Affordable Childcare Is Not Enough

Any discussion about working women always includes the mantra, “If only we had affordable child care.” Affordable child care is necessary, but it is not nearly enough to allow women and men to function optimally at home and at work. By putting this issue front and center, we are unable to imagine (and then implement) different strategies that would make life more integrated and less frenetic and burdensome for both men and women. This transformational concept is the key to transcending the concept of “men against women.” We are all in this together—shared solutions will bring these artificial barriers down.

Issue #1 is pay equity. If women were paid equitably then child care would be more affordable for everyone. That extra 23 cents for most women workers (and 38 cents for women physicians) on the dollar would go a long way to affording the help that we all need. This is not a woman’s issue (as I have said for years.) Think about the husband who lost his job and now expects to support his family on his wife’s lesser pay. He and his whole family have been cheated as well.

Issue #2 is about rethinking who really needs the care. Affordable child care is just not enough and it only addresses the need of one member of the family: the child. The family, as a whole, needs care and help to function in a way that brings out the best in each family member.

Think back to the days when men worked and brought home “the bacon” and women took care of hearth and home. Childcare was divided back then. Most men took on the role of “the heavy” when it came to discipline (e.g. “Wait till Daddy gets home….”). Most women imparted the ever present, small daily doses of character building while keeping faces clean, clothes washed, and mouths fed. And that was the way it was because no one person could work outside the home and then come home and do everything else that had to be done to create a life that was more than work in a few short hours at the end of a long and tiring day. Most of it was done already. Time to relax and time to enjoy the family.

Then came the industrial revolution. Care of hearth and home became easier. Not as much to do in the house; taking care of the home became easier. Then came the second wave of the feminism. The wider world became accessible and was interesting. Women wanted to (or had to with the shift in marital demographics) share in the excitement of living outside of the now boring cocoon of the home alone. Their daughters went to college and could change the world. And we did.

Undervaluing the roles women played at home led us to think that it was so easy it could be done “after hours.” How wrong we were. And our mistakes have left us with twice the burden. While grateful and excited for our newfound opportunities, the “job” of hearth and home and children, was really never assigned its proper worth.

A patchwork of solutions emerged, each one of us finding our way on our own. The underpinnings of what would constitute not just a reasonable but a desirable “model” (along with pay scales, job descriptions, duties, support services and the like) did not emerge as quickly as our emergence into the market place.

Even today we have not yet come to the realization that a whole new approach is needed to supporting the lives of couples who work, especially if they have children. We need to start by replacing the concept of “child care” with that of “family care.” Stay tuned.