Progressive Wednesday

Monday Morning Motherhood: Priceless (not in a Mastercard sort of way)

February 19th, 2007 by Melissa Brannen

I have a tendency to procrastinate. The reason for it is simple: I’m very, very good at it. The last minute rush of adrenaline helps me get stuff done, and it makes me feel productive. Perhaps that’s why I had the gall to wait until I was four months pregnant to start thinking, Oh, yeah: child care.

The prospect of returning to work after having my daughter seemed too far away to deal with then. I was too busy throwing up and waiting to feel her kick. Apparently I should have begun the process before I even considered having a child, because only slacker parents wait until they’re actually pregnant. When I finally started looking for a daycare center, I was overwhelmed. I toured eleven different daycare centers before I found one that I felt comfortable enough with to leave my precious daughter there every day. When I did, I was thrilled because it was located in the same building as my office. Plus, the teachers involved the children in the activities, the kids acted happy and playful, and the staff welcomed the parents to come and visit anytime.

After all the horror stories from my coworkers that I had heard about finding a place, I felt unbelievably lucky to have beaten the slot-machine odds. Then, of course, the problem: the ever-present waiting list. A spot wouldn’t be available until she was almost 8 months old, a year from then. Thankfully, I was able to find a place for her in the meantime, and she’s been a happy attendee of the aforementioned center for three years now. In my case, procrastinating worked out. But I was one of the fortunate few.

The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA), estimates that in the United States, twelve million kids are in some form of child care arrangement. That’s 63% of the wee ones in the country. The majority of families today require two incomes to economically survive, and working parents[1] are faced with mounting challenges when it comes to the availability of quality child care. Why? In part, because there are two, very distinct, kinds of daycare.

According to the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), “home daycare centers” have become more and more prevalent due to the rising cost and low availability of “center-based child care.” Home daycare tends to be less expensive, and more readily available and accessible. Center-based child care is typically located in the outer-suburbs, where families usually have a higher income and are more likely to drive to work in the city. When you take the bus to work because you have to save as much money as possible, it’s easier to have your child attend home child care in your neighborhood than a center 45 minutes away. Unfortunately, the quality of care tends to significantly lower in home care. Home care centers have a higher student to teacher ratio, therefore it’s difficult to give each child the attention they deserve. It’s a lose-lose situation for both the parents and children. Quality child care is expensive and low-quality care extracts a high price from those who can ill afford it.

Not a day of daycare goes by without me realizing how rabbit’s-foot, four-leaf-clover, and number-7 lucky I am and, more importantly, my child is. Luck, though, shouldn’t be such a deciding factor.

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[1] I am in absolutely no way implying that stay-at-home parents do not work. I believe they work just as hard, if not harder, than those who head off to an office or factory every day. If I ever believed or even came close to suggesting otherwise, at least six generations of women in my family would kick my ass.