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

[Anonymous]

I have 3 kids and we've been limping through the spring with 2 parents working full-time at home.
If this is the situation =in the fall (or if kids are home half-time) I think I'm going to leave my job.
I'm the secondary earner and while we need my income for long-term goals I don't think it's worth it to my family in
the here-and-now to be living on the edge of sanity like this.
Things will only get more complex if the kids are only in school part time (be that rotating days, rotating weeks, half-days etc.)

What are your thoughts on what your family will do?
Clearly I'm a planner and thinking this through helps me deal with an incredibly frustrating situation.

**Please no debate in this post on whether or note we will have distance learning. Let's say for this post that we do. I think everyone can agree that it's a good possibility.
Let's work off that premise.

[Anonymous]

Eventually school will be back in session. And I don't know what the economy will be like then. I don't want to quit my job because who knows if I can eventually get another one.

I've thought about dropping to 50 or 80%. But in reality, part timers always work more than their allotted time.

So I think the best option for us will be babysitter. Even a few days a week will help ease the load.

[Anonymous]

I honestly don't know. If my spouse and i could figure out telework so one of us would always be home, i think I'd give up the spot in day care I've paid for for 3 months for a baby who hasn't even started and look for part time help and/or another family to combine forces with for school for the older kid. We don't have the income for a FT nanny, but we need my job, and if my husband were to quit his, his career would probably be over (he's a postdoc and even though his income isn't high, he has been working toward a professor or research scientist position for a LONG time). It would be tough.

[Anonymous]

If it's 100% online we may decamp to FL so my mom could help my rising kindergartner.

[Anonymous]

Telework will continue until schools are back. So telework until January 2021? 😒

[Anonymous]

I've thought about it, but my income is about half our household income. And I have a fed job, so pretty secure, and it seems silly to give it up during such an unsettled time. Not having had to worry about money during this time has been really great. If my employer will let me continue to telework, I think we'll just keep muddling through. I think the economy is going to get even worse, and relying on a single breadwinner seems too risky. If nothing else, we can keep saving aggressively to build up more and more of a cushion to give us more options in the future.

[Anonymous]

Nanny for us. We were finally going to not have one this fall, but we will need one so I can continue half time work. Our former nanny has other plans for fall, so we have to hire. I am not looking forward to it.

[Anonymous]

I am a fed. I will hopefully be able to telework fulltime as long as needed. If so, and if school is condensed to a few hours a day, then I will work with my boss to rejigger my schedule so I can help my rising 1st and 4th graders. Maybe 6-8am then log back in 12-6. If it gets too overwhelming, I will probably ask to drop temporarily to part time, or we will try to hire a babysitter/nanny part time.

[Anonymous]

I think it is best to put this in perspective. Yes, things will be very complex and stressful for a while. But quitting a job, especially a high earning one, is a serious decision. Both spouse and I make similar amounts. Makes me too nervous in this economic environment to be dependent on one income, and it could take a long time to find another similar job. So we will hire a babysitter, take advantage of employer flexibility we are fortunate to have, and do the best we can for a while. It is difficult to grasp now with all the doom and gloom in the media and on this site, but the reality is that pandemics go away eventually. Maybe it's not in the fall but soon enough this will be behind us. This is a short-term situation, so at least I think it's important to think about the possible consequences of decisions like quitting a job.

[Anonymous]

I’ll keep limping and underperforming.

[Anonymous]

I quit and took a part time job working two evenings a week. I can’t telework and take care of kids at the same time. I have no idea how people are doing this.

[Anonymous]

Good news--there are going to be a bunch of HS grads who just deferred starting college for a year. Hire one of them.

[Anonymous]

I am going to convince my employer to let me work around my kids' schedule. They are older elementary so they require some supervision, but not at all like having little kids.

[Anonymous]

I will not quit my job -- it would be too difficult to re-enter the workforce later.

We will have to get some kind of in-home childcare but I am uncertain what type. I am pregnant with a 2nd due in December and was planning to hire a nanny after maternity leave, but I'm not sure an infant nanny can also handle online school with a second grader: in my fantasy, a fed-up teacher is interested. I've also considered sharing a tutor for the oldest with a couple friends we trust, but not sure how to set that up.

[Anonymous]

I honestly don't know. I have little kids and can telework at most one week out of the month, and cannot do it with them around in any event (and my work has to be done during business hours). I have to go in to work the rest of the time. My husband teleworks full time, but it's a job that requires immense focus so it can't be done with the kids around. Right now, we have grandparents providing care. But if my rising kindergartner has to go do some modified rotating days at school, I don't feel very good about exposing him to my parents on the other days. I may have to quit, I guess. But I really don't want to for both mental health and financial reasons. I just don't know.