Nursery school, pre-school, kindergarten, babysitters and day cares.

Oh my.

This morning at work I was talking with a student who also has a four year-old who is in kindergarten (A German Kindergarten is like a North American pre-school for children ages 3 to 6) from 7:30 am to 1pm every day. My son, goes from roughly 8:30 to almost 4 from Monday to Thursday. On Fridays his Kindergarten closes at 3:30 and on the last Wednesday of every month at 1:30. The crazy schedule, though, is nothing compared to my worries that they let the kids run a little too wild or the fear I felt when I picked him up with a cut on his head after falling off the slide.

Still, Kindergarten is a breeze compared to our trouble with babysitters. Once, someone called Social Services to inform us that our son’s carer was an alcoholic.

Now that I am back at work and my son is in Kindergarten, I have been flying in a succession of relatives who have been taking care of the baby for month at a time. The only thing that makes me feel safe and secure enough to do my job is the fact that my daughter is with someone who loves her. Still, it is very expensive and I can’t write the cost of airfare, room and board, or financial gifts off on my taxes.
According to an article in the Guardian, I am not alone in my caregiver angst:

• The in-depth poll of 2,000 working mothers of under-fives has brought into focus the pressures many parents face. Only 23% of mothers say their company allows them paid time off if their child is ill, yet many children are unable to attend nursery even if they have a cold.
• A perceived lack of training among nursery staff is cited as a concern by three in 10 mothers, and a fifth say they have removed their child from nursery due to poor treatment of the infant.
• Ideally, according to the Childcare Survey of Great Britain 2006, mothers would like a nanny – but with wages reaching £650 a week in London, just one in 20 can afford it. However, even wealthy parents who have nannies are not immune from feeling guilty, with 86% worrying that their nannies are becoming closer to their children than they are. Overall, 83% of mothers are pleased with their nannies, who typically work 61 hours a week.
• Libby Rowley of the Discovery channel’s Home and Health TV programme, which commissioned the survey, said that what working mothers really wanted was “a wife” to care for their children at home when they were at work. Of the women questioned, 5% had a nanny, 3% shared a nanny, 44% used a nursery, 29% had a childminder, 15% relied on parents and 4% had a partner who was a house husband.

I know that the house husband, the adventures of one can be read about at Inside Fatherhood, is a great phenomenon. If you can afford to lose the second income. We went without my income for as long as we could, but I got tired of having holes in my shoes and worries about being able to afford to visit our families.

I wish, that I had the opportunities my sister has. Her oldest goes to pre-school two or three mornings a week to have a little social interaction and spent the rest of my sister’s work week with her grandmother. Now that my sister is on maternity leave again, both grandmothers are there to make sure she gets a rest.

I am really, really happy for my sister and other women with mothers and mothers-in-law of their own who are prepared to care for another generation of children (our own mother is still working). At the same time, I wish there were an easier solution for women like me with no one around.

Post from: Babylune