by Ann Bibby
A blogger at the Des Moines Register recently wrote about having to give a few of the families she provides daycare for their notice. It seems she has a policy that strictly prohibits parents from using her services outside their working hours. She will not care for children on a parent’s day off, nor is she inclined to keep them while a parent runs an errand. If these things happen on a regular basis, she will terminate her contract with them.
I understood her frustration. A family who knew her policy took advantage of her by simply not telling her when they were using her as a babysitter as opposed to a daycare provider. She had every right to be upset, but does she have a right to dictate how parents choose to parent?
While the majority of the comments generated by this blogger’s post were positive, it got me wondering about whether or not the current crop of American parents are truly shirking their duties or are we just having to outsource in more obvious ways than in generations past.
My mother’s outsourcing go-to was my dad, even though he worked on average about 60 hours a week in a meat packing plant. If not him, there was a neighbor woman down the street who was always able to dash up and sit with us, and in a pinch, my maternal grandmother and auntie were just a 35 minute drive away. And they were just the first string. My mother knew plenty of people, other stay at home mother friends mostly, who could, and did, help her when she needed it.
Today my go-to is my husband, but not long ago I was a widowed mother living in a city that was a three and a half hour drive from my own family with just a single best friend to call in case of emergency (and she had a job and two kids of her own). So, like many parents, my daycare providers became my mainstay. They covered many a time outside of the working day. Days when I was sick or had an appointment or just needed thirty minutes to sit at the Starbucks and remember what it was like not to have to think for anyone but myself.
Outsourcing of parental duties can seem a bit extreme, I suppose. There are companies that will make your child’s school lunch, cart them around to their after school activities and even delouse them for you. Although the lice-busters would have come in handy during the two and a half solid weeks my husband and I spent nit-picking our little girl’s waist length hair (my poor husband needs bi-focals now as a result), I am a bit uncomfortable personally with the rest and that really shouldn’t be because that lands me squarely in the judgment camp with the daycare provider in Des Moines.
Would you patronize a daycare that set limits like the Des Moines provider does?
How does sub-contracting figure in to parenting, in your opinion?
I know I can only parent my own child. A task that is time consuming and difficult enough without worrying about how other parents are handling the challenge.
