Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
I wish I had a trusted girlfriend like Laurie McPherson, somebody who could care for my child in a pinch.
But I don't.
McPherson is the Seminole woman who got caught running what amounted to an unlicensed home day care. A tipster told the Pinellas County License Board for Children's Centers and Family Day Care Homes that she had as many as 10 children in her care. It doesn't matter if you're just doing it for friends. Nor does it matter if sometimes friends return the favor and babysit your children as you care for theirs. And it doesn't matter if everybody does it out of the goodness of their hearts and doesn't charge a dime. All this was true in McPherson's case. She still needs a license.
I understand why this has to be.
Yet it about pops my cork.
A license is the best shot - the only shot - the county has of insuring that its 881 home-operated day care centers are safe. Imagine the outcry if McPherson's home went unlicensed and something catastrophic happened.
But, but, but
I have found that one of the most powerful bonds of parenthood occurs with other mothers. We compare notes about our children's progress. We talk about the rough moments when we feel overwhelmed, as well as the sweet, transcendent times. I have formed intense friendships this way, friendships with women I otherwise might never know.
These are the sort of women with whom I would feel safest leaving my child. But the moms I know all work days.
McPherson, by contrast, works nights as a bartender and is home during the day, with time on her hands. My friends and I are all on the lookout for somebody like her, who would bring that most elusive of characteristics to our lives: flexibility.
I think of the days when my child is sick, when I either stay home and miss work or pay through the nose for a sitter. I think of the hours I just plain need for myself, for errands, or hair and doctor appointments. I think of the wash of guilt I feel when I cram everything in with everything else and am left with the nagging feeling that my child is perpetually short-changed.
Then I think of McPherson. I find myself envying her life.
Along with five or so friends, she has cobbled together a schedule in which the kids rotate days from house to house, depending on whose mother is not working that day and can care for them at home.
This is the way neighborhoods once operated. People helped one another. The government was not part of the picture.
McPherson is furious now at the day care board. She doesn't want a license. She wants to be left alone, to run her small group with her girlfriends and their children and nobody else.
"That's between my friends and me," she said Monday.
"A parent should have the right to choose who, when and for how long their child is watched, not the county. It's not the county's job to be the parent."
I can understand why she feels this way. She has the best of all worlds. She knows her children's teachers, her girlfriends. She doesn't have to worry about whether to trust them. She gets this comfort for free, not the $100 or more per week that day care can cost.
Pinellas' day care rules are a little peculiar. If you care for children only one day a week, you don't need a license. So, for now, McPherson will take her friends' kids only one day a week, even though, she said, "It really screws us up. Other arrangements will have to be made."
The state law on day care is not as tough as Pinellas.' The state law doesn't require the day care homes to be licensed if, like McPherson, they don't charge a fee. McPherson wants Pinellas' law to match the state's, and she intends to fight.
Consider it an addition to her resume: Mom. Wife. Grocery shopper. House cleaner. Bartender. Political combatant.
Yet another hat for women who already have plenty to do.
- Mary Jo Melone can be reached at mjmelone@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402.