"But I wonder why this isn’t an issue anymore. Not much has changed, yet it’s dropped off the political radar."

You and me both...I only have one little one, so far, and most of my friends are stay-at-home moms. But even so, all of us are tearing out our hair over quality child care.

The most self-described "laid back" mom I know has moved her daughter three times since starting back into the workforce (and it's only been five months). During her search she found the at-home child care where infants were watching TV, strapped in their seats. And the one where the adult children of the day care provider were still living in the home (and, presumably, not subject to those background checks).

And none of us can afford what we're getting, even if it's terrible. I have a good situation now, but she's turning into a pumpkin at the end of August. And then I, too, start my own nanny diaries.

I had a cool idea - a cooperative, parent-directed preschool for working moms (a 9-to-5-er, maybe). Turns out preschools can only be 3 hours 59 minutes per day. Any more and they are daycare, subject to extremely stringent requirements. They have to be on the ground floor. The teachers have to have a great deal of education and experience. They have to have so many square feet of play space and nap space. There are minimums and regulations for toilets, food offerings, locations, and student-teacher ratios.

The rules are such that working parents don't have time to figure them out, let alone create a situation that adheres to them. So they resort to the day cares run by people who have the patience and time for that. Often, these people aren't anything like the ones we want raising our children. Not that they're bad - they're just not pie-in-the-sky.

Politicians need to take notice. So much research has been done that supports the concept that kids raised in loving communities are smarter, less violent, more likely to get jobs and stay in relationships. But maybe it's not for the politicians. Maybe it's for us to get together as a community, make the change ourselves.

Some of us are starting a cooperative, in-home preschool, like a playgroup taken to the nth degree. It's not perfect for us working mamas - in fact, it still doesn't provide the solution. But it's a step in the right direction.

I think the cooperative idea is a good one. I think moms (and dads) do have to work together in the absence of any state or national child care policy/program. Unfortunately I don't think we will ever see something like that, not at least for the next decade. I often think about the extended family situations of the past and realize their benefit: Grandma living with you meant you had an experienced child care provider in the house and who had a child-rearing philosophy you knew well (and hopefully agreed with). Good luck (and kudos) to you with the preschool.

I must have ran the gauntlet just right, because all of my experiences (save one) with childcare here in Oregon for smaller (pre-gradeschool) kids were positive ones. Of course, due to the economy, some of the options I had even two years ago are no longer there...and, as Leslie said, thankfully I had the money and did the legwork to find decent care. Could I do the same thing now as a single, unemployed parent? HAH!

As with everything else, it's about networking. Talk to parents with older children. Investigate the co-ops that are already up and running here in Portland (there are at least two that I can think of.) What about more informal arrangements? (The 'I'll take your kid for two hours today if you take mine for two hours next week' scenario.) I know I've heard of successful babysitting barter setups before (not in PDX, though.)

I'm having a hard time understanding how I - a full-time working mama - can contribute fully to a preschool cooperative. Is it productive for me to offer my loving mama services at 4pm? Or on some Fridays when I'm "telecommuting"?

Maybe the secret is a special recipe. Like the perfect compost is two parts brown plus one part green. Maybe the perfect preschool coop recipe is two parts mamas-who-don't-work-full-time-outside-the-home plus one part full-time-mamas-who-work-outside-the-home.

Maybe I can offer other services. I'm good at other things - organizing, administering, strategic planning, fund-raising. Can we try to make this work? Help me help you. It takes a village.

It is not the government's responsibility to raise your children. That's your responsibility.

If a dual income is necessary for you to survive, then do not have three children.

If your husband can not help out, do not have three children.

All these mothers are complaining because there is no one available to TAKE CARE OF THEIR KIDS!

This isn't progressive, this is selfish and lazy.

Cute baby, Leslie!

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Richard's attitude above, complete with all the assumptions and built-in value judgments, is one of the main reasons why childcare for working parents isn't seen as a priority.

Dual-income families should have 'planned better.' Or they're 'living beyond their means.' And us single parents? Why, we should have tried harder to keep our marriages together. Or thought twice before choosing the partners we did to have children with.

But it's a huge issue that won't get solved by moralizing, or reverse engineering (I'm a single parent NOW with two children - what, should I get a time machine ready?) And if there's a solution that could benefit two sets of people - those needing quality, low-cost child care paired with those looking for an opportunity to work that could include their children in a home-based center, for example - what's the harm? What's the down side?

Would it be better to have the first set of parents not work, while the second set stays on public assistance? Somehow, I don't think so...

I wonder how Richard feels about low-income moms. While middle class moms are supposed to stay home full-time for the good of their kids, welfare moms are told to get off their ass and get a job, never mind the kids.

Telling me "Don't have three kids" is like telling me "Don't get cancer" after I've been diagnosed. Wise up, Richard: no contraceptive is 100 percent effective. Kids happen. Let's work to take care of them the best we can as families and as a community.

My wife and I have been through the whole thing! We are both in the Navy and childcare is very important. Normally one of us is on shore duty while the other is on sea duty. I'm the lucky one on sea duty this time around. (My ship is deployed to the Middle East, where I'm commenting from right now!) So dependable childcare is a must. We started out with a Portland based (we are on the east coast) chain daycare and it was great for a while but child care centers like that don't really pay well so there is a high turn over rate. Before you know it new people have replaced all the wonderful people who were taking care of your child and you don't get a say in who gets hired. The entire staff including the director had changed in 10 months! The new staff was not up to the job and after 3 bouts of Hand, Foot, and Mouth... we pulled our son out and had a family member watch him for a while. The DoD provides excellent daycare on the Navy base but the waiting lists are insane. My son was on the list for 14 months. We put our daughter on the list before she was born! She didn't get in until she was 9 months old (16 months total). She went through a neighbor and two chain care centers before she got in to the DoD center. The diseases your kids pick up in these places! It is amazing that they even make it. The DoD childcare is very clean. My kids have been sick only a few times since starting there. It was so bad at the other places that my wife and I started to call it Kennel Cough! :-) Now even though the DoD subsidizes it, the care is not cheap. We pay about a $1300 a month for the 2 of them. The best part is that the staff gets paid very well because it is not a profit-based company. We are so lucky to have the option. It isn't open to civilians. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have it. I'd probably go AWOL and move my family into Forest Park!

I for one would like to see the issue back on lawmaker radar. I sure would like a bigger tax break on that childcare...

Good luck to all, Sam Eureka

Olivia, Betsy, Leslie - you've all made good points that have got me thinking. Ideally a cooperative would be something like Olivia says - two parts stay-at-home parents, one part working parents - because as much as we'd like to be smart and forward-thinking enough to be able to live on one income with our families, things happen, jobs are lost suddenly, companies go bankrupt, people get sick, parents die, it's not all under our control. And the community (not the government), the "village" needs to be supportive and loving enough to step in and pull for those who are stuck, dependent on two incomes.

If I could ask for one thing from the government, it would be a rule that all employers were required to give the parents of children under 18 one paid day off every two weeks to be involved with their kids' care and education. The problem with today's environment, as Richard clearly demonstrates, is that employers have no patience for the demands of parenting. It seems to me (and I've read a lot of research to back me up) that the more involved parents are when their kids are young, the less involved they will have to be when the kids are older, the fewer problems those kids will cause, and the more likely they will be to be gainfully employed (and not on welfare). We'll have societal benefits ranging from a reduction in violent crime to a reduction in taxes - because an involved community will reduce the demands on school budgets, police departments, jails, public works like grafitti cleanup, etc. etc.

Well, I wouldn't endorse any movement to give parents paid time off of work to deal with family issues. No matter what the benefits might be downstream, that's still providing a benefit for one class of employee - not to mention creating huge headaches for those who manage them, and huge resentment from those who work alongside them.

That's where I feel it's my responsibility to juggle work life and home life to make it all work - and I've found employers in the past who are willing to work with me so that I can work from home when a child is sick, or put in time early in the morning in order to leave mid-day for a school event.

If you want to encourage employers to foster more community involvement, why not have them grant a certain number of hours per month that ALL employees can draw from to do volunteer work? (I know that some companies do this already.) Whether it's a parent volunteering in a child's classroom or someone without kids working for Project SMART - we all win, no?

I'm so glad this issue is resurfacing. Hopefully mainstream media will take note of the continued plight of Portland parents for reliable, wonderful and affordable childcare for our children.

I'm staying home out of necessity and it's definitely a labor of love. I have three children 9, 6, and 3 and have a MS in Education. As a teacher, I can't afford to work and pay childcare for three children in Portland. My husband makes enough for us to get by, but certainly not enough for us to get ahead. And that's okay for now.

But each summer.....I check out how much it will cost us for childcare if I take a teaching job and compare it to my take-home teaching salary.....and it's not worth it. I'd make enough to pay for my gas and wardrobe...... and childcare.

Good luck, Portland parents! We need it.

I think the dismissal of Richard's post is more symptomatic of what's wrong with our society than the problems of finding strangers to help raise your kids. We don't want to face up to the costs of sexual irresponsibility. We celebrate diverse family arrangements (or whatever the euphemism is) and talk about "single mothers" rather than fatherless children. If more men had the dogged sense of family responsibility that Richard advocates, we would truly have a kinder, more child-friendly society.

As far as the "kids happen" comment, all I can say is "they know what causes that now." Or I can cite the advice once offered by an elder acquaintance to a mortified young friend: "You know what the best contraceptive is," he asked my friend. "No," the latter replied. "Asprin," said the older man. My friend stared with incomprehension until the older man explained: "Tell her to hold it between her knees!"

"Tell her to hold it between her knees!"

Well, there's one way to solve the day care crunch: sexless marriages! We'll need to find a way to deal with all that pent-up sexual energy, however. Let's hear it for good old-fashioned self-flagellation and hair shirts!

I'm not saying there's nothing to your point, Leslie. But I think Richard's point got short shrift. And frankly, I think your response is more of what can be expected in response to the introduction of the theme of self-control. It strikes me as a kind of reverse prudery in response to an unmentionable topic.

Richard says "Take responsibility!" but others find that impractical. Better that "the government" be responsible; people can't face the consequences of their own actions, so government (other people's resources, extracted through a coercive mechanism) must step in. One person refuses to accept the duties of liberty, so others have a little of theirs taken away.

It's worth noting that your logic just as clearly results in the possibilities of unmarried people having multiple children. Why should more self-control and responsibility be expected of them?

Maybe no more is expected today, which might explain why we do have so many more single mothers/fatherless children today than in the past, along with related social problems. "Tough luck, kiddies! I can't be helped! Sucks to be you, but I aint wearing no hair shirt!"

El Zonda, this is frustrating to me because I feel I am taking responsibility for my actions, as I suspect most of the moms and dads out there are trying to do. We all have personal circumstances that lead up to our decisions to work or not work, and it's hard to hear someone say "have self-control" or "be responsible" when they know nothing about the circumstances of my life. At the risk of divulging way more of my personal life than I wish to divulge here, let me just say this: I didn't set out to have three kids, but two, but because my prevention of the third did not work, I ended up with three. If I stay home with my kids full-time rather than work part-time, there is no money for college. After great deliberation and angst (which continues to this day) I am trying to do my best by them and provide them with both 1) my guidance and presence and 2) the chance for an education and self-sufficient life. The fact that this country does not support me in staying home (as other major democracies do, with things like monthly subsidies to families with children or subsidized college education) is part of my frustration. We say "family values" but don't invest in families, or kids. So I'm working part-time and at least there will be some money for college. Am I being irresponsible? Somehow I don't think so, but as with all major life choices, only time will tell. What I can say is that I am trying to do the best with the hand I was dealt.