UNIT B: Blog 6: Cost of Child Care

Blog 6

For mothers who are living in a low income situation the issue of how they are going to take care of their children let alone themselves is a very hard question to answer. Some mothers as in the case of Brittney and her child Bethany could get some rent help, food stamps, and WIC, and help from her family. As Brittney was trying to go back to work she left her daughter in the care of her uncle, which was her only choice. SO in Brittney’s case she was lucky to have family who would help her so she could try to make a living. After a while she starting living Bethany at her sister’s because her uncle was not responsible enough to take care of her. After she did finish her training for her new job she looked into family child care providers through her work were she temporarily found care. After which she had Bethany stay with her father and this time it was a matter a trust rather than money. Brittney would have preferred a better child care situation for all those years, but these were her only choices if she wanted to work and make money (Chaudry, 28-29).

The different types of child care that are presented in the book “Putting Children First” are: Home-based, individual care provided by family members, nannies, or informal care, Family child care in the caregiver’s house provided by a licensed family day care, day care network, or day care group, a Center care provided by child care professions in a community setting through Pre-K, preschools, and nursery programs, and finally there are mother’s care while working, special needs care, and day care in hospitals, shelters, or institutions (Chaudry, 34).

In the second case in Chapter two Annette wanted to leave welfare and work, but needed to provide care for her son Aaron. The advantage that she had over Brittney as the fact that she had another older son and could use a different type of childcare , the home-based child care where her older son would take her of her younger son. She also used friend’s help, informal care, and group care, but most of them were not good enough and were a good situation. Her situation of not having the right kind of finances forced her to use care providers that were not qualified and gave bad quality of care (Chaudry, 35-36).

The factors that challenge and constrain child care choices are financial issues, whether you have choices from family and friends at your disposal, the lack of structure and quality in the care that these mothers could afford (Chaudry, 48) and the conditions of the setting of where the mothers had to leave there children because they didn’t have a choice (Chaudry, 55). Some child care centers had too many children and did not provide the attention and right amount of care that they needed and their schedules did not conform to parents needs (Chaudry, 62). In kin care children are babysat, spoiled, stimulated less and it is usually for a short time and informal (Chaudry, 70). In Family day care children structured less, less stimulated and is seen as babysitting and not providing individualized care (Chaudry, 71).

In “Underprotected and Undersupported” it outlines some major issues in child care. It points out that many centers are not being help to any standards that they saw a center that had only two people working for 58 children there. This type of neglect does not provide a safe, stimulating, and enriching environment that children need to be in. The fact is that there are some child care providers out there that are following the minimum standards, if they are even doing this, of children care. In the United States there is an alarming rate for different kinds of child care providers that are not up to standard and the ones that are woman that are living under or right above the poverty line with child can not afford them. The woman with children that can not afford the pricey child care providers should be able to get the same type of quality of child care for their child as well. This is an injustice in are world and needs to be fixed.