P A R T  2

By Andrew Garber
Staff Writer

At right: Karen Doner, left, who teaches at the University of New England, holds her baby, Allison, during a visit with Debbie Flanagan, owner of A Child's Place, a day-care facility in Portland where Doner hoped her infant could be placed. "When I got pregnant, I had no clue it would be this hard," Doner said of her search for a quality day-care provider.
Staff photo John Ewing

Karen Doner sits in the middle of a busy daycare center, gently rocking her 6-week-old baby. Her dark hair covers the child's face as she bends close, whispering softly, kissing her daughter's translucent skin.

Doner is visiting the center to see if she'll feel comfortable leaving her daughter there several days a week while she works. It's the fifth day-care center she has visited. She is worried about leaving her daughter at any facility.

''It's one of those times where I wish I had a lot of money and could spend five years with my daughter,'' Doner says. ''It's difficult for a woman, or a man, to be put in a position of either putting food on the table or taking care of their children.''

Yet that's Doner's situation. She teaches education at the University of New England and cannot afford to quit work and stay home. Her situation is the norm nowadays.

The majority of women with preschool children work. As a result, day care centers have become part of the fabric of American life. And caring for children of working parents has become a substantial industry.

In Maine, the number of day-care providers has doubled in the past decade to about 3,200 state-regulated homes and centers that care for 50,000 children. For individual families, day care is often both a major emotional burden and a significant financial expense - full-time care can cost $650 a month.

Parents are largely on their own in trying to find child care that is affordable and safe.

An examination of child care by the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram found that searching for such care is a tough, nerve-wracking job for many parents.

Although most day-care operations are safe, experts say that nationally an estimated 12 percent are so poorly run that they pose a health and safety risk to children.

By early March, Karen Doner had called 20 day-care providers and dropped in on those that sounded promising. Only one seemed like a good prospect, and Doner fervently hoped the owner would call with good news.

Infant care - especially high-quality care - is hard to find, she learned.

''I've pretty much been told by day-care directors that it's impossible to find infant care in Maine,'' Doner says. ''When I got pregnant, I had no clue it would be this hard.

''It is very discouraging. I honestly don't know what people do. Do people save spaces in day cares for children who are unborn? What do they do?''

DAY-CARE DEMAND SKYROCKETS

It's a question more people are asking as the number of mothers entering the work force continues to grow.

Shortly after World War II, only 12 percent of mothers with children under age 6 were working. But by 1995, more than 60 percent of mothers with preschoolers were working.

A recent survey of 1,000 mothers by the Whirlpool Foundation found that 74 percent of the working moms felt it was ''unlikely'' they would stop working to take care of the family.

To work, many must place their children in a day-care facility. It isn't cheap. The average cost of full-time care in Cumberland County is $88 a week for one child.

A family earning $35,000 annually - the average household income in Cumberland County - could easily spend 25 percent of its gross income on child care for two children.

And cost isn't the only hurdle.

The number of day-care providers in Maine has almost doubled in just 10 years, from 1,660 in 1988 to about 3,200 today. But even with the increase in new day-care homes and centers, many parents still have a hard time finding child care.

In Cumberland County, for example, an estimated 10,400 children need outside child care, but there are only 8,800 slots available in day-care homes and centers, according to Child Care Connections, a day-care referral agency in Portland.

It's common for parents to spend six months to a year on waiting lists to get a child into a day-care facility.

Infant care is the most difficult to find. Only about 6 percent of all slots at centers in Cumberland County are set aside for infant care, according to Child Care Connections.

Infant care is scarce, in part, because state law limits the number of very young children that day-care providers can take in. One adult cannot care for more than four infants. The state requires low ratios for safety reasons: Infants demand a lot of care and attention.

By comparison, state law allows one adult to care for up to eight toddlers. The higher ratio for older children creates a financial incentive for day-care providers to offer more openings for that age group.

Doner says she could probably find a spot for her child fairly quickly if she were willing to settle for substandard care.

''There are certain things you are not willing to take a chance with and your child is one of them,'' she says. ''The last thing you want to do is send your child to a day care that is not acceptable to you, just because it's the only thing available.''

COST: 'IT'S LIKE TWO CAR PAYMENTS'

As Doner went from day-care center to day-care center, she was surprised that they generally charge the same amount of money, regardless of the quality of care offered.

One center she visited was in the basement of a church. ''It was kind of dark and dingy and not the kind of environment I'd like my child in.''

And at a home she visited, the day-care provider said that when infants slept, she went outside with older children and took along an electronic monitor.

''I don't think it's too much to expect that the child will be monitored more closely than with a baby monitor,'' she says.

Even that quality of care comes at a high price. Infant care in Cumberland County averages around $540 a month and can cost up to $650 a month.

''It's like two car payments,'' Doner says. ''It's a lot more than we expected it to be. At this point we're willing to pay whatever it takes to get her into a good situation, but we're still having difficulty.''

A 1995 national study done by researchers at Yale and three other universities found the same pattern Doner ran into. Researchers looked at 400 day-care centers in four states and found ''little difference in fees between poor-quality and high-quality centers.''

The study found that parents often cannot distinguish good care from poor care. That means centers can get away with providing poor care, but charge as much as those providing much higher quality care, according to the study.

The shortage of quality care made Doner worry about how it could affect her judgment as the pressure built to find child care for her daughter.

''It's sort of like when you go to buy a car and you have this big long wish list and you get a little more flexible about what you want when you see what is really out there,'' she says.

''Then you start wondering if you are lowering your standards for good reasons, or bad reasons.''

TEMPORARY FIX, THEN A PERFECT MATCH

All the pressure made a tough situation worse for Doner.

She had a six-week maternity leave from the University of New England that ran out in March. Doner couldn't afford to take unpaid leave.

As a temporary solution, Doner was able to hire a student from one of her classes to watch her baby while she worked. That gave her until fall to find child care.

Still, she worried about finding the type of care she wanted.''I'm in a complete panic about what I'm going to do.''

''We kind of thought we had a lot of time to play with,'' says Doner, who gave birth to her daughter in December. ''We kind of feel now like we waited too long.''

Then, in early April, Doner got the call she'd been hoping for.

The one infant day-care provider she visited and liked could take her daughter for four days a week.

It was a perfect match, and a tremendous relief for Doner who said the day-care center was her first choice. ''We don't feel like we settled,'' she says.

Still, Doner wishes that somehow things could turn out differently.

''Being with Allison full-time was so enjoyable,'' she says. ''I thought that by the third week (at home) I'd be crawling the walls ready to go back to work. But by the time the third week came, it hit me that being at home was pretty enjoyable.

''Work is all I've had before,'' she says. ''It has always been the highest priority. Now she's an even higher priority.''