um
i've had
uh three boys through
i guess uh some child care each one of them and now they're in school so it's all over but uh
i guess i would say it's not easy to find what what most parents would want
well i can profit by this because i'm due with my first in about three months
is that right
i guess uh
the um the only rule i can think of is that uh
i like to find look for places with uh
good respectable nonprofit behind them like a university or a hospital or something like that if they're associated with a college or a university they're usually pretty good bet
no
um
i think it's sort of the opposite of what you would want when you buy car or refrigerator something you'd like to get it from some
good cutthroat capitalist company but not with child care
i guess not usually i suppose you're absolutely right there um-hum
i
yeah for profit places i would really look at them awfully carefully but uh
when i was
when my kids were young i was teaching at a university and uh the child care center associated with our university was quite good so i felt confident that they would do the right thing
um-hum of aren't don't they kind of use them for everybody kind of use them for guinea pigs for their personal for their pet theories or some such thing
oh you mean uh learning type uh yeah i mean actual experiments they would have to get your permission but yeah i suppose um
yes
if you're if there's a psychology department or an education department around you might find that they're pushing one form of education or another i guess that's true but uh
i never had a bad experience in that respect of course you
also tend to get people that are associated with the university and the hospital as the parents and they're you know pretty good people
um well the thing i really worry about is um the sexual abuse cases you read about
um-hum
and i mean you just feel awful if something like that happened
i
yeah i never really worry very much about it i tend to think those are
very rare but quickly exploited and made public so i never really worried too much about that being uh
um-hum
uh the case with my boys
oh
um
i you know i think those things get
into the headlines immediately when somebody finds out about them but i don't think it's as common as uh the newspapers would make you believe
um-hum
um-hum and another thing is cost
oh yeah i mean
i mean i know so many of my friends i went to school with who are having babies right now and they finding some cases they're finding that it's just not worth it to work because it's all going out in day care
that
right
hm
well in our case we made the decision that my wife would stay home until the boys were um in school and i'm really happy we did it although it was very very difficult and i think it was the right thing to do when we were um
hm
we
just decided that we would do it and we went ahead but um not everybody can make that choice and even even though my wife wasn't working we did have
um one or another of the boys in uh child care for part time just for part of the day
um or a couple of days a week just so that uh other things could get done around the house and so on so
hm
so we did look around i think my wife
is much better than i am at just walking into a place and getting a feeling for whether it's a loving and caring place or not and uh so i would always trust her judgment on that
hm
hm well i'm just thanking heaven my husband just got a new job his last company he was only working four days a week so it's and he just got a new job he's getting lots of overtime he got a pay raise
uh-huh
and so i'm just grateful that we don't have to worry so much about my working or not
there's absolutely no question that you're gonna be the best child care provider for that kid so yeah do it as long as you can
i suppose
but i think you know you you have to look through a place and you have to get a feel for um
how they treat the kids and uh uh what kind of staff members they have and how much turnover they have and things like that before you uh commit your child to them and i think
um-hum
um-hum
you have the main thing is that you have to determine that they're perfectly open that you're welcome anytime without notice in the middle of the day and so forth and if they're at all queasy about that then
you have to start wondering if they don't want yes
i'd look elsewhere yeah right
hm
you have other friends that have kids uh being taken care of in uh child care
um i have one but i haven't really had a chance to talk to her about that for a while
um-hum
so but i really think the news reports are uh tend to sensationalize the problems i think the problems are more ones of
um-hum
cost and resources and um pay and exhaustion and human things like that rather than these um uh
really wild wild abuse cases that you read about because it make good copy
this is true
yeah
Current Affair can get several shows with those cases
yeah
right
uh-huh
well
