Childcare Strategies:
-Work opposite shifts
-Depend on extended family, especially grandmas
-Enroll the children in a large daycare center
-Enroll the children in a home-run daycare
-Trade babysitting with friends
-Take the children to work
-One parent stays at home
By the way, that is just a list of the strategies my family has used.
When we moved to our newest military base my husband and I had to put the boys into the base’s daycare so we could attend an all day meeting. For each boy I had to fill out a ten-page packet that outlined the daycare’s rules and regulations. I also had to provide medical clearance forms signed by their doctor.
One of the sheets outlined the behavior rules: should your child cry continuously for over an hour you will be called to retrieve your child, should you need to be called more than five times the daycare center may drop your enrollment. A second sheet outlined what illnesses required you to keep your child at home: temperature over 101 degrees, vomit, diarrhea, and if your child has a contagious disease (ex: pink eye, chicken pox, lice, etc.) your child cannot return to daycare until you get a doctor’s note that the child is no longer contagious. A third sheet was about hours. First, there is the ten-hour rule. The ten-hour rule states that children cannot be at the center for more than ten hours. Second, you cannot be late in picking up your children. If you are late you will pay $1 for each minute. Those three sheets of rules and requirements are pretty standard across the daycare world. Many of those rules are written into daycare licensing procedures and if daycares don’t follow them, they risk losing their licenses.
That’s why articles like this are so infuriating to me. All too often the conversation about mothers in the workplace completely ignore the practicalities of childcare. Someone somewhere has to be watching the children while the parents are at work. It’s the day-in, day-out reality of making childcare work that puts a lot of constraints on parents’ (especially mothers’) work habits.
Finding childcare for my two sons has been the most important factor in my work history. Like a lot of other parents, I spent a lot of my working career depending on relatives to watch the boys when I couldn’t. When my first son was born, my husband and I worked opposite shifts and my mother-in-law worked part-time. Between the three of us, my son always had the complete attention of at least one adult who adored him. When my husband joined the military, we were moved across the country and we no longer had any childcare help from family.
A few months after we moved, I got a part-time job. I got the job while my husband was in-residence at school. I had to find childcare, fast. The base’s daycare offered hourly care with the caveat that it might not always be available. I couldn’t reserve a spot more than a few days in advance. My only other option was enrolling him full-time, but that would have cost more than I was making. I had to find a permanent affordable solution.
We did two weeks of hourly care before I found a home-based daycare that had a part-time opening. It worked great for four months until the provider went on maternity leave. I suddenly had to find care for the summer. Luckily my son’s best friend’s mom agreed to watch him for me until my daycare provider re-opened.
Before my second son was born, the part-time home-based daycare was 35% of my pay. My need to put both boys into daycare coincided with a pay cut. Daycare was suddenly 79% of my pay. When my daycare provider moved, I decided to not find another daycare and changed my schedule so I only worked during the weekend when my husband was available. I only attended staff meetings or special events if a friend could watch the boys or I could just bring them with me. Thank god I had understanding bosses.
My childcare problems and solutions aren’t at all unusual. Within my group of friends, most of their kids have attended at least three or four daycares. Parents are always on the lookout for more convenient and more affordable childcare. If you can find a daycare a bit closer to your job, you can spend a few extra minutes there each day without breaking the ten-hour rule. If you can find a daycare that charges even a few dollars less, you have more money to buy food.
Instead of attacking mothers for working fewer hours, we need to be questioning the idea that we’re all supposed to be working 50+ hours a week. As long as that is our society’s idea of a devoted worker then mothers will never measure up… it’s simply impossible if you have to stick to the ten-hour rule or make sure you’re home in time for your co-parent to go to work.
I also think that we as a society need to get over the idea that childcare is a luxury for women that choose to work.
Historically, people have not raised children alone. In the past, extended family and neighbors shared – yes, that “village” Hillary talked about.
We have to replace it with a paid village, because a spontaneous village doesn’t exist anymore for most people. People are more mobile and move away from family, neighborhoods are empty during the day because everyone has to work to make ends meet. Health care and housing have skyrocketed, and the last 30 years have seen an increase of worker productivity, but no increase in the compensation that workers get. (Easy credit made people feel ‘richer,’ because they were able to aquire more on less salary).
This is not due to “selfishness” on the part of women. I love my work, and my fulfillment makes be a better parent. Women entered the workplace and society at large, and society refused to step in and fill the child care gap.
This is the care and nurturing of future generations we are talking about, not some luxury. We need to extend public school and care options to preschool.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by jijiy flawless and Vyckie D. Garrison, Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: Childcare and the Working Mom Debate: A Guest Post by Wingstaff http://bit.ly/eGaY30 [...]
as I read the last line of that article, all I could think was “F— YOU!”
I say that as a mother who is married but in no way can we afford to have me stay home. I have to work full time because with my crappy state job, we can barely afford to make ends meet.
We have my mom as our daycare provider but she’s already high in years so we are looking for other options with son who is 3 already. Looking for trustworthy daycare is tough.
The “devoted worker” (what sociologist Patricia Roehling has termed The Career Mystique) ideal was only ever really possible for single adults who outsourced caregiving and adult men with a full-time wife who could take care of all the non-work details. SOMEONE has to do the cooking, cleaning, childcare, scheduling doctor’s visits, balancing the checkbook, grocery shopping, laundry, etc. No worker should be expected to put in more than 35-40 hours per week without overtime pay or other provisions made for those necessities of life that need to happen. Actually, I don’t think anyone should be expected to work more than that, full stop: we need time that isn’t owned by those who pay us for labor.
I can’t believe that article was all, “92% of mothers work less than 50 hours a week” like it was unusual and immoral to work less than 50 hours a week.
Who wants to work 50 hours a week? What kind of life is that? And it’s not like articles like this are talking about people who have to work 50+ hours a week to afford rent; no, this is for people who are expected to work that much in order to afford upper-middle-class lives. Well fuck that.
Nobody should have to work more than 40 hours a week. Full stop. Our culture’s relationship with work is fucking crazy. I hate it.
“Childless women are also significantly more likely to work overtime. The vast majority of mothers, 92 percent, work less than 50 hours a week.”
FIFTY HOURS???? Less than 50 hours per week is an issue? Not working OT doesn’t mean a person should get paid less… it means the person who DOES work OT should get paid extra ONLY for those hours. Caveat: I get paid by the hour and have no idea how salaried positions work.
Also, I’m not a mom and I still only work 37.5 hours per week (gov’t cube jockey). I guess that makes me a worthless person who doesn’t deserve fair pay?