All about the money parents

[Inspired by Reggio]

.... I just don't get how $35 is a lot when I paid that for daycare 8 years ago for my own children and I have no idea why price is the first thing in parents' mind compared to quality of food, safety, quality of care/program and what is offered.

You wouldn't just buy a car for $500 because it was the cheapest thing available.

Preaching to the choir hon .... I entered the field in 1988 when minimum wage was less than $3 per hour and was lucky to land a job in one of the first 'non profit' childcare centres in my home town recruited right out of college with a starting salary of $21,000, 3 weeks of paid vacation, 12 paid sick days at 100% and 12 at 50%, full benefits AND pension matching so if I paid in a $1 to it they matched it .... SWEET payment plan at the time cause that works out to $10.10 in direct wages with the paid vacation, sick days not to mention the ADDED benefit of the full drug, full dental and partial 'braces' things, full glasses and extended things like chiro, massage, short term and long term disablity and so forth which was very good plan and could add at least $3000 a year to your 'indirect income' through savings more if you had expensive drugs or what not!

2000 ... 12 years in the by the time I LEFT that job my salary had risen to a whopping $22,400 and we had lost most of our extend benefits and had to pay 50% on all the other things and the pension program etc and the fees to clients over the course of that time had only increased 'marginally' over the course of that time frame basically 'less' than the cost of living and were often 'frozen' same as our wages!

In 2005 when I relocated from that city to a new one ... with almost 20 years of experience and proven track record as an excellent ECE in my field whose continued their education and training to stay on top and I have a second degree in Human Resources Management and held my CHRP designation for that through the province for a couple years before deciding it was too expensive to keep ... you want to know the starting salary I was offered .... $10.10 an hour with no benefits, no paid sick days and no pension just your basic 2 weeks of vacation required by law!

So in the 20 years in the field ECE have seen their pay DECREASE .... how many industries can say that???

Not to mention that clients who use childcare keep complaining about the COST but the reality is that FEES in childcare centres have not changed with the COL like everything else at all ... as a new grad our INFANT program was $180 a week and well 25 years later and INFANT fees have only gone up in that region to about $220 a week which yes sounds 'bad' and in other regions they are WAY more I know but in comparison to how much FOOD / GAS and other things have gone up the change is very little ... seriously $40 over the course of almost THREE DECADES is not a huge inflation when you think about the fact that back than gas was like $0.27 a litre and now it is $1.30 a litre!

Want to hear another sad fact ... I am 43 years old and my father was a 'single dad' back in the early 70's wanna know what my 'babysitter' was paid to take care of me from the time I was 18 months until I started school at 6 years and my sister was old enough and home to babysit .... $100 a week and there were no RATIOS back than there were about 8 o so of us running around the house at any given time and they did not have to claim that as 'income' cause it was not seen as WORK by society

Seriously so in 40 years the cost of childcare has gone up from $20/day to $35/day and back than the 'average' work day was 7 hours so you'd be in care a max 7.5 hours cause commute were shorter and well now most kids are in care an extra 2 hours at least.

Our industry is one of the least valued and least supported out there and it is only getting WORSE as the standards and expectations for the industry increase but the remuneration continues to go down while society sees the 'cost rising' not realizing it aint cause WE are pocketing that but the cost of food, heat, hydro, sewage, property taxes and well all the cost of offering the 'service' have gone up considerably!

And yet we constantly have to listen to society drone on and one about how we are in this for the money