There are over 150,000 stay-at-home dads in the United States, according to the Census Bureau.

But experts say that number should be far higher because the census definition doesn’t consider single fathers, those with children over 15 or those who work part-time or flexible hours to be home. Federal labor statistics show the number of fathers providing their young children’s primary care is more like one in five.

Despite the growing number of stay-at-home dads, the playing field is not equal. Sure, there are a few daddy playgroups in larger metro areas, and some men’s restrooms have changing tables, but we still have a long way to go.

SAHDs face different social reactions than SAHMs do. Sometimes, they’re applauded for their nontraditional role. Other times, they garner suspicious glances. My husband (who isn’t a SAHD) sometimes gets weird looks when he takes my daughter somewhere without me. Apparently it’s just not normal to see a man with young children and no mate in sight. He’s not a perv, people - he’s just a dad! Nobody looks twice at me in a similar situation - then again, nobody’s cheering my choice to stay at home, either. Society still sees that as a natural choice for women.

Another difference is that more SAHDs work at least part-time on top of staying with the kids, and many of them still identify their primary job as whatever they do aside from full-time parenting. One stay-at-home dad’s take:

“It’s not like I can’t do laundry or make a pot roast,” he said. “That’s the easy stuff. It’s more like do I want a job or deal with the societal stuff of people saying ‘Dude, what do you do again? You stay home with your kids?’ ”

Still, dads are just as reluctant to give up their SAHP status as moms are.

Like their female counterparts, most stay-at-home fathers say they plan to return to work, many when their youngest child reaches kindergarten. But many said they will look for limited hours and flexible schedules.

They say they don’t want to lose the intimacy, the way they have come to know their children’s daily rhythms like no one else.

Aww. Personally, I’m glad to see the number of SAHDs increasing, and I hope the trend continues. I think men need that option, need society to open up and accept that maybe dads can pull diaper duty just as well as moms can. It’s also good for moms, because if dads are more comfortable considering the SAHP role, we are more free to choose what works best for us, even if that turns out to be going to work while DH stays home. And that’s just cool.

Posted by Sunshining.

Recently on the MomSquawk forums, one of our members (who is a pediatric nurse) brought up the topic of pediatric hospitals, and urged the moms to use them instead of the adult ER and hospital.

While I live about 40 minutes from one, the adult ER is only about 15 minutes away, and I guess I always thought of the pedi hospitals as being for specific circumstances. Her post, however, gave me some food for thought.

Searching the web, I found this article referencing a study done in 2006 showing children fare much better when treated at a pediatric facility. According to Kimberly A. Davis, MD, FACS:

Children are physically, psychologically and physiologically different from adults, so emergency care providers are trained not only to recognize the different ways that children’s bodies respond to traumatic injury and illnesses, but also to communicate and comfort young patients effectively.

I have heard tragedies about children treated at adult ER hospitals. Sometimes, it seems, the docs just miss the clues. Maybe not because they don’t know what they are doing, but because children are inherently different from adults.

Unfortunately, I fear this is what happened with Rebecca Ava Rabinowitz. She was born 4 weeks early, and sent home a healthy beautiful little girl. The following day, she was mucousy and her parents brought her to the ER, where doctors diagnosed her with a common cold and repeatedly sent them home. She lived only 8 days. She had a common enteroviral infection.

In order to help other babies, Rebecca’s parents have taken this tragedy and turned it into the R Baby Foundation. Their mission is:

that newborn babies, primarily those in the first month of life suffering from viral infections and other infectious diseases, receive the highest quality of care and service through supporting education, research, treatment, training and life-saving equipment.

I find it interesting that part of their goal is to get pediatric doctors in every adult emergency room. I think this was something I just assumed…that docs in emergency rooms knew how to treat infants and children. This is not the case.

For their first major fundraising effort, the R Baby Foundation raised $2.1 million dollars before even walking in the doors. Amazing.

From this, I hope you will map out your plans in an emergency, should one ever arise, and know where you want your child to be taken once stable. It may just save his or her life.

(Thanks to JoAnn)

Posted by Mally

So you’ve decided to go with a nanny instead of a state-run daycare or anything else. Now how do you go about finding the right person to care for your child(ren) in your stead� According to Parents magazine, here’s how to effectively weed through your options.

Make a list of your criteria in advance. Does your ideal candidate adore dogs? Is she a high energy person? Whether or not you officially advertise anywhere, having a concrete list of what matters to you - and an idea of order of importance there - will help tremendously as you’re shuffling through applications or interviewing candidates and their references.

Do interview those references!� These are the people from whom you’re most likely to get a candid picture of the person you’re considering for the job. Be detailed, specific, and downright blunt if you have to be in order to get the answers you need. Talk to as many references as possible. Sometimes it takes several viewpoints to paint a clear picture, and one family’s experience might differ (perhaps worrisomely) from another. Evoke negatives, if possible - everybody has their flaws, and you need to know what the nanny’s might be before facing them so you can decide whether you can live with these aspects of her personality.

A side note on references: Be on the lookout for bogus references — such as a friend masquerading as a former employer. “That’s the biggest problem we run into when we screen nannies,” says Pat Cascio, president of Morningside Nannies, an agency in Houston. Fakes often give themselves away by bungling details about employment dates and children’s ages.

Run a background check on anyone you’re seriously considering. You will need written permission and her SSN (and around a hundred bucks!), but anyone worth the position won’t mind because she won’t have anything to hide. Go with a reputable background-checking service (a lot of online services that promise cheap, quick checks are neither thorough nor necessarily legitimate), and expect to wait 3-4 days for results.

A few other things to keep in mind:

What vehicle will the nanny be driving - her own, or one of yours? Does she know how to properly install the carseats/other equipment? Details like these should be worked out well in advance, with understanding clearly demonstrated.

Is she infant/child CPR and first aid certified? (Hey, SAHMs - we should be, too!) I’d certainly hesitate to hire someone who might not know what to do in an emergency situation.

And finally, listen to your inner voice. If her references and background are perfect, but something just doesn’t click with you or you have a bad feeling about a given candidate, don’t hire her. Chances are that you’ll be happier if you keep looking for someone who is a better fit for your family.

Posted by Sunshining.

Some child development experts are now claiming that the experiences and education your child receives in the first few years of life will actually have more impact than their Ivy League time later. Yet, few - if any - of us are willing to shell out college rates for daycare, at least not with the education of our children in mind.

Most of brain development, an estimated 85 percent, occurs in the first three years of life, child development experts say.

“All of us are affected by how we were raised as children,” [pediatrician John] Salvato wrote in one of his many writings on the subject. “The human brain undergoes most of its growth and development in the first three years of life. Our behavior, emotions, social and intellectual skills can all be traced back to these formative years.”

Ok, but most daycare workers, while certainly adept at caring for the children’s needs, are hardly the equivalent of Harvard professors for three-year-olds. (On that note, neither am I, though I’ll only have two kids dependent on me for their early learning - my own.)

Even if you could find such people, most of them could easily make more money teaching outside the daycare system. Why shouldn’t they go where the money is? Loving children is one thing; making ends meet every month is another, and highly skilled individuals tend to go where the career opportunities are - not because they don’t care, but because pragmatism dictates they do so.

Of course, caregivers can provide children with wonderful opportunities even at an early age, whether or not the caregiver has an extensive background in early education. Awareness of how critical these early years are for development is key to planning activities and routines that help children explore and grow. And I doubt anyone seriously thinks that someone with young children to care for simply plays all day long, though respect for daycare workers (and even kindergarten and first-grade teachers, while we’re at it) is far from where it probably ought to be.

The bottom line: We don’t pay early educators (daycare teachers definitely count!) well enough to compensate them for their weighty responsibilities in our children’s early development, and while the overall attitude toward early education is changing around here, it’s a slow change that’s long overdue.

Posted by Sunshining.

More Daycare Studies: A UK study indicates that toddlers who are in nurseries for seven hours a day are more “antisocial, worried and upset” than their peers. For the government-sponsored research, analysts looked at profiles for more than 800 children and their families. Long daycare hours also had positive effects - the children tended to be more confidant and sociable, but the longer they were enrolled in nurseries, the more likely they were to exhibit antisocial behaviors. Some worry that this latest study will put more pressure on mothers, who on the one hand are being encouraged to return to work, but on the other are made to feel they are putting their children at risk.

Pretty Preggo: Actress Naomi Watts broke her silence about her pregnancy, confessing,”You know, I kind of wanted to keep it private because there is just so much to worry about. I had morning sickness for four weeks at the beginning and I feel congested which is linked to my pregnancy, but otherwise I am at the ‘glowing stage.’” The baby’s father is Watts’ boyfriend Liev Schreiber.

Helene Guldberg has a great response to the recent UK educational initiative that introduces “standards for development, learning and care of all children from birth to the age of five”. The standards include 69 specific learning goals and several hundred developmental milestones that teachers and caregivers are supposed to use to assess the children in their care.

According to the document, children under the age of one should show an ability to communicate through crying, gurgling, babbling and squealing, and should be able to play with their own fingers and toes and focus on objects around them. Toddlers up to two years of age should be interested in putting objects in and out of containers and should begin to move to music, [and] listen to or join in with rhymes or songs.

God forbid you should have in your care one of those toddlers who doesn’t particularly care for singing.  And help! What constitutes a “gurgle”? And how do I know whether or not my child’s gurgle is communicative? What if he’s just phlegmy?

What’s ironic is one of the guiding principles of the program, apparently, is that all children are unique. If so, why do we require that they all play with their toes by a specific age? (Yes, that is one of milestones that daycare providers are supposed to document, in between diaper changes, feeding, playing with and loving the babies in their charge.) From the column:

A century of research has given us great insights into what children should be capable of at different stages of development but it has also taught us that children vary greatly in the pace and nature of their development. It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions from certain children’s developmental delay, and to make any grand assessment about their cognitive, emotional or linguistic futures.

Amen. Enough with the government as neurotic first-time parent model. Sure, give parents and providers general information on warning signs that a serious developmental delay might be presenting itself in a child, but this sort of nonsense just distracts teachers and child care professionals, as well as parents, from what they ought to be focusing on: Providing a safe, nurturing environment for children.

Posted by MommaSteph.

Sporting twins: Mia Hamm and Nomar Garciaparra welcomed healthy twin girls to the world late Tuesday. Nomar was on a plane en route to the hospital, on the phone with Mia when the girls were born.

Daycare confusion: The National Institute for Health has determined that a child that spends time in day care is more likely to have behavior problems later on. The study tracked 1,364 children since birth and found that those children in day care were more likely to be reported for problem behavior in the 6th grade, and the more time that child spent in day care, the more likely the child was to exhibit problem behavior. The news isn’t all bad. For one, the study found just “slightly more” behavioral problems in kids who attended day care, and for another, the results differed based on the quality of the day care. Above all, good parenting is the most important thing.

Posted by Pager12.

Imagine being told that your daycare provider was going to charge $50 more per week for your breastfed baby. This happened to Robin Neorr when she brought her 3 month old daughter to a City Kids Daycare in Downtown Columbus, OH.

What reason was she given for the extra charge?

Her milk was a hazardous body fluid, and it had to be kept in a biohazard refrigerator in the director’s office and labeled with a “biohazard” sticker (do you think it will glow in the dark?).

She was also told it was an expense for the daycare because they had to purchase another warming pot, as this biohazard could not be warmed with in the same ones as formula. I can see the daycare providers, donned in yellow suits and masks while feeding this baby her bottle of biohazard fluid.

Interesting, because according to the Centers for Disease Control:

Are special precautions needed for handling breast milk?
No special precautions exist for handling expressed human milk, nor does the milk require special labeling. It is not considered a biohazard

Thanks to the research done at the Lactivist, we learn that according to Ohio Department of Health’s Rules for Licensed Daycares:

Center policies and practices shall support parent preferences in infant feeding, including breast feeding and introduction of solid foods as long as developmentally appropriate and not detrimental to the health of the child.Infants shall be served food in conformity with dated written instructions from the parent or guardian or physician. The instructions shall include amounts of food, type of food, and feeding times and be updated as needed based upon the child’s needs and parent’s instructions.

and…

If breast milk is provided by the parent or guardian, it shall be labeled with the child’s name and the date of receipt and immediately refrigerated or frozen. Refrigerated breast milk shall not be stored for more than twenty-four hours. Breast milk shall be kept frozen no more than two weeks.

Hmm…no mention of biohazard stickers/refrigerators or anything out of the ordinary. It goes on to say:

If formula or breast milk is to be warmed, bottles shall be placed in a container of hot (not boiling) water or be placed in a commercial bottle warmer. The container of water shall be emptied and cleaned each day. The bottle shall be shaken well, and the milk temperature tested before feeding. Frozen breast milk shall be thawed under cold running water or in the refrigerator.

Sounds simple enough right?

To prepare formula, look at what they have to do:

Bottles prepared at center: when infant formula is prepared by the center, it shall be prepared in conformity with written instructions from the parent or guardian, or physician. All powdered or concentrated formula shall be prepared according to the manufacturers’ instructions unless written instructions from a physician or an advance practice nurse certified to prescribe medication are on file at the center.

and then…

The center shall clean and disinfect all counter surfaces and equipment needed to prepare the formula. All equipment shall be washed in a dishwasher or scrubbed with hot water containing soap, and be thoroughly rinsed. Equipment not washed in a dishwasher shall be boiled for five minutes or more just prior to filling bottles. Handwashing facilities shall not be used for formula or food preparation or for rinsing or washing dishes and bottles. Handwashing facilities shall not be used for formula or food preparation, or for washing dishes and bottles or rinsing for reuse.

and…

Open containers of ready to feed and concentrated formula shall be covered, dated and refrigerated. Prepared formula and food shall be discarded if not used within twenty-four hours.

Sounds like a lot more work to me.

Another interesting tidbit I came across is the licensing page for this daycare. They have had a lot of violations, including spacing between the crib mattress and side, dirty refrigerator, and not washing hands after changing a sirty diaper.

So what to do? Make your voice be known.

Patricia Elam has owned and operated the daycare in downtown Columbus since 1989. If you would like to let her know what you think of her policies, you can email her at citykidsdaycar@aol.com.

Posted by Mally

(Thanks to Dana for the link.)

My father and I have an ongoing battle over the safety of his television set. I think it could tip over on one of my kids if they were hanging or climbing on it; my dad thinks I am overreacting and being silly, citing the fact that the TV is way too heavy for them to move. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, I win.

The CPSC is once again warning parents about the dangers of TVs and large furniture tip-overs. According to CPSC Acting Chairman Nancy Nord:

There are usually five deaths reposted to CPSC each year caused by televisions tipping over onto young children, but we are aware of 10 deaths already in 2006. We are issuing this warning to parents will take the necessary steps to prevent any more of these tragedies.

In 2005, the CPSC also estimates there were more than 3,000 children under the age of 5 treated in emergency rooms with TV tip-over injuries. If these numbers continue at this pace, the projected number of deaths this year will be 17. That is three times more than last year.

(more…)

A 24/7 emergency daycare center is opening in the heart of Toronto’s financial district, and many companies are expected to cover the cost for their employees to use the service. It’s a way to help parents balance home life and career with a bit less stress. The goal is to plug the “mommy drain” - the exodus of highly skilled women who find that work has too much of a negative impact on parenting:

Health Canada estimates that work-life conflict — the inevitable stress that comes when work and family demands collide — costs Canadian businesses $4.5- to $10-billion a year in direct costs to cover absent workers and indirect costs to train replacements for those who leave.

So for the sake of the stressed-out employees, and the economy, provide child care for working parents. It sounds good, but here’s what is odd: The parents will use the service not just for when a child is sick and can’t go to school, but on weekends and evenings, too, when mom wants to go shopping or couples want to go out to dinner. In fact, freeing mom up for “me” time seems to be the emphasis.

So the corporations are kicking in on child care to help parents spend less time with their kids? And that’s supposed to alleviate “work/life guilt”?

Wouldn’t it be smarter to allow for more flex time options, or floating personal days, or partial telecommuting to create a more family-friendly corporate environment? Emergency daycare for a sick child is one thing…but for a fantastic sale at VilaVentura, rather than offering child care on a Saturday, why not just allow for the occasional long lunch?

Posted by MommaSteph