Minding the kids
As the rest of the city blinks itself awake, 50-year-old Ula is already at work, laying out the day's plans for the two-year-old and six-year-old girls she travels two hours each day to care for.
Ula is in a unique position: Not only is she the matriarch of her own brood, but she is also the caregiver for two youngsters whose parents must join the daily grind to make ends meet. Ula is so valuable that her employer, freelance interior designer Ewa, said she relies on her pani not only to care for the kids, but to run her household while she and her husband, the owner of a construction company, work ever-increasing hours.
Ula, who like Ewa did not want her last name used, is a pani, or a hired grandma who minds the babies for dual-income parents. In the past, choosing child-care providers was never a sticking point for new mothers who debated returning to their jobs; they could always rely on their families.
But as corporate Warsaw lures young talent from across the country with promises of top pay, flashy cars and retirement cushions, fast-track couples uproot and leave their safety nets behind. The question of who will care for the baby turns into an arduous, almost desperate search.
That's because child care options are scant. Expensive private day care centers have only a mild following, public facilities are often substandard or overcrowded, and corporations ignore the needs of working parents beyond the mandated maternity leave.
Many companies defend this position by saying of all the struggles they face to stay afloat in the market, child care ranks low on the list. Employees don't request child care benefits, employers said. They are happy just to be working. Yet with more than 5 million women age 15 to 49 in Poland's work force and nearly 2 million of those of typical child bearing age - 20 to 39 - employers may have to change their approach as the labor market develops in coming years.
For now, though, the idea of raising young children in classrooms does not appeal to many Poles. A clear majority still prefer to raise kids in their own home. This makes panis - safe, compassionate, and relatively inexpensive - a hot commodity.
"My nanny is a person with a big heart," Ewa said.
So early on families send out a signal across a network of friends, co-workers and siblings for a recommendation to hire a pani, the next best thing to a grandma. That blackmarket network - panis are usually paid in cash to avoid taxes - is vast, with tentacles extending across Poland.
While many working mothers would like to stay home, they don't necessarily have a choice. It's a struggle to stay at home and just as big a struggle to pay for day care, said Regina, a 65-year-old pani who commutes an hour daily to care for two youngsters.
The law grants mothers three months of paid maternity leave. After that a woman can stay home for three years on unpaid leave and then return to work in the same or parallel position.
But many young mothers can't afford to stay at home. Even though panis can be an expensive burden, the family still needs two incomes.
While panis bring a warmth and familiarity to kids and they help develop a daily, stable routine for little children, the cost cuts deep, those who use them said. Pay ranges anywhere from zl. 450-zl. 1,000 per month, which can be a large chunk of the family budget. Panis paid near the lower end of the range usually live with the families they work for. The others, who commute, are reimbursed for commuting costs.
Ewa said she pays Ula zl. 7 per hour, plus social security and taxes. That comes to about one-fifth of the family's monthly income, she said.
"It is a big load for our budget," she said.
The decision on whether to stay at home or hire a pani is especially difficult because Polish women see having children and having a career as mutually exclusive, according to Wanda Nowicka, executive director for the Federation for Women and Family Planning. Most women feel they should stay home because it is not worthwhile to work, she said. This is a feeling government policy supports. While women are enabled to stay at home, no policies exist to build a support system for working mothers, she added.
"The government wants them to stay home and have more babies because of the declining birth rate," she said. Estimates show the birth rate has dropped 30% since 1989.
On their own
So far, working mothers are the only ones grappling with how to care for children and have a career. Companies here have not addressed the issue, which once was only the government's domain.
Under communism the state provided child-care facilities. Today, the government provides partial support and companies may have to fill in the rest in coming years.
Jacek Kacprzak, a country manager at human resources company Antal International, predicts companies will have no choice but to offer some type of child care benefits to keep star employees.
Corporations now do not even consider child-care benefits as part of a negotiation package, Kacprzak said. "It's the ex-pats who request it, if at all," he said. "It doesn't exist in this part of the world. They (employees) don't expect something they don't know about."
So employers start with expensive cars, high salaries and pension packages to recruit candidates, he said. That will change in as few as three years when Kacprzak predicts the market will be rich with talent, and those employees will have the leverage to demand new perks. "Nothing is so big as losing a candidate and hiring another one," he said. "A good employee is worth anything."
For now, only two businesses in Poland offered on-site day care facilities in 1996, according to the latest figures available from the Central Statistical Office (GUS); one was in Katowice, the other in Plock. No company offers child care subsidies.
Even unions are powerless in easing the child care burden on working families, said Anna Wolanska, chief of the international department at NSZZ Solidarnosc.
"The union is pro-family, but in the future that will develop," she said. "Not now." Workers do not know they can ask for benefits like that, she added.
And what isn't asked for, isn't offered.
"They (employees) are not really asking, so employers are not really giving it out," said Matthew Tebeau, vice president of SMG/KRC, a Warsaw-based human resources company. "Employers are looking for driven, ambitious employees. The Polish employers tend to think that women with young children are not ambitious employees."
While these companies are not hostile to women, he said, the environment does not necessarily reflect the needs of working women.
And gender does not play a role in hiring women and it plays no role in designing benefits packages, said Scott Mackie, general director of General Motors Poland. "Poland is stereotypical, perhaps because of the strict labor code, perhaps because that's the way it is," he said. The labor code limits the type of work women can do in industry, he explained. "If you see a woman working, it tends to be in administration, in the office," Mackie added.
GM's office in Warsaw might seem disproportionately female, its plant in Gliwice disproportionately male, he said. But that does not explain the situation of child care in the work force, Mackie said, emphasizing the point most employers make: Child care, while it circulates with a host of other benefits issues, is just not a major request for employees here yet. Most of his employees with children have a grandmother at home to care for the family, he said.
Mackie also said he is not sure if the issue will gain in popularity. "It depends on how things go," he said. "We'll see what it takes to be competitive as an employer."
PepsiCo does not offer any benefits beyond state-regulated maternity leave, said Brad Shaw, a spokesman in New York for the soft drink company. There are no on-site day care centers for Pepsi in Poland, and the company does not offer child care subsidies, he said. However, there are no benefits like that in the United States, either, he said. But Pepsi will negotiate flex-time schedules with employees in the United States by request, although company policy does not require it.
Organized care
When she was raising her four kids, Regina said, she had no choice but to place them in a state-run facility. "Everyone had to work," she said. "We had no choice."
The pani system was nearly nonexistent before 1989 because the state offered more nurseries and kindergartens, she said. On the other hand, parents had no problem taking days off work when their kids were sick, she said, eliminating the need to hire baby sitters.
Yet Regina said she loathed using those state-run facilities. There were too many kids for the number of available teachers, the care the teachers gave was bad, and in those overcrowded conditions, the kids were always sick, she said. If she had to choose today, she said, she would hire a pani.
Parents who do choose to send their kids to day care have three options: private, public and semi-private facilities. Each center caters to two age groups - nurseries care for babies and toddlers, and kindergartens serve kids from three to six years old. Older kids go to day rooms, a type of after-school club, rather than day care.
Public kindergartens are paid for by the gmina, with only nominal fees paid by parents for lunch or extra classes. Public centers are crowded, often holding as many as 100 kids at one time, but they are fairly cheap at about zl. 160 per month.
However, there are no child-to-teacher ratios and no license other than a standard operating license is required. Barbara Przygodzka, manager of gmina-funded Przedszkole #108, runs her kindergarten from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Parents can drop their kids off any time, paying only zl. 160 each month to cover the children's meals.
Przygodzka's center is packed; she has 107 children split among several rooms enrolled this year. Her teachers, who earn zl. 5 an hour, lead the crowd through optional English, gymnastics or art classes, as well as lead the daily play-time routine.
The overcrowded conditions at the public schools are typical, with waiting lists often years long. Ewa, for instance, said she waited one year before she transferred her oldest child to the gmina-funded school. Her daughter, she said, had to attend a private school for a full year before she was admitted to the public school.
Private day care centers are rarely affordable. A private facility can average zl. 500 per month, or roughly one-third of an average monthly salary. However, many believe the care they provide is outstanding, said Ewa Sobczynska, an assistant to the director at Private Kindergarten in Warsaw. That center accepts a maximum of 14 kids, a standard that reflects the U.S. policy of a 1:16 child-to-teacher ratio. She aims to give them maximum personal attention, she said. All seven of the kids currently enrolled participate in gymnastics, English, and a range of other classes for zl. 520 a month.
Semi-private facilities, the newest concept, are growing in popularity. These new schools, open since 1991, integrate disabled kids with mainstream kids. Subsidized in part by the gmina, parents pay about zl. 300 per month to expose their children to a new range of ideas and people. For an extra fee, the kids can take English or music lessons, or take part in speech therapy or private counseling sessions.
Nanny agencies, an option growing in popularity among mothers, are also sprouting up. But so far they haven't been able to beat the pani system.
Regina Kruszewska, owner of Agencja Niania, said she hires only women aged 40 to 55 because at least 75% of her clients request that age. Her nannies, who earn zl. 5 per hour, must past a rigorous screening process that includes an interview with a psychologist. But her main requirement, one she won't budge on, is that the nanny has a warm personality and bonds instantly with children.
Kruszewska said although her company served 100 clients last year, her business has declined. New nanny agencies are popping up and she is not optimistic business will grow anytime soon, she said.
Because no agency regulates these businesses, the only gauge they have to monitor their competition is the newspaper. The number of daily ads for nanny agencies has increased from three a few years ago to 10 or more, although only a fraction are run legally, said Anna Loginska, an assistant in the human resources department at Julitex, one of the biggest agencies in Warsaw.
The three-year-old company has experienced a boom in growth. "Our company cannot complain about a lack of clients," she said. "The interest in hiring nannies is increasing."
Not only do more women want nannies, but the amount of time they hire them - say from two hours per week to several hours each day - also is on the rise. Loginska could not comment on the number of Julitex clients, but she said the agency has a database of roughly 5,000 nannies to draw from.
Anna Halter, owner of Agencja Smyk, is not so optimistic. She said her company logs about 50 inquiries a day for her nanny services, mainly from women at the end of maternity leave or from women in white-collar jobs.
Yet Halter said she has seen no increase in business the last several years.
"There are just not a lot of clients," she said.
But for the moment there are a lot of panis.
Ula is in a unique position: Not only is she the matriarch of her own brood, but she is also the caregiver for two youngsters whose parents must join the daily grind to make ends meet. Ula is so valuable that her employer, freelance interior designer Ewa, said she relies on her pani not only to care for the kids, but to run her household while she and her husband, the owner of a construction company, work ever-increasing hours.
Ula, who like Ewa did not want her last name used, is a pani, or a hired grandma who minds the babies for dual-income parents. In the past, choosing child-care providers was never a sticking point for new mothers who debated returning to their jobs; they could always rely on their families.
But as corporate Warsaw lures young talent from across the country with promises of top pay, flashy cars and retirement cushions, fast-track couples uproot and leave their safety nets behind. The question of who will care for the baby turns into an arduous, almost desperate search.
That's because child care options are scant. Expensive private day care centers have only a mild following, public facilities are often substandard or overcrowded, and corporations ignore the needs of working parents beyond the mandated maternity leave.
Many companies defend this position by saying of all the struggles they face to stay afloat in the market, child care ranks low on the list. Employees don't request child care benefits, employers said. They are happy just to be working. Yet with more than 5 million women age 15 to 49 in Poland's work force and nearly 2 million of those of typical child bearing age - 20 to 39 - employers may have to change their approach as the labor market develops in coming years.
For now, though, the idea of raising young children in classrooms does not appeal to many Poles. A clear majority still prefer to raise kids in their own home. This makes panis - safe, compassionate, and relatively inexpensive - a hot commodity.
"My nanny is a person with a big heart," Ewa said.
So early on families send out a signal across a network of friends, co-workers and siblings for a recommendation to hire a pani, the next best thing to a grandma. That blackmarket network - panis are usually paid in cash to avoid taxes - is vast, with tentacles extending across Poland.
While many working mothers would like to stay home, they don't necessarily have a choice. It's a struggle to stay at home and just as big a struggle to pay for day care, said Regina, a 65-year-old pani who commutes an hour daily to care for two youngsters.
The law grants mothers three months of paid maternity leave. After that a woman can stay home for three years on unpaid leave and then return to work in the same or parallel position.
But many young mothers can't afford to stay at home. Even though panis can be an expensive burden, the family still needs two incomes.
While panis bring a warmth and familiarity to kids and they help develop a daily, stable routine for little children, the cost cuts deep, those who use them said. Pay ranges anywhere from zl. 450-zl. 1,000 per month, which can be a large chunk of the family budget. Panis paid near the lower end of the range usually live with the families they work for. The others, who commute, are reimbursed for commuting costs.
Ewa said she pays Ula zl. 7 per hour, plus social security and taxes. That comes to about one-fifth of the family's monthly income, she said.
"It is a big load for our budget," she said.
The decision on whether to stay at home or hire a pani is especially difficult because Polish women see having children and having a career as mutually exclusive, according to Wanda Nowicka, executive director for the Federation for Women and Family Planning. Most women feel they should stay home because it is not worthwhile to work, she said. This is a feeling government policy supports. While women are enabled to stay at home, no policies exist to build a support system for working mothers, she added.
"The government wants them to stay home and have more babies because of the declining birth rate," she said. Estimates show the birth rate has dropped 30% since 1989.
On their own
So far, working mothers are the only ones grappling with how to care for children and have a career. Companies here have not addressed the issue, which once was only the government's domain.
Under communism the state provided child-care facilities. Today, the government provides partial support and companies may have to fill in the rest in coming years.
Jacek Kacprzak, a country manager at human resources company Antal International, predicts companies will have no choice but to offer some type of child care benefits to keep star employees.
Corporations now do not even consider child-care benefits as part of a negotiation package, Kacprzak said. "It's the ex-pats who request it, if at all," he said. "It doesn't exist in this part of the world. They (employees) don't expect something they don't know about."
So employers start with expensive cars, high salaries and pension packages to recruit candidates, he said. That will change in as few as three years when Kacprzak predicts the market will be rich with talent, and those employees will have the leverage to demand new perks. "Nothing is so big as losing a candidate and hiring another one," he said. "A good employee is worth anything."
For now, only two businesses in Poland offered on-site day care facilities in 1996, according to the latest figures available from the Central Statistical Office (GUS); one was in Katowice, the other in Plock. No company offers child care subsidies.
Even unions are powerless in easing the child care burden on working families, said Anna Wolanska, chief of the international department at NSZZ Solidarnosc.
"The union is pro-family, but in the future that will develop," she said. "Not now." Workers do not know they can ask for benefits like that, she added.
And what isn't asked for, isn't offered.
"They (employees) are not really asking, so employers are not really giving it out," said Matthew Tebeau, vice president of SMG/KRC, a Warsaw-based human resources company. "Employers are looking for driven, ambitious employees. The Polish employers tend to think that women with young children are not ambitious employees."
While these companies are not hostile to women, he said, the environment does not necessarily reflect the needs of working women.
And gender does not play a role in hiring women and it plays no role in designing benefits packages, said Scott Mackie, general director of General Motors Poland. "Poland is stereotypical, perhaps because of the strict labor code, perhaps because that's the way it is," he said. The labor code limits the type of work women can do in industry, he explained. "If you see a woman working, it tends to be in administration, in the office," Mackie added.
GM's office in Warsaw might seem disproportionately female, its plant in Gliwice disproportionately male, he said. But that does not explain the situation of child care in the work force, Mackie said, emphasizing the point most employers make: Child care, while it circulates with a host of other benefits issues, is just not a major request for employees here yet. Most of his employees with children have a grandmother at home to care for the family, he said.
Mackie also said he is not sure if the issue will gain in popularity. "It depends on how things go," he said. "We'll see what it takes to be competitive as an employer."
PepsiCo does not offer any benefits beyond state-regulated maternity leave, said Brad Shaw, a spokesman in New York for the soft drink company. There are no on-site day care centers for Pepsi in Poland, and the company does not offer child care subsidies, he said. However, there are no benefits like that in the United States, either, he said. But Pepsi will negotiate flex-time schedules with employees in the United States by request, although company policy does not require it.
Organized care
When she was raising her four kids, Regina said, she had no choice but to place them in a state-run facility. "Everyone had to work," she said. "We had no choice."
The pani system was nearly nonexistent before 1989 because the state offered more nurseries and kindergartens, she said. On the other hand, parents had no problem taking days off work when their kids were sick, she said, eliminating the need to hire baby sitters.
Yet Regina said she loathed using those state-run facilities. There were too many kids for the number of available teachers, the care the teachers gave was bad, and in those overcrowded conditions, the kids were always sick, she said. If she had to choose today, she said, she would hire a pani.
Parents who do choose to send their kids to day care have three options: private, public and semi-private facilities. Each center caters to two age groups - nurseries care for babies and toddlers, and kindergartens serve kids from three to six years old. Older kids go to day rooms, a type of after-school club, rather than day care.
Public kindergartens are paid for by the gmina, with only nominal fees paid by parents for lunch or extra classes. Public centers are crowded, often holding as many as 100 kids at one time, but they are fairly cheap at about zl. 160 per month.
However, there are no child-to-teacher ratios and no license other than a standard operating license is required. Barbara Przygodzka, manager of gmina-funded Przedszkole #108, runs her kindergarten from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Parents can drop their kids off any time, paying only zl. 160 each month to cover the children's meals.
Przygodzka's center is packed; she has 107 children split among several rooms enrolled this year. Her teachers, who earn zl. 5 an hour, lead the crowd through optional English, gymnastics or art classes, as well as lead the daily play-time routine.
The overcrowded conditions at the public schools are typical, with waiting lists often years long. Ewa, for instance, said she waited one year before she transferred her oldest child to the gmina-funded school. Her daughter, she said, had to attend a private school for a full year before she was admitted to the public school.
Private day care centers are rarely affordable. A private facility can average zl. 500 per month, or roughly one-third of an average monthly salary. However, many believe the care they provide is outstanding, said Ewa Sobczynska, an assistant to the director at Private Kindergarten in Warsaw. That center accepts a maximum of 14 kids, a standard that reflects the U.S. policy of a 1:16 child-to-teacher ratio. She aims to give them maximum personal attention, she said. All seven of the kids currently enrolled participate in gymnastics, English, and a range of other classes for zl. 520 a month.
Semi-private facilities, the newest concept, are growing in popularity. These new schools, open since 1991, integrate disabled kids with mainstream kids. Subsidized in part by the gmina, parents pay about zl. 300 per month to expose their children to a new range of ideas and people. For an extra fee, the kids can take English or music lessons, or take part in speech therapy or private counseling sessions.
Nanny agencies, an option growing in popularity among mothers, are also sprouting up. But so far they haven't been able to beat the pani system.
Regina Kruszewska, owner of Agencja Niania, said she hires only women aged 40 to 55 because at least 75% of her clients request that age. Her nannies, who earn zl. 5 per hour, must past a rigorous screening process that includes an interview with a psychologist. But her main requirement, one she won't budge on, is that the nanny has a warm personality and bonds instantly with children.
Kruszewska said although her company served 100 clients last year, her business has declined. New nanny agencies are popping up and she is not optimistic business will grow anytime soon, she said.
Because no agency regulates these businesses, the only gauge they have to monitor their competition is the newspaper. The number of daily ads for nanny agencies has increased from three a few years ago to 10 or more, although only a fraction are run legally, said Anna Loginska, an assistant in the human resources department at Julitex, one of the biggest agencies in Warsaw.
The three-year-old company has experienced a boom in growth. "Our company cannot complain about a lack of clients," she said. "The interest in hiring nannies is increasing."
Not only do more women want nannies, but the amount of time they hire them - say from two hours per week to several hours each day - also is on the rise. Loginska could not comment on the number of Julitex clients, but she said the agency has a database of roughly 5,000 nannies to draw from.
Anna Halter, owner of Agencja Smyk, is not so optimistic. She said her company logs about 50 inquiries a day for her nanny services, mainly from women at the end of maternity leave or from women in white-collar jobs.
Yet Halter said she has seen no increase in business the last several years.
"There are just not a lot of clients," she said.
But for the moment there are a lot of panis.
