Think Of It As Extension Of The Family
Question: I am a working mother with two kids, a boy, 4, and a girl, 3. My husband works out of town a lot. We work hard to be with our kids as much as possible, but we have to use day care. I read in the newspaper about a study that showed most day cares weren’t very good. I feel guilty so much of the time. When I first went back to work I dropped my infants off and they would cry for me. I drove to work in tears. I like my daycare provider, but still I feel so guilty. What do you think about day care?
- Marjorie, Coeur d’Alene
Answer: I feel for you. I and my wife have both felt that guilt when our children started in child care. For my wife it was especially painful, as she, like you, dropped the kids off most mornings. Yet Gail and I are very supportive of day care.
The thread that runs through my observations of day care is this: When parents and day-care providers work together to form relationships among themselves, they create a community spirit in which their children feel like they are moving between families, not out of their own family and into a stranger’s house.
When, years ago, blood relatives - mainly grandmothers and aunties - watched over a couple’s children, the couple felt normal parental anxiety, but did not tend to feel the gutwrenching fear we feel as parents when we give our kids to the care of strangers. Thus it is essential we pick day cares where we do not have to remain strangers. It is essential we pick day cares we are allowed to observe in, attend for a while every so often should we wish to, day cares where we can hear about curriculum, get answers to our questions about what our child did that day. If we search out these sorts of day cares, we are helping create a second family for our child.
In order for more of these second families to be available, our culture will have to upgrade our opinions of child care in general. Right now, day cares are considered by many people, especially policy-makers, to be necessary evils. This attitude will have to change. We will have to be willing to become more involved with our child’s second family, more bonded with the provider’s world; the providers, too, will have to be more accepting of our input.
Corporations will have to get involved. They’ll not only help families and kids if they do, but they’ll cost themselves less money in the long run. Elliot Lehman, an executive at FelPro Inc., an automotive and industrial manufacturer in Illinois, is also on the board of directors of the Child Care Action Campaign. He and other executives like him have noticed, as he puts it: “We have a nationwide shortage of decent, affordable child care, and that means employers are finding more and more parents coming to work with something on their minds besides their jobs - or simply calling in sick … that absenteeism costs U.S. businesses an estimated $3 billion a year.”
This figure doesn’t include the corporate debt incurred by the government for parents who choose to go on welfare rather than work because going on welfare at least allows them to care for their children in a void of quality child care.
I’ll never forget the comment made to me by a man seeking a job change. Both he and his wife had to work. He felt guilt about his children being taken care of 20 hours a week by grandparents and a day-care provider. He said, “God didn’t give me children for me to let someone else raise them.”
I have to disagree with this man. A healthy, caring “second family,” even one made up of non-blood kin, can give a child different stimulation, echoes of values from external sources, and wonderful new worlds to explore.
When you are looking for a day care for your children, look at whether the center, home or caregiver has high staff-child ratios, high-end teacher wages, high staff education, low staff turnover and good management.
The New York Families and Work Institute suggests these numbers for staffing ratios: one adult for every three to four infants; one adult for four or five 2-year-olds; one adult for eight to 10 4-year-olds.
Keep your letters coming. I’ll be teaching a class at Deaconess’ new education center, titled “The Mother-Son Relationship,” six Tuesday evenings in a row beginning April 18 (for information call 624-1436). As I prepare for that class I’ll answer as many of your questions as I can on family relationships. letters can be sent to: Michael Gurian, care of The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615