Full-Time Dads;
The E-Magazine for Caregiver Fathers
Issue 4, originally appeared in print - October 1991
A year ago I was a senior lawyer for the International Monetary Fund, one of the "Gnomes of Washington." Every day, I had to make decisions affecting how hundreds or thousands of people in the Third World made their livings. I had a huge office with a view of the Potomac River, a secretary who looked after all my work needs, guaranteed admission to the Executive Dining Room, and first class tickets for my infrequent travels. Now, as parttime child care assistant, my pay is near the minimum wage, my work uniform is sneakers and T-shirts instead of threepiece suits, and my clients are kids. Every day I get to decide snacks, songs to sing, and how to settle playground squabbles. I feel much more rewarded now.
Why?, You may ask. I feel more useful, I reply. Money and power are great when you can't get a roof over your head or the next meal, but after that they're a poor substitute for love and a real stake in the future. When taken to extremes, money and power lead to abuses of both, a splintering of the human spirit, as with the Nazi concentration camp guards who tortured prisoners at work and then came home to be good family men. Money and power in a government or corporate bureaucracy often come from cultivating the bosses, rather than helping the people the bureaucracy's supposed to help. The clients easily be come statistics on a chart, mainly there to be manipulated to prove what a good job you're doing. Child care, in contrast, is very immediate and down to earth.
You need to concentrate with your whole self on the needs of the complete human being who stands before you, entrusted to your care. A bumped knee, or her sudden discovery that written letters are connected with the noises that they represent, focus all your attention on the child in a way that helps. Similarly, giving a child the words to express his feelings may or may not settle a particular playground squabble, but it may give him the means to deal with more substantial conflicts for the rest of his life. When I help a child learn that the world is a friendly place, that he can keep himself out of harm's way, and that he's worthy in himself I feel that I'm really being useful to humanity. The effects of my work are both immediate-- in a smile through tears, or a discovered talent-and long term, in part of a generation better able to cope with what lies ahead.
A child care worker spends much of the time on the floor, dealing with children at their level, noticing things that most adults have lost the vision to see. Not just bugs and pennies dropped on the sidewalk; kids usually read and interpret nonverbal signs of feelings and moods much better than their elders. It's only unobservant adults who see children as empty personalities waiting for life to fill them in. In child care, you begin to understand and admire the quirks of each young personality, the unique way each person meets the daily problems of living and growing. You translate the world to the child, and the child to the world. It's one of the few jobs around where love is an essential part of the job description.
Changing from bureaucrat to child care assistant was easy for me. My daughters' college educations had been paid for, my wife has satisfying work, and I had an opportunity for early retirement with a pension I felt I could live on, The minimum training requirements for the new profession were easily met, though obviously I was far behind those of my age who had started out in child care. As I am also a lawyer, I can return to some legal practice as a financial safety net if our new family income can't pay the bills. I chose part-time status because I can sustain its reduced physical demands longer, and maintain my second career until I'm no longer able to squat down on the floor with the kids. With my remaining work time I can write and lobby for young children in general, because the world needs to understand its next generation just as much as the reverse.
My age and gender are impediments to some parts of the profession, but as a relative pioneer in both these areas I get much support from people that matter. I don't yet have the creaky joints of old age that would keep me from getting down on the kids' level, but my memory ain't what it used to be and my handwriting will never be a positive example for the children. Some aspects of the profession are harder to learn than others when your own children have grown: you tend to forget the timing and sequence of their growth, and you need to reeducate yourself about how to help children grow at each stage of development. These newfangled diapers may be easier to put on, but it takes some training to do it the prescribed way. I am told that child care workers often suffer more communicable diseases in the first few years than the general population, as immunity builds up to the children's common illnesses; still, my health has improved since I changed.
In the last few years, several organizations that train retired people to find work in child care have sprung up around the nation. For instance, Grandcare TM, in Montgomery County, Maryland trains retirees without charge for work a s substitutes or parttime assistants in 30 local child care centers. I had done most of my formal training by the time I found out about GrandcareTM but I attended their one-week course and benefited from their career advice. Perhaps something similar could be found or established in other communities.
As one of the three percent of males in a female dominated profession, I sense that some parents and teachers may regard me as potentially a "dirty old man" until my conduct proves otherwise. Although statistics and my convictions show that concern to be unwarranted, I accommodate to it by ensuring that I am part of a teaching team and rarely, if ever, alone in a room with a child. Sometimes my gender gets in the way of my communications with my co-workers, but the good humor and common goals of the workplace easily overcome these difflculties. Studies have shown that children thrive better when cared for by both sexes than by women alone.
Caring for children in a group is also different than raising your own child. When my daughters were young, we did the best we could do, and we had our share of conflicts as each girl needed to have resistance in order to assert and sense the independence of her own personality. Other parents' children, however, are with you for only a relatively small part of the day and an even smaller part of their Uves. As a caregiver you cannot substitute for or compete with a parent. Instead, you need to introduce the world away from home to the child in a way that will help the child to grow to be as capable and caring as the child's own inner being and the rest of her life permits. A caregiver needs to be less partial to the child than the parent. You give because you want to give, not because that child is of your flesh.
Finally, a group of young children the same age is very different than a family setting, particularly for children who are just beginning to develop language and other social skills. A caregiver in a center has less time for one-onone interactions than a parent, and the children in a center need to be encouraged to learn to interact more with each other. Conflict management skills developed in preschool tend to last a lifetime, and studies have shown that good preschools make better citizens.
The need for men in child care is great and growing. With most men and women in the work force, most children are cared for outside the home. Child care centers and family day care homes operate at or over capacity, and many children take care of themselves at home long before they should. Given the terrible pay, child care workers are hard to come by and quick to quit. Men are in very short supply in the profession, even though many children desperately need male role models other than the caricatures, rock musicians, and super heroes they see on the television screen. Only a man can show a young boy that he can become a caring, peaceful man if he wants to
The rewards of child care are as great as they are immediate. Playing with children every day restores your zest for living, your sense of humor, your perspective on people, your creativity, your flexibility, your physique, and your sense of being appreciated for who you are. Young children often give their elders far more love than they receive from them, and they have a natural empathy that is often destroyed in later years.
Young children catch on quickly and they grow very fast, so that each day you may witness some evidence of accomplishment. Other child care workers are unlikely to be consumed by ambition and greed, so they can be delightful company. As a group, they are among the most practical, creative people I have met. Child care work is close to nature, both human nature and the world we live in. For a man wanting to leave the world a better place than it was when he came here, child care offers a heritage that is sure to outlive the caregiver, a path to a better future.
So, if you are approaching an age when you can get a pension that will meet your basic needs, my advice to you is this: Look toward the floor; the future is there, needing your love.
Copyright 1991 John Surr
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