There are other options for childcare.
There are actually daycares set up in Hong Kong where older local women watch children in their homes while the parents are away. These daycares are certified by the government.
You can also hire legal outside help for part-time work. When my son was about 2-months-old we needed to hire someone to come in during the days to help with my son because I was having health problems.
So, we hired a local Chinese lady through a church charity that trains displaced homemakers to be nannies and maids. She came to our house for a set time during the week.
So, if you wish to work part-time, this may be the perfect way to hire someone--you can have them come on the days and hours that you need them and avoid some of the hassles that go along with live-in help.
The going rate for this type of local worker is at least $50 HKD/hour which is more expensive by far than hiring a live-in helper, but it may suit you better. In fact, I really enjoyed the local lady we hired and learned so much from her about the practicalities of parenting--I wish it had been feasible for her to work for us full-time.
But, it's true that doing co-op childcare is probably a pretty hard sell in Hong Kong. There really isn't a demand for it because people who work outside the home usually opt for a live-in helper or as SZJ said, they send their children to full-day nursery school earlier. Or, they take advantage of other programs set up for childcare. I could see a place for co-op childcare when it comes to short-term babysitting (a night a week etc.) when a family doesn't have any family living here and they don't have a live-in helper.
There are lots and lots and lots of people hiring illegal help in Hong Kong--I would think that the majority of them are actually local people who have their helpers working in their restaurant or shop (lots of examples of that going on out where we live). I guess the risks aren't high enough for the local people to stop doing it but I don't know what the risks are for foreigners and if they're that much higher. I think where you get into real trouble is when the illegal help doesn't have residency--as in they are illegal immigrants.
Personally, this is how our childcare has worked in the past and how it works now.
My husband is local Chinese so when our son was little and when I went back to work, we relied a lot upon them--which they quite enjoy doing, actually. For the first year of my son's life, I would say I did 85-90% of the childcare as a stay-at-home mom and my parents-in-law picked up the other 10-15%.
When I returned to work this past year, for the first part of the year, my parents-in-law were then picking up the childcare duties about 65-70% of the time and the other 30-35% of the time the responsibility again fell to me because I was only working part-time.
In May of this year, my mother came over and spent a total of nine months with us as part of a sabbatical she was on. At that time, the responsibility for childcare shifted to her 65-70% of the time and then on me the rest 30-35% of the time I wasn't working.
In September we hired a live-in domestic helper from the Philippines as my mother was going to return to the States and it had become physically taxing for my petite mother-in-law to handle my tall and strong son so many hours a day. So, in the three months of transition time, I'd say that the helper had full responsibility for my son's care maybe 20-25% of the time, my mother 45-50% of the time and the remainder again fell on me.
Now that my mother is gone, the helper picks up the 65-70% of the time for caring for my son, however she splits this with the Chinese parents-in-law who probably spend 25-30% of the time during the week with my son. And then my husband and I take care of him the remainder of the time.
