The Problem of Childcare

Mothers everywhere work. We work in the home or we work outside the home AND inside the home, but either way, we DO work. Especially if we have children at home, we work. The gift and the curse women in the world of today have is the fact that so many of us need to work at jobs outside the home, and we have been educated and trained and often have established career paths that allow us to make salaries that can support a family. Unfortunately, few of us can make enough to hire (if we can even find) a full-time caregiver that we can guarantee loves, protects, and educates our children, and there is the rub.

Women who have a spouse with a good job can make the difficult choice to be “stay-at-home” moms, at least until all of the children are in school. Or, these days, it can be more convenient for the spouse to choose to stay at home while the mom works outside the home. This is actually the cheapest way to go for any family, except that you lose the salary potential of one person. It also takes care of the worry about leaving the children with someone who might not have a love or concern for the best interest of the children at heart, but it takes the woman or man out of any career path they may have chosen and dries up opportunities of advancement for many years. The risks for a couple who choose this path involve counting upon the couple remaining healthy and together for as long as their division of labor needs to last. Also, the person who is the caregiver/homemaker needs to be prepared to realize that she or he has taken on a true full-time job. There will be little time while small children are awake for the caregiver to take time to think, let alone produce anything like a fantastic invention, a hit song, the “great American novel,” or even a blog post. Please! 

If both spouses choose to continue to work outside the home, the caregiving for the children becomes a huge elephant to negotiate without damaging the children or the family unit in some way. Many people hire a nanny. This works well if you have a great budget, because there are good people out there who actually enjoy the work involved in child rearing, who have trained to teach and care for small people with the tenderness and patience required, and who will work with a family without upsetting the applecart of parental expectations along with the weird dynamics that every person brings to the table within any family structure. (I seriously challenge you to show me a perfect family!) A person of this caliber is worth what you must pay to hire her or him. And you WILL pay, but if you are lucky enough to have that budget it is the best way to go. An example of this is the nanny Prince William and his wife Kate of England were able to hire for their children. 

Some try the Au Pair route. This is a good possibility if you happen to get just the right person. Because it is a way for young people to get a job and room and board in a foreign country, it has benefits on both sides. The family has to provide appropriate lodging and food and usually a small stipend to the young person in return for childcare with limitations and often the performance of some household duties. As far as cost, this can be the most affordable option if you have room to house a stranger and can work with less childcare hours than a full-time nanny is usually expected to give. The groups that work to place au pairs will often have contracts that state the number of hours per week the au pair will be working and other aspects of the agreement. For the family, the most important questions become how do you guarantee that the person has a love for children, training in their care, and the maturity to handle being an integral member of your family while a long way from their home of birth and in unfamiliar circumstances? It is something to think about…

Daycare for your little ones is the next option. This usually takes your children out of their home and places them in some space that is designed to care for several children at a time. The possibilities range from small homes where one mom takes in a few other children close to the ages of her own, to large, company-run models where babies and different ages of children are cared for in different groupings. This allows for a more “school-like” setting where children are taught certain things in supervised settings. There are obvious pros and cons in these situations. Cost is usually much less than a good nanny but more than an au pair. You will have no one using your own home as a place for the childcare, and you will not have to take a stranger into your family. Your child is given the opportunity to interact with other children and often to receive some form of early school training. However, as with all options, the parents must do their homework before trusting their child to the care of others. If the childcare is a small, one home situation, it is very possible that it has never been checked out by any agency or regulatory group. The parents should first see how many children will be cared for by a single person. Actually, this is important in the case of the larger, company-run model, as well. The ratio of caregiver to number of children should be workable for a good standard of care. Then, how is the home or company building set up for day care? Is it clean and well stocked? Is there a place for children to play, to eat, and to nap? Is there a bathroom(s) that functions well for multiple children? How does the home caregiver or the larger institution plan to deal with illness, either of the staff or on the part of your or another child? How can you function if the daycare is closed on a day that you need to be at work? Snow days or hurricane days or holidays when half of the staff calls out at a large facility or the home you take your child to is unreachable? What do you do when your own child has been sick all night, and you have a big meeting the next day, and you can not expect your child to be cared for in a group setting? These are things that WILL come up, because life happens to all of us.

Personally, my husband and I had twins as the first of our seven children, and I tried to continue working from home for about a month after my “Maternity leave” was up. It was impossible to get anything done while the twins were awake, and when they were asleep; I was exhausted or too busy doing other chores to think about writing or editing books (my job pre-twins). When the twins were seven months old, I learned I was pregnant with our next baby. It was over after that. I was working full-time as a mom, a wife, and a homemaker. Over the next several years, I have to give credit to God for His oversight. Each time a new baby was being added to our family, my husband would be blessed in some way that added to his salary. And I did manage to do some things on the side to keep my sanity. I did public speaking, some television work, got my real estate license, prepared and taught motherhood classes. Due to some illness issues, I went back to work outside the home when my youngest son was in fifth grade. I had to revamp myself at that time in order to reenter the job market. (A topic for another time.) But mainly, I was a mom to seven great children who grew up and became seven great people. 

Here are my basic thoughts about all of this. When you think about how to handle your work life after the children start coming, do your homework and try prayer. I can not say what will be right for you and your family, but I can say that if your heart is open to the possibilities, and you are willing to adjust your expectations for the greater good, things will work out for you. My husband and I know that children are a great gift. They are worth all the hassle and all the trouble and all the expense. If you have them, treasure your time with them. Things WILL work out for you!