Here’s another page from the lack-of-daycares-keep-women-down book. A woman moves to Canada from Slovakia and works as a live-in nanny. She meets her husband-to-be, another Slovak emigré, and becomes pregnant. She takes her year-long maternity leave and doesn’t know what to do next. She knows that she won’t be able to land a job that pays enough to cover the cost of full-time infant care, and the wait-list for subsidized spots is eons long.
So she stays home and her young family makes do with a small (but quite lovely!) basement apartment. She puts her hopes of gaining experience in the Canadian job market on hold. Then her daughter turns 18 months, making daycare rates are a bit more affordable and the prospect of increased socialization more appealing. She gets on the list at a local daycare and waits and waits. Finally, last week, mere days before her daughter’s third birthday, she gets the call. Now she just needs to land a job before July 15th or forfeit her spot.
It’s not just parents with active professional careers who need daycare, you see. They are, however, the parents most likely to speak out and demand that there be good, quality, child care. They are the parents willing to pay for it, too. When daycare spots are few and far between, prices will stay up across the board and some families will have to do without.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to find a job and then enrol your child in daycare? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to stay home for a few extra months and then return to work, if that’s what you want? Shouldn’t that be an option? Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to settle for child care that you don’t feel good about? Or have to shuffle you child from one temporary arrangement to another until you can get a good daycare spot?
The City of Toronto is harmonizing the bylaws that used to govern five distinct municipalities and it looks likely that the more restrictive suburban bylaws will become city-wide. Those restrictions include stipulations about where and in what type of building daycares and day nurseries can open. In a city already hurting for daycare spots, those restrictions would make it very difficult for new daycares to answer the demand.
Please say YES to neighbourhood daycare and show your support at next Tuesday’s rally from 4 – 5 pm at Toronto City Hall/Nathon Phillips Square. And, hey, daycare’s not still a women’s issue, is it? And you don’t need to be a parent to know that families are important in our city, do you? EVERYBODY should come out for this.
I would love, too, for Toronto-area bloggers to share their stories about daycare shortages. Because that is what we do and that is what makes these issues hit home. Let me know when they’re up.