Sometimes Day Care Is a Nightmare to Find

When the pregnancy test came back positive, the Orange County woman burst into tears. Tears of joy, yes--the blessed event was a planned one--but mixed in with tears for another reason.

“I knew I would have to find child care or I couldn’t go back to work,” she says. “And if I couldn’t go back to work, we couldn’t afford a child.”

Thousands of Orange County families are struggling with that Catch-22, according to a 1984 report by the Orange County Commission on the Status of Women. “Many families are finding that it takes two incomes to make ends meet to live in Orange County,” says the report, titled, “How Can We Work and Care for Our Children?”

The report estimated that by 1988, 113,533 Orange County children 14 years and younger will need spaces in licensed child-care facilities. That number is based on the assumption that the rest of the estimated 294,000 children of working families in Orange County will be cared for by relatives. But the study found just 33,467 licensed spaces available in 1984, without much growth anticipated.

That leaves roughly two out of three families scrambling to find alternative solutions. Some leave older children home unattended, while others rely on live-in help. Others put together patchwork solutions, such as juggling schedules or hiring foreigners without asking questions.

But some families, even those who can find and afford spaces in day-care centers for their children, would rather avoid that option if they can. Some of them are afraid because of the highly publicized child molestation cases in recent years. Others are concerned about exposing their children to illnesses. Some parents just prefer to keep their children at home or in a homelike environment.

When their daughter, Ashley, was born three years ago, Andrea and her husband, Dale, a municipal services foreman, didn’t want to leave their child with a stranger. But they couldn’t get by on just one income, either. “Our house payments are $1,400 a month,” Andrea says.

So the Irvine couple juggled. “I went back to work when Ashley was 8 months old,” Andrea says. “I worked 5 hours a night (at a clerical job), and he worked full-time days. We didn’t need a baby sitter, but we didn’t see much of each other, either.”

After nearly two years of parenting in shifts, Andrea says, “we realized we were having severe marital problems because we were separated so much. We had to have our nights together and become a family again. So we started shopping for a baby sitter.”

At the same time, Andrea arranged to switch to a full-time day job. They started looking for a sitter in January, and Andrea’s new job was to begin in March.

“We found someone who was highly recommended by our neighbors, and she just happened to have an opening. It was licensed, in-home care, six children, and two of them were her own. It cost $300 a month, including breakfast, lunch and snacks.

“The only real problem we had was when the baby sitter’s mother-in-law died. My family lives out of town, and Dale’s family all work, so we didn’t have anyone else to keep Ashley. Fortunately, I was allowed to bring her to work with me for a couple of days. I brought a pillow and a blanket, and when it was nap time, she just crawled under the desk. I felt really uncomfortable about it, even though people at work were very pleasant, because it’s just not appropriate to have your kid at work.”

Six months later, Andrea says, “the bomb dropped. We knew she (the sitter) had sold her home and thought they were going to relocate here in Irvine. But that deal fell through, and suddenly they ended up moving to Long Beach.

“One morning I came to the house to drop off Ashley, and the baby sitter was crying and very upset. She told us the 29th of October was going to be her last day and we’d have to make other arrangements. I talked to her in a nice tone of voice and said I understood. I was freaking out, but I didn’t want to let her know. By the time I got to work I was hyperventilating.

“My husband took time off work to investigate baby sitters. We weren’t planning on putting her in preschool until she was 4, but we decided to go ahead and look into it. He checked out eight preschools in Irvine, and she’s still on a couple of waiting lists. Finally we found a vacancy at a preschool in Tustin, which is on the way to where I work. But I still haven’t calmed down. I haven’t been able to breathe normally since that happened. One of my co-workers gave me a relaxation tape, and that helps some.

“I’ll tell you, the panic when something like this happens! You try and do the best for your child, but you have to have two incomes in order to survive. And there’s so much to worry about: child molestation, kidnappings. It’s kind of scary. You hope for the best and go for it, but sometimes the best isn’t feasible.

“Now my old baby sitter says she’s coming back to Irvine, but I don’t want to change back. We’re just going to stick with this, even though I think a baby sitter would be better for a child 3 and under.

“The thing is, we’d like to have another child, but the thought of it is just out of the question. We’ve got the mortgage, the car payment, the day-care cost--I don’t know how people do it. I don’t know how we do it with just one.”

Nancy and Dan of Rancho Santa Margarita had their child-care arrangements made by the time their son was born seven months ago. Nancy, a manicurist, returned to work eight weeks after the baby was born. “It was kind of a fluke, really,” says Dan, a supermarket manager. “We found a girl from New Zealand who was already here, but she was unhappy with the family she was with. So she came and lived with us.”

The girl was an au pair, a foreigner with a visa to visit the United States but not to work here. Au pairs, who are people exchanging services such as baby sitting for food and lodging, have become less popular because of the new, stricter immigration law passed last year.

After four months, “her visa expired, and she stayed on for a couple of months anyway, but then she went home,” Dan says. “We went to an agency and hired a Mexican woman. That only lasted three or four days. She had a lot of friends in L.A., and she kept wanting us to take her to Anaheim to meet them. That seemed to be her priority.

“Now we’ve made arrangements to have a friend baby-sit, and we’re working our schedules around it. I’m working evenings and weekends now, so that we don’t have to leave him as much. Ideally, we’d have one of us stay home with him, but in Orange County, it’s pretty tough for anybody to do that.”

Maria and her husband, Steve, an estimator for a construction company, live in Mission Viejo and have a 3 1/2-month-old daughter.

A store manager, Maria says she’s returning to work in December, “so we’re making arrangements now. The day-care situation’s really bad. We’ve checked into neighbors, baby sitters, day-care centers, and now we’re thinking of a nanny because we’re looking for someone who can give individual attention.

“Nowadays, with the situations at day-care centers, it’s so frightening, with molestation, AIDS, the sicknesses children can get these days. And we don’t want to just go out and get a baby sitter. We want someone who’s going to give the same kind of love and attention she’d get if we were home.”

After calling several agencies and interviewing four young women, Maria says, they have found two prospects who might work out. “We’re just looking for someone we feel comfortable with, who’s comfortable with us. Someone we can live with.”

READERS: What’s your family’s solution to the child-care gap in Orange County? If you use day-care centers, what have your experiences been? How can a family make ends meet and still meet the needs of their children?

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE? Your children aren’t babies anymore, but they still demand a great deal of your attention. And now, a couple of other people need your parenting skills: your own aging mother and father. When you’re caught in the middle between two generations, how do you keep your sanity?

ARE LIES EVER WHITE? Tell the truth, now. We’ve all done it. When is it OK to lie to your children, your parents, your spouse? Or is it ever the right thing to do? Tell us about the times you’ve lied or been lied to.

Send your comments on these subjects to Family Life, Orange County Life, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa 92626. Please include your phone number so that a reporter may contact you. To protect your privacy, Family Life does not publish correspondents’ last names.