Blog #6: Child Care

There is a wide range of child care options that low-income mothers are forced to use and what they would like to use for their children. According to “Putting Children First”, a lot of mothers must rely on family care for their young ones. Some prefer to have their families watch them so the kids are surrounded by loved ones in the family atmosphere. Others, on the hand, use family members as a last resort when they cannot afford anyone else or when their normal care provider falls through. They would prefer to have their kids in a learning environment with other kids their own age so they can learn to socialize as well. The next time of care is informal care. Most informal care providers are unlicensed. The mothers in “Putting Children First” tended to have a lot of conflicts with their informal care providers. There were trust issues, times issues, and money issues (mostly from late subsidy payments from the government). Most mothers used informal care as a secondary form of care when working late hours, weekends, and/or holidays. Family day care is like kin care and center care. It has the home setting with loving attention, meals, and family environment, but it also allows kids to socialize with their peers with more one on one attention. The bad thing with Family day care is that it is not as educational and the care is not always ideal. The care centers are the ideal location to have their kids enrolled. There are the most structured, most educational, and they are licensed care providers. The negative aspect is that they are hard to get into, not as much attention, and hours are more restricted. Licensed facilities are declining in number, which means that more families will have to turn to unlicensed care (UnderProtected, UnderSupported, 2009).

There are many factors that go into the mother’s child care choice. I think the most influential factor is the cost. Diana had to find alternative arrangements because she could not afford the $25.00 increase that her informal provider wanted (Putting Children First, 47). Next, mothers need to work and not all jobs have flexible hours to work with them. This leaves mothers shuttling kids around from one care provider to the next and in some cases for the moms to leave their jobs. Such as Julia, who had to move her daughter, Jacqueline around to prove that she was willing to work (pg. 101). Mothers also has to have a “good feeling” about the care. No mother wants to leave their child in an unhealthy situation. A lot of the mothers have trouble finding a center with availability and are forced to put their children on waiting lists and hope for the best.