I was having a coffee with a friend and fellow childcare mum when the conversation turned, as it often did, to the latest drama at our childcare centre.
This time, it was about a fee increase that some parents felt had come without enough notice. At that point, any sort of price rise was frustrating, but the irony was that neither of us could confidently say how much childcare actually cost. Between the means-tested federal subsidy, a state fee offset and changing entitlements for multiple children, the final figure was often an educated guess.
Working out the fees was one thing. Keeping up with everything else was another. Last week was a gastro outbreak, head lice the week before that. A departure of a beloved educator, more incident forms to sign. My friend just wanted to get through the next few months before her youngest started school the following year.
My youngest was also about to start school, and it wasn’t until this other mother said it that I realised how ready I was to leave the system behind, too.
Nearly a decade ago, I was pregnant with my first when I was warned of the long waiting lists in metro Melbourne. So I started putting a name down at centres that seemed fine when I waddled in to tour them. It was hard to know what to look for when there were screaming toddlers with snotty noses everywhere.
In the end, that didn’t matter. We didn’t choose childcare, so much as childcare chose us.
We got a spot in a community centre that felt warm, with Persian rugs, lace tablecloths and walls adorned with family photos. We knew someone there, so there was a bit of shameless name-dropping, and a lot of squeaky-wheeling – very polite phone and email follow-ups. In the end I agreed to take any day they had, and was flexible with when our child started.
Still, we felt lucky. We had grandparents who helped us with the days we didn’t get and our daughter settled in well. The educators were dedicated and friendly. Drop-off was never a problem. She was happy to go.
We had many good months before that turned.
Just before she turned three, we enrolled our daughter into a state-funded sessional kindergarten. These are standalone, teacher-led early education programs for three- and four-year-olds with standards designed to prepare them for school. The kinder was at the end of our street and co-located with the primary school our daughter would eventually attend, so we didn’t think too much about it.
To us, childcare was childcare, where she was looked after while we worked. Kindergarten was where she went to prepare for school, with set drop-off and pick-up times, holiday closures and a home-packed lunch.
Funded kindergarten kids also wore red hats. Our daughter watched as her peers disappeared into a place she wasn’t allowed to go … At lunchtimes, she reunited with the red hats, a constant reminder they had something she didn’t.
We thought we could enrol our daughter in both.
We learnt that we couldn’t, not without unintended consequences.
Like many working families, ours needed childcare on top of the 15 hours of state-funded kindergarten, so we applied to the original centre in the hope of securing the days that our daughter was not at sessional kinder. We found that the children enrolled in the centre’s kindergarten program were given priority, so we lost our regular childcare days.
We took what hours at the centre we could. But even when she was there, our daughter couldn’t join her friends. The kindergarten room was upstairs, lauded as the final room before big school. Funded kindergarten kids also wore red hats. Our daughter watched as her peers disappeared into a place she wasn’t allowed to go. She remained downstairs in the mixed-age childcare room. At lunchtimes, she reunited with the red hats, a constant reminder they had something she didn’t. There were no words to explain policy and funding models to a preschooler.
Our daughter started to resent going to a place she once loved. We explored our options, even considering switching her sessional placement into the community centre, but it was too late – the kinder program at childcare was already full, having reached its educator-to-child ratio. So with heavy hearts, we decided to move her. We joined more waitlists and started again.
We found a new centre where those distinctions didn’t exist: the childcare rooms and kinder rooms were merged. The catch was they could take only my daughter and not our younger son, who had just started in the room for babies 6-20 months old. So for a while, we had two children at two different childcare locations. Little brother eventually got into the new centre, but it was only after his sister had already left for school.
That time was like the blur of the fourth trimester – those disorienting months after your baby is born. I look back and wonder how we made it work. Maybe, it was because our younger child didn’t go often. He started childcare in the first year out of Covid, a time when immunity to every other illness was low. Our son’s childcare cold spiralled into pneumonia.
He lost weight and fell off his growth curve. On medical advice to limit exposure and reduce his childcare days, we looked for a nanny – which came with its own set of challenges. There was not a big pool of reliable carers with availability that matched what we needed. There were no subsidies to soften the costs. Ultimately, a nanny was not a viable long-term solution.
As our son recovered, he built more resilience and went back to the centre. We found and settled into a new groove. We dealt with the management changes, the staff turnover, the ton of communications, all part and parcel of making childcare work.
Since the ABC’s Four Corners report on childcare abuse and negligence, and the arrest of a former employee of a Melbourne centre for child abuse offences last year, drop-offs have felt heavier. The system has felt even harder to navigate, a highly bureaucratic structure made even more bureaucratic.
As parents, we do our best to move forward because we have to, and also because childcare can be fulfilling.
Over the years, it became so much more than a place for the children to go while we worked. They have had many formative experiences through messy play, the talent shows, the incursions and excursions. I see how much of their childhood happened in those rooms.
Both my kids started before they could speak. Their first words were of their first friends, their first connections beyond family. When my toddler son came home and said the name of his “best friend”, who he wanted to invite over, I was delighted.
Watching little bonds form is one of the most underrated joys of parenting. I found the friend’s parents in the group chat and drafted that first awkward introductory text. They were thrilled to hear from us. We arranged a play date. Both parents came too, bringing morning tea with consideration for the nut allergies they already knew my son had.
It wasn’t only he who made a friend.
For parents, it’s the chats at the gate, the fundraisers and the birthday parties that create a much-needed community in those early years of parenting. It will be sad to leave the families behind. It won’t be easy to stay in touch, but I will try.
The Albanese government has made universal childcare a signature ambition. The federal, state and territory governments have agreed to major reforms in early childhood education and care, with a commission planned to fix the system. Experts predict at least 10 years before it is up to scratch.
As I take leave of the system, it’s strange to think that if I ever return, it would be for a grandchild. I hope the next generation, whether it’s my own children or not, has childcare that works for them, not what their parents had. Not a system where you have to work to make it work.