Having had kids and cared for them as infants myself, and previously worked in a (very much unlicensed) home-based daycare, the 1:4 ratio for childcare centers

Having had kids and cared for them as infants myself, and previously worked in a (very much unlicensed) home-based daycare, the 1:4 ratio for childcare centers and 1:2-1:4 (depending on primary licensee's experience) ratio for home-based daycares for infants are not at all unreasonable. Yes, most of time that's going to seem excessive -- but it is not a cloud system with on-demand autoscaling, you have to set your capacity by peak demand, not average demand.