Child Care Today

I'm just going to come right out and say I'm not going to do Penelope Leach's new book, Child Care Today: Getting It Right for Everyone, justice.

Child care is one of my political pet projects. I believe every parent should have access to quality child care if America wants to compete on a global level with its own workforce. The financial and mental burden placed on parents to locate and finance child care good enough to feel comfortable leaving kids and going to work is insane. It's the most difficult thing I've ever dealt with, and I have the means to afford quality care. I don't work weird hours or swing shifts. I have a vehicle that I can use to drive to my child care provider's location. I'm one of the lucky ones -- and I still think it's horrible and it sucks and I've never been more terrified than when my daughter was in what I considered to be a subpar facility as a baby because there were no other options.

I didn't make it through Leach's incredibly well researched book. It was much more academic than I expected it to be, but that's fine -- it's an amazing resource and one that I intend to go to when writing on this subject in the future. Leach digs through crazy volumes of research in the U.K. and the U.S. and talks about child care on a global level -- giving me insight into how other countries handle child care and how we might improve things in our own country.

So, I apologize to you, Ms. Leach -- you really killed it with this book, and I did not have the mental energy to get through it, but I'm very happy to own it and intend to use it as a resource to make me smarter in the future.