It Doesn’t Have to Be This Hard

A primer on child care and how we making parenting extra hard in America

But first, why Substack?

In 2013, I was pregnant with my first child and working in a newsroom that was facing layoffs. It was also around the same time “Lean In” had become a bestseller, and Sheryl Sandberg had been extolling all of us to try harder, take more opportunities and not give up before we could be counted out. The newsroom I worked for was owned by a much bigger, better-known media conglomerate overseas. Our publication was a single revenue line for them. Any cuts they made to staff in our newsroom had very little to do with “leaning in” and very much to do with upcoming shareholder reports. 

I admit that I never really considered how hard things are for parents (and parents-to-be) in this country until I was faced with my own predicament. What would happen if I lost my job at 20 weeks pregnant? My health insurance was through work, how could I give birth in a hospital without it? I had been planning to take weeks off after the baby arrived, but how could I do that without a salary? I had a husband, but could his income really sustain us for very long? And how would I conduct a job search with the aggressive enthusiasm required while I had a newborn to juggle? 

Imagine trying to look for a new job in this situation. Oh, and unpaid FMLA doesn’t even kick in until you’re on the job for a full year.

I wound up writing about this incident a few years later for the Washington Post*. (Spoiler alert - the company ended up offering buyouts instead of layoffs, so I stayed, took 12 weeks paid maternity leave and kept my health insurance which meant that I was ok financially, unlike 60 percent of women in this country who face financial hardship in carrying and birthing a baby). Still, 2013 was the wakeup call for me on how little infrastructure we have to support parents in this country and that is a decision we have made as a society not to change. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way. 

So this is why I’m here. My reporting beat used to be workplace politics (including the importance of paid family leave, which I could write about forever and ever until everyone in this country has access to it). Now, with the support of the Better Life Lab at New America, my reporting has shifted to cover child care and why this matters.

But lately my own reported articles have begun veering toward commentary. A well-meaning editor recently left this comment on a draft: “Can you make this a little less editorial-y?” She highlighted a kicker I wrote on why we need to reinstate the child care funding provided by the American Rescue Plan which allowed so many providers to stay open and pay their staff a livable wage. Make sense, right? It certainly did to the people who worked in those child care centers, and the families they served. 

What is so confusing about paying child care workers a living wage? Probably because without federal investment, child care is too expensive for most families to pay the full cost on their own. Photo by Christopher Ryan on Unsplash

I’m starting this Substack to allow for more “editorial-y” fact-based writing covering the many ways this country continues to put parents at a disadvantage. We are the only developed country in the world without a paid leave policy, and we have no federal child care infrastructure which we know costs the economy $122 billion - yes billion - in lost wages and drastically hurts people’s (mainly but not always mothers) chances to advance at work. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot time and again, while not realizing there is a way to change this that many other nations have already figured out. 

You know who wins with access to quality child care? Moms. Dads, too, but it’s moms who are more likely to take the work and income hit when they don’t have reliable care for kids. Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

What’s so maddening is that it’s a choice - we don’t prioritize care as an election issue, and many of our politicians don’t vote for care policies like paid family leave and subsidized child care when given the opportunity to do so (see Build Back Better, R.I.P., 2021). 

This newsletter will be a chance to write about caregiving, work, why it matters, and how we can do it better. The ‘we’ here is largely colloquial, I don’t anticipate offering any individual hacks to make life go more smoothly for the 53 million people who juggle work and care.  But I do hope I can help frame these issues differently, so that when we all go to the ballot box this November, care is one of the issues still on our minds. 

If you like what you read and want to support this newsletter, please consider forwarding to a friend or leaving a comment. If someone forwarded this to you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing. 

Looking forward to the conversation to come. 

Rebecca

*Shout out to Amy Joyce for editing and publishing this Washington Post freelance piece, at a time when I was still brand-new to freelance writing. Amy just left the Washington Post for new adventures - excited to see what she is doing next.  

What I’m Reading Now:

Haley Swenson, one of my Better Life Lab colleagues and also an amazing editor and writer in her own right, has a piece in Slate about how she and her wife intended to do a 50-50 split on the caregiving and work duties when they had their first kid, and then realized just how hard this is to do. Someone’s work gets priority, and it’s usually the one who makes more money. Her piece in Slate, “Our Best Efforts” is worth a read.

Elliot Haspel has been writing about child care for years before the Covid-19 pandemic made it front-page worthy. He has a report out on the downsides of relying on businesses to support our child care industry. Read his piece in Fast Company about why relying on business-supported child care could be problematic. I also did a Q+A with Elliot for Early Learning Nation on what the thorns in this approach look like, and how and why it is hard to advocate against bringing in more child care options, especially for people and places considered child care deserts.

A substack I’d recommend - I’m new to the platform but wouldn’t be here without Lindsey Standberry, whose newsletter The Purse is one of my favorite work+money+life reads. She tackles all the complicated topics of midlife - caregiving, division of labor, income, savings, indulgent splurges. Even if you have life and care and money figured out already (because we all have our own superpowers), Lindsey’s deep dives into other people’s spending and living expenses is fascinating to read.

Have something you think I should read? Drop me a line and share. 

And thanks, as always, for reading.

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