Parents in Oklahoma City who work atypical hours seek nontraditional child care

April 10--Landon Gibson's shift at the Colcord Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City doesn't end until 11 p.m., so a day care center that closes in the early evening is of little use for the single father of an 18-month-old.

"I'm a single dad and I don't have any family down here," Gibson said. "Without having a day care center open at night, I would just have to take any job I could get."

Gibson's daughter, Nyriah, spends her late afternoons and early evenings at the Kinder Castle Children's Center in Midwest City, which is open 24 hours a day (except for Sundays).

The handful of day care centers in the Oklahoma City area that offer extended hours and evening care have become a vital resource for a growing segment of the city's working-class community where a traditional 9-to-5 schedule has little meaning.

Nightlife in OKC

Oklahoma City isn't necessarily considered a "24-hour city" when it comes to nightlife and entertainment, but has a growing round-the-clock economy with an increasing segment of its working class employed in hospitality, food service and transportation sectors that mandate nontraditional work hours, according to local labor statistics.

As manufacturing employment rates have declined in recent years, retail has become a growing segment of the workforce and is the largest employment sector in Oklahoma, according to the National Retail Federation.

"The retail industry has changed," said Kathy Cronemiller, who runs two 24-hour child care centers in the Oklahoma City area, including Kinder Castle. "It used to be stores were open from like 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but now malls and places like Target open at 8 a.m. and are closing at 10 p.m. We have more and more workers who are making choices to take those jobs.

"I'm feeding just as many (children) for supper as I am for lunch and I can't take any more children."

Most day care centers still maintain traditional hours of operation even as over 40 percent of America's workforce is on shift during nontraditional hours, according to an analysis of labor statistics by the University of Maryland.

"I think that it's picked up a lot in the last few years," Kinder Castle program director Vicki Duggan said about the demand for extended-hour day care. "In the past, those jobs (with nontraditional hours) use to be reserved for people who didn't have children, but now people are taking just whatever job they can get. They have to take those nontraditional jobs when they come."

Nakia Ayer drops her daughter off at Kinder Castle before her 4:30 a.m. shift begins at a Bethany restaurant where she is the breakfast manager.

"It's so tough on her -- getting her up that early," Ayer said about her daughter Tenley. "But it works."

Nothing new

The need for nontraditional child care hours isn't a new concept as Kinder Castle has operated its two 24 hour centers for over 25 years. There was steady demand in the early 1980s when the General Motors auto assembly plant employed hundreds of workers that kept the assembly line running at night, Duggan said.

The GM plant eventually closed in 2005 after years of layoffs, but today's fastest growing working-class jobs are often found in nursing homes, health care facilities and the hospitality sector where evening shifts are common.

"It's not just that a parent works at night," Duggan said. "They may work in an office the first part of the day with traditional hours, but they need that second income to help make ends meet. They are picking up those hours, even in retail, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., so that's when extended-hour centers really come to be important for them."

Gibson said parents like him have to choose between pay and a normal schedule.

"You can settle for a job that gets you better hours but pays you less, or you can take the one with the most money but difficult hours," Gibbons said. "(Working nights is) still difficult but you really don't have a choice."

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