Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Subsidizing child care

[Bonnie Fergusson (fergyb2]

   This discussion reminds me of a wonderful thing I
was a part of many years ago (long before I heard of
Cohousing) back in the early 70's when I was a new
parent.  We had a "baby group" of 6 families at first,
later expanded to 8.  The babies were 7 to 9 months
old when we started.  These were all first babies and
at first we met twice a week with 3 parents taking all
6 babies for 4 hours one day and another 3 taking them
the second day.  So we all got one day off and one day
on.  As they got older and we knew each other better
we switched to 3 days a week and 2 parents for 5 hours
at a time, so we all got two 5 hour days off for one
day on duty with one other parent.  We met in each
others houses and in the park in the summer.  When the
babies approached 2 years old the group expanded to 8
families, hired a nursery school teacher, met in the
renovated basement of one family's home and met 5 days
a week with the teacher and a different parent on duty
each day.  That baby group stayed together until the
kids were 4 and went off to nursery school.  It was
wonderful, the kids were a little tribe and the
parents exchanged babysitting on other occasions
easily since we all knew each other's kids really
well.  We all lived in the same town but not all in
the same neighborhood.  We met in different ways (two
mothers were in the same room in the hospital when
they delivered, I was in a Food Conspiracy group with
another two, and the sixth woman came to a woman's
conference where they discussed child care issues and
she met several of the others there.  There was
cconsiderable diversity of class although we were all
white but were able to maintain the group and decide
things by concensus.  Perhaps a cohousing group
augmented by outside parents with kids of similar age
might be able to pull this off.  Although those were
different times with less extreme financial pressures.
             Bonnie Fergusson
             Swan's Market Cohousing
             Oakland, CA

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