I have faced the huge challenge of work/life balance for 7 years since my eldest's birth. If high quality part-time daycare was accessible, it would've significantly reduced my child care challenges.
I want the best child care for my child. When delivering my own child care, I gain personal growth, self-esteem, satisfaction of rising to the challenge, and the learning of new skills. As well, I have completed 24 years of education and want the best for myself. I desire the personal growth, self-esteem, satisfaction of rising to the challenge, and use of my trained skills that career brings.
Parents will always remain the most influential and important people in nurturing and promoting a child's development. However, to be the best parent that we can be, parents need support. With the recent changes that find extended families typically distributed around the world, the nuclear family is solely responsible for solving its own child care needs. A compounding problem is that community spirit is at an all-time low. This makes it difficult to know your neighbours let alone trust them with helping you care for your most precious commodity.
As a society, we need to determine if supporting the growth and safety of our most precious commodity is a priority. If so, we need to explore and determine solutions to help support our nuclear families with the difficult challenge of childrearing.
It really does take a village to raise a child and currently the village is absent.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My resolution passed!! After suffering from bouts of tachycardia for 7 hours straight, I finally got my 2 minutes (literally - there were traffic lights and I spoke for 5 seconds past my red) to explain Alberta's child care woes. That AB has the lowest number of regulated child care spots of any province. That Alberta spends the least of any province on its social programs. That Alberta has the fewest number of women working with children aged 0-5. And that part-time child care is essentially non-existent in Alberta. The AB physician representatives applauded and then voted unanimously in favour of my resolution. With the AMA's guidance, I will now move forward to lobby the AB government for more child care spaces and for emergency child care spaces. As my parents just pointed out, perhaps one person can make a difference!!
ReplyDelete