“Childcare Center” vs. “Daycare Center”: Taking care of the child or the day?

Linda MacConnachie, owner of two Sunshine Station preschools in North Carolina, wrote to us:

Please help us change the image of our industry by replacing the word "day care" with “child development centers” or “child care centers”.

As we like to say, we are not taking care of the DAY, we are taking care of the CHILD.

Indeed she has a strong point.

Doodledays is about childcare. We did wrestle with this issue. Should we use “childcare center” or “childcare provider” consistently? Avoid the term “daycare” or “daycare center” altogether?

The American Heritage® Dictionary defines the two terms as below:

child-care or child·care
adj. Of, relating to, or providing care for children, especially preschoolers: a child-care center; child-care professionals.

day·care or day care
n. Provision of daytime training, supervision, recreation, and often medical services for children of preschool age, for the disabled, or for the elderly.

Clearly, “childcare” is a more precise term than “daycare”.

The term daycare somehow connotes a solution to an inconvenience. Daycare = Paying someone to take care of your child during the day because of practical reasons.

On the other hand, the term childcare puts the focus on caring for the child.

As Linda put it – it is about taking care of the CHILD not DAY.

So why did we still use the term daycare on many pages?

Word of mouth and search engine results are our two predominant means of reaching our audience. For a young website like doodledays.com, it is important to get noticed by search engines like Google. Matching the phrases people are searching for to the language on our site was an important consideration.

While childcare topics are universal, our initial focus has been on the US region. We were surprised to find a big difference in search usage for different phrases within US and outside. Most people in the US use “daycare” or “day care” as the search phrases rather than “childcare” or “child care”. Interestingly, the statistics are reversed for non-US searches!

For Google search usage indication, see:

1. “Childcare”: US and Canada at the bottom two of the seven ranked countries searching with “childcare” as Google search keyword.
2. “Child care”: Australia ranks first followed by Canada and US for “child care” - but there is significant gap in usage.
3. “Daycare”: Canada and US are top two and most predominant in usage in search.
4. “Day care”: US, Australia and Canada top the search usage.

So we did compromise.

We will strive to change the usage from ‘daycare’ to ‘childcare’. Even a change in usage could help reset our expectations about the service.

After all, doodledays is all about childcare matters.

Help us by spreading the word on doodledays.com.