How would you like to go to work each day for minimum wage with no paid holidays or sick days and no health insurance, wondering each day whether you would work a one hour or eight hour day? How would you like to get penalized for someone else taking a vacation or getting sick? How would you like to get fired without warning or notice? How would you like to work with outdated equipment while the rest of the industry has the latest technology? How would you like to work, sick or not, because you know that there is no one to replace you? How would you like to work under these conditions with the added burden of knowing you are molding the minds of future generations at the most critical time of life?
These are the conditions day care providers work under daily in owner operated day cares. These men and women dedicated to their work, allow themselves to be employed under the most negative of circumstances. When asking caregivers why they do what they do, 98% will answer that they love to work with children. For the most part, day care providers are dedicated caring people who do the best that they are capable of achieving. It is this dedication that enables owners to create working conditions that are inhumane while taking advantage of giving spirits.
What kinds of individuals get attracted to minimum wage jobs? Since the standards are so low, providers are generally high school graduates (if you are lucky), some of who are illiterate. State regulations in day care require daily records be kept on infants and toddlers yet providers often cannot spell or formulate a thought for complete sentences nor can they communicate in verbally. Vocational schools push students ahead and even reward them for menial skills in order to get them into classrooms. Resumes from students in vocational schools, look like the ‘Who’s Who’ of students in America with awards and commendations. However, the standards are so low that these validations of accomplishment are merely artifical. Yet these are the people who are molding the minds of our children.
What about drug testing? Why aren’t daycare providers required by law to get drug screenings? Would you want your child in the care of drug users or addicts? Although no data has been accumulated in these matters, it would be an educated guess that among minimum wage caregivers, drug use is prevalent. No one seems to care much about the condition of providers with these issues.
Why don’t caregivers work a full eight-hour day? Owners play number games with regulations. Specific ratios are required by law concerning the number of children per adult in the room. Owners use these ratios (among other regulations) for monetary gain. If the ratio is one teacher to five children in a toddler class, and one to four in an infant class, when the numbers go down during the day, children are shuffled to one room so that the teacher goes home. The owners save money adding to their profits, while the single mother depending on her paycheck to pay the bills, is devastated. Directors play number games all day long.
Making a profit and caring for children effectively do not coincide. Our attitudes in this country about our children are reflected in the apathy we display for their care. If providers made the same six figure incomes as computer technicians, then our values would be on the right track. We need to value and revere the most important time in a child’s life- age’s birth through six- when a child’s mind is a sponge for critical learning patterns.
The Day Care Council, made up of day care owners, would better spend its time on issues that are the heart of day care, the people who are caring for our children, than the petty nonsense they spend countless hours debating. When council members start putting in a week’s worth of work in the classroom, they may get a different view of the day care laws they create! Changing 36 diapers a day; cleaning up vomit and runny noses; and dealing with the perpetual staff turn over and the lack of qualified personnel, may give them a different perspective. Making a profit and caring for children just don’t mix!