Do You Have Reliable Childcare?

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand your question. You seem to be conflating daily childcare (nanny, daycare, or school) with backup/emergency care (days off, summers, or sick days). They are not the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's backup day care that the employer can pay for if they want their employees to have it. We do have that, with bright horizons, and it's useful. But if my elementary-school aged kid is sick, I'm staying home, and I can either take leave or work. My employer would prefer to have me work.

I've heard of this but neither of us has ever worked for an employer that provided it. I think this is a pretty uncommon benefit.

Plus if my 4 year old is home with a 103 fever, I'd rather take my leave. I could see this benefit being useful for a teacher workday closure or something, but not a snow day or a sick day.

Right - we use it for planned days off to take the kid into bright horizons, not unplanned/sick days.

[Anonymous]

FT daycare, we WFH but our jobs are real jobs.

Younger one in daycare, older in ES + aftercare that also covers a lot of the random days off.

Sick days we have to juggle. Our workplaces are sympathetic about that but would not be ok with someone not having real childcare in general - we get paid enough that it's not an excuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You say reliable childcare and then you mean it to have coverage when camp closes. No! I do have reliable childcare, but if my aftercare or camp closes, then by definition I do not. My backup plan is taking annual leave.

My kids are 2,5,8. They don't veg in front of the TV all day anyways. They'd have activities and be playing when I'm working. The oldest likes to read. I absolutely can't work with the 2 year old home though. The others are fine and don't need me nonstop.

This. There's reliable childcare and then there's expecting people to never, ever have a childcare emergency. If someone has a "childcare emergency" multiple times a month, I can understand being critical and saying they need to figure something out. But if you're upset because a few times a year, a working parent needs to either take off last minute or may allow an older child (not a 2 year old, agree that's impossible) to stay home while they work, they you're really just saying you don't think parents should work unless they have a SAHP or a nanny. But even then -- sometimes a SAHP or nanny have their own healthcare emergency. Stuff happens. This is life.

Yeah I would need to be paid a lot more to have my life set up this way (like multiple nannies and someone on-call).

[Anonymous]

We are both permanently remote and we have FT childcare for our kids.

5yo is in full time k and goes to aftercare and our 3yo goes to full time montessori preschool

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are both permanently remote and we have FT childcare for our kids.

5yo is in full time k and goes to aftercare and our 3yo goes to full time montessori preschool

Adding that of course there are some gaps that we can't avoid- school breaks, 3 days between school ending and camp starting, 5 days between when camp ends and school starts back up in Aug, etc. We piece together grandparents, our date night sitter, and PTO.

[Anonymous]

I work at an ES that dismisses at 2:25 (Loudoun). The amount of students being picked up at that time by a parent (vs going to aftercare) has probably quadrupled since pre Covid. All those parents are then “working” with their young ES kids at home and no childcare for the remaining 3+ hours of their workday. Watch all the parents come here to defend it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at an ES that dismisses at 2:25 (Loudoun). The amount of students being picked up at that time by a parent (vs going to aftercare) has probably quadrupled since pre Covid. All those parents are then “working” with their young ES kids at home and no childcare for the remaining 3+ hours of their workday. Watch all the parents come here to defend it.

For my 2nd and 4th graders, the issue would the parenting/screentime, not the work quality. They'd be only too happy to leave me alone for three hours to play video games.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at an ES that dismisses at 2:25 (Loudoun). The amount of students being picked up at that time by a parent (vs going to aftercare) has probably quadrupled since pre Covid. All those parents are then “working” with their young ES kids at home and no childcare for the remaining 3+ hours of their workday. Watch all the parents come here to defend it.

Weird that you know the work schedules and childcare arrangements of all of those families!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at an ES that dismisses at 2:25 (Loudoun). The amount of students being picked up at that time by a parent (vs going to aftercare) has probably quadrupled since pre Covid. All those parents are then “working” with their young ES kids at home and no childcare for the remaining 3+ hours of their workday. Watch all the parents come here to defend it.

If every kid needed aftercare, the demand increases and so do the prices. Most of the parents in my kid's cohort are SAHP, shift workers, or PT workers. I am the only parent I know in my kid's cohort that works from home FT. I work around pick up and drop off and walk my kid to/from school because transportation is not provided for kids living within 1.5 miles of the school in my county (ridiculous as that is).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work at an ES that dismisses at 2:25 (Loudoun). The amount of students being picked up at that time by a parent (vs going to aftercare) has probably quadrupled since pre Covid. All those parents are then “working” with their young ES kids at home and no childcare for the remaining 3+ hours of their workday. Watch all the parents come here to defend it.

If every kid needed aftercare, the demand increases and so do the prices. Most of the parents in my kid's cohort are SAHP, shift workers, or PT workers. I am the only parent I know in my kid's cohort that works from home FT. I work around pick up and drop off and walk my kid to/from school because transportation is not provided for kids living within 1.5 miles of the school in my county (ridiculous as that is).

You don’t need transportation if you use aftercare. And there aren’t suddenly 3-4x as many SAHP as 4 years ago. It’s obvious what is going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at an ES that dismisses at 2:25 (Loudoun). The amount of students being picked up at that time by a parent (vs going to aftercare) has probably quadrupled since pre Covid. All those parents are then “working” with their young ES kids at home and no childcare for the remaining 3+ hours of their workday. Watch all the parents come here to defend it.

Question is WHY ARE YOU SO FIXATED ON IT?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work at an ES that dismisses at 2:25 (Loudoun). The amount of students being picked up at that time by a parent (vs going to aftercare) has probably quadrupled since pre Covid. All those parents are then “working” with their young ES kids at home and no childcare for the remaining 3+ hours of their workday. Watch all the parents come here to defend it.

If every kid needed aftercare, the demand increases and so do the prices. Most of the parents in my kid's cohort are SAHP, shift workers, or PT workers. I am the only parent I know in my kid's cohort that works from home FT. I work around pick up and drop off and walk my kid to/from school because transportation is not provided for kids living within 1.5 miles of the school in my county (ridiculous as that is).

You don’t need transportation if you use aftercare. And there aren’t suddenly 3-4x as many SAHP as 4 years ago. It’s obvious what is going on.

Aftercare is full AND IT COSTS MONEY. Its more per hour than daycare and honestly, it is shi% care. You dont care about the kids, you think its unfair and you are bitter because you think someone else is getting a better "deal" or "scheming" the system.

And people 100% changed their shifts/jobs, decreased hours, or quit. Do you not remember COVID where there was NO support for working parents who had kids at home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at an ES that dismisses at 2:25 (Loudoun). The amount of students being picked up at that time by a parent (vs going to aftercare) has probably quadrupled since pre Covid. All those parents are then “working” with their young ES kids at home and no childcare for the remaining 3+ hours of their workday. Watch all the parents come here to defend it.

That's a different matter. My school dismisses at 3:30. Some people get in 8 hours of work by starting at 7 AM. Some people work in schools (my kid's best friend's mom BOOKS it from her workplace to our school). Some people have flex schedules (my husband is a professor, and if he's not teaching at that specific time, the cliche is "you can choose to work any 80 hours you want). I know a lot of parents who pick up their kids, and almost none of them take their kids back home to keep working, they all either have a SAHP or some specific work arrangement.

I didn't have school aged kids before covid, but I suspect the real change in aftercare demand has at least as much to do with the increase in flexible schedules and decrease in commuting time due to telework/remote work. If I were working my same schedule fully in office, I'd definitely need aftercare due to spending 2 hours on metro and the train, not because of my actual work hours.

There you go. There's your defense. Totally different than the question in the OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work at an ES that dismisses at 2:25 (Loudoun). The amount of students being picked up at that time by a parent (vs going to aftercare) has probably quadrupled since pre Covid. All those parents are then “working” with their young ES kids at home and no childcare for the remaining 3+ hours of their workday. Watch all the parents come here to defend it.

What a catty, nasty response. This is exhibit A for why 2:25 should not be an acceptable end time to a school day. It's early afternoon and way before most people's core hours end.

I pick up my DD at 2:25 and I end my day at 3:30pm, not 3 hours later.

I'm at a title 1 school. All the middle class kids get on activity buses because their parents are unable to pickup in the early afternoon. The poorer kids? They go home on buses to empty homes by themselves.