Our day-care centers resemble educational rubble landscapes. Tens of thousands of facilities, especially in western Germany, recently had to send children home, merge groups or close the houses. Because there is no staff. This was the result of the latest inventory reports from the state ministries for families.
A survey by the German Kita Leader Congress (DKLK) had previously revealed catastrophic results, which should raise a worrying question for many parents: Is it really a sign of parental care to bring your child to the daycare? Has the experiment to nationalize what was once family-based child care possibly failed?
The second question is difficult to answer definitively. But you have to reply to the first one at the moment: In many cases it is not an expression of care to leave your child in the daycare center – as the following figures suggest: According to a DKLK survey, in around 10,000 of around 59,000 daycare centers nationwide in 2022, more than 50 percent of the Working days with less staff than allowed. In addition, the quality-assuring EU requirements for the maximum number of children per caregiver are rarely met. In around 70 percent of German day-care centers, the actual staff-child ratio is worse than scientifically recommended. It’s no wonder that almost 90 percent of all day-care center managers complain about declining pedagogical quality – to the detriment of small children with all their need for attachment.
There are not enough educators, quality and money – that characterizes the daycare center, which has been proclaimed fanfare-like by the federal and state governments since its expansion in 2008. Of course, this judgment isn’t made from the perspective of, say, a single parent with a severe drinking problem. In such cases, an unstable day care center should still have a stabilizing effect. But there are also well-earning dual-income parents without addiction problems who could invest even more time and energy in their children.
But not only qualitatively, also quantitatively, politics never fulfilled what the population demanded of them. According to the Bertelsmann Foundation, 383,600 additional places in childcare would have to be created in Germany in order to make an offer available to all interested parents. Most of them are missing in West Germany. But there, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia, where, according to the Bertelsmann study, 100,000 places alone are needed, the expansion is proceeding extremely slowly. For the coming year, only an increase of 8822 places is planned in NRW. “At this snail’s pace, it would take 18 years for all U-3 children who need it to be cared for,” complains SPD family politician Dennis Maelzer.
The federal and state governments are pumping more money into care from year to year. But these sums are largely used up by the ever-increasing demand for childcare places. The immensely high price of extra-familial childcare with decent quality is becoming ever clearer. Nationwide, spending in 2022 rose to 41.6 billion euros. An estimated additional four billion would have to be raised for the missing places. For North Rhine-Westphalia, SPD expert Maelzer has calculated that around another billion euros would be needed in the most populous federal state alone. But that would only mean more places, not more quality of care. It wouldn’t be any better for them than it is today. So even more educators would have to be lured with higher salaries.
You can complain like the FDP family politician Marcel Hafke that there is “catastrophic crisis management” in the countries. Those in government should also be aware that “the economic costs would be significantly higher” “if parents did not get a place or the care had to be restricted,” as Maelzer says.
That’s right. Only: Without exception, all governments and opposition parties of all stripes have promised since 2008 to raise the quality of care and the number of places to a good level – none of them kept it. The goal of a high-quality day care center was always too expensive for them. And behind closed doors, several family ministers have already admitted in an interview with WELT that the high quality standards of science are unfinanceable anyway. The day-care center organized by the state has not proven to be really trustworthy. The promise to pave the way to the labor market for mothers in particular and to give their children good support – they were deceptive. The horrible Corona years with their day care center closures, in which parents had to look after children and work at the same time, made this disappointing finding particularly clear.
Should the demand for the model “Kita-fürs-Kind-Jobs-für- den Eltern” drop one day, no politician would have the right to complain. Because the question arises: How long will fathers and mothers swallow all this and continue to put their child in care that is always shaped by political considerations of expediency and budget plans, but not by parental love? Who knows, maybe some parents (at least those who could afford it) will soon come to a realization that is currently unfashionable: Less daycare means more quality of life for my child.
