Politic?

Where Tot-Hugging is Forbidden

"My mind is all over the map. One minute I'm like, yes, I absolutely need this, I need the time to work and focus. I'm just way too drained. And then the next minute, all these emotions start flooding in and I think, oh my gosh, we haven't even opened our bubble up to grandparents."
"There's so many questions. I think that's the biggest thing about daycares reopening so suddenly. It was a shock to hear daycares are opening Friday. Not a week, not two weeks, not July 1. There's no time to mentally prepare for that and you just have to make a decision."
"It's really hard to prepare yourself in terms of what the future is going to hold when it comes to kids going back into that environment, especially when you've been in such a closed bubble for so long."
Erica Williscroft, bank human resource officer, Ottawa

The Palotes preschool in Valladolid, Spain, on June 10, 2020. CESAR MANSO/AFP via Getty Images

"Parents are also worried about a shortage of available childcare spaces as many childcare programs are on the verge of financial devastation."
"Without any new provincial funding to the child care sector, either child care centres won't be able to reopen or parents will be expected to pay higher fees. That's not fair."
Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care

"After they declared the last emergency last week, we figured it would be weeks, not days. I think they were absolutely blindsided."
"There's less critical mass of parents to be paying the worker salaries. And the staff were mostly laid off and one of the reasons that they're not working in childcare, is because they're making more money on CERB [the temporary government financial support to people laid off from work due to COVID closure fallout]."
Martha Friendly, executive director, Childcare Resource and Research Unit

"There's a lot of families that are very nervous. Some families did take their children out for a period of time because they were nervous and then they started seeing a lot of families returning. They saw the fact that their children were really missing their friends and their teachers."
"What's the greater evil, keeping your child isolated, not interacting with their friends, and all of the positive things that go with that?"
"I don't know. I mean, it's a tough one."
Linda Starr, vice-president, sales and marketing, Kids & Company

A student has her hands sanitized in the schoolyard in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., on May 11. Christinne Muschi / Reuters

Well, after all, it's business. Operating day cares, some government sponsored at various levels, others for-profit represents an industry. As for parents, accustomed to freeing up their time from what full-time parenting would demand of them by discharging their traditional duties outward to ill-paid day-care workers who dedicate their services to providing emotional support and caring guidance to other peoples' children, while their parents get on with life pursuing their careers, they have been absolutely flummoxed by the new reality foisted upon them.

Two life-complicating changes have occurred in lock-step swiftness; most in the professions now work from home as a universal safety measure against the transmission of the highly infectious zoonotic that has locked the world community down in cowering fear of infection, severe illness and possibly death. The second, just as their employers have emptied their brick-and-mortar offices permitting employees who they consider essential to work from home, schools and daycare facilities have also been shuttered.

Effectively trapped at home, with their children. The familiarity of their days completely upended. No scurrying to drive the children to school or daycare, then off to the office to work alongside colleagues. Going out for lunch, socializing, attending meetings, and taking the reverse trip back home, picking up the children, preparing meals, putting the children to bed, tending to last-minute email, falling into bed exhausted but fulfilled.

All that traded in for sequestration, following government instructions based on best-case advice from health authorities. No more morning and evening commutes, no more hurrying children to have their breakfast and prepare to leave. Alarmingly, the responsibility of home-schooling abruptly arrived without a by-your-leave, and the house feels confining with children's loud voices, arguments, pleas and presence. There is no escape. And little opportunity to focus on work.

There is now housework to be done, since such paid services to continue are ill-advised for no one wants to voluntarily bring health risks into their home. How to survive when parents have chosen from day one to narrow down their responsibilities and give their all to the future of their careers and enhanced salaries to be enabled to live in the manner to which they have accustomed themselves. Having children no longer equates with raising them, emotionally nourishing them, entertaining them, instilling values.

In two-parent families shift work has been installed with one parent working the morning hours while the other looks after the children's needs, and then they reverse for an exhausting ritual of attempting to placate and enthuse and connect with one's own children -- a routine that simply hasn't been a vital part of past roles as part-time parents. These are the 'professional' employed, the middle and upper-middle class of society, not to be confused with those dependent on menial service employment.

Those who have mostly lost their employment when the companies or shops or restaurants or bars for which they worked have closed shop or entirely gone out of business, more casualties of the horrible SARS-CoV-2 dilemma. The people who have no recourse to aid other than food banks, who fear next month's rent, living in cramped apartments, with no green backyards for diversion and fresh air, even while area public parks are forbidden entry.

And then, suddenly, a solution to the dilemma. Daycares reopening by government decree. Leaving daycare operators to struggle with government-issued guidelines for safety that emphasizes social distancing for everyone and personal protective equipment for the workers, masks for children old enough not to tear them off, and fewer entries on the rostrum of children accepted to enable care workers to leap forward to separate three-year-olds who impulsively hug one another.

According to a survey undertaken by the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, 88 percent of childcare homes were concerned over reopening about health and safety issues and how they would manage to make ends meet in the light of lower enrollment, even while they require a larger staff to meet the new rules they must cope with. Both parents and daycare workers think of how safe the measures will make everyone.

Should outbreaks occur, how will they be handled? What will the children's reactions be like when confronted not by friendly, familiar faces and emotional hugs, but fully geared, masked and gloved care workers with a clear hands-off direction; hands busy for that matter continually cleansing hard surfaces with disinfectant. So busy in fact cleaning that children's most immediate needs and fears may be overlooked?

A child enjoying weather at Domino Park, Brooklyn (John Nacion/STAR MAX/IPx)

A maximum of ten people to a room, roughly representing a 30 percent reduction in ratios that childcare centres base their business plans on. Fewer children in a room means fewer revenues, means higher operating costs, means transferring some of those higher costs to parental fees hiked to make up at least some of the difference. And the rest will in all likelihood come from public subscription when municipalities and provincial governments decide to pitch in.

For-profit providers in daycare like Kids & Company operating centres across North America decided to keep their services in operation in British Columbia, maintaining operations to service essential workers elsewhere. No COVID incidents have cropped up so far with any of its centres. There will no longer be "family meals" with everyone eating in close proximity, naps will see cots spaced further apart, and disciplined cleaning will take place continually.

Hand washing will become a constant ritual. Any whisper of illness will automatically result in absence from the centres by both children and care-givers. Toys usually casually handled by everyone will be in short supply, leading to the need to distract children by offering a range of innovative and fun games in their stead. And it will be headache-inducing to monitor the under-fours to intervene when any feel a sudden urge to hug a friend.