Con question

[maevele]

Is wiscon like the only con with childcare?

Because I'm giving tiny amounts o thought to oddcon, since it's local, and penguicon, cuz michigan is close and I wuv my linux, but if no childcare, I can't do it. I ean, I could hop in and out o oddcon as spousal childcare allows, but itd be a pain.

Comments

[flourish.livejournal.com]

Childcare is an excellent idea for cons and one that I will totally bring up in future if I'm ever again involved in planning one. I wouldn't have thought of it as I don't have kids, but now that you bring it up, o holy jeez it's important!

[naomikritzer]

There are others. There's a con down in Illinois or Iowa that does childcare, but I forget its name.

[naomikritzer]

One thing to check on / ask about -- at least in the past, many cons where they provided childcare, it was totally a co-op arrangement. Parents who wanted care for their kids put in a shift in the childcare room. If that's how a con is doing it, that means you have to leave your kids with someone who hasn't been background checked, who may not really be very good with kids other than his/her own, etc.

WisCon hires actual licensed, professional day care providers and pays them to provide the child care. If you ask about child care and they say yes, be sure to ask for more info.

I mean, there are plenty of people in fandom I would leave my kids with in a heartbeat, but there are also people who creep me out, even at Wiscon. I would be twitchy about leaving my kids in a co-op childcare where the providers were strangers to me, and hadn't been screened.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Penguicon does not do childcare...Puppy is now old enough that it's not a pain. They totally should do it!

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

Mostly. There are sometimes "kid rooms", but I rarely see cons with the sort of mostly-full time childcare Wiscon has.

[heathergalaxy.livejournal.com]

We're going to be offering childcare this year at Think Galacticon! We're very excited about it.

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

Most big cons, like WorldCon, tend to have it, but I think your Josephine Average Con of 400 or fewer people does not tend to have childcare.

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

DucKon (Chicago suburbs) has childcare.
http://www.duckon.org/childcare.html