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Chapter 1 FAMILY DAY CARE PROVIDERS AND THEIR WORK Two goals compete in this chapter: on the one hand, an attempt to describe the "typical" family day care provider; on the other hand an intent to indicate the individuality of women who do this work and the idiosyncratic features of their experiences. The case studies below consequently convey simultaneously a woman's uniqueness and what her story reveals about a shared experience. And it could not be otherwise. A recurrent argument in this book as a whole is that the individual characteristics that differentiate among these women are insufficient to overcome the essential dynamics of this kind of work. In each set of relationships (with parents, with children, with their own family members, and with the state) family day care providers face certain dilemmas; the particular attributes of the providers may enable them to "fiddle" around the edges of these relationships-but rarely can they alter them altogether. Case Studies I have selected seven women to describe in some detail. Three of the women care for their own preschool children as well as those of others: Gerry Porter and Rena Milks each have only one child; Shelley Tompkins has three. These women represent the typical day-care provider. The next four women were selected to represent the most common variations. Both Nancy Bingham and Cara Brown have preteen children who are now in school all day; Patsy Lincoln's two children are both in high school, and Joan Bolton's four children are all adults with children of their own. WOMEN WITH PRESCHOOL CHILDREN Gerry Porter started taking care of children in her home a little less than a year before I interviewed her. She had found that she could no longer Copyrighted Material 19 20 PROVIDERS AND THEIR WORK bear to be separated from her own daughter who was one year old at that time. She had no qualms about the care her child was receiving, but she was distressed and became increasingly certain that she wanted to remain home. She was not sure, however, that she could afford to give up her job as a secretary in a lawyer's office. Her husband also was hesitant-his own work as a car salesman entails seasonal changes in income. He agreed at last and, as Gerry says, "the financial end has been acceptable." Gerry was caring for three children on a full-time basis and a couple of others part-time but she was not looking for more clients. She knew from taking her daughter to another home that she wanted to keep the group small-"If that was comfortable with me I would offer that to the other mothers." She also wanted to be able to offer the children in her care "a lot of attention." Her own family "was broken up a lot," and she was raised by her grandparents. She feels that her past experiences are relevant to her now-intense desire to devote attention to her daughter: "1 just want her to have everything." As we talked, she held Peter, a little boy of eighteen months, because his cough was keeping him awake during what would normally have been a nap time. Gerry was concerned: She wondered whether the child was really well enough to be with her that day. She was also angry at Peter's mother for not calling a doctor and for not leaving any medication. Aside from this kind of ongoing problem, so far Gerry had not had much trouble with parents. She did lose one child following a disagreement about how much structure there should be in the daily routine. When the mother took the child to a preschool, Gerry said she didn't mind: "He wasn't a good kid, to be honest." Thinking back, Gerry said she was surprised to realize that she had "more experience than [she] had thought": Although she had never had any formal training in child care, she used to tutor younger children in reading and she taught music lessons for a time. Nevertheless , Gerry felt she had had a lot left to learn about children and that she had grown during the past year: It's strange to take care of other people's kids-it's almost like having babies-but you just sort of learn like you did with your own.... It's been a long year, learning the different things and about different age groups. I didn't know what...

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