The initiative to extend state daycare hours to eight in the evening looks like long-awaited relief for working parents. As a lawyer and a mother, I see it as an attempt to treat the symptom while ignoring the disease.
Formalism versus reality
Most municipal daycare centres are officially open until 7 pm. In practice, however, the system has settled into an unspoken arrangement: parents are pressured to collect children by 4:30 or 5. Arriving at the legal time of 6 pm turns a parent into a pariah and a child into a hostage to disapproving looks from the staff.
The problem is not the opening hours. It is critical underfunding and a staff shortage. You can extend the schedule until midnight — but who will work, when many centres do not even have a second carer to cover a shift?
A burnt-out carer instead of an educator
The consequence of the staffing crisis and low wages is a carer who sits with their phone, counting down to the end of the shift. When someone works double shifts for poverty-level pay, professional engagement gives way to indifference. Children are left to their own devices. This is not childcare — it is a storage facility.
No schedule extension will make a burnt-out person fall back in love with their work.
Private versus municipal daycare: two different worlds
The private sector: working until 8 pm, a separate evening meal for children who stay late, flexible drop-off. This is a market where the client is respected.
The municipal sector: a brand-new centre in a good neighbourhood that turned out to be a survival challenge. Working until 7 pm was impossible because there was no second carer. A 4:30 collection deadline is a sentence for any parent with a 9-to-6 working day who has no car and no backup.
And in the end, the “free” daycare — with its endless shopping lists and requests to come and wash the windows yourself — costs only marginally less than the private option. But we pay not only in money: we pay in daily humiliation.
The real issue: underfunding, not extended hours
While the profession of early years educator remains unattractive because of low pay for gruelling work, no extension of hours will change anything. What is needed is not “8 pm” on a schedule — it is a shift in philosophy: from a system built on suppression and staff turnover to one built on respect for people’s rights.
Without adequate public funding, any top-down initiative will break against the closed group-room door at half past four.