Rexdale's Cradle Rockers

How we lost Dong Xi

It was almost 9 years to the day that Dong Xi applied to work at the daycare center.  She spoke Chinese fluently and English hopefully.  She'd come for a chance to work and possibly improve her English.  So, after a brief conversation, she was invited to spend some time in the toddler room.

She graciously spent time with the children and staff, but it was clear from her face  that this was not her area of strength.  Doubt began to creep into my mind as I thought, how in the world can I hire this individual who doesn't seem to enjoy being in the classroom?

We talked some more.  I had a gut reaction to her and thought she should be part of our daycare...somehow...somewhere.  Perhaps her talents, and there were many as she held a Masters Degree, spoke Japanese, and in general was an extremely intelligent individual, could be used in the office.  So we decided to see if she could work in the office.  My peers said I was "nuts".  I was going to have her answering our phones, talking finances to our parents and finance office, and representing out daycare?  What on earth was I doing?

Soon she had mastered the day to day obligations of working in a daycare center's office.  She gently pointed out "little" problems along with suggestions on how we might fix those problems without causing embarrassment to any specific individual.  She served as an example to everyone as she always worked to improve everyone's life.  Sometimes it was a kind word, other times it was repairing the computer or screwing in a hinge.  It was never a problem to explain a confusing paycheck and help work out a schedule for a teacher going back to study. 

She was called lovingly "the Money Women" because she handled tuition payments and petty cash.  There was always plenty of money to do what we needed and never money to waste.  When there was no money there were alternate suggestions offered to make things work.

She took advantage of our study program and improved her English.  Then one day she told me she was going to embark on a several month course to become a sonogram technician.  I listened closely.  She would go to school after work and she would be studying in English...all those medical terms.  Although she would be eligible for $10,000 educational reimbursement from our program, it would only be reimbursed if she could pass classes.  Then, after a 6 month internship without pay, she would be obliged to pass a State Test before being able to reach her new dream.

When we held her fare-well lunch we were sad and glad.  One staff member sincerely said, "We may have to close the daycare center without Xi."  I tried not to take it personally because I realized how much we all had grown dependent upon her work and skill.  On the last day, each staff member was invited to write a note wishing Xi well and they were not to sign it...she'd have to guess who had written it.  What a surprise it was to see Chinese staff members writing notes in Spanish and Spanish staff members writing notes in Chinese when a few years earlier, before Xi's arrival, it had seemed impossible to have these two very different groups interact.

So Xi left the daycare center to go out into the world of grownups.  We extracted promises from her to stay in touch but we all knew she would be very, very busy over the next months.  But we all knew she had left us her gift of great friendship and daily examples of how to care for each other.

The Roots of a Child Care Center

The tangled, uneven, and ever-changing growth of child care throughout the world has been consistently tightly interwoven with the role of women in society, the economy, and a new understanding of early childhood development, national interests, and human rights.

It is not surprising that child care has changed dramatically over the years as our understanding of a woman’s role in society has evolved. As society’s interest and support for women’s expanding role waxes, new child care models have been developed, refined, discussed and eventually discarded or utilized for specific populations. As society’s interest has waned for women’s expanding role, support for new child care models has languished.

In the summer of 1984 I read an employment ad in The New York Times Newspaper. Even though I was happily employed as a Director at a private nursery school in Manhattan, it was my custom to always read the employment ads. They always told a quiet story about what was happening in schools throughout the city. You could always tell where the problems were since the same ad for the same position would appear every month or two.

Today’s ad was very different. It advertised for a position of director at a new daycare center in Northern Manhattan that was affiliated with a major medical center. The center was just getting off the ground and the director would be heavily involved in shaping the new program. Being an eager professional chomping at the bit for my big chance to make a mark in the world, I turned to my friend and said, “Here’s my new job!”

I phoned for my appointment, readied my resume, and rehearsed the standard interview questions. Then the big day arrived. After I found the building, I walked around the block twice just so I wouldn’t arrive at my appointment too early. I met with a very nice young man from Human Resources. He quickly described their new project – the creation of the daycare – as well something that had to be done to satisfy the demands of a new employee union contract. He was motivated, to be sure. He had a boss who needed a daycare. But he knew nothing about daycare, nothing about kids and parents, but he did know that the union contract would end in five years. And that meant there was an excellent chance that the daycare he was creating wouldn’t last past that date.

So he explained that the corporation had rented space in a nearby apartment building. This space would be renovated to meet the building department’s code. In addition, staff would be hired at $3.50 an hour and to create an inexpensive program, the staff would receive no medical or dental benefits. Additionally it was planned that the staff would be sent home, without pay, went the daily attendance allow for it.

He wanted to know what I thought.

I wanted to tell him something about the history of child care so that he would understand the foundation of what he was trying to create.

It was inconceivable that this man was trying to do something so positive, so on the cutting edge of science and social development, without the benefit of its historical perspective.

He needed to know why women were adamantly speaking out for child care and why their cries would not be silenced. And it was tragic that on behalf of his company, he was innocently and ignorantly abdicating a prime leadership role in modern child care simply because he did not know the “why” of the question.