I can't look away... thoughts on childcare

NYTimes knows me well... they keep sending me these emails that say, "You may find this article interesting..."  It is eery how good they are at it.  Creeps me out a little, to be honest.  Makes me feel very predictable.

But I confess, they just about always nail it.  And today, it was no different with this one:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/crushed-by-the-cost-of-child-care/?hp&_r=0

I can't stop reading the comments and wanting to strangle people.  I can't look away and its driving me nuts.

The article is a comment on how hard it is to find good and affordable day-care for small children, even for parents who are pretty financially successful.  From the comments, you'll learn that there are some very vocal people out there who think:

1) you shouldn't have children unless you are willing to stay home with them full time, else you are torturing and causing long-term damage to them by putting them in "warehouses" (aka, day care)

2) you shouldn't have children unless you are in a stable and financially well-off marriage, so that you can afford any and all related costs, especially expensive "warehousing" if you plan to neglect your child that way.  (There is apparently no such thing as divorce or health problem that good planning can't have enabled you to overcome.  If you find yourself in such an unfortunate and unexpected situation, it is your fault b/c you planned poorly.)

3) if you can't meet the about 2 points, you should defer having children.

OMG.  Where do I start? 

First off, the hypocrisy of our political system.  Cut sex education programs, cut access to birth control, oh, and get rid of the option to abort.  Where does this leave women?  If we don't provide sex ed and/or make birth control available, are these people serious in the alternative that this leaves?  As I see it, this means that women should wear chastity belts with padlocks and never leave the house.  Oh, and don't let anyone into your house that might get that might be able to find the padlock key.  This is feeling a bit Taliban-like...

If our country really wants to force women into having all the "surprise" babies that can possibly be conceived, the least we can do is provide them with good childcare support.  Oh, and perhaps health care, but that's another post.

Second, I want to use my own personal experience as an example for this point.

I am very well educated.  I am responsible.  I am very well-paid.  I live in a two-income home.  I have a very responsible and stable husband.  I really, really, really wanted my baby.  I am very, very lucky.

And, I was incredibly lucky to have a fabulous maternity leave situation.  I got 3 semesters (essentially, one and a half years) at full pay to do all of my job save for teaching.  What this translated into was about 4 weeks of ignoring work right after my baby was born, followed by about 4 months of working ~15 hours a week at my convenience.  And then, when my daugther was 5 months old, I started to feel ready to work more, and she was starting to need more than I had the knowledge base to know what to do for her.  I then worked about 30 hours a week until she was almost 18 months old.  Given my university's leave policy and the fact that I have tenure, I did all of this at essentially little-to-no-cost to my career.  Does it get any better than that?  No.  No, I don't think it could.

I am a pretty good mother.  But, that said, I don't know anything about kids, esp little kids.  What should you expect them to do?  What's a reasonable level of maturity to push a 2 year old to?  How do you potty train?  What if the advice from your mom doesn't work for your kid's personality?  How hard should I push on rules, and what are age-appropriate rules anyway?  I don't know.

And honestly, this just isn't my thing.  I am a scientist.  I am good at it.  I am a professor.  I am good at teaching 20 year olds, and mentoring students through research projects, and writing papers.  This is where my passion AND my skill sets rest.

I COULD look up all the early childhood education stuff, but honestly, the amount of time and effort I would need to do to play catch-up on this would be time wasted.  I'd spend months and months of my life dedicated to figuring out solutions for raising one child.  That is really not the best use of my time, especially when there are people out there who are as passionate about child development as I am about my science.  They have spent years of their lives thinking about these things, gaining experience, etc.

I don't think it makes me a bad mother to confess that I don't want to dedicate years of my life to figuring out child rearing all on my own.  

I don't cut my own hair.  I don't self-diagnose (much) when I have a health concern.  I don't even fix my plumbing when it breaks.  Theoretically, I could/can.  But why would I do this?  We all play our parts in society, and so why wouldn't you call someone who already has acquired that skillset and have them help you (money issues aside)?  We all specialize and then share those specialties in order to raise everybody's quality of life overall.  Right?  Isn't that the point here?

I wasn't sure I'd ever feel that way about my daughter, especially when she was a super tiny baby.  I worried that it would feel like "outsourcing" her care.  But as she matured, I realized that she would benefit from the input of experts.  No matter how much I love my daughter, I realized that she needed to be raised and not just loved.  And raising her well, well, I wasn't going to be able to do that all by my lonesome.

Being part of a university community meant that I was extremely lucky to have the option of an early childhood education program linked to our academic programs.  I am also extremely lucky to be married to a guy who has worked at this university for a long time, so together, we had the seniority to actually get one of the coveted spots in that program.  It is expensive.  That's true.  For infant care, the cost was about half of my take-home pay.  For toddler care, it is more like 41%.  But since I am in a two-income family, we can luckily afford this.

Just to be clear, I don't want cheap childcare.  I want my child to be cared for by people who are comfortable in their careers, who make enough that they can afford for their families and focus when they are at work.  

I think, hope, that my daughter's teachers are well paid.  They deserve more than they get, that's for sure.  But I hope they are on the higher end of the pay scale for childcare.  Given that teachers stay for years and years, I'm guessing that they are.  I hope.

As they do right for my daughter.

My kid is a wonderfully thoughtful, compassionate little toddler.  She understands that there are rules that we all need to abide by.  She gets that you don't just take something from your friend's hands when you want it.  She is being potty-trained, and her teacher came up with a potty-training plan tailored to my daughter's specific personality.  This amazing woman (with a masters degree in childhood education and many years of experience and an innate way with little kids), she even sent me an email with a Word document attached outlining the plan, with several scenarios written out based on things she knew M would actually say and how I ought to respond.  Unbelievable.  And you know what?  It works.  Really well. 

I am eternally grateful to have this kind of environment for my daughter.  I don't have the skill set to guide her the way these teachers do.  I learn from them constantly.  I deeply admire their talent with children.  My daugther is loved and cared for, and most definitely taught about boundaries of acceptable behavior but in gentle-but-firm ways.  They push her in ways I wouldn't have even guessed a child her age was capable of, but it is never harsh or scary.  My daughter is thriving thanks to her childcare situation.

But she still needs her mama, that one special caregiver that is ALL HERS.  I am not hiring the daycare to raise her for me, we are all doing it together, playing different roles.  And I think it is a really good thing for a child to know that multiple people can be relied on to care for you, and that they differ in how they do it, but that they can all be counted on.  

And I am thriving as a mama, constantly learning how to better parent.

I deeply appreciate and enjoy getting to talk with her teachers every day, sharing stories about M and reveling in the cute things she does and her accomplishments.  If I were her only caregiver, who would I get to share all of this with?  We are a team, all in it together, so they genuinely enjoy all of these moments too, or share the same concerns.  They love her (or they fake it very, very well).  And those other kids in her class?  Seven of them have now been together since they were 3-5 months old.  Everyday.  For 2 years now, and counting.  They are like siblings.  Seriously.  And I love all those other little kids, and their parents are such an amazing support group to see in passing every day.  

And I am thriving as a professor.  I go to work everyday feeling good about dropping M off.  I am productive at work, I teach other people's kids in my classrooms and in the lab, I get some interesting research done, moving the knowledge of humanity forward a little bit.  I put my education to good use.

And someone else puts their education in early childhood education to good use.

It is win-win from my perspective.  I am a better mama for it, from my ability to be more than only a mother to getting the expert help at how to be the best mother I can be.  I know that if I had to spend 24/7 with M, that I wouldn't be as good of a mother as I am right now.  When I am with her, I am hers (mostly, though I do shower and wash dishes...)

I deeply wish that everyone could have this same situation.  I would pay a lot more in taxes to make this a reality.  If, as the studies show, the first 5 years of a child's life predicts so closely how successfully they will matriculate into being good members of society, there is nothing more important in my book.  Not only would all kids get the very positive stable loving experience of being in a great day care, but parents would get the support and encouragement to be better parents.  And kids unlucky enough to be born to unstable families?  They'd have a stable and healthy and loving part of their lives that would help to circumvent the problems at home.

I am all for government-subsidized childcare for everyone.  Pay caregivers well so that people with a passion for small children will be encouraged to follow their hearts.  Pay for the safe environments, pay for the healthy food.  Every kid deserves this.  And every parent does too.

I want to be clear here, I'm not saying all kids should be in daycare.  I know there are parents out there who rock at being full-time caregivers.  They love it, thrive on it, and do a great job.  Those people should be rewarded for this.  Why not a system that gave stay-at-home parents of small kids a serious tax break?  Taking care of kids and doing it well is something that society should compensate people for.  If other people's kids do well, my life is better.

In all likelihood, the guy who broke into and robbed my house last year, I'm guessing that he didn't have a great start when he was a small child (he's been arrested, by the way).  Maybe, if his mama had had access to quality childcare, or been compensated for her childcare work, this guy's life would have turned out differently and I would still have my grandmother's wedding ring.  I incurred $40,000 in stolen goods and damages that day.  I would have much rather paid that in taxes over the years and not have incurred the emotional pain.   And that was a pretty small crime in the whole scheme of things -- think of the victims of violent crime.  I bet they'd gladly pay more in taxes to have avoided that experience. 

We are only parents of small children for a short time.  It is a waste of human potential to expect all parents (mothers, especially) to forgo their skills/abilities/talents that contribute to the greater good of society because they have children.  A lonely mama who feels trapped by her role as a parent does not equal good childcare.  And a woman who is essentially forced to have a "surprise" baby because she didn't know about birth control or didn't have access to it, and who doesn't have financial resources, she really shouldn't be trapped into poverty-childcare-giving.  That's not good for her or her baby.