What will you do for childcare and work if school is online in the fall? Quit? Hire nanny?

[Anonymous]

My mom is retired, so if she's willing I'd fly her out here, or we'd go there. The problem is "there" is California, so getting DS up 3 hours earlier for online school would be less than awesome, but wayyyyy better than trying to do it all alone here.

If mom says no, I'm really hopeful we can "pod" with another family or two. Both next door neighbors have kids the same age as mine, so if we could get the three together to do school in the mornings and rotate whose house they hang out at for the day it would alleviate a lot of issues.

[Anonymous]

DH is military, essential, and goes in every day. I am a fed who was already doing TW almost full time. But my job is complex and requires sustained periods of work. My rising K kid has special needs and we decided to continue with in home therapy for him, so a therapist comes x3/week for three hours. I imagine we’d ask her to align her schedule with DS’s school schedule so she could support him with school work. I usually use my lunch break to run him around. We might look into a sitter but we’ve been managing this far between me and the therapist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems I'm in the minority here, but given your circumstances, I'd quit. Especially if you think you can easily get a job again when you are ready.

I would ONLY quit if you are very sure you can easily get a job again after a break in employment. Otherwise, there's just too much economic uncertainty. The economy likely isn't going to recover, and certainly not fully recover, until the pandemic is under control in some way (effective treatments, vaccine, a robust test/trace/isolate system) and I would not want to be relying on a single breadwinner. If you are certain you could easily find a new job, and you can afford to forgo your income for some indefinite period of time, then quitting might make sense to solve the logistic problem. Certainly my life would be easier if I were only handling childcare/distance learning/household tasks and not also trying to work full time. But financially, it would be more precarious. If my income were a small fraction of our household income, and not half of it, and if I weren't the one whose job provided our family's health insurance, the calculus would be different, and I might consider quitting, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH has permission to work from home as long as DS is home. DS is low key and pretty good at doing what we ask him to do so this has not been bad for us. DH does not have phone calls to take or make or conferences to attend so he can help DS when DS needs help. Yes, we are super lucky and I am grateful for that.

That said, I have suggested using a high school or college student this summer and DH hates the idea. He is worried about adding another person to the home.

How will a student work at your house? COVID will still be around. I will also not leave kids with any non-family member because all these months of isolation means that people will have mental issues. Finally, what kind of parents will allow their HS kid to come and babysit someone else's children during COVID?

I am waiting for a wave of child abuse to happen because parents will get unvetted outsiders to babysit their children since they will be desperate to get someone in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems I'm in the minority here, but given your circumstances, I'd quit. Especially if you think you can easily get a job again when you are ready.

I would ONLY quit if you are very sure you can easily get a job again after a break in employment. Otherwise, there's just too much economic uncertainty. The economy likely isn't going to recover, and certainly not fully recover, until the pandemic is under control in some way (effective treatments, vaccine, a robust test/trace/isolate system) and I would not want to be relying on a single breadwinner. If you are certain you could easily find a new job, and you can afford to forgo your income for some indefinite period of time, then quitting might make sense to solve the logistic problem. Certainly my life would be easier if I were only handling childcare/distance learning/household tasks and not also trying to work full time. But financially, it would be more precarious. If my income were a small fraction of our household income, and not half of it, and if I weren't the one whose job provided our family's health insurance, the calculus would be different, and I might consider quitting, too.

All of these things were true for me.
I can easily get my job back.
Husband is a intensivist. He has great job security right now.
I only brought in 1/3 of our HHI. He also has health insurance. We could live without my income indefinitely.

I didn’t quite quit, but I cut waaay back. I have several colleagues with spouses who lost their jobs during this, so they were looking for additional work. It was a no-brainer.

[Anonymous]

Maybe we need to rethink nuclear families and revert back to multigenerational families.

[Anonymous]

Work part time and have part time nanny. $23.50 an hour all in with taxes. Two kids under 3. Was doing this Before lockdown anyway, but dropped morning preschool. Works very well for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe we need to rethink nuclear families and revert back to multigenerational families.

Multi-generational families is one of the reasons Italy had such a horrific death rate until they finally started to get things under control. Not the answer during a pandemic.

[Anonymous]

I have tweens who are supposed to start 6th grade. I'll likely block off time in my schedule every day to supervise and assist with their work. I'm the breadwinner, so quitting is not an option. But I'm fortunate to have a very flexible position.

[Anonymous]

I'll keep working, though will perhaps reduce hours to 80%. Luckily I have the flexibility to do so if need be and can telecommute, and kids are old enough to not need a ton of supervision. DH will likely be back in the office most days. We will likely shell out money for real online classes. Kids in 4th and 6th in MCPS.

[Anonymous]

This is definitely the question that keeps me up at night! We have a 4 yo who is supposed to start kindergarten in the fall, and are expecting our 2nd any day now. We've been muddling along like everyone else, taking a few hours of PTO a week to switch off parenting shifts while we work from home. DH is a fed and his job is pretty autonomous and research focused, whereas mine is more demanding and requires a lot of calls and quickly responding to clients. We are overall lucky with how this has been going so far, but we're also burning down our PTO balances and I'm about to go on maternity leave and use up the rest of my PTO.

It seems like a nanny may be our only option come fall, but I'm very dubious about how this will work out. we've never had a nanny, and I just can't imagine my DD just accepting that she will switch from spending the day with us, as she has done during quarantine and will do during my maternity leave, to spending the day with a stranger who is also trying to manage an infant, while my DH and I are trying to hide in the basement in our very small house. Do others anticipate this problem?? Am I being overly anxious? I'm picturing all sorts of meltdowns and interruptions and general mayhem, all with a hefty price tag.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH has permission to work from home as long as DS is home. DS is low key and pretty good at doing what we ask him to do so this has not been bad for us. DH does not have phone calls to take or make or conferences to attend so he can help DS when DS needs help. Yes, we are super lucky and I am grateful for that.

That said, I have suggested using a high school or college student this summer and DH hates the idea. He is worried about adding another person to the home.

How will a student work at your house? COVID will still be around. I will also not leave kids with any non-family member because all these months of isolation means that people will have mental issues. Finally, what kind of parents will allow their HS kid to come and babysit someone else's children during COVID?

I am waiting for a wave of child abuse to happen because parents will get unvetted outsiders to babysit their children since they will be desperate to get someone in.

You sound unhinged. Do you think your children on 100% lockdown aren’t developing mental health issues? Or you and your spouse?

The child abuse is a concern because of the stress of primary caregivers/parents abusing kids with no reporting via schools and also the increased pressure due to job losses/the pandemic. None thinks a bunch of depraved teenagers abusing kids is causing the spike.

[Anonymous]

My hope is that distance learning in the fall (if it happens) will be more organized and of longer duration than it is now - so I expect that it will occupy my kids for at least 2-3 hours per day, plus an hour of schoolwork. This is about half the day. The other half the day they'll run around and play outside, or DH and I will trade off for a few hours, or we'll get a babysitter.

I don't think it's going to be as much of a $@it show as it has been the last couple months. I don't expect I'll need to hover as much.

It's only temporary. If it's difficult and messy and far less than ideal, at least it is only a few months. This is not going to be years like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe we need to rethink nuclear families and revert back to multigenerational families.

Multi-generational families is one of the reasons Italy had such a horrific death rate until they finally started to get things under control. Not the answer during a pandemic.

That was because they weren’t social distancing in Italy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe we need to rethink nuclear families and revert back to multigenerational families.

Multi-generational families is one of the reasons Italy had such a horrific death rate until they finally started to get things under control. Not the answer during a pandemic.

That was because they weren’t social distancing in Italy.

The PPs point is that the elder generation got sick because they were living with 4-10 other individuals. Are you going to make sure your toddlers social distance? No play dates for 12 months? No kids going out for pick-up games of soccer in the cul-de-sac? Will you and your spouse never go outside or interact with anyone else? Will you commit to contactless grocery delivery until the end of time?