well i haven't had an awful lot of uh incidents in regarding child care when my two year old was in New Orleans she got bit on the cheek and uh but uh that's about the the uh the extent of it
but but but the when i really am uh am concerned about is that uh so many of these child care places are are coming under uh uh you know investigation for for uh you know child molestation
uh-huh
and i and i and i'm saying to myself well you know you you dump your your your little turnip off to uh you know this child care place and they don't pay very much
and why why why would they be interested in your in your little turnip unless you know one of the motivations in the hidden agenda is well that's somebody to molest you know
uh-huh
and uh that's a terrible kind of thing and i i don't think my children have ever been subject to that but my wife didn't work and so we didn't really didn't have that much exposure to it
uh-huh
well i am a working mother i have three children and my children since i um since they were very young i've had various various um different alternatives child care arrangements and
like most working mothers i i'm really not defensive about it i personally feel um in our particular situation i'm a much better mother when i work out of the home and
my kids i think are very very secure well raised children my comment on this is that we paid an absolute fortune over the years for a variety of opportunities
hm
so i i i uh you know it is a problem and but as you pointed out i think i think the real problem is the low pay child care facilities and that is sometimes what some women who have to work that is all they can afford
when our children were very young we had a pay a live in paid babysitter that was wonderful and then as they got older they went to uh i preferred to call them schools and they really were all day preschools and they were wonderful
hm
and i think they got exposed to a lot of neat things
oh well that's interesting
but we did we really truly did pay a fortune i mean we were paying
at one point
well about about close uh close to about five hundred dollars a week for two children
oh my God well you must have a just one hero ace professional job to support something like that
so
well i'm a physician i'm a physician uh and as is my husband and i and i felt very uh very good about working i'm a pediatrician actually
oh well yeah
um-hum
so uh but i think there are some wonderful child care opportunities out there for children but and we all know the kind of things that you're supposed to look for i think
well not not all of us you know what the kind of things you're supposed to look for i'm an engineer and
oh
well i think it's real important that you have a place that first of all parents have a lot of input into and that they're always welcome and that they have a lot of activities where parents come in during the day and that at any time you can drop in
and we had a really wonderful arrangement um i'm with the university actually and they had a wonderful uh program that started at age three
uh-huh
and it was about a block away from the hospital where i work and so many times at lunchtime i would go over and visit the children and eat with them and
see what they were doing and they had wonderful they had things like gardens and lots of pets and just they had a four to one uh teacher student ratio so that that sort of and all most of the teachers had degrees um
yeah
five hundred dollars a week for two kids that's incredible
yeah it was incredible actually but it was good i mean it was it was at that time there were two children and they were in special programs and each one was a little over two hundred a week and then in addition i paid a little bit extra
oh oh
but the kids were i mean they really had some great opportunities but that what you were alluding to earlier is you know women who work for minimal wage and
well
well
yeah
and and really have to feel they have to put their children sometimes they do put them in uh fairly low paying situations situations
you know they could
uh somebody will have a job at three hundred a week to get off welfare and you know and that's a good starting wage but boy three hundred dollars a week doesn't go very far on child care
uh-huh
um-hum
no even that
that really i think i don't it's been awhile since i've looked at my youngest child is eight so it's been a little while since i've looked into actually day care centers but they are you know the good ones do cost maybe sixty dollars a week since and so
i mean we used to pay pay fifty cents an hour to babysit but mine mine are twenty two twenty three and twenty seven so you know that i guess babysitters now are up at what five dollars an hour
um-hum
um-hum
something like
oh my
well you know but you made the comment earlier why would someone be interested in children i mean it has been a real um there there have been some good entrepreneurial type experiences and i think
i think they have captured a certain market again but but then there are babysitting groups as a pediatrician one of the things we've been real concerned about is the infections as you start putting lots of little kids together the infection rates that go around and
um-hum
oh yeah
