Negotiated Care: The Experience of Family Day Care Providers

Chapter 6: A "Deviant" Group: Professional Providers

Chapter 6 A "DEVIANT" GROUP: PROFESSIONAL PROVIDERS Professionalization represents another direction in which the activity of family day care could move. Ten of the seventy women interviewed for this study stand out from the majority of family day care providers because they say that they offer a "preschool program" in their homes.1 In linking their activities to those of early-childhood educators , they explicitly align themselves with a more professional occupation . Discussions of professionalization and the field of early-childhood education have two strands: a consideration of the possibility of ever achieving such a status and an assessment of the desirability of doing so. Those who hold out the goal of professionalization focus on specific actions participants might take to abet this process, such as requiring a CDA (Child Development Associate) credential for all childcare workers, assuming a common nomenclature, and educating the public about the occupation's important social functions. Drawing on the sociological literature describing the route other occupations have taken, William Ade, for example, summarizes a series of these necessary changes:2 1. Require a greater familiarity with the field's knowledge base... . 2. Identify and establish uniform criteria for admitting new members.... 3. Develop a more elaborate practitioner licensing process.... 4. Secure internal control of this licensing process. .. . 5. Demand a stronger position in the relationship with parents, school officers, and government. Another group of observers believes that even with such actions the goal is unlikely to be achieved. To be successful, a profession must "steer away from a vocabulary that sounds too familiar to everyone."3 Copyrighted Material 179 180 PROFESSIONAL PROVIDERS But, as Carole Joffe, for example, notes, "The problem for childcare workers is that the care of normal preschoolers is very familiar to everyone and especially to the parent-clients. Thus for a 'weak' profession , like early-childhood education, the main struggle with clients .. . is to be acknowledged as 'professional' in the first place-to make the leap from 'babysitter' to 'educator.'''4 The overwhelmingly female composition of the profession may be another obstacle. Not only do women have low status in our society, but the prevailing cultural assumption is that women do this kind of work out of "love and duty."s In claiming expertise (and even the right to receive reimbursement for the care they give), early-childhood educators have to struggle to redefine "one of the main areas of social life of adult womanhood-the relationship with children and the responsibility of caring for them."6 Observers note barriers at the structural level as well. The escalating demand for child-care services, Joffe argues, may run counter to efforts to restrict entry into the field and thereby preclude the attainment of a distinctive" 'license and mandate' .. . to deliver [these] services." Early-childhood education, she continues,? must compete for acceptance with neighboring professions , such as social work, and with a range of non-professional providers.. .. Although licensing requirements for childcare facilities exist in most states, they are often very casually enforced, and they usually deal only with the physical features of the facility, not with the qualifications of staff or the content of programs. Because childcare services are currently delivered under a hodgepodge of different arrangements, with minimal government regulation, it has been virtually impossible for anyone group, such as early educators, to gain anything approaching 'exclusive control.' Considerations of the desirability of professionalization take into account effects on both workers and clients. If some view the process as one that will bring autonomy, prestige, and economic rewards to workers, others are more skeptical. Some argue that professionalization might actually reduce the autonomy of practitioners when the process leads to a separation of conception and execution, as in a distinction between responsibility for the design and implementation of curriculum.8 Others point to evidence suggesting that the marginal or semiprofessions have been most effective in gaining financial rewards when they view themselves as workers rather than professionals and allow unions to negotiate salaries.9 From a somewhat Copyrighted Material PROFESSIONAL PROVIDERS 181 different perspective, it can be argued that professionalization has proved-especially problematic to women. The acquisition of a specialized knowledge base inevitably entails a denigration of the kinds of experiential knowledge women acquire through their informal work as caregivers. Even in the semiprofessions dominated by women, men often assume leadership, leaving women with the lower-paid (and sometimes more menial) positions. With respect to clients (both...