Pia K. Hansen: Day-care issue goes beyond whether women work

I‘ve noticed some serious picking on working moms lately, and it’s beginning to annoy me.

Yes, I am a working mom, also part of the subspecies labeled “career woman” as well as the other subgroup “single mom,” and I’m tired of listening to the same old song: “Moms should stay home with their kids,” followed by the refrain “day care is bad” and the chorus “moms – feel the guilt, really feel the guilt, feel the guilt.”

In Idaho, the Legislature just shot down a bill that would have set some minimum safety standards for day care providers, as well as another bill that would have created learning standards for young children.

Seriously, people, that’s not a socialist plot, as one lawmaker implied; it’s simply common sense.

I don’t think it’s all right for a person with, for instance, a criminal record, a drug problem or no experience or education in child care to simply hang a shingle saying “Bob’s Funny Day Care” and go into business without further scrutiny.

The quality of early childhood care is crucial for a child’s development later in life, and regardless of how much you want it, reality clearly shows that not every child can have a stay-at-home parent.

If, for whatever reason, we as parents can’t watch our children 24-7, we simply must demand to know something about the people who fill in for us while we work.

National groups like AAA and the Better Business Bureau are watching over the people who fix our cars, but no one is paying the same attention to those who watch our children; at least not until something horrific happens.

Perhaps the connection here is that we don’t pay child care providers as much as we pay the technicians who put new head gaskets in our car engines?

It always struck me as odd that people don’t mind paying more than $80 an hour at the shop to get their car fixed, yet bark about paying $20 an hour for child care – but I digress.

At the same time the legislation failed in Idaho, a discussion flared up on the Parents Council blog at www.spokesmanreview.com about day care versus stay-at-home moms.

One post read in part: “I figure that no matter how wonderful your daycare provider is they will never love, care and nourish your child like you can.”

Another posting read in part:

“The bottom line? There is no substitute for a mom and a dad.”

Of course day care is not a substitute for mom and dad; it’s not supposed to be.

Taking care (hence the name) of children is the point of day care, and it is possible to do so in an educated, responsible manner that supports and nurtures the child. Many, many day care providers work hard to do so every day.

A more reflective blogger chimed in asking why the discussion about day care always ends up as a discussion about what’s best?

“There should be a choice,” read that post. That’s exactly true: There should be a choice so parents can decide what works best for the family under its specific circumstances.

And adopting some safety and education standards is a big step toward ensuring that it’s not just families with lots of money who have access to quality care.

Another thing that adds to my personal frustration with this discussion is that it’s totally focused on moms, on women.

Every child at least at one point has a dad, but fathers are rarely included in any public child care discussion. And I’ve yet to hear anyone use the term “career man” in the same derogatory way the term “career woman” is used, when one talks about families, children and work.

Access to quality child care is a parenting issue, a family issue; it’s not an isolated women’s issue.

To the working parents out there, I wish I could take away your guilt.

To the stay-at-home parents out there, I respect and salute your ability to make it work.

And to everybody who’s reading this, I just want to say that if we take good care of our children – at home or at day care – I don’t think we’ll have to spend as much money on new jails 15 years from now.