What if Eastern had a daycare center on campus? A daycare reserved for the children of Eastern’s faculty, staff and students would provide parents who are a part of Eastern’s community with a more easily accessible, reliable and financially feasible childcare option. Moreover, it would show Eastern’s commitment to justice and holistically supporting its students and faculty.
But what might the logistics of such a daycare look like? To figure that out, we should also look at what parents really want and need. Adaelle Chollar is a full-time, on-campus undergraduate student, enrolled in 12 credits – with a newborn baby. She cited reliability as an advantage to a campus daycare, saying that “it could be good” to have “easily accessible childcare… in a way that’s not going to change dramatically” based on a babysitter’s schedule, for instance.
Meanwhile, Amber Bowen is a professor in the philosophy department at Eastern who had a baby last winter. Bowen similarly mentioned the “burden [for a parent] if someone [the babysitter] is sick or on vacation – that’s something daycare covers.”
Both Bowen and Chollar also said that having their babies close by would be helpful. This indicates that accessibility and reliability would be important logistical factors for a daycare. Thus, the daycare should probably be on campus and have flexible hours. (That is, parents do not have to enroll their children full-time, but only when helpful.)
Bowen also expressed the importance of making the daycare professional. She said that it would “definitely need to be more than student workers” and that it should instead be “run by professionals in the field.” Similarly, Chollar said that she would “want to be very selective about who is running” the daycare and who is watching her child.
However, Bowen said that this would be a “really great opportunity to collaborate with [students in] early childhood development” and education. So, the daycare could certainly involve students, provided the daycare maintains professional standards and runs as an optimal daycare.
The daycare also ought to offer a more financially feasible option. Bowen suggested that Eastern could offer a certain number of free or discounted childcare hours per semester to the professors at Eastern who have children. This would, Bowen said, “make it easier to get faculty members to accept [Eastern’s] offer over other institutions.”
This principle could apply to other faculty and staff at Eastern, too. Eastern becomes a more appealing place to work if it shows that it wants to help carry the weight of working parents.
Chollar also referenced the financial side of things and ways that Eastern could lighten the financial burden. Eastern could offer discounted daycare to students, as well.
Chollar said that a daycare option could be a “good way of supporting both low-income students and families being able to come to school and finish their degrees.” She added that, “it’s just hard… even if you’re in a stable financial condition” to be a parent and a student at the same time.
To add to it, without extra support from the institutions that they work at, women in academia with children can easily fall behind their peers in terms of the time-sensitive, high demands of the academic career trajectory. Bowen said that a daycare on campus “could support the unique weight that women carry as academics and mothers.” She noted that it is “kind of a justice issue.”
Chollar also mentioned justice. She said that it “behooves the university’s ideals of faith, reason and justice” to support families in this way. Eastern wants to live up to its ideal of justice, and to support students who might not ordinarily be able to get a degree. “If we’re going to have justice in the whole ‘city,’” said Chollar, “we need to support families.”
This same justice angle could apply to providing childcare support for professors with children. Bowen said that a daycare on campus would be “one way that Eastern could be especially accommodating to women in the academy.”
