Daycare in Denmark

By Dorothy Nixon

A few years ago, a good friend of mine, a single woman, was up for a job she really wanted. I recall how nervous she was about it: She couldn't sleep or eat. She even got hives. I was jealous. As a mother trying to re-enter the dwindling job market, I didn't have the luxury of being nervous about job interviews. My worries centered around what I would do if I DID happen to land the job. How would I solve my daycare dilemma?

Even though I was married to a man who understood my career ambitions, this problem somehow seemed all my own and it drained most of my energies. When I landed a job and stood the salary up against the child-care costs, I fretted some more! Can any other moms relate?

Daycare in Canada is a patchwork affair. There just aren't enough good daycares to go around. Many working moms rely on child care from friends, family and stay-home moms hoping to make a few bucks themselves. Unlike established daycares, these less professional arrangements are often unreliable, and moms are frequently left high and dry with little notice. Mothers lucky enough to find a daycare have their burdens too: Every newspaper or magazine you pick up these days complains about the poor quality of daycare in Canada.

Some people see this situation as some sort of natural directive for women to stay home with their kids. But I have a different answer: universal access to quality daycare. Even if many mothers do choose to stay home with their children, how can anyone begrudge working moms the right to have access to caring, nurturing, consistent child care outside the home? Wouldn't this be good for all of us?

In the 1980s, promises were made in Canada with regard to starting up a national daycare program. After all, over 60 percent of Canadian women with young children work outside the home. Unfortunately that promise died with the deficit, corporate and government downsizing and the "every man for himself" spirit of the nineties. Some countries in the world do better. Daycare is a fact of life for most Danish mothers according to my older brother. Mark, who has lived in Denmark for the last 14 years, works for the Daycare Worker's Union. Every two years, he comes home for a visit and taunts me with talk of their exemplary daycare system. "Would you answer some questions for Moms Online?" I recently asked him by e-mail. Mark and his family complied with my request. His wife Ina, a nurse who raised a large family on her own for many years, and his stepdaughter, Disse, an educator who heads a daycare institution, helped my brother answer my questions.

First, let's put things in perspective: Denmark is a constitutional monarchy with a population of 5,168,000 (1992 census) scattered over an area slightly more than twice the size of Massachusetts, (16,629 sq. miles). Seventeen percent of the Danish population is under 15 years of age (884,000). Denmark has a birthrate of 1.67 children per woman. Women comprise 44.5% of the Danish labor force, 65 percent in unionized jobs.

Here's what I learned from Mark, Ina and Disse. In Denmark, they informed me, institutional child-care is provided for children, newborn through ten years old. A majority of Danish children are in child-care eight hours a day. Although institutions may vary from district to district, all have "creches" (French for cradle) for infants and toddlers (newborn to three years) and kindergartens for children between three and six. In addition, there are youth centers where schoolchildren ages seven to ten can stay before and after school hours.

Me: What percentages of children are in organized daycare?

Mark: In Denmark around 50% of the children younger than three years old are looked after in public day nurseries, and approximately 80% of all children are in kindergartens.

Me: And what is the pedagogical philosophy of daycares?

Mark: The education and care of children in Denmark's child-care institutions are marked by respect for the children's personal and all-round development. In a typical creche group, there are three adult care-providers for every ten children. In kindergarten groups, there are generally two adults for every twenty children. The manager of each institution is always a trained educator, and each group in the institution has at least one trained educator, the remainder of the personnel being made up of assistants without teaching degrees.

Me: Off the top of your head, what is a typical daycare teacher's background?

Mark: All Danish educators attend a teachers' college, where they study child psychology, child teaching theory, the role of play in child development, etc. Part of the curriculum is a year of practical work in an institution combined with theory.

Me: Is daycare subsidized for poorer families and single moms?

Mark: All daycare is subsidized, and can be free depending on the circumstances -- single moms, alcoholic parents, or families with many children and low incomes, for instance, may not pay at all for daycare services

. Me: Is there any daycare debate around the need of the child, especially in early years, to be with his or her mother, as there is here in North America?

Mark: There is, but it's an economic fact that, for most families, both parents *have* to work to make ends meet, and most women *want* to work. On the other hand, most women also want to be with their children in the very early years.

Me: Is there any feeling that kids would do better if raised entirely by their mothers?

Mark: Not really. The feeling is that it's better for children to have many playmates. The educators work very hard at understanding children's play habits, and playing with other children in a relatively structured environment is considered very important.

Me: Can anyone start up a daycare?

Mark: Yes, but they have to live up to legal requirements with regards to the number of children and number of trained personnel.

Me: How many trained daycare workers are there? Is there a glut or are more needed? And how are they paid in relation, say, to other teachers, clerical workers, or doctors?

Mark: There are about 36,000 trained educators, and there's a lack of them, partly because their union limits the number that can get into the teachers colleges, and partly because it's bloody hard work for relatively low pay. They're paid about the same amount as teachers, a little more than clerical workers, and a heck of a lot less than doctors!

Me: Are there any controversies around Danish daycare?

Mark: Not really, except we want more and better. Some municipalities try to wriggle out of things like limits on the number of children per square meter of space. We've had a baby boom in Denmark, and many municipalities are having trouble getting the money to build new institutions, so they're being very creative, like counting the toilets and closet space so that they can jam in more kids than the union agreement allows. Also, some municipalities are denying daycare to unemployed parents, which the unions are fighting tooth and nail.

Me: That sure sounds controversial to me... Do parents have influence over how daycares are run?

Mark: By law, all institutions have a parents' committee, which participates in the functioning of the institution. Parents have a great deal of influence in the way the institution is run and it's goals. They hold regular meetings, and about once a month or more the parents, educators, assistants and children meet after work to drink coffee eat cake and play with the children. Almost everyone feels this is a good thing.

Me: Why do Danes feel their daycare policy is the right way to do things?

Mark: With most families needing two incomes, what choice is there? Besides, with the high degree of training the educators have (plus the fact that parliament has agreed to a three-month introductory course in educating for assistants), daycare centers probably give the child more stimulus, better play possibilities and more playmates than they could get at home.

I thanked my brother Mark for the interview and decided that Denmark is a country that really cares about its children -- and it's mothers -- and puts its money, as well as its policies, where its mouth is!

Here in North America -- when it comes to children - it seems like we're all talk, but no action. The well-being of any one child is often left to the luck-of-the-draw as far as policy goes. At least that's more and more the case. "Raising children is the parents' responsibility," many politicians imply, even mocking those who dare think otherwise. "A good mother stays home with her children and it has always been that way," I've heard some say. Too bad we can't go back in time to prove otherwise...

A few years ago my children and I visited an Ontario replica of an 18th- century community called "Upper Canada Village." According to this popular tourist attraction, it seems that 18th-century villages were self-sufficient, each with a butcher, a baker, a candlestick-maker, black-smith, a tailor, and a cheese-maker.

"Who ran these businesses back then?" I asked the tour guide. "The owners," he replied. "Usually a man and his wife." "Who took care of their children, then?" I wondered. "Well, older children worked," he replied. "There was no such thing as 'childhood' back then. Sometimes young unmarried women were hired to care for the very young children."

Upper Canada Village models what the historians tell us, that the stay-home mom concept is largely a product of the industrial revolution. In fact, so is the modern concept of "childhood."

Lately, I've been thinking about the new world order and how home-based businesses are becoming more and more common. I know this is a leap of thought from examining the Danish daycare system, but could it be that we are heading "back to the future" with a modified version of the 18th-century pre- industrial prototype in which both moms and dads work from the home and, hence, there would be less need for daycare? Perhaps the whole daycare debate -- as we understand it here in North America -- will become obsolete. Maybe it's a waste of time to try copying countries like Denmark, that seem to have designed an excellent daycare model for a caring post-industrial society. Maybe, maybe not. You decide.

Dorothy spends a lot of time reading and writing about media, culture and education and is especially interested in the new technologies and their effect -- or potential effect-- on women and children. She lives near Montreal, Canada with her husband, a news editor and her two boys, Andrew and Mark, 10 and 8.