Editors Note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service, under the headline “These Military Moms Turned Their Homes Into Day Cares. Then DOD’s Inspectors Came Knocking.” Subscribe to their newsletter.
Julia Bardsley felt a growing dread as she toured a day care just outside the gates of Fort Gordon, Georgia, with the nine-month-old son she had never even left with a babysitter on her mind.
Three infants cried from their cribs. One baby on the floor clutched a rattle, the only toy Bardsley could see in the room. Another had pulled herself up to a cabinet and was peeling off the laminate. In the corner, a television was tuned to Judge Judy.
Bardsley didn’t feel she had much of a choice when it came to child care; she was days away from starting her dream job, and wait lists for the child development center on post were two years long. But this was not the answer for her son, Carter. No way was a celebrity judge going to raise her child.
Instead, she shocked her Army specialist husband — and herself — by ditching her career in retail management and turning her home into a child care center for military families.
At bases around the country, military leaders are leaning on spouses like Bardsley to open their own family child care homes that will offload pressure from understaffed on-base centers with long waitlists.
Military moms are answering the call, lured by the triple promise of making good money, working from home, and being their own bosses.
But Bardsley and dozens of other moms have a warning for them. The rules and regulations, well-meaning though they are, are out of control.
You can’t store a box of fruit cups on the floor of your pantry: inspection violation.
Shovel snow immediately to ensure there’s always a clear path out of the house. But never leave children unattended to do so.
Take pictures of the children in your care only with a government-issued phone. Never mind that you won’t be issued a phone by the government.
Family child care centers can be a lifeline for military spouses who want careers and for parents of kids with special needs that make finding center-based care even more challenging.
But when The War Horse spoke with seven current and former providers who had taken care of military kids in 13 states, they said reams of rules and a culture of retaliation make them feel less like independent contractors and more like peons in a chain of command they did not sign up for.
Be your own boss, but act like an employee
Family child care providers care for up to six kids at a time who can’t access on-base child care spots, need care during nontraditional hours that centers can’t provide, or whose parents want a more home-like environment. In 2021, the latest year for which data is available, around 2,700 children were enrolled in a family child care home.
Air Force spouse Lisa Slaba said her children, now in first grade and pre-K, have “thrived exponentially” thanks to loving family child care providers who, as fellow military spouses, she’s more inclined to trust.
Home-based care for DOD families started decades ago as an informal way for military moms to help out other families while earning a living. But as the program grew, so did its playbook.
The DOD says its requirements for certifying family child care providers are “typically more stringent than state standards,” and providers are inspected more often; while most states require annual inspections, supervisors visit military child care homes every month.
And with supervisors able to interpret inspection criteria as they see fit, many providers say the level of oversight is more intrusive and less standardized than they expected.
“It’s no longer just people wanting to just drop their children off into a safe space,” said April Dingle, a provider at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
Today, parents expect a miniature child development center in these women’s living rooms.
The DOD seems to share that expectation.
On a recent inspection, Kayla Calhoun says she was told she had to leave all the lights on during naptime at the family child care center she runs from her home at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey; the Air Force regulation states that lights stay on in Child and Youth Program facilities. “This is my home, and you’re telling me I can’t turn my lights off?” Calhoun said.
Guidance like that makes some providers feel they’re responsible for running an on-base child care center with a staff of one.
Dingle says she has to be not only an early childhood educator but also a janitor, a medic should an emergency arise, a chef, and an administrator.
“I have to be just all these other different labels instead of just caring for kids,” she said. “That’s not what I thought I signed up for. I signed up to provide a safe space, a routine for these children, and care and love, but it’s way too much.”
Many of the rules providers must follow make perfect sense, and Dingle said everyone wants there to be reasonable boundaries.
But some of those rules? “Just crazy,” she said. Like having to use chemical test strips to confirm her home was properly cleaned and sanitized.
Or being told she can only serve the children food from the commissary, despite the fact that she was finding expired milk and spoiled meat on the shelves.
Kayla Calhoun used to take her toddler and a child she watched through the family child care program to a local farm nearly every Monday, when it was free for military families. The kids loved throwing pellets of food to the barnyard animals, climbing on the tire tower, and running through the splash pad.
Then the Air Force changed a regulation and said children under the age of two were not permitted on field trips. The preschooler Calhoun takes care of was allowed to visit the farm. But Calhoun’s own son Lyle — 18 months old at the time — was now considered too young for his own mother to drive him there.
“It’s asinine,” Calhoun said. Fun wasn’t the only casualty; a program coordinator misinterpreted the new regulation and told providers they could no longer take young children along to drop older ones off at school. “It really screwed over a lot of people,” said Calhoun.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Air Force, which oversees more family child care providers than any other service, said specific guidelines for providers ensure high-quality care for kids. And every licensed child care operation, military or civilian, must adhere to safety guidelines.
But the DOD’s expectations for military moms have gone too far for some.
Kayla Corbitt, the founder and CEO of Operation Child Care Project, a military child care advocacy nonprofit, surveyed 59 family child care providers in 2023. Just over a third of the 45 who had quit the business said they did so because of all the red tape and regulations.
Corbitt says from what she can tell, family child care providers have zero autonomy and are treated like employees, not independent contractors, as the military claims.
“I honestly always thought the IRS would eventually take them down,” she said. “You can’t claim someone is a [contractor] when you tell them when to work and what to charge and how to do your work and who you’re allowed to watch and where you’re allowed to watch them.”
A house that’s not a home
When Dingle became a family child care provider almost two decades ago, she was lured in part by the promise of working from home while she took care of her own kids.
But soon it didn’t feel like her home at all. With demands including materials to have and how to set up the space, it felt like an institutional care center.
When her children were around they were required to be in the same space as Dingle and the other kids — even if their father was home, even if they were old enough to go do their homework or hang out in their own rooms.
They couldn’t have friends over, or go put dishes in the sink.
“In that aspect, I’m not even my child’s parent at that time any longer,” she said. “It’s like I’m 100% provider.”
These rules are in place to protect kids and uphold fire, health, and safety standards, said the Air Force spokesperson. “We truly appreciate providers’ flexibility as adjustments are required to adhere to regulations,” they said.
While Dingle feels a sense of purpose taking care of children who really need her, she wants her home back.
“By this time next year,” she said, “I want to be completely done.”
Too many standards, not enough standardization
Despite all the family child care program’s regulations, many providers complained that their jobs and treatment look wildly different from installation to installation.
“Everything from paperwork to policies to the systems that are in place. … The way that things are implemented are different at every single garrison,” said Bardsley.
It all comes down to the relationships between providers and the various authorities overseeing the family child care program, providers said.
Providers say some coordinators and directors are helpful, knowledgeable, respectful, and encouraging. Get someone who is not well-trained, not that invested, or just plain vindictive? You could be in for it, providers told The War Horse.
Bardsley said she faced retaliation from a coordinator at one post after taking a policy issue she disagreed with to the garrison leadership. Before the month was out, Bardsley — who said she’d never once been written up for any violation in her nine years of providing military child care — received three write-ups, including serving lunch 15 minutes early and allowing children to remove their shoes indoors. She was threatened with closure. After her next move, to Texas, Bardsley decided running a family child care center was no longer for her.
Denise Clark, a three-time “FCC provider of the year” in two states, said she was excluded from the list of available home day cares at Scott Air Force Base, just east of St. Louis, after she refused to provide 50 hours of care each week and accept families using the military’s child care subsidy program.
Clark submitted a DOD complaint and met with Nathan Whitesides, the director of Scott Air Force Base’s Inspector General Complaints Resolution Department. Afterward, Whitesides searched for guidance stating providers had to offer 50 hours of care. He couldn’t find any.
“My belief is that there is no official written guidance and that the AF [Air Force] childcare program is running the FCC [family child care] program in an ad hoc manner without proper oversight,” Whitesides determined in a memo dated Dec. 4, 2023.
Without being able to get a straight answer from program leaders, he added that “The potential for fraud and/or abuse in this program is high.”
But instead of getting relief, Clark learned this summer her certification was being suspended after someone made a child maltreatment allegation. Investigators determined the allegation was unfounded, but revoked her certification anyway for a transgression Clark believes would have ended with a slap on the wrist for other providers. She thinks it is retaliation for challenging the 50-hour rule and lodging complaints.
Public affairs officials at Scott Air Force Base did not respond to a request for comment on Clark’s case.
Clark said she will continue fighting to clear her name. But she’s offended and confused by everything that’s happened. She and other disgruntled providers say it’s time to remind the Department of Defense that they’re not servicemembers duty-bound to say, “Yes, sir.” They’re moms — trying to do their part. “It really hurts,” she said.
This War Horse story was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.
Jennifer Brookland is a regular contributor to The War Horse who served as a special agent in the Air Force before she received her master’s in journalism from Columbia University. She’s covered military and veterans’ issues for North Carolina Public Radio and child welfare for the Detroit Free Press. She was also a 2022 War Horse Fellow.
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