cooperative euphoria

That's our daughter Edie in blue!

Prologue.

My creativity has returned. Or perhaps my productivity, who knows. And really that's only true at the present moment but I have to take full advantage of it when it happens. I could spend this post analyzing reasons for why this disappeared in some post-holiday haze, but instead I want to write about our neighborhood's new child care cooperative.

Background.
Last fall I began attending a Mom's group. For some reason I was never totally settled with the group, though I went to meetings for much of the fall term. I don't know if I wasn't settled because the buzz of tokenism wore off*, or if in fact this particular group was just not my scene. Might be the latter. Yet my stated goal of attending was to gain resources as a parent and meet new people. That, I did.

The meeting.
At November's meeting I met two new Moms, both with daughters around Edie's age, both neighbors across and down the street from me, both parents about my age. The meeting itself was so-so, a thorough presentation with not much time for discussion, but on the street following the session the three of us parents got to talking.

We were all new parents, all presently stayed at home (if part time), and all wanted to get back to some form of work provided we could find affordable child care. One Mom suggested a child care cooperative, where we exchange points or possibly fake money with neighbors for free babysitting. The other Mom and I thought this sounded great, and we all went home to check our Internets.

Organizing a cooperative.
Turns out there are lots of child care and babysitting co-ops across the country, which operate in various ways that work locally for that group**. The three of us became four, adding a coordinator to our local parents network***. We advertised an organizing meeting, which drew about 15 families, and just yesterday we held our kick-off event, where maybe ten different families attended beyond those at the first organizing meeting. That's perhaps 20-25 families to start. Really amazing.

Our system for babysitting exchange started out simple, got complicated, and then returned to simple again. We contact other parents in the co-op, make arrangements to sit for each other's children, and then report transactions to a secretary who manages accrued points on a spreadsheet. Once a month we all meet as a group to socialize, meet new members, perhaps troubleshoot some network issues. When we're not in person, we communicate and store our family profiles on a Google Group.

Cooperative euphoria.
This is brand new, but the idea that so many families - all practically in walking distance - are already involved is truly powerful. And the best part is that it's a good mix of both Moms and Dads. In some cases, both parents came with their children. In others, a parent came alone while the other stayed home with the child. In still others, Dad or Mom came along with a child. Not all families are dual parent, I've yet to tell much about sexuality, and not all of us are white non-Hispanic. Word of the group spread very quickly, and many of us are way excited that something like this is happening in our neighborhood.

This is all just to say that thanks to getting out there and not caring about identity (or better gender) politics, I've accidentally tapped into an entire other network of parents looking for the exact things we are. I'll still pop in at the Mom's group from time to time. That combined with this new cooperative makes for a very rich parenting community.

*I mean really, once you get over the novelty of a guy being at a Mom's group, then what? Most of my conversations ended up being with people that hadn't met me yet, starting with something like, "Oh, I've heard about you!"
**In fact, there's even an online social networking tool if you so choose.
***Who knew! About the same time I started attending the Mom's group, a meetup group started in our neighborhood, now over 140 families strong.

marc

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Source: http://feministdad.blogspot.com/2008/01/cooperative-euphoria.html
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