![]() ![]() According to a recent report by the nonpartisan think tank New America, parents in the United States pay, on average, $9,589 a year for full-time care of children from birth to age 4 - that's more than the average cost of in-state college tuition ($9,410). Stretched: Working Parents' Juggling Act How Politics Killed Universal Child Care In The 1970sĪnd, on the other side of the equation, centers can't significantly raise their prices. Many states require a ratio of one caregiver to every three or four babies. Costs are high, factoring in real estate, supplies, insurance and, above all, labor. The answer boils down to the fact that child care, particularly infant care, is an extremely low profit field. These experiences - from disruptive frustration to tragedy - leave many parents wondering why the supply of quality, licensed infant care in the U.S. But it's the deepest fear of parents who face severely limited child care choices. Even at the first and second checkup the doctor was like, 'Mama, keep doing what you're doing. "I couldn't wrap my head around it," says Walia, straining to recount the day. The coroner's report confirms SIDS as the cause of death. On his first day away from his mother, Avin died - he was 3 months old. The caregiver told Fremont police that she turned Avin onto his back after about 15 minutes, and that he stopped breathing a short time later. ![]() Research has established that placing babies belly-down to sleep puts them at higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome. To settle Avin for his first nap on her watch, the paid caregiver had put the baby belly-down in his bassinet - a move that goes against established infant-care guidelines set by the American Academy of Pediatrics and is against standard practice in the infant care field. ![]() "I was on the way to go pick him up," recalls Walia, "and the Kaiser ER called me." You have to come over, they told her. What ultimately happened on Avin's first day at this facility is every parent's worst nightmare. "And by place 10 or 11, our only question was, 'Do you have a spot?' " "At our first few interviews we were asking a lot of questions and were really trying to get a feel for the place," Carpenter recalls. So she and her husband started looking for child care early, only a few months into her pregnancy. She had a hard deadline - 16 weeks after her baby was born her maternity leave would end and she would have to return to her job at a nonprofit that serves homeless and low-income women. Megan Carpenter, a new mother who lives in Alexandria, Va., knows well the feeling of desperation that can come with the search for safe, quality infant care. Chan School of Public Health, surveyed more than 1,000 parents nationwide about their child care experiences, a third reported difficulty finding care. When NPR, along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. One of the most stressful questions a new parent confronts is, "Who's going to take care of my baby when I go back to work?"įiguring out the answer to that question is often not easy. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |