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More than 70% of families with younger-than-school-age children utilize childcare in America, including mine. We just switched the little angel from our beloved Emerald City in Kansas City, Missouri, to a new daycare in the suburbs, a new daycare that is expensive. We got on the waiting lists for other, less-expensive daycares, but this was the one we could find that met our standards and could take the little angel right away.
I’m an editor and my husband is a financial representative, and our salaries together afford us a decent living. It will be a challenge to swing the new daycare price hike, but we can do it. I doubt we could afford to put a baby in daycare there in addition to the little angel, though. Two children in daycare at that school would cost us around $1,800 a month, or $21,600 a year post-tax. For the little angel alone we pay $9,800 a year post-tax. I’m one of the lucky ones, though. For that expense I get a high standard of care and don’t have to go to work worrying my child is unsafe or ignored. I don’t have to choose between putting food on the table and putting my child in a questionable environment.
Things are not so good for the working poor, who also have children. When we think of daycare, we tend to imagine mommy trotting off to her office, not to McDonald’s, but work is work, and you can’t take your kids with you. In a 2004 article for Women’s E-News, Jennifer Friedlin wrote,
"’The reality is most states are making cuts because they can't service all the kids anymore,’ said Bethany Little, director of government relations at the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. She estimated that over then next five years some 300,000 to 450,000 child care slots would be eliminated.â€
Regardless of where parents fall on the socioeconomic spectrum, choosing where your child will spend his or her days is a difficult one, and one for which no childbearing class will prepare you. A friend of mine told me finding good childcare was the most difficult part of parenthood, and that was true for me in the little angel’s first year. We needed my salary to make ends meet, and my "choice" was between available daycare options, not whether or not to work.
Finding care for a potty-trained three-year-old is considerably easier and less expensive than finding newborn care, and older children are more resilient than babies. They can tell you about their day. With a baby, you have to drop off your bundle of joy and not know what happened all day. It’s excruciating if you don’t feel comfortable with your childcare “choices,†which are often not choices at all. I got on three daycare waiting lists when I was six weeks pregnant, and the little angel’s name got called for one when she was 18 months old. Especially in cities, where licensed in-home daycare is scarce, institutional childcare waiting lists and costs can be nightmarish. Chibi writes,
“The next ongoing decision we are facing is childcare. Childcare is much more difficult and complicated than I had imagined. The responsibility for this choice is weighing especially heavily.â€
Like affordable universal healthcare, I can’t understand why affordable universal childcare is not available in a country so proud of its “family values.†Childcare providers should be paid more and rewarded financially for quality care, not just by the parents with higher tuition, but by the community at large. Getting grants should not be so difficult. Getting support from government agencies should not require so much red tape. It should not take three years for a new center to gain accreditation. We should not have to spend more on our children’s care than our mortgages. The working poor, so encouraged to work, work, work by society, should not have to leave young children alone or in cars or in sketchy surroundings because they have nowhere appropriate for them to go while their parents are working.
BlogHer Contributing Editor Suzanne Reisman writes here about childcare as a feminist issue. It is a feminist issue. It is a women’s issue, a family issue and it should be a political issue. Working parents can’t trot off to save the world in science and industry if they are worried their children might be administered
