Do you think it's unethical for a daycare provider, working out of her own home, and by herself, to expect two weeks of paid vacation every year?

I wouldn’t have any problem with helping to cover a babysitter’s paid vacation. But, the terms need to be expressly stated in advance, before the relationship begins, and certainly before anyone dishes-out the cash.

A ruptured ectopic pregnancy; how devastating. I had that happen to me. I have no idea, at all, how you went back to work after a couple of days. My own recovery took a month.

Most of my parents were quite poor. All but one were single mothers. No way could they pay two baby sitters for a week. Some of my other parents were SRS, and I was paid through SRS. That would have been a mess for them.

It took a loooong time. I couldn’t even walk straight for a month. Really, I just sat in the chair and gave the children directions. They all knew all the drills, anyway. For example, we cleaned house at 3:30 and they did most of the work because they made the messes! I had taught them, long ago, what all needed to be done.
They made their own meals with direction from me.
My daughter, who was only 7, did the laundry for me. I couldn’t make it up and down the stairs to the washing machine.
They were wonderful.

I agree with @Love_my_doggie

I think there should be a written clause in the daycare cOntract specifying that one will be charged an extra fee for vacation time, not necessarily the full fee but something reasonable. However, it should be handled in a professional manner with the vacation dates set up in advance and not just sprung on the parents last minute, not only taking their child care monies but announcing it is vacation week at the last minute as well.

@Coloma I agree, it would have been nice but my parents could not afford it.

It’s unethical not to tell you before you “sign up”. If you don’t use her services for the full year, you get ripped. The setup is sleazy. The equitable method would be to factor the 2 weeks into the normal rates and tell parents of the policy.

What I think they need to do is set it up with someone else to watch them for that week. I had to list a “back up” provider. I listed my ex husband, who did take the kids for a few hours once or twice, but never for an entire day. Don’t remember why I asked him to watch them all when I did.

You can always change sitters….....

I was thinking that she must be very good with the kids, in order to get away with such an arbitrary routine. Are these “vacations” scheduled?

She just started with her about 2 months ago. Baby sitters, good ones, are SO hard to come by, especially SRS certified ones. My daughter has a pretty good job, driving a forklift in a factory, but her income is still low enough she qualifies for SRS assistance.

I never, ever pulled some of the crap on my parents that her sitters have pulled on her. One didn’t want to settle for the SRS payments and her rates started going up every week until my daughter just had no choice but to quit her job. Good ones are VERY hard to come by.

I’m pretty sure that I, as a provider, was an angel in disguise for my parents.

Doesn’t sound like they’re scheduled @stanleybmanly. I would never do that to my parents. Ever.

My daughter just called. I asked if she remembered the daycare when I was recovering from surgery. She said she did.
I said, “You guys were doing all the meals (breakfast and lunch.) I know we had toast and bananas everyday for that first week, but what did we do for lunch?”
She laughed and said, “Burritos and green beans! We could make microwave burritos! We brought you the green beans and the can opener, though. And we could microwave green beans.”
She described how everyone would line up, like little factory workers, or a a Subway food line, and they made the burritos, sliding them down for the next person to put the next ingredient on.
I felt a little guilty about that because I was required to make a menu every month to send to the SRS to show what I was feeding the kids, and it had to be varied. In return they reimbursed me for my grocery bills. I shopped at Sam’s once a month, 5 grocery carts full of food. Like, $1000 a month. I figured that in return I could at least follow their nutrition guidelines. Toast and bananas every morning for breakfast, and burritos and green beans for lunch every day, for a week, was kind of breaking the spirit of the rules. :/

But no one suffered from malnutrition during that week. Whew. And the kids brought me breakfast and lunch. They were awesome, I’m telling you!

On my birthday in July, exactly one year later (the day after my surgery was my birthday the year before,) they made me sit in the chair and they once again made me breakfast (toast and a banana and a glass of milk.) Later in the day they lured me, unsuspecting, into the back yard, and proceeded to launch a full-on water balloon blitz at me!

Great kids. They loved me. I loved them. Sometimes the things outside of their control, with their parents, broke my heart.

Parents and siblings are one thing, but the profession itself must be one TOUGH gig. I fully understand why a good provider is tough to come across, because nothing gets around faster than information about the good ones. In fact, if you come across a day care facility with an opening, you’re justified in being suspicious. The childcare crisis in the country is another one of those unaddressed yet critical issues in marking us for inevitible decline.

If it was stated as a requirement when the agreement to watch the kids was made, I see nothing unethical about it. If it wasn’t clarified, it seems pretty darned unfair.

“Darned unfair” is what best describes my daughter’s daycare predicament over the years, and many others, I’m afraid.

@janbb You’ve worked in Social Services, haven’t’ you?

@Dutchess_III No – i suspect you’re thinking of jca.

@stanleybmanly yes, the profession is a tough one. You have parents in custody battles battling it out on your front lawn.
I had one father who was temporarily awarded custody of his kids and he didn’t think he really had to pay his daycare bill. His ex had paid the bill without fail. I ended up filing a small claims law suit against him When he got the summons he was like, “This bitch is serious!” and before it actually went to court he sent some big, huge, awful biker dude to my house to angrily, and aggressively, give me the money he owed me, in an envelope. The awful, huge, aggressive biker dude was thrown off balance by my politeness and manners. I mean, I threw Miss Manners Meets The White House on him! I thanked him very much and graciously invited him in for some tea, which, thank goodness, he declined. I didn’t have any tea in the house Only diet Coke. But he didn’t know quite what to make of me. (I was raised upper class.)

You have kids that you know are being abused, but the system doesn’t do a goddamned thing about it.

@janbb I suspect you’re right. All you J’s look the same to me, you know!

^^^ In that same situation the wife kind of got on me for providing him with the same daycare services. “Whose side are you on?!” Daycare is intimately personal.
Well, I was on the kid’s side. I told her that with everything that was going on, with the breakup of the marriage, didn’t she think that having the same daycare for the kids to come to would be some small amount of stability for them? That gave her pause for thought. And it wasn’t brought up again. And she regained custody of the kids.

If it was part of the agreed terms and conditions, it’s not unethical. I don’t see any problem with childcare workers (whether in the home or not) getting some paid leave. Were the terms discussed prior to your daughter agreeing to this person caring for her child/children?

I don’t know @Earthbound_Misfit. It just never occurred to me to put such a clause in my contract.
I only mention the home workers, because workers at actual daycare facilities have others who can take over for them. Home workers don’t unless they’ve planned for that.

The parents would need to make sure they planned to take time off or have alternative care while their carer is on leave. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. So the question is, was your daughter informed or not. The leave itself isn’t unreasonable.

@Dutchess_III I agree with the jellies who said it should be agreed upon up front.

I also think it’s very odd/unusual for a babysitter to expect paid vacation, but I don’t think it’s a bad idea, I just think it’s not a usual practice.

Lastly, you said the babysitter just started a few months ago? Is that right? And she wants her paid vacation just after a few months work? That’s bullshit. Even working for a company with good perks and benefits it would be unlikely to be able to use your vacation time when you just started.

@JLeslie, perhaps she doesn’t only look after this one parent’s children. Perhaps she’s been caring for children for a year without a break. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect this carer to wait a year every time she agrees to look after a different parent’s children.

I also think the term ‘babysitter’ is a problem. If this person is a professional child carer, surely she’s entitled to similar work conditions to anyone else? If you have your own business, you’re entitled to some time off. You aren’t expected to work 52 weeks of the year.

^^I didn’t say a year. She can take a few days off if she needs it, I’m just saying paid time off usually is earned over time, and if I read the info correctly she already had one week paid, so I have to wonder how many weeks did she work and she already gets a paid vacation? That’s very unusual for that type of work. What if she had quit two weeks later?

If she is entitled to what other people get in the US at her pay grade, well many people get zero paid vacation. Many do have to wait a year. I’m not saying I agree with that, it really depends on the specific situation of employment. Having to wait six months is more typical. Then the employer knows the person seems to be sticking around.

If she is part time I personally would not expect to give her any paid vacation time if I employed her in that type of job, or if I was an employee. If I did get 5 days paid in a part time situation that would be very appreciated. Is she claiming the income? Paying taxes on it? If it’s all under the table then to expect vacation pay is even more strange.

I didn’t get vacation pay when I was an employee for a GC. I didn’t get vacation pay when I was self employed as a vendor rep, or what I do now self employed doing some bookkeeping. That woman is self employed, not technically an employee.

I haven’t read the previous – will do later.

I would be extremely pissed if I were your daughter. I would probably not return to that babysitter. That’s bullshit. If the babysitter wanted paid vacation weeks she should have discussed it in advance with the customer (your daughter) and then your daughter might have wanted to choose a different provider. To leave your daughter in the lurch and scrambling to find a temporary fix is pretty fucked up.

I don’t think a babysitter asking for paid vacation is unethical. I don’t think I would choose that babysitter if I did need one, however.

My babysitter who watched my daughter from when I returned to work when daughter was 7 months thru pre-k (at that point it was about 3 days per week, full time when she started at 7 months) did not do anything like that. The few times she had an issue (death in the family or her son was sick) she didn’t charge me for her days off. I think other than that, her vacation weeks coincided with ours so it worked out.

A good friend’s son used a babysitter who wanted paid vacation and I had never heard of that but the son needed a good one and so he went with this one who needed the paid leaves.

@Dutchess_III “Whose side are you on?!”

That question has a very simple, logical answer: the child’s side.

^^The child’s side? The child who suddenly won’t have their caregiver available to take care of her, because she last minute decided to take a vacation?

That really isn’t the type of job an employee should just pop up and say, “I’m taking the week off next week,” without some apologies. Forget the pay issue, what about the responsibility to the job and the employer?

A good friend of mine nannied/full-time babysat in the Boston area for over a decade before she went back to university to complete her education master’s. She always had paid vacation. The only person who gave her trouble about it was her sister when she worked for her for a while.

As I recall, since most babysitters/nannies worked through agencies, it was the expected norm in the community.

I’d expect that the individual families’ shares should be proportional to how long they’ve been working with the nanny/babysitter. i.e. you’ve had the relationship for a year, you pay full whack. you’ve worked with them a month, you pay 1/12th the normal rate.

It’s something, as a parent, I’d want to discuss with a caregiver before beginning the arrangement. I know/understand/value that they deserve vacation time, and think they need to have a break as much, if not more, than most working people.

I expect every working person to have, and take, vacation time. If possible I’d co-ordinate my time off with theirs. If it wasn’t possible, I’d realize I had to budget for a short-term alternate.

Daycare is at a premium in many communities. In Toronto, you sure don’t want to piss off your child’s caregiver and try to find someone new. Waiting lists for good daycares, in-home and otherwise, are years long.

I think a Nanny having paid vacation is different than your babysitter/day care provider suddenly springing on you that, “btw, your payment is not going toward care but I’ll be out next week, see you the week after.” No previous warning, no previous arrangement so if you don’t like it you can pick another babysitter.

A nanny does the same work as a full time babysitter/in-home daycare provider. It’s just a different name for the same job in some communities. My friend had no training to be anything other than an anthropologist. The community she lived/worked in called all childcare people nannies – sounds fancier eh.

Are we talking about someone through an agency? I would expect they get paid vacation and that the mom doesn’t pay it, but I don’t really know how that’s done. I thought that it’s built into the margin the agency makes. Like when I temp I can get benefits from the temp agency, and it doesn’t matter if I work 40 hours a week for one company for 4 weeks, and 7 months for another, all the hours total up and the agency is paying me and providing benefits. An agency would also set up someone to fill in if needed so the mom doesn’t have a problem.

@BellaB: I know. I do think that in the case of the nanny getting paid vacation, the couple that employs her knows, they plan for it and that’s how it works. In the case of @Dutchess_III‘s daughter, she didn’t know until the last minute. Good point also by @JLeslie. If through an agency, it’s different than the mom (@Dutchess’ daughter) paying directly after employing babysitter for a few months).

I disagree that it is different at base.

Whether @Dutchess_III ‘s daughter knew/should have known is a separate issue.

On the basic question of whether childcare providers (of whatever title) are entitled to paid vacation, I come down very strongly on the side of their right to paid vacation. That money could be earned through increase in the rate charged or by ongoing payments.

The anecdotal stuff doesn’t change my view of the fundamental issue.

@BellaB: Don’t you think if a couple hires a nanny and tells her she’s going to get paid vacation, and they can plan for her absence, it’s different than a daycare provider/babysitter telling the mom, @Dutchess_III daughter, after receiving payment, “I’m taking off next week and you just paid for it?”

Being able to say, I’m taking the week off next week, instead of asking, “I’d like to take off next week, will you be able to cover me” is the difference between being able to claim this woman has a right to vacation pay or not. If she is self employed and basically has total control over when she takes a day that’s a perk with something. Most people can’t do that. They have to plan, make sure no important meetings are scheduled, the floor is covered, the phones will be answered, etcetera.

@jca , I’m not addressing the particular case. I am talking about a basic, fundamental right.

@JLeslie , employers rarely get any right to comment on, let alone, decide when others take their vacations. Things in the US may be different but you’d be in a stinkload of trouble here if you thought you were going to tell an employee or daycare provider when their vacation can be.

Here in the US, at least for the employer I work for (government, quite liberal), we need to be approved for our vacation time and if the department wants to deny it because of coverage issues (for example, if too many people decide to take off at the same time), then the employee is denied their vacation time. We can take it another time, but it’s always with the approval of the employer.

Has @Duchess confirmed the carer didn’t let her daughter wasn’t informed there would be a period of paid vacation? I haven’t seen her do that yet.

@Earthbound_Misfit Yes, I feel there may have been some miscommunication here that we don’t know about.

@Love_my_doggie…I guess you didn’t read the rest of the post which said, ”Well, I was on the kid’s side. I told her that with everything that was going on, with the breakup of the marriage, didn’t she think that having the same daycare for the kids to come to would be some small amount of stability for them? That gave her pause for thought. And it wasn’t brought up again. And she regained custody of the kids.”

@JLeslie I don’t know how long she’s been baby sitting. She just started watching my daughter’s kids a couple of months ago. Yeah, you can’t start vacation count down every time you get a new kid.

Yes, the parents have to make other arrangements and pay for those arrangements. As I said, most of my parents were single mothers. They didn’t have money to spare. Many of them were SRS and they certainly didn’t have money to spare.

I just never did that to them. If I took a week off I just wouldn’t be paid for that week, and I could not afford to lose a single dime of income. So I never took a week off.

@Earthbound_Misfit I don’t know if they discussed vacation in advance. I know she gave her almost no notice before she took this week off.

I think if I were the mom (@Dutchess’ daughter) and I knew about the provider needing two weeks paid vacation, the fact that the provider sprang it on the mom at the last minute is unacceptable and I would be done with her as a babysitter.

@BellaB You obviously are not a nurse at a hospital, or an employee at a retail store, or a hotel, or any other job that requires floor coverage or has seasonal peaks and valleys. Do you really think if three ICU nurses want the same week off that all three requests will be approved? Maybe if it’s a huge unit with 20 nurses or lots of per dorm nurses, but the floor must be covered. It must, there is no exception. they are caring for critically ill patients, and only a certain amount of patients per nurse. Or, if someone who works at a department store wants to take the week before Christmas off? Any time in the 6 weeks before Christmas off? Not in most stores.

@JLeslie that’s why I specified a woman providing daycare from her home by herself.

@jca much easier said than done.

@Dutchess_III Is she fabulous with the kids? Is she young? My FIL was considering doing a business with a young woman, and she had all sorts of demands about vacation pay and we were all shocked

Well, I would hope she’s fabulous with the kids! I don’t know though.

There are just some jobs where you can’t expect paid vacations.

@Dutchess_III You get what you negotiate in this world.

Has you daughter had a conversation with her about the issue or had they talked about it before? Has she talked to any of the other parents who use this sitter? I’m just not seeing a clear picture here.

We can sit and opine all day but this is an issue for your daughter to figure out. And I suspect your experience from the past is not necessarily relevant to child care conditions today.

You know as much as I do. She just mentioned it last week. She hasn’t said any more. I am not looking for advice to give her. She isn’t looking for advice. It was just the inspiration for this question. That is all.

Why would my experience working daycare in the past not be relevant today? It’s all the same things.

Because child care is even more needed now than before and because low paid and marginal workers are demanding better working conditions. Just as home healthcare workers and cleaners are expecting better benefits, I suspect day care providers are expecting more too. This is a case in point.

”...child care is even more needed now than before…” No it’s not. I had a waiting list for my daycare. As soon as a position came open (or I dropped a kid, which I did once) the spot was filled within a week. And even if that were true it isn’t even relevant.

Business owners don’t have to “demand” anything. They just do what they want.

Maybe I’m just too damn thoughtful. None of my parents could afford to pay 2X childcare for two weeks out of the year. My SRS parents especially couldn’t. And SRS sure wasn’t going to pay for my vacation.

To me, a babysitter is a teenager with virtually no training, of whom little more is expected than to be in the house while the child sleeps or is parked in front of a TV. I’m very surprised people are equating full-time daycare with babysitting.

I fully expect daycare workers to get paid time off, and I fully expect them to make that clear in their contract. The parents are presumably not paying an hourly (or monthly, or whatever) rate for childcare, they are paying an hourly (or whatever) fee for all services over a long period (X number of months or a year). That period is going to include paid leave. This should not be a surprise.

They are paid a flat rate per week for 40 hours. They may be paid weekly or every two weeks, or like the SRS paid, once a month. My rates were low at $50 / week for older kids and $65 for infants and kids under 2.

What if the parents can’t afford to do that @dappled_leaves ? And do you think that the SRS is going to pay out for work not done?

I didn’t see anyone comparing it to teenage babysitting. It was just used as a descriptive term.

Oh, BTW. My daughter called. I asked if any of her other providers ever said anything in their contract about taking time off. She said “No.” She said her current provider allowed for 1 week paid in the contract, but it was optional whether the parents wanted to pay for the 2nd week.
She was paid at the beginning of the month so my daughter’s kind of stuck with this week (her second week off in just the past two months) because she’s already paid her.

@Dutchess_III What if they can’t afford the childcare provider’s services? Then they don’t hire that childcare provider. This is not difficult math.

It sounds to me like your daughter entered into an agreement without actually finding out beforehand what that agreement entailed. That is hardly the fault of the person providing the service.

What if they can afford her services, but can’t afford to pay double for a week? I mean, these are real people. Most of mine were single mothers supporting their kids on one income, and not a large income at that.

What do we do about the folks who have SRS paying for their care?

Regarding the assumption that my daughter wasn’t paying attention, I’ll repost a bit from my post right above yours, ”She said her current provider allowed for 1 week paid in the contract, but it was optional whether the parents wanted to pay for the 2nd week.” She knew before hand. She didn’t expect vacations to be taken helter skelter,with almost no notice. Is she at fault for that?

Also, she said paid vacations had never been mentioned by any other provider that she has used.

I did read the post above mine. It’s not clear at all that your daughter knew this when she signed the contract, or if she just realized it now that she has to make alternate arrangements.

But ok, let’s say she did know that it was one paid week and one week which could be optional (which… I’m not even sure what that means). Then she clearly realized that the childcare provider would be absent during her vacation, since that’s what a vacation is. This means that she already expected to pay someone else to look after her child. What’s the problem?

Anyway, this is shifting the goalposts of the question quite a lot. Your original question appeared to be about whether or not childcare providers deserve vacation. They are self-employed, offering services on a contractual basis. They can charge for whatever they think is reasonable. No one is forcing anyone to accept their services.

The babysitter told her on the Saturday night (last Saturday) before the week she was going to take the vacation (this week.) She had almost no time to prepare.

That was the problem.

It was in the contract. She read it. She did not expect the baby sitter to take weeks off, just helter skelter, with almost no warning.

I didn’t ask if they “deserve” vacations either. Everybody deserves a vacation, but if you can’t afford to take one you don’t. I couldn’t so I didn’t.

One of the most important jobs people do in this world is looking after our children. Whether they be teachers or professional child care workers who look after children in their home, we need to ensure we have qualified people working with children. To suggest that a professional child care worker who looks after children in her home should not receive the same work benefits as someone working outside the home demonstrates a devaluing of their work.

I’m pretty sure parents who drop their children off with this person expect her to ensure her house is safe. To make sure there are locks on drawers and doors, that she has insurance in case there is an accident, that she can do basic first-aid, that her house is clean and she serves the kids nutritious foods. That she entertains the kids and engages them in appropriate learning rather than parking them in front of a TV. If we want our child care workers (at home or otherwise) to provide professional care and a safe environment, we have to pay them professional wages and conditions.

As to holidays, I really think looking after kids is the hardest job in the world. As such, I’d really want the person looking after my kids to have vacation time. Her job is child care. Why should she not get paid holidays? I don’t understand why anyone would expect child care workers at home to have lower levels of employment conditions.

And I totally agree with @dappled_leaves about the terms babysitter as opposed to child care worker. A babysitter to me is the 16-year-old who looks after the kids while you go to the cinema for an hour or so. A child care worker is looking after your children while you work outside the home. Quite different roles.

The problem is there are many parents, especially single mothers, who can’t afford to pay the day care provider AND another provider at the same time. They struggle to even make the regular provider’s payment every week.

These are real, flesh and blood people we’re talking about, not abstract philosophies.

You also have people who have their day care paid by SRS. SRS certainly isn’t going to pay for a day care provider’s vacation.

If I were to take a vacation when I had my day care, it would have been an unpaid vacation for these reasons.

And I don’t see anybody here comparing a 16 year old babysitting to a professional day care provider. I would have taken offense if they had.

Telling the child’s mother on a Saturday that starting Monday, the provider is going to be on vacation is unacceptable. I wouldn’t expect to tell my boss on a Saturday that starting Monday, I’m off for the week.

@jca, I agree that fair notice should be provided, however, @Dutchess_III‘s problem (as indicated in the question), is mostly about the carer taking paid leave at all.

And @Dutchess_III, because parents can’t afford child care, does not justify not paying those who do that work fair wages and conditions. This woman is caring for children to earn her living. She’s not a charity. Why should she work for less or not have paid leave because parents are struggling financially? I wouldn’t work for low wages because students have difficulty paying their tutiion fees.

What about parents whose daycare is paid by SRS? SRS won’t pay for a day off.

I don’t know what SRS is. However, I don’t think the child care worker is responsible for policy failures. I don’t see why she should economically suffer because of poor government funding to parents. Expecting some paid leave is not unreasonable. I know you have low guaranteed paid vacation in the US, but I believe most people who work are entitled to at least a couple of weeks paid leave. Why should a child care worker be worthy of less?

Social and Rehabilitative Services. Yeah, government. Actually, I much preferred SRS to individual pay. It was a guaranteed check at a guaranteed time.

I appreciate your sentiments, and I agree. Everyone who works full time should get paid time off. SRS doesn’t agree. But that’s off the subject, really.

On the subject: You know, those people became much like family to me. I couldn’t just ignore their financial suffering. I just couldn’t bring myself to make it even harder on them in any way.

You don’t get paid time off when you own your own business, you know.

@Dutchess_III, actually you do get time off in your own business. My husband has his own business and he takes time off and he gets paid. While he may work many more hours than most workers, he does take paid leave too. And why shouldn’t he? Any why shouldn’t she?

I understand your empathy. However, if you choose to and can be charitable, it’s not fair to expect others to donate their time or to work all year without leave. That’s your choice. It’s obviously not hers. And I don’t think her stance (with fair notice) is unreasonable.

I know when I was looking at child care options, there are (were) two types. There was child care in a facility, usually called something like a “day care” or “preschool” and there was child care with an individual, which would be in the home of the individual unless you could find one that would come to your house.

There were advantages and disadvantages with both, and I used both types. Preschool is a bit more rigid with the schedule. Child had to be picked up by a certain time of there might be a fee, for example. It was also more expensive, but it was more like a school, and if the workers there got paid time off, the school paid them and there was coverage by the other workers there, so no parent was inconvenienced. The preschool was closed on certain holidays, of course, but other than that, it was open year round or maybe closed for one week (usually the week before Labor Day) and the parents did not pay for that week. Four days a week in the preschool my daughter went to was over $1,000 per month. How could I afford it? My salary is pretty good. In the beginning I think she went three days a week and that was $700 per month. The rates may have been slightly different, but I remember fairly well.

I supplemented it with the individual provider, more with her in the beginning at $60 per day and then daughter started preschool, 3 days a week for one year and then 4 days a week the second year.

With the individual, the schedule was less rigid, it was cheaper (I paid $60 per day and that was cheap around here). My “babysitter” had a great, clean house and she had kids of her own, but only once could she not babysit because her kid was sick (and she told me you can bring her but she might get sick, so really the choice was mine) and another time she had a death in the family. Otherwise, she was always available and if there was a week or two when she’d have no or few kids, she’d take the week or a few days for vacation. I didn’t pay her for vacation, nobody did and she didn’t expect it. She was great, but it was less of a “school” environment, more like play all day, eat and nap.

There was the awareness that with the individual, if there was an issue like she was sick or she had an emergency, I could be left high and dry. With the preschool, like I said, if the workers got paid leave that was between them and the employer, as it did not come directly out of my pocket.

We shut our shop doors for 4 days for our honeymoon. We lost a lot of money those 4 days.

I understand the empathy was all mine, and it was my choice. I would have personally felt unethical taking poor people’s money for doing nothing, and expecting them to cough money they didn’t have for someone else to watch them.

On top of that there was the SRS problem. A substantial amount of my daycare income was paid by them.

So, no vacation for me for 3 years!

I know that when people live on government assistance, they can barely make ends
meet. How would someone on government assistance be expected to pay, out of their
pocket, for a week of child care? Two weeks of child care? @Earthbound_Misfit, I know
that the child care worker should not be responsible for policy failures, but what would a
mother do in this instance if she could barely make ends meet (which is why she’s on
government assistance) and then she needs to come up with a few hundred dollars extras
so the babysitter/day care provider can take some vacation weeks?

Exactly @jca. Plus, SRS won’t pay for part time. It would cause a governmental shit storm if we turned in only 3 weeks worth of daycare in the month. They’d pull funding, or refuse to pay me for those 3 weeks that I DID work, all all kinds of stuff. And the only way to still get paid by them and prevent the shit storm would be to falsify records.

Why should this child care working subsidise your government’s failures? Is she being paid a high rate of pay? I doubt it. If someone (Dutchess_III) chooses to work without holidays for three years, so be it, but can anyone expect another person to do that? If it was a company, given the work you do @jca, would you advise employees that they should donate their time to make life easier for their boss? Even if their boss was struggling to pay his bills?

If parents can’t afford to pay their childcare bills, and the government subsidies in place don’t cover paid leave for child care workers, that’s the government’s responsibility. The poor child care worker shouldn’t have to wear the cost. She’s not working to donate to charity. She’s trying to earn a living and expecting the woman (or man) to work with either no holidays or no paid leave is ridiculous.

Do people routinely work all year with no paid holidays in the US? And if they do, is that a situation you all think is fair and just? I can understand if someone is a casual employee working for Maccas, however, in Australia, their pay would reflect their lack of holidays. Casual employees are paid a higher hourly rate to compensate the lack of sick and holiday pay. Fix your systems rather than exploiting child care workers and expecting them to donate their time to poor families.

You CAN NOT compare a home day care to a company that has employees.
It’s is a very small, privately owned business and there are no benefits inherent in it. Only what you can work out between you and the parents.

If the parents took time off, I expected to be paid anyway, and they did. No problem.

@dappled_leaves And, you think it’s ok that the caregiver gave a few days notice that she was going on vacation? And, you’re ok with getting both two weeks vacation after only having worked a short time? Haven’t you had to “earn” vacation days at your jobs?

@JLeslie For all I know she’s been a day care provider for years.

Yeah, the one day notice thing was wrong of her, IMO.

I think charging over and above what SRS pays is unethical too.

But such are the joys of finding daycare in the US.

@JLeslie I never said that. That was not the question. The question was about whether or not these types of workers should be able to take vacation.

I’m not sure what you mean by “earning” vacation. Typically, there is a 3-month probation period for most jobs; but none of that applies to people who are self-employed. People who are self-employed get to set their own terms.

That’s true but, springing it on the parents the way she did borders on criminal. Then there’s the announcement of the upcoming vacation a few days before the fact. She may be exceptional with the kids, but my guess is that she gets away with such behaviors because she has the parents over a barrel when it comes to other available facilities.

We don’t know how what the situation is with the other parents: how long she has watched their kids or when they were told.

^ Exactly. We don’t really know how much notice she has given to her clients. And that’s what the parents who drop their children off to be cared for are… if they don’t like her terms, they can find another child care provider. She’s not a charity worker. She is a self-employed child care provider, and her terms are that she gets two weeks paid vacation a year. While I agree she should give parents notice, I haven’t seen one credible argument here for why this person should not be entitled to two weeks paid vacation time each year and we don’t actually know whether she had provided notice to her parents before this. Perhaps @Dutchess_III‘s daughter missed some information along the way.

She knew before hand, @Earthbound_Misfit that she would take two weeks vacation. She just didn’t know when. One day’s notice is unacceptable to me.

I didn’t take paid vacation because I couldn’t do that to my parents, mostly single moms, who could barely make the payments to me as it was, much less pay double for two weeks out of the year. And I couldn’t afford to take any non-paid vacation so I just never took any.
I asked this question on facebook and got a wide variety of responses. One gal said she did childcare for a few years and didn’t take vacation either, for the same reasons.

Also, there was also no way around the SRS situation, and that was over half of my daycare income.

And that’s YOUR choice @Dutchess_III. However, you can’t expect other people to be so altruistic. Perhaps she can’t afford to go without pay for two weeks. I consider myself to be caring, but I wouldn’t work for three years without a break to be kind to other people.

I think everyone has agreed fair notice is required, but that wasn’t your original question.

No, it wasn’t the question, but it was a clarification to the comment you’ve made, a few times: “Perhaps @Dutchess_III‘s daughter missed some information along the way.” She didn’t.

Anyway you slice it, I still couldn’t have gotten around the SRS.

I work self employed now, and have before, and have never received vacation pay doing it. As someone who is self employed I am basically running my own business, and have expertise in my profession (my expertise is nothing special, I just don’t know what other word to use). What self employed expert do you expect to pay vacation pay to? Consultants in business don’t get vacation pay. Self employed reporters don’t get vacation pay. General contractors don’t. Owners of business don’t usually get vacation pay. I’m just still unclear if she is self employed. I also am willing to admit that in some professions, even self employed might get vacation pay, but that basically puts them “down” on the level of being an employee. Not that there is anything wrong with being an employee, but it is a different dynamic.

@Dutchess_III I missed something. Does she work for an agency or not? Please help me with this. Or, does she watch several children at a time and your daughter brings her kids to the caregivers place of business.

@dappled_leaves I should have worded it better. I just was curious about what you felt about the specific situation in its entirety.

No, she doesn’t work for an agency, any more than I did. She works out of her home. (All of this was actually in the question itself.)

She watches more than just the twins, but I don’t know how full her day care is. Capacity is 6 kids. So maybe she has 6 kids she watches all together. I don’t know.

As a state licensed provider we have the option of agreeing to accept kids from parents whose income is so low that the government (SRS) will pay for part, or all of their day care expenses.

This is a whole separate process than simply getting licensed by the state. To be SRS, the provider has to pass some really rigorous (and sometimes ridiculous and changing) conditions. We also have to be prepared for unannounced drop ins by the inspection nurse.

There are two benefits for accepting SRS:
~ A guaranteed check on a certain date
~ SRS reimburses us for all of the food we purchase for the daycare. That could be $1500+ a month, easily. It paid not only the food for the daycare, but for the food for the family when I didn’t have the daycare, although that wasn’t their intention I’m sure. But it certainly helped me. For that to happen, though, we have to prepare a menu for the month, which has to follow specific nutrition guidelines.

To be an SRS provider you sure have to jump through a lot of hoops, and you’re under their thumb (they will keel you if you turn in anything less than full time, because the won’t pay for part time,) but the benefits are worth it.

That’s why I keep mentioning it as one of the hurdles that is in the way of taking any time off.

Here is why I think it is unethical (thank you for your FB post @JLeslie.)

Home daycare providers are self employed. Self employed people have no expectation of taking paid time off, of being paid for work they don’t do.

That’s the nature of self-employment. I think it’s unreasonable for me to expect my parents to pay for a week when I don’t have their children, because I took time off, just like I wouldn’t expect the customers of the mower shop I owned to pay me just to keep my business afloat when it’s closed to them for a week (which it never was. With the exception of 4 days off for our honeymoon, we were open 6 days a week for 4 years.)

And then there is the SRS.