Campus childcare blues
Wah! I Just found out that the school program I was planning to start in the fall doesn't actually have the available childcare they said they did.
I went through this as an undergraduate at Mills, and as a graduate student at U.C. Berkeley--so why am I still such a sucker? Why do I always believe these advertisements of childcare? I am feeling hopelessly and endlessly naive.
Most of these schools' education departments have fancy lab schools for the rich kids in the area (hardly ever for the kids of student mamas or even professor mamas). And there are these huge long wait lists for the preschool programs. Your kid would be in grade school by the time she got in. I guess we're supposed to freeze our embryos until it looks like there's just about a year left to wait and then quick! implant and send in the school application.
Meanwhile, these huge billboards all over town picture a mom or a dad at a computer, kid crawling by. DISTANCE LEARNING. I mean, internet classes and e-learning, and low-residency programs are fine for some things, but it's not like you can get a whole and real university experience online while your kid crawls around at your feet. And it's hard not to see these things as yet another excuse for schools not to offer childcare--or to offer childcare and then tell you there's a year-long wait once you get there and, Here, honey, why don't you just take your classes online and stay away from our pretty little campus with your snot-nose kid.
posted by Contact at 9:12 AM
14 Comments:
That is so frustrating.
I remember reading something a long time ago in a NAEYC magazine (national association of young children) about how university childcare is some of the best -- low ratios, affordable, great resources. And the article basically wagged fingers at tenured professors who used the childcare since the author assumed they'd have the resources to get other childcare and so the lab schools should first and foremost meet STUDENT needs. I thought it was a pretty radical article and really, right on the money. Students should have first shot maybe on a scholarship level (so that students with less resources would have a better chance to use the great daycare). Not that money solves all daycare woes but it certainly makes a difference, especially since so many parenting students also have transportation challenges.
Hope you work out the issue!!!
Very frustrating. The waiting lists for quality childcare are pretty awful all over. I put my youngest on the waiting list for her Montessori school before I conceived her - when I just was thinking about conceiving her seriously - and we just managed to get her a slot there at 18 months, the age at which they take them. I put her on the list for the daycare she went to before that when I was pregnant. Here, there is a lab school sort of daycare at the community college and it serves the students, faculty and community. It is excellent, but does have a waiting list. The local university has a lab school in conjunction with the isd here, but it is a lottery system to get in.
yep, I have been there. Now that I'm no longer in school, the local university has a daycare but supposedly the prices are outrageous.
Have you looked at PSU? Their program is based on Emilio Reggio and is quite wonderful. Good luck!
Oh man, those billboards crack me up. Perky, blonde, makeuped mama with a laptop on one knee and a baby on the other, smiling like her life is so damned perfect. Yeah. Fucking. Right. I have typed many a paper with a baby in one arm, but she was usually attached to my boob, which was hanging out of my grubby nightgown, while I pecked away at the keyboard one-handed.
While I agree with you about the lack of childcare (I don't have kids, but all my friends do, so my home looks like a daycare center 24/7. I work from home!), I take issue with your comment about distance learning. There's a difference between distance learning and low residency. I had what I think was a "college" experience doing a low residency program at a pretty nice school. I worked with the author I worship most in the world (Sarah Schulman) and had her all to myself. I stayed up late writing, writing, writing and crying, crying, crying and stressing, stressing, stressing, with people who were engaged and DOING the same thing. I'm not sure what "college" experience you speak of, but I easily did without the frat boys, faux activists, bullshitty white people with dreads, hackeysack, hook ups and all that other stuff that I think of when I hear "college" experience.
I love your blog, your zine and your books! You're fabulous. If you lived here I'd watch your babes while you wrecked shop on some college campus!
I am also very frustrated with the lack of affordable/quality child care at PSU-downtown portland...I am trying to start school in the fall but won't be able to if I don't find childcare...I got our names in the waitlist for the PSU's childcare center a while ago, I was told that I would hear back in june...few weeks ago I went to the center to ask about the waitlist and the lady said: we are full...you are number 300 on the waitlist...we are not calling anyone about it. Dios mio! good luck to you.
I just wanted to say I am so elated that you went to school for communications. I am going thru hell & beyond to finally get myself in school in the fall as a poor/immigrant non-citizen/young mama in Milwaukee and it seems everyone around me is conspiring saying (besides "but why d'you wanna go back to college??") all kinds of things about how a communications degree is USELESS and will get me NOWHERE.
I know in my heart I made the right choice. I am happy with it. I'm gonna start telling people to piss off. Seriously (starting w/ my MIL).
I just opened your blog to look for a link to Katherine Arnoldi (is she the mama who advocates for education and child care for young school age and university attending mamas?) only to read your post about the same topic.
I'm trying to hook up a 17 year old single mama here in Durham, NC with some resources for applying to colleges with childcare support. Also I'm buying her a subscription to Hip Mama magaazine.
This issue should be at the FOREFRONT of any women's rights agenda. How can we move forward and make the world better for our families and our children if we can't get decent education for lack of childcare?
Yes, it's Katherine Arnoldi who put together the College Mom Guide and also a College Mom Magazine.
See: http://www.katherinearnoldi.com/collegeguide1.html
I had the same experience at PSU --I put my name on the waiting list when I was pregnant and by the time they called me, my two year old was all set in another care situation. PSU has a support program for parents, but their one overwhelmed staff person handed me a packet of hundreds of providers that had not been screened in any way -- I had no idea where to start -- but when I began calling, most did not allow for part-time care, which is what I needed as a grad student.
And yeah, those distance learning ads -- so very realistic. Has any serious scholarship ever taken place with any child, no matter the age, within a 50 foot radius?
I am just 3 classes away from completing a bachelor degree online. It was the only way that I could continue to work full time while studying. (I do not receive any public assistance or child support and I have financed the remainder of my education at a selective private college on student loans.) Though the majority of my classwork was completed in a traditional setting at a local state university from 1989 to 1994,the online program was the only way I could complete my degree and still manage working and raising my 8 year old daughter at the same time.
Regular interaction with people from a wide geographic area and varied backgrounds who are managing the same issues both academically and personally is a component of many good online programs. Twenty of us are going through this particular program as a cohort and keep in touch via e-mail, chats, class threaded discussions and meetings.(for those that are close to the campus) Perhaps because I attended college traditionally in the beginning, I do not feel that I missed the "college experience".
Please don't discount alternatives to traditional classroom study- for many, it might be the only feasible option for an education under the unique circumstances of single parenting.
I've been going through the sasme thing. Last semester I went to sign my daughter up for the childcare that they offer, and OF COURSE they wouldn't take her for the hours that I needed them to. This class was once a week, three hours in the afternoon, and they said that it wouldn't be in her best interest. And I needed childcare during her spring break, but no, they don't take short term. I gave up on childcare! Now I provide childcare for people that need it!
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