Through the minefield of childcare

A woman who advertised recently for someone to mind her children in their own home got a quick response. One of her calls came from a man who said he was great with kids, didn't drink, didn't smoke, but liked the odd bit of ganja. She slammed the phone down; seconds later, he called back, complaining bitterly about her rudeness.

Both she and a friend who was looking for a minder at the same time were phoned by the same lady who explained that she didn't have any references because the Chinese family she used to work for had been deported.

If you are planning to have children, or have just had one, and intend to go on working, be warned: the problem of finding the right kind of care is one that will go on and on and on until your youngest is old enough to take care of him or herself. This means a minimum of 13 or 14 years if you have only one child, and 15 to 20 years if you have two or three.

This will be 13 to 20 years punctuated by stretches of bliss, as you find the perfect childcare arrangement, and of crises. Like when the after-school minder gets annoyed with you for some reason, brings your nine-year-old to a neighbour's house, and leaves a note saying she's quit. Or when your child begs and pleads to be able to go home after school like other children, instead of to his/her minder's house/after school care programme/ creche-with-school-attached. Or when your treasured live-in nanny of two years says she's leaving to get married/see the world. Or when you lose your job, and can't afford £200-plus a week in creche/nanny fees, but can't get out to look for more work if you can't pay a minder. Or when you and your partner break up, can't agree on childcare arrangements, and both have less money to pay anyone properly. Thirteen to 20 years of constant adjustment, because what most of us don't realise starting out is that your childcare needs keep on changing as your family grows, and that children will have an opinion too as they get older. A creche might be perfect for your one to two-year old - but what about when you have two or three children aged three to 10? What do you do when your eight-year-old outgrows your perfect childminder, and begs to come home to his/her own house after school? When you don't need a minder before school's out, except of course when your child is sick/on mid-term break/summer holidays?

The very first time you hand your baby over to someone else to mind, you're sick with apprehension about how it will work out. It's probably just as well, then, that you don't know the angst, the emotional wrench both you and your children will feel when a loved childminder goes, the sinking feeling every time you face into finding someone new. The resentment you feel that it's so hard to get work that's family-friendly, and that pious talk of flexitime and long paid parental leave means damn all to many in the contract economy.

There may be some parents-working-outside-the-home who won't any of these problems - but I'll bet they are the lucky few. Getting the right kind of childcare at a price parents can afford is a problem that never seems to get any better, and depressingly, as Kathryn Holmquist revealed in her recent Irish Times articles, seems to be getting frighteningly worse.

Creches have long waiting lists, are closing because they can't afford to comply with statutory regulations and stay in business, and cost over £100 per week per child if you're lucky enough to get a place. The National Childminders Association reports that its parents' waiting list fills several fat files. The number of girls/ women who respond to ads for childminders is noticeably less than it was even a few years ago, says one mother whose perfect nanny left recently to get married. And you're made to feel guilty if you rely on au pairs, although this is an arrangement that can work out well depending on your circumstances. (At under £50 a week plus room and board, it's certainly tempting, although few au pairs stay for longer than eight or nine months.)

Perhaps what's surprising is not the number of women who won't work as childminders any more, but the number who still do: the single most common childcare arrangement, a stay-at-home mother taking in one or two children to mind, carries a rate of £100 a week, i.e., £2.50 or less an hour per child per 40-hour week - less than most teenagers will accept for babysitting/working in the local supermarket. Many women outside of Dublin are getting even less, at an average of £60/£65 a week.

Hardly surprising, then, in this boom economy, that stay-at-home mothers, upon whom parents working-outside-the-home rely so heavily to mind their children, are a dwindling band. Or that women who used to do this kind of job are choosing better paid, better respected work. Work, of course, that means they will need childcare when they have babies - so that demand is growing just as the number of people willing to supply it is decreasing. Little wonder that Vivienne Ledder of the National Childminders Association fears that the whole situation is growing towards an explosion and warns that if you have a good childminder, for God's sake, look after her well.

"Face it - your childminder is more important than your husband," says one mother. Part of the reason that parents don't get their act together and fight for proper help from the Government is that there is no one right childcare answer, and definitely no unanimity between parents about the best kind of care. Some of us would prefer an untrained minder with a one-to-one relationship with our new-born to placing a baby in group care in a creche, for example; other would regard that as irresponsible.

Even if you do have enough time to get a grasp of the recommendations of Expert Working Groups and Government reports a,b, or c on childcare, you know instinctively that it will probably be years before the State does anything substantially practical to help parents, and that you'll likely be minding your grandchildren before that happens.

Why work outside the home then, you ask? Why try to have it all? If the expense and the anxiety outweigh the benefits, why do it? Many families eventually answer that question, with one partner - nowadays, quite often, a man - staying home, resentfully or otherwise, to mind the kids while the higher-earning partner goes out to work.

Why have kids, then? Well, because we do want to have it all, and the good news - after all that - is that somehow or another, parents do muddle through, childcare crises are usually resolved, and that you and your children come out the other end, with a good and loving relationship, reasonably unscathed.

I think . . . .