at people who are raising kids. These women, who supposedly have such a high consciousness, have absolutely no sensitivity or interest in relating to a woman who is a mother...(3.) Or one who takes the place of a mother. Even some of my dearest friends have asked me when I'm going to get a real job. Women who aren't my friends smile condescendingly when they discover my occupation and save the intellectual conversation for when they think I'm out of earshot. Society wonders, if staying home with a child can't be fulfilling to the child's own mother, how could it possibly be fulfilling for anyone else? Attitudes about child care are very confusing. Mothering is a labor of love and payment for it is unethical. But since there is no payment for mothering, it is exploitive and of little value in the "real" world. Mothers need liberation, so we hire someone to take Mom's place. But since Mom never got paid, it shouldn't cost much to replace her. After all, it doesn't even take a high school diploma to be a mother. Ironically, when a stay-at-home Mom decides to go to work, she too must often see the child care provider as someone who has an inconsequential profession. After all, if caring for the children was important and meaningful, then it would be wrong for the Mother to leave the task to someone else, right? On the other hand, Mothers who quit their jobs to stay at home with the children frequently cite as one of their reasons the incompetence of the 'glorified babysitters' they pay to take their place. The guilt inflicted on the Mother for whatever choice she makes will cause her to demean the one person in the working world whose sole purpose is to help her. Lynn Segal writes that the paradox of how to affirm the real value of woman's mothering, while seeing also how it serves to perpetuate woman's oppression, can also lead to a decreasing emphasis on the public responsibility for the adaquate care of children (100.) As mothers realized that they didn't want to be martyred in a depressing, thankless job, the rest of society did too. Instead of being shared by everybody, suddenly child care was too much for anybody. Our Family Leave laws are woefully inadequate and precious few employers have any provisions for the needs of families, let alone access to child care close to the workplace. Though the working world hinges on their existence, the child care provider is one of the lowest paid professionals, responsible for our country's most precious renewable resource. Ironically, the institution that offers child care providers the most social esteem offers children the least. This is the day care center, where large groups of children, 18 or more, are cared for in one building. Because they have the trappings of a traditional business, center workers are respected as the Child Care Professional of the community. They have titles, like Director, Teacher and Assistant, that sound career oriented. But the workers are usually paid a minimum wage and many of them only work in centers for short periods of time, which offers no consistency to the children (Levine,74.) Parents feel comforted by the "programs" in daycare centers; lessons and routines that prepare children for school and prevent the clattering chaos that a large group could cause. What they don't understand is that some children's progress actually deteriorates in a larger group (Endsly, 108.) Dr. David Elkind, author of The Hurried Child, writes that children need the opportunity to play their own games, make up their own rules, abide by their own timetable (31.) This kind of freedom cannot be granted to a school of children, but it can to a few of them lounging in my living room or racing in my back yard. For a child, there's no place like home. But home day care often conjures up unpleasant images of women in rollers who scream at the kids all day while chain smoking and talking on the phone. Though most states require that home day cares be licensed, there are few resources to enforce that law. A license itself only means that a home has passed minimal standards for health and safety. There are indeed many licensed day care homes where the television does the babysitting with the children often confined to one small room so they don't disturb the home. This confuses the reputation of home day care, for these can be the worst possible place for a child to spend her day, unlike homes like mine, which can be the best. As with every other matter that concerns their child, the parent must inspect, interview and determine for themselves a suitable environment. Unfortunately, city governments often work against parents by limiting the number of home day cares that they have to choose from. This is happening in my city now. Because they are concerned about issues like traffic generation and the preservation of neighborhoods, (Echlin,3), the city commission has proposed zoning laws for day care homes. They would like to restrict the number of day care homes to two per block and to limit the hours that they can be open to day time only. This misinterprets the needs of the community, for it would openly discriminate against all parents who work a night shift. It would also mean that the privilege of raising children would simply be assigned to whoever gets there first. If there are two horrible day care homes on our block, that's all there will be, no matter how many career oriented providers are aching to go into business. I don't understand how we will preserve our neighborhoods by discouraging neighborly interaction and excluding children. Fortunately, there is some action against these measures. Senator Jack Faxon has introduced legislation to our state Senate that would prohibit communities from using zoning laws or special land use permits as a way to restrict child day-care operations in residential neighborhoods (Echlin,3.) The bill has a slim chance of getting through because it would tie the hands of local governments. But some states have passed such a law. I think the most beneficial thing about this bill is that it would secure community involvement with children. It would insure more of them a chance to be raised in a home, not herded into institutions in commercial neighborhoods. Marie Schueller, employee at a local child care agency tried to explain this to the planning commission when she said, day care should be considered a valid use of a home and a valuable community resource, and not a commercial enterprise in need of restriction (Echlin,3.) Imagine, people needing to be reminded that a home is for raising children! (Author's Note: I currently must hold a costly Special Land Use permit to run my Group Day Care Home, though the marketing business in the home across the street has no such restriction imposed. ) The upheaval of parents into offices and factories has confused the purpose of the home and the people left behind. To provide child care in this atmosphere is lonely, difficult and with few tangible rewards. Not many people can do the job well, yet by 1990 there will probably be 20 million children in need of day care (Fuller, 64.) Large portions of the community no longer feel any responsibility to share or even support the care of children. But there are some people, like Senator Faxon and Marie Schueller, who have a clear vision of what children need from adults. And there are people like my neighbors, who tell me how nice it is to have my business in the neighborhood. As I parade my little charges around the block, like a mother duck with her ducklings, they wave, chuckle and comment on how much they've all grown. They give to the future much more than they realize, by giving my children a sense of place, of belonging and a feeling that someone notices them.
|
Home The Day Care The Nanny Community Site Map