Family time on rebound

One of the many surprising discoveries this week from our Choosing Childcare series is attendance rates. Ministry of Education data shows that early childhood attendance rates on Tuesday, the highest day of the week, is still tracking at only 60 per cent this month. Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood Council chief executive Kathy Wolfe put it simply when she said “demand is down”.

Wolfe also says it’s clear children are spending less time at centres than before the Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown. She says 95 per cent of children who attended childcare before the lockdown are now back, but many have come back for fewer hours because parents are working from home or have lost their jobs.

Another possible factor, not cited, may be that parents, having been forced to spend more time with their children during lockdown, found it a positive experience and have worked out ways to increase the contact.

A University of Otago study from last year found New Zealand has experienced a growth in the use of childcare as a weekday living environment for children under 5 years old in recent decades, with an increasing proportion of children attending, and for longer hours.

It may be that parents, having been forced to spend more time with their children during lockdown, found it a positive experience and have worked out ways to increase the contact.

As our series showed, there are a multitude of options for parents wanting or needing to mind the young ones during the day.

Could it be one of the many curiously positive outcomes of the Covid-19 pandemic is families reassessing their time together and limiting childcare to when it is most needed?

Time, as they say, will tell.