KEY POINTS:
A friend rang me last week to ask a favour. She's a working mum with a gorgeous toddler and, although her childcare arrangements are usually impeccable, she was in a bind. Would I look after the little one for a couple of hours next Friday, she asked?
I
would have loved to. The child is a delight and I'm at that awkward stage of life where my hormones are in full cry. Walking past babywear shops sends me into floods of tears as I realise I have to make the choice between one last desperate late-life baby or spend the next decade waiting for grandchildren.
Babysitting my friends' children is a safe way of assuaging my yearning for babies. But I so seldom can. I'm a hopeless friend. I was working that day - a long-standing engagement I simply couldn't get out of - so I said no. Again.
I remember what it was like trying to find people you trust to mind the baby for an hour or two while you attend meetings, or go to the doctor, or even get your hair done.
It doesn't seem a lot to ask - a couple of hours in the middle of a day to keep an eye on a little one. Yet in this increasingly atomised society, where families live miles from one another - sometimes, as in my friend's case, in other countries - and when most people work six or seven days a week, we're forced to rely on professionals rather than the people who love our children the most.
It's mad. I have resolved things will change next year and I will make myself more available for my friends, rather than strangers.
But in the meantime, I take umbrage at the Ministry of Education taking such a hard line with gym creches. I know that ministry policy requires facilities looking after three or more children to be licensed, this is nothing new.
Indeed, some gyms, like Les Mills in Auckland, took it on themselves years ago to become licensed, employ trained and registered childcare workers and endure the ERO reviews and the fundraising involved in keeping the creche going.
And good on them for taking the initiative to do so. But should they have to? Where's the harm in having a couple of kindly women, with years of experience in raising kids, helping with crayons or jigsaws, or reading stories while the mums (or dads) pound away on the Stairmaster?
In most cases, parents are quite literally seconds away from their children and it is unlikely a child's development will come to a shuddering halt if there isn't an educational plan in place for the wee thing when it tags along to the gym with mum for a couple of hours a week.
It's all very well and good for the ministry to offer to help gym operators through the licensing process so they can continue to provide a child-minding service for their clients - as the team at Les Mills will tell you, it's a huge drain on resources.
They don't make money from the creche and spend a great deal of time flogging T-shirts and calendars to try to offset some of the loss.
Some of the smaller gyms would find it impossible to survive if they were forced to provide an early childhood education centre, rather than the childminding service they offer at present.
If I was sending my child to an education centre, I would expect a fully qualified and highly trained teacher to provide a rich learning experience for my child.
I would expect the person and the centre to be monitored, and I would be willing to pay through the nose to help fund the centre.
But if I wanted to pop into the gym for an hour, all I ask is that the person minding my child is kind, has no dodgy convictions, and has checked the space for sharp objects. The same level of care I'd expect from a friend.
Perhaps there could be some sort of system in which the ministry can award three different levels of certification - bronze, silver and gold.
Bronze would be the minimum standard of care required for a drop-in child minding facility, gold the sort of super-duper, well-organised, bells-and-whistles type of early childhood education centre.
I'm sure the ministry only has the welfare of children at heart but enforcing rigid regulations that will inevitably mean the closure of some gym creches will surely result in mothers and children being worse off.
