<p>Actually yes, @busdriver. I was director of a child care center for years and my 30+ year career has been in child development/parent education and health care for children. </p>
<p>The nrccrra article above shows the % of child care providers who are educated. There are many. It speaks to states that do require education. </p>
<p>What I was objecting to was the stance of whether or not child care providers could even “stand” their job/career. And an implication that they are not educated or don’t need to be. </p>
<p>"Look at the llinks I linked. It’s sexist. Women can’t even get hired as firefighters. They can get hired as childcare workers.</p>
<p>there is so damn much sexism built into the system, and this is why I said “blindly.” "</p>
<p>My friend had a difficult time getting hired as a firefighter, but she eventually got the job. The problem was, it is difficult for women to pass the strength tests, and I don’t know if the standards were lowered for women, just so they could get enough female applicants. Strength could be a matter of life and death, and very few 110 pound women could haul a large man out of a burning building. Far fewer women applied.</p>
<p>I fail to see how you go from A to B in this case. There is no suggestion that an unqualified child minder would be suitable to care for a special needs child.</p>
<p>My post was a little facetious, sometimes a mistake on CC.</p>
<p>Actually, I own a kindergarten, where all the teachers are women, and all are highly qualified (and very much underpaid).</p>
<p>“Childcare workers should unionize like all service workers should unionize. Like the middle class manufacturing workers”</p>
<p>And their pay and benefits would go way up. The number of children they took care of would go way down. I am very pro union, and recommend it for many people.</p>
<p>However, the number of clients would go way down. People could not afford to pay double the cost. More men or women would stay home instead of losing money or getting paid nothing after paying the childcare center.</p>
<p>When you are not “educated”, you have a higher chance of living in poverty. When you live in poverty, you have less resources, more stress. A child’s development is a product of both nature (environment) and nurture (emotional connections). By age 4 children living in poverty are up to 18 months behind developmentally often (not always!) due to one or a combination of both - lack of an emotional bond or lack of stimulation in a productive way (whether that means no books at home, lack of talking “to” a child, only talking “at”, lack of experiences (no outdoor playing time, no interaction on the living room floor playing a game, etc.) </p>
<p>"Actually yes, @busdriver. I was director of a child care center for years and my 30+ year career has been in child development/parent education and health care for children.</p>
<p>The nrccrra article above shows the % of child care providers who are educated. There are many. It speaks to states that do require education.</p>
<p>What I was objecting to was the stance of whether or not child care providers could even “stand” their job/career. And an implication that they are not educated or don’t need to be."</p>
<p>And I am sure your child care center was excellent, but if you look around the country, particularly in underprivileged areas, you must recognize that many people are highly overworked and grossly understaffed.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m looking at the wrong article, but the one I looked at for family childcare providers said 44% had high school degrees or less, 38% had some college, and only 18% had degrees.</p>
<p>I hope you understand what I meant by “stand” their jobs. I personally could not stand taking care of too many children at one time for long. That would be far too stressful. When my kids were young, I went from day care center to day care center, looking for something acceptable. Every single one had too many kids, unhappy, stressed out workers, very little attention to the children, and we just couldn’t do it. This was the nicest area in town, fairly expensive daycare. We ended up never putting them in a day care center, and worked opposite schedules for 21 years instead. Perhaps if we’d been living elsewhere, it would have been a different story.</p>
<p>this is why it is better to be a parent in other developed countries which understand childcare to be a public good and not a private problem to be individually solved by the laborers for the benefit of the employers.</p>
<p>Busdriver, your last statement makes your thoughts a little clearer - thank you. Actually a room full of two year olds was my favorite place to be when I was in the classroom. Never felt I couldn’t “stand” it! </p>
<p>I think I have to go back and read the original post on this thread - kind of forgot exactly what we are suppose to be talking about. Sorry for any of my contributions to get things off track!!! </p>
<p>"'Busdriver, your last statement makes your thoughts a little clearer - thank you. Actually a room full of two year olds was my favorite place to be when I was in the classroom. Never felt I couldn’t “stand” it! "</p>
<p>I could never do that, I would be a nervous wreck. Some of the most stressful times were when I was a parent, supervising on a field trip, responsible for 4-5 little kids. Mine were always easy to handle and helped me a lot with the other kids…but some of the other ones, yikes, so much energy, some of them so badly behaved, trying to keep your eyes on them all. My youngest kids teacher had only eight kids in the class in first grade, but they were high IQ and had some had behavioral issues. The teacher told another parent that she didn’t even know what her kid was doing, because she was so busy watching these other few kids. And that was with just eight kids. A room full of two year olds, especially with some throwing temper tantrums, would probably give me a nervous breakdown.</p>
<p>But it’s not <em>education</em> that would make you better able to deal with it. It’s temperament / personality.</p>
<p>I daresay Atomom was / is a better mom of 7 than I would be if I had to be a mom of 7, but that’s a function of temperament and personality. What she and I were like in the classroom, or what degrees we have or don’t have, seems irrelevant to that discussion.</p>
<p>When my kids were preschoolers, I went to check out our local, very highly rated public school and visited a kindergarten class. The young female teacher was very sweet and nurturing. The class was making Valentine’s Day boxes out of shoe boxes. She held up a closed shoe box and asked, “How many sides does this box have?” Silence in classroom. “Four” she stated, The class kind of nods. I went home, got a shoebox, and asked my crew: “How many sides?” “six” - “no. in and out. (counting, counting) 12?” “wait, what about those tabs where the box closes? sides?” They counted sides all afternoon and wanted me to name all the different shapes of those sides. Which I had to look up because I only knew square and rectangle and we got into 3D kind of stuff. I barely passed geometry. D. Right - D. That fulfilled my high school math requirement and was my final math course. (I will spare you an account of sexism in math education in the south in the 1970s) Frequently I wonder how someone who actually understands math would have approached the shoebox.</p>
<p>I think it matters how and with whom our kids spend their early years. Does anyone besides me think that kindergarten class was disadvantaged that day? Does it matter what kind of adult interaction they experienced 7 am–6 pm, M-F ages 0-5? Or is my pov elitist snob? Me- I’m willing to pay some taxes for high quality universal day care even though it won’t directly benefit my family. </p>
<p>“I think it matters how and with whom our kids spend their early years. Does anyone besides me think that kindergarten class was disadvantaged that day? Does it matter what kind of adult interaction they experienced 7 am–6 pm, M-F ages 0-5? Or is my pov elitist snob? Me- I’m willing to pay some taxes for high quality universal day care even though it won’t directly benefit my family.”</p>
<p>I agree that would frost the heck out of me, just like when elementary schools send around flyers with incorrect grammar and misspellings. </p>
<p>"True…but also, when there aren’t two parents in the home (whatever the make up is), you have a higher chance of living in poverty.</p>
<p>So true. The number one route into poverty. I have no idea why anyone would step into that role (as a young woman, with no career or support), purposefully. It is so hard to do a good job raising children with two people, you would pretty much have to be superhuman to do it all by yourself.</p>
Sorry for any of my contributions to get things off track!!! </p>