Night daycare scribbles a sad ending to the little one's bedtime story
The Vancouver Province
14 Nov 2006
Editorial - By Alan Ferguson

EXCERPT

In boomtown B.C., we can fling billions at building a gateway to China. But when it comes to our kids, we make Scrooge look like a philanthropist.

Government budget cuts mean Danielle Arbour, a 32-year-old Sunday school teacher, is about to be laid off as a teacher's assistant.

The single mother of a 10-year-old girl will go back full- time to a job she's done for years -- providing night daycare in her Langley home.

What that means is that Arbour takes in strangers' kids at night while their parents, invariably single moms, grub for tips in minimum-wage restaurants or go to night school to try to better their lives.

Night daycare is a growth industry in the Lower Mainland as more and more moms are forced to work late or do double shifts to make ends meet.

Classified advertising sites bulge with offers from women to care for other peoples' kids evenings or overnight.

"It's becoming more common," says Arbour. "There's just too much pressure on single moms who have no one to help and who get no child support. You do what you can to get by."

The phenomenon has spawned Internet discussion sites, where parents swap experiences and warn of the dangers of recruiting trustworthy sitters.

"Finding someone to be safe with is a big issue," says Arbour, who provides her clients with evidence of a criminal record check. ...

Arbour says many single moms tell her how isolated they feel; the government cuts back on welfare, while their erstwhile partners often disappear, reneging on child- support payments.

Deadbeat dads are indeed an irresponsible lot. But they're not as ubiquitous as some people believe. Statistics show as many as 91 per cent of eligible children in fact receive payments.

Nevertheless, the plight of these struggling moms is fuelling a wider debate about the nature of a society that obliges them to abandon precious evening hours with their kids in order to survive.

It seems to me that, if we want to make "family values" anything more than a cheap political cliche, we'll have to do more to encourage them.

....in the United States, Democrats, cheered by last week's electoral comeback, are reviving radical proposals to help families whose health and marriages, they say, are put in jeopardy by long hours at low wages.

The problem goes beyond child care, day or night. It extends to such things as inflexible workplace practices, lack of family support systems and an absence of pre- and after-school programs.

In Washington last summer, Sen. Hillary Clinton tabled a bill to give low-income parents subsidies to stay home with their kids.

Wouldn't it be worth considering such a step in B.C. -- if only to make sure mom's there to read the bedtime story?