Where to Start

Trusted recommendations are most parents’ starting point for finding the right childcare – no matter which type.

One of the questions that many grapple with is whether to find a facility that’s convenient to home or convenient to the office (assuming home and work aren’t close enough that it can be both).  It’s a polarizing question: people come down pretty equally on both sides.  Kay Moffett, a senior manager at Amplify, an ed-tech company, likes picking her daughter up when she’s on her way home: “I like to keep work and home quite separate,” she told me.  A daycare near home is also a necessity for many parents who sometimes work from home or travel frequently. 

Another consideration: how long your commute is.  Some parents are adamant that they don’t want their child to spend 30 or 45 minutes in the car every morning and evening.  Others need to have their child near their office explicitly because of that commute: if daycare closes at 5:30pm, and you need to be in your office until after 5pm, you can’t afford a 20 minute drive to pick up your kid. 

And for parents who want to visit during the day or breastfeed, nearby the office is a necessity.  One mom told me that for the first few months after returning to work, she’d walk across the street to her daughter’s daycare every day at lunch to nurse her.  “It was wonderful,” she said.