Originally Posted by SunshineMama:
That is awful and makes those of us who follow rules look bad. Not all providers are ao money hungry that they put the children in danger with over-capacity. There are state limits and there are personal limits, and if the state limit is higher than your own personal limit you need to be responsible enough to not add additional children to your care. This is sad 
I think this is an important distinction. If I have more challenging children, or lots of very young two's for instance, I keep my numbers lower through attrition. Keep in mind, the 10 in Minnesota is 8 under school age.
Parents also have a responsibility to be sure these numbers are followed, and report when they are not. I'd love to see more details on the data reported in this article. While tragic, this article came about because of the directive licensed child care providers in Minnesota were issued recently about concerns with the high number of infant deaths in family-based child care homes. Correlations cannot automatically be drawn between high numbers of infant deaths and overcrowding, or negligence, or improper sleep arrangements. No study was actually done which reduced variables and examined causation. How many infants were in child care the last two years vs the years previous? Is that a factor? Based on this article, we don't have enough information to draw any real conclusions.
To be clear, the directive I speak of actually stated that more information was needed, and the state was taking steps to examine the data to come to more concrete conclusions.
It would be interesting to see the numbers across the board for each state, to even see if a correlation between legal capacity and infant deaths could be made at all.