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Child Care Can Cost More Than Money

Featured Author:

Dianne McDonald

Dianne McDonald is a weekly columnist for the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, MA. Her “Everyday Feminist” column addresses the topics that are important to “womyn” with a feminist perspective. Dianne has been an ethnographic researcher investigating women’s-only spaces and the community that those spaces promote. Dianne graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Women’s Studies. She lives in Marshfield, MA with her husband Jason, and their five children aged two through 19.

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Woman is ready for a job. Woman is highly qualified. Woman has dress clothes for business environment. Woman has transportation to get to job. But wait: Woman is also a mother. Woman has dilemma.

Challenges are presented when a mother chooses to go to work. Most households require the woman to work. If she is a single mom, she has to bring home the bacon. In a two-parent household, it is common that two incomes are necessary to make ends meet.

While mom is working, who will be minding the young guns? The best-case scenarios would include relatives who live to spend eight hours a day with the kids or having a Mary Poppins-like nanny at your beck and call.

Both options would have to be free of course. But these dream day-care situations are unlikely and unrealistic.

Unfortunately, finding stellar child care is labor intensive. You have to decide what type of child care best suits the family’s needs – at-home, group, etc. Then you have to interview and choose an experienced person who is the most nurturing option or visit facilities and choose the safest. After finding the perfect pseudo-parent, you come to terms with the very real expense of the find. The cost of child care is staggering. You then have to weigh the weekly deduction of child care cost against your net pay.

Ouch… doesn’t leave much.

Not to mention the intense guilt we often feel not being the primary care giver for our own children. So we look for better alternatives. Many moms work second shifts, or work part-time when the other parent is available. There are programs that allow infants to go to work with mothers and there are companies that offer on-site day care. Some mothers find a work-at-home occupation.

Whatever your day-care dilemma is, you are not alone. There is a toddler at my feet right now. The moment my hubby comes home from work I am out the door to go to work and he will take over for the evening shift.