Any Nashville parent knows that good child care is expensive and hard to come by. It’s also priceless.
In reporting on child care this year, I found a group of passionate and lovely yet underpaid and underappreciated child care workers. The low pay makes it hard to recruit people into the field, and on top of that, federal funding that has kept day care centers afloat has not been renewed. I think Debbie Ferguson, executive director at Glen Leven Day School, said it best: “It seems really backwards that I’m still only paying $16 an hour for someone to build a brain.”
What’s striking about this field is how much it has evolved in the past 50 years. We now know that babies start understanding language from a very early age. We now know they need to be talked to and played with and held for their brain to develop to its full potential. Moving away from old tactics like corporal punishment takes extra effort, reasoning and time. Child care providers are doing that without fanfare. They know better, so they do better.
In many cases, a child care worker spends more waking hours with a child than the child’s parent does. For young parents without grandparents and family around, these workers are a salvation. It’s a heart-driven profession and a head-driven economic resource. These are people who studied little brains, how they work and what they need. They are a resource to parents, and to society. I cannot thank them enough for that service.
—Hannah Herner
Health Care Reporter, Nashville Post and Nashville Scene
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