Working as a Family Child Care Provider is a great job. I'm almost never bored, and I nearly always feel useful. I have enjoyed working with children, … seeing our day care kids grow up, and being self-employed.… However, if you care about any form of traditional success, such as money, security, or status, I cannot recommend Family Child Care as a career. In 40 years we've failed to earn enough money for even a modest retirement, or to buy a car less than 10 years old. … Government at every level treats child care work with shocking hostility and disrespect, and the number of men working as child care providers is even lower than it was 40 years ago. I believe that for women and men to achieve equality of opportunity and for children to be raised into a free and open society, we must have significant numbers of men caring for children. We must not only open "men's work" to women, we must also change "woman's work", including child care, into everyone's work. [R]aising children in a democracy [should] be an attractive vocation, viewed favorably by people with options as one good choice among many other good choices. … Taking care of children is one of the greatest jobs in the world -- if and only if you are referring to the actual work. I love the work as much or even more than I did 25 years ago. The profession of Family Child Care offers great freedom and responsibility. Quality is limited only by imagination, dedication, skills, and funding. Curiously, limited money may be the least important barrier, moment by moment, to delivering excellent care. The children want our love, our attention, our stories, our time. Poor funding is felt more keenly in the harm it does to child care as a career. We have taken care of them as their siblings are being born, when their parents have to work all night or Christmas Day, and through a host of family crises. I have taken day care children camping and canoeing, on astronomy field trips in Minnesota and Wisconsin, train rides to Duluth, on over 3,000 field trips! Our child care home provides stability to children through divorce, changing jobs, moving, changing schools; day care is the one constant in their lives. I like that, and I think it's really good for the children.
Michael Kauper