BOOK REVIEW : Other People’s Children: We Need to Care : A CHILD’S PLACE: A Year in the Life of a Day Care Center; <i> by Ellen Ruppel Shell</i> ; Little, Brown and Co. $19.95; 262 pages

I used to grumble about co-workers who were parents. They took too much time off, avoided overtime, were often late. Remarkably, I never wondered who cared for their children.

When I had a baby 10 years later, reality struck like a rock. Then I was the one late to meetings and phoning anxious directions to the baby’s caretaker. When the baby was feverish or ill, nothing could ease my grief at being so far away.

The job I once loved became a chore. When I got home one afternoon to find my toddler asleep in her stroller, her apple juice-coated mouth covered with flies while her caretaker relaxed on a curb nearby, I decided to turn my back on an 11-year career and stay home with my child.

But staying at home was no solution for our family. Without my salary, we slid out of the middle class into what felt like poverty. And so I re-entered the world of compromise, sleep deprivation and relentless hard work that working parents in this country know so well.

In her book, “A Child’s Place: A Year in the Life of a Day Care Center,” Ellen Ruppel Shell documents the lives of children like mine, the children of working parents. To do this, she focuses on a particular day-care center: Cambridgeport Children’s Center, known as Tot Lot, located in a multicultural neighborhood just outside Boston.

Her goals are to let busy parents know what daily life may be like for their children, to fire up the debate in the public arena and to motivate political leaders to take steps to improve care for our children.

It’s a tall order for a little book. Unfortunately, a few things work against her purpose.

The book’s organization is not always clear. A chapter may start out focusing on Tot Lot’s efforts at fund raising and end up relating one teacher’s efforts to quit smoking. So many children, parents and teachers appear that the author should have provided a list to keep names and relationships in order. And the title, though truthful, is not appealing. Would you snatch up a book subtitled “A Year in the Life of a Day Care Center”?

Despite these shortcomings, the book successfully draws a complex and sometimes troubling portrait of one day-care center and the people involved with it.

The toddlers and preschoolers at Tot Lot are fortunate because, unlike millions of American children, their parents are not forced to leave them in unsafe circumstances. But they do not lead ideal lives. Each day, regardless of weather, mood or health, they are roused early, dressed, fed and dropped off at Tot Lot.

According to Shell, “The center is a hothouse, breeding germs by the trillion. Most of the kids have colds, and many also have more serious maladies requiring the frequent ingestion of antibiotics.” Since few parents have the luxury of time off for their children’s illnesses, children show up as scheduled at Tot Lot every day, sick or well. Many of them won’t be home again for 12 hours. Some of the parents are neglectful; a few are abusive.

The teachers have an almost religious dedication to these children. For this, they earn about $5 an hour, with no pension plan or career ladder.

State budget cuts occur every few months. At Tot Lot, the shortage of funds translates into a depressing environment. Staff turnover is 41% per year. The dishwasher and water cooler are broken, plumbing works fitfully, peeling linoleum is patched with duct tape, water-stained rugs cannot be replaced, the ceiling droops alarmingly. The nearest play area is “Trash Park,” littered with broken glass and dog droppings.

It’s a sad place to start out one’s life. Tot Lot is not richly funded, it is “not a model, university-based center . . . nor a church-operated center . . . nor a corporate center . . . nor a chain center.”

It is, Shell writes, an average “community center in a neighborhood that is diverse, complex and contentious; a neighborhood of poor, middle-class and affluent.” It is far better than many other centers. No federal standards regulate the conditions at day-care centers in this country, and state regulations are at best uneven.

Woven into the story of Tot Lot are absorbing individual tales: the toddler teacher who lives barely above the poverty line after 15 years of dedicated work in her field; the single mother who works around the clock, skipping sleep to be with her son; the affluent professionals who rarely find time to be with their “perfect” daughters; the Haitian family homesick for their lush green island.

No simple answers are offered in this complex work. Some of these children clearly would be better off at home with Mom or Dad; others seem to adjust well. Some of their lives are unspeakable, and no amount of concern by a day-care worker will help.

What finally emerges is an urgent plea for public attention to the child-care issue. More than half the mothers of preschoolers work outside the home. By the turn of the century, that figure is expected to increase to 70%.

Shell argues convincingly that as a nation we dare not continue to ignore these children. Whether we have sacrificed to stay home with our children or are working outside the home in the marketplace every day, somehow we need to find the energy and concern to force government action in their behalf.

Funding needs to be made available, conditions must be federally regulated, training must be standardized. One day soon, our workers and leaders will come from these ranks of “other people’s children.” If they were neglected or abused, we and our children and grandchildren will all pay a very high price.