Layered Childcare: Because Things (Always) Happen

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and twenty one, which is airing in early November of twenty twenty one. We are to be talking about how to take a layered approach to childcare. One of the most common questions we get at Best of both Worlds is, you know what sort of childcare should I have? You know what do I do for backup? You know what would make sense for my work situation, which is somehow a typical and so we want to just talk a little bit about our philosophy of making that work. Now. Sarah has something of a layered approach right now, even though her children are all in what apparently you know, we could be considered full time school because, as she has discovered, full time school is not actually full time childcare. Take it from that, and you mentioned getting a question of like what to do for childcare? I do get the question fairly often, like, oh, now that your kids are in school, aren't you going to do something different with your childcare? You know, there are times when I admit I get a little bit tempted, because it is quite an investment. But every time I even start to think about it, which quite honestly, I haven't really gotten to the point of thinking seriously about it. But when I start to meander into thinking about it, then a kid gets runny nose, or a kid has an emergency dental incident, or there's a holiday that week that the school has off that I don't have off, or there's a teacher work day, which we have this week. In fact, this week we had like three of these. Yeah, we had a dental appointment that I couldn't get to, we had a kid with a running nose, and we have a teacher work day. So like, I don't think this week is unique. I think these types of weeks come up so often. That it's almost like I would be constantly cobbling things together. And often when you're cobbling, that can make things even more pricey because you're sort of working in an emergency tide market. Plus I would lose I would just lose the peace of mind that I number one always have childcare and number two currently have my childcare help with some other things since there is on some days time to do so. So yes, agree, Have you had any normal weeks of school so well? I mean the kids have been in school, but there's just always something, you know, whether a kid gets sick or you know, we've had a few days that our nanny has needed to take off for various things, and so then we have to have back up for Henry for instance, unless you know, we're able to cover it. And I'm covering Henry tomorrow for some of the day, but we had a backup situation for him today, and so that's just you know, what you have to do, I mean basically with childcare and so well, these are the things nobody tells you when you're going into the market for it originally, is that every single approach is going to have days when it is not available, like every approach is not going to cover all the hours that you might need coverage, even if that's not regular coverage, it's just that you might need it some additional hours sometime. So if you are a two career family or you are a single parent who is working for pay, you are going to need a layered approach until the kids are old enough to care for themselves, and the layers need to be more robust as things become more complex, so as you add in travel for one or both of you, as you add in any unexpected late nights or we can and shifts for both of you. If parents have to absolutely work on site, right if there's no option for remote work, that means the layers need to be more robust if you have multiple young kids, because then that limits how many hours somebody can work without burning out. Basically, so you know all of these are going to require more layers, and so people are always like, oh, well, what form of childcare should I choose? It's like, no, no, not one, not one. You need more than one and figuring out what you know the first primary option is, but then also what your secondary option is and how often you need it, and you know on what level of you know, availability it's going to have is a complicated question for many people. So you know, we we thought we'd talk about a few ideas of how this could work for different families, and you know, brainstorming, like these are hype esthetical families, but they kind of match up with what we have gotten in letters from people in the past. So let's do our caveat. Sarah, you want to give our caveat. I like your caveat. Well, okay, I had a couple. I also want to add one other thing, which is that sometimes you want to tell yourself the story that like, oh, you know, if my kid get sick, like it'll be fine, Like, you know, most days aren't that important that I be at work. I get tempted into that line of thinking sometimes when I'm thinking about nebulous time in the future, and yet when the day approaches and it's like, oh my god, I have fifteen patients scheduled and it would mean canceling on fifteen patients, or I have like a meeting with the CMO of our health system that like would be mortifying. Like there's all like I think I've run on a blog post, like it's either a bad time or a worse time, like to lose your childcare like it's never You're never going to be like, oh well, it's okay, Like I mean maybe not never se to not have child. I was hoping to just curl up and you know, watch movies with my runny nose tilder all day. I mean it does not sound terrible, but like there's always going to be stuff going on. So I think that you do have to be very realistic. I mean, if you and your partner both have extremely flexible careers and you can work out a thing where like each parent is fully on call and you like have a schedule and like you really truly, but I don't think there's that many careers that are like that, and certainly not that many families where both people are that flexible where it wouldn't be. Yeah, it also depends on the age of the kids too. So if all of your kids are like sort of in school aids, like over six years old and so could be reliably distracted during an important call with minecraft for an hour, like chances are that they would not actually interrupt you for it, then you potentially could have the layers be you know, some primary system for the kids. But then the secondary is the two of you could work from home and could alternate, you know, like Monday and Tuesday is always one parent, Wednesday and Thursday is always the other parents. So if something comes up, you know, and you can see how this would lead to occasional promptsuse what if party A is traveling on Wednesday or Thursday or something like that. So you know, you would have to rework it as time goes on. But theoretically it could in fact work. But again, as you have younger kids than that becomes harder to do because you know, there's very little you can do with a two year old to reliably keep them away from you while you're trying to do a call, even if you are in fact working from home. And I would just add here that if you have very long hours, I've had conversations with people and they're like, why do I keep losing my childcare? My nannies keep quitting, And it's like, well, they're expecting them to work sixty hours a week with like an infant in a three year old, and it's like they have no break. I mean, they're on constantly, and so that's why people are quitting, and so if you are in that situation you need significantly more than forty hours, You probably need more than one person. So that's your layer as well, all right. So our caveat as I go on, is that all of these families are probably not normal families in the sense that when you have any options for childcare, that puts you in a rather privileged place. I know a great many people do not have many options at all, and so we want to acknowledge that. But on the other hand, we are trying to be of service to the core of our listeners, which, as we see from the letters we get, tend to be people who do have options and are trying to figure out which option would best support both them and their partner as they try to build their careers while raising a young family. And I would also like to stress that again, as we said, some people think that if you have option what are let's say, a full time nanny, that you have no problems ever whatsoever. But you know, you can have very reliable childcare. But if somebody is a mortal human being, like stuff happens that people get sick, they have family emergencies, or car breaks down, whatever it is, and so you might still need another option in the back of your mind, even if you don't need it all that often. All right, So Sarah, Yeah, I mean I can speak for that personally because our Nanni is extremely, extremely reliable. She has worked for our family, been employed by us for over eight years now, and we've still run into issues where by no fault of anyone, we just need something else as well, because there's just you know, someone gets very sick, or there's a funeral, or something big happens in somebody's life, and you can't control every single variable. Plus, people do need to take vacations, and that's very important, and I think making sure that people can get appropriate time off is probably the key to making sure your relationship can be healthy for eight years or more. All Right. So, couple one somewhat similar to one of our hosts here to the physicians two preschool aged kids, let's say age three and four. Clinic occasionally runs long, but within a range, and there is call for some weekend and night hours. Sarah, what would you suggest, Yeah, this one's definitely for me. Right. Well, the first thing I would suggest is that those physicians, if their kids are that age, consider taking their call at the same time with childcare, if that's possible, Because I do have friends in the situation who are you know, and did it myself who stagger their call and then never see each other. And I think I figured out early on that that was not ideal. So that's one thing to think about, figuring out if you can do that. I agreed that this would be a scenario where layered is a must. I mean, this was kind of like Josh and me when we just had Annabel and Cameron and they were little, and in our case, what worked really well was to have daycare or school available plus some backup sitters. At that time, we happened to live near family and that was an option and a nanny so that, you know, having kind of multiple layers in place and having a preschool off for your like two plus year old to allow them to a get that stimulation. I mean, yes, the downside is they're going to bring home more germs, but there are upsides as well, and to make sure you are not burning out your nanny and to have a backup in case something goes wrong, because it's one thing to ask your family member to care for one child, and it's it's a bigger ass to care for, like a baby and a toddler. So that is what we did, and that is probably what most people would need in that situation. And I do think, you know, we don't really we haven't gotten help from family in a long time because we moved a lot farther as well. But for those that can swing it, that may be a theme to at least think about if it's an option, because in certain scenarios that's a wonderful layer of backup and has other benefits of having your kids be close to older family members. Yeah, especially having the preschool plus full time nanny option, it gives you some more coverage for those evening hours. But then if you know the preschool is not available on a day, your full time child crimon be able to come earlier because that is their full time job, so presumably there might be some flexibility to that. But then if your full time nanny was not available, somebody as a backup could pick your kids up from preschool let's say, you know, one or two o'clock whenever they're done with it, and that's a smaller number of hours you're having to find coverage for. Let's say it's two to six, or you know, even noon to six is just more doable than finding necessarily a whole day of care. So that's what we would recommend for that couple. And I think we need to take a quick break before our next one, so stay tuned. All right, Well, we are back talking about childcare, a layered approach. Various types of childcare we might recommend for different families in different scenarios. Couple too, is a high school principal plus lawyer. So this couple has one toddler. Now the things to think about here. Lawyers tend to work longer hours, but they often are slightly more set hours for many of them. A high school principal starts very early. On the other hand, you know, they theoretically could be done early, but there's probably lots of occasional evening events that they're going to have to show up for, dealing with the community and things like that. So what would we recommend for them? So there's no one right answer. You know, we haven't mentioned OPERR yet, although I think we were going to think about it in a future answer. But if this people had extra room and wanted that flexibility, that might be helpful. Because anytime you have an early starter, you might need extra help in the morning, and having someone that's actually living in your household could provide that. Now, there are rules we always give this caveat with OH pairs about providing overnight care. Often you're not allowed to do that, but there's certainly no rule that they can't get up with the kids in the morning and help with breakfast and getting ready for school. And if you have a high school principal rushing out the door at seven am, and another parent that I don't know sometimes has to catch up on work or takes a call in a different sime zone in the morning, it might be nice to have another set of hands. I also have to say that this sounds a little bit like my sister in law and brother in law because they're a lawyer, teacher combo. She was a guest on the show That's Missed Rachel Hunger anyway, So their solution at the time I think was to use daycare and also rely on family as they lived right nearby. Yeah, I would suggest the daycare plus o pair option for this family, and the reason being that with one toddler and you need full time care for that you're going to run up into the hour limit with an O pair forty five hours max. A week, You're going to hit that with this family. Since it's a toddler and they're always there, there's like you need full time coverage. It's not like they're in school, So how can you approximate the school while you can put them in at least a part time daycare. And so if you were able to find a relatively affordable daycare solution, the O pair solution can also be relatively affordable too. In general, because there is a cultural element to it that people are coming to the US, it tends not to be quite as expensive as the full time salary of a professional nanny. And since this family is already dealing with teenagers all the time as part of the high school principal aspect, they may have a higher tolerance for like twenty year olds than many other people might. So that's something I would suggest for this family. And then obviously if the daycare didn't work out on some day, if the child was sick and couldn't go, then the O pair would be available to care for them on that day for at least some number of hours. And then hopefully the family could shift on either side their work hours to care for the kid as well in those days. All right. Couple three This is a consultant who has a fairly intense travel schedule plus a tech company project manager. They have three elementary school aged kids who are five, seven, and nine. I'm feeling full time manny on this one, all right, just because of the possible need for overnight help at times, plus minus living near family as well if they can you can sense the theme again, this is not something that really applies to us, even though we do live somewhat near family. But I do know when I speak to others that's often part of the story of what makes things work. So I don't want to leave it out here. But the fact that they may need frequent overnight coverage, I mean, their kids are in school most of the time. I also would probably add in a trusted like aftercare like so for example, the gymnastics gym my kids go to, they have a ton of additional like aftercare type stuff where they offer gymnastics programming and other stuff. They need to find some like activities or you know, it could be an after school program, but better if it's not affiliated with the school so that if there's like a teacher work day or something like that, and I guess they have their nanny as well, but sometimes having an activity or two like that where you know you have that option. I know it's helped us. And this family sounds like they got a lot going on and a lot of kids, so having some community option in addition to their nanny and then school would probably be a nice combo. Yeah, this is another family that might need, you know, the full time nanny even though they have school available, because if one person has to go to work and the other is like off in California and you know it's the backup is just you know, if a child is out of school for some reason, or you know there's a half day, they're going to need the full time coverage. Some people in this situation say, once they're all in school, they do go with the opair option because they think they would like the flexibility of the morning and the afternoon. So again that's another option that can work with that. But as as Sarah has found, the full time nanny even though all your kids are in school can work well with that too. I think this is a family that would need to you know, not try to skimp on that, because when one parent is gone a lot, it can be really hard on the other person to continue their career unless they have you know, full layers of coverage there. And then we wanted to try a single parent family. So let's say we've got a mom and a nine and eleven year old. So this family most likely needs driving help. Mom works full time in a corporate manager role. She can't leave the kids home alone all day, right, so if they're homesick from school, she can't just like you know, leave them there from seven thirty to five thirty. But on the other hand, they could be home for a few hours by themselves, the nine and the eleven year old, Sarah, what would you suggest for that? So I know a family kind of like this pretty well, and what they have done that's worked pretty well is what I mentioned about kind of having activities where there's aftercare included, so they're they're involved in number of those. And then honestly, this person has done a wonderful job just creating a huge village of friends, and I think that if you do put effort in that, which might mean that she's often having other people's kids over at other times. This person's very social, so I think it works really really well for her. And she also does, I think, strategically live near her family as well, who help her on occasion, I think when everything else falls through. But she has so many other layers that even though she doesn't have her own nanny or o pair, she's actually able to make it work really well. Yeah, it can work really well. And again, the living near family. We keep saying this, but for many people that is a pretty good backup option that they're not going to provide full time care. But the peace of mind you have knowing that say Grandma or an aunt, your cousins are occasionally available if you did need them, allows you to not have to have a paid solution that it's going to be hard to maintain because because that's the issue. It's like when you have multiple layers, then you have to think about the logistics of the multiple layers, and it could get pretty hard. You know, when we were doing daycare when Jasper was little, we wound up with you know, it was like five backup sitters at one point, but they were never all available. Right, It's like I would find somebody and they'd work for a while and do some nights, and then something would happen, they'd move on, and you know, I'm trying to find someone else, and so it's like, you know, I have five people on the roster, but you know whether any given person is going to be available to work, and especially on short notice, can be really challenging to make work. So what if you're over the time. You know, you've had different situations, Sarah, you've done daycare for a while too. Yeah. I mean when we were residents. Financially, there wasn't really another option available to us at the time, and I don't think an opair would have covered enough hours, even if we could have swung that, which maybe is similar to the cost of a year of full time daycare, but yeah, I don't think that would have worked hours wise. So, yeah, we did the Duke daycare. We loved it. It was when we had one kid. It was a great experience that the secret is that a hospital affiliated daycare probably has longer hours. So we definitely benefited work because from what I understand of like residency hours, it would have been difficult to residence. If I had been a resident, we would have had to take out loans and get more types of coverage, because what do your residents do now? They day combination of daycare. Not all of them have physician partners, so that's always easier if you if your partner is more flexible. Some of them specifically chose our program so they could be closer to family, so that was a strategic option for them. Yeah, so a combination of things. And honestly, you know, I have residence with little babies, so I think they're all kind of learning. It's I don't have resident I have, and I've had residence with like older kids. But the next couple of years will be interesting to see what they do and as we hopefully, you know, multiply are the babies in our residency family, I bet there'll be more. Yeah, I mean, so we've had, you know, a bunch of different things over the years. You know, we've for the past twelve years, we've always had a full time nanny, but different ones have been available for different number of hours per week, often as a personal preference, and when that's less then we've wound up hiring part time sitters as well. So for a while we had one person a full time nanny, who worked eight to six Monday to Thursday, because she decided that she needed to limit it to forty hours. And she was wonderful and we loved her, so we said we would make that work. And so we wound up hiring a person for Fridays, so that person would work you know, ten to twelve hours per week. So that was one full time and one part time. And then the upside of having the part time is then you have a regular sitter option too, you know, if the person ever wants to work extra hours the evenings or weekends than they are available. You know, we had for a while when Ruth was in preschool and the boys were in full time school, that we had our full time nanny generally start on at noon on the day she was in preschool, right, so we had the layered approach of school and preschool plus the full time nanny to get some evening hours. We have had a situation where we you know, needed some overnight coverage and needed more, you know than one night, and so what we've had is had a backups that are come in the evening so you know, to provide I guess respite for the person who was staying overnight so that they could go off and do their own thing for a few hours and then trade off again. And so no one person was on twenty four to seven for multiple days in a row, which can get really tough with young kids. I mean, I've done it, but I'm their mom, so it's a different, different sort of thing. And you know, right now, currently we actually, you know, we have our full time nanny and the four big kids are in school. We have a family friend who will occasionally take our baby if we need coverage for him, but then we need to be around for the other big kids. But that's mostly worked because Michael has been working from home for the past eighteen months. So between the two of us, you know, even if one of us had, you know, like I'm giving a virtual speech or something, he might be available to, you know, pick up a kid or deal with you know, Alex when he gets home or vice versa. If he has to run into the office for the day, then I'm here and I can be you know, decide to not do anything after four o'clock if I have to deal with the kids, the older kids, for instance. So you know, one way or another, you make it work. But it definitely helps to have two parties able to work from home versus one. I can say that that is a silver lining of the pandemic for sure. That is awesome. Now we have our full time nanny still, and then the kids are obviously in st school, and I don't see us changing things up anytime soon. I mean the more again, every time I even think about it, stuff happens. And then the activities kind of are a lot too, and I need another driver, and my husband's never going to be home, so it's I mean, you know, sometimes he's home, but I can't rely on him being home at a given time really on any specific day, so we need it there. Yes, all right, Well let's move to our question. This listener is a software engineer, which is an industry that she feels suffers from sexism and agism, though her particular organization is much better because that's why she chose it. But anyway, she says she is a bit older than her peers and didn't bother to tell anyone her real age. She started work as a fresh PhD grad and actually looks quite a bit younger than she is. I lets say, is what she what she's telling us here? So people think she's younger than she is. Her deliver thinks what she thinks. She thinks, she I guess she hasn't taken a poll of her office, like how old do you think I am? People? However, so she has made a decision years ago to start dyeing her hair. She says, I don't think I can keep doing this, however, forever, because as she has hit forty, she has noticed the white strands have come in faster and faster. Her hair is very, very dark, so gray hairs are quite noticeable, and the low maintenance highlight and low light techniques don't seem into work for her. She feels like her scalp is becoming more sensitive as she's dumping the black dye on it daily, or whatever it is she's doing to hide the grays. So she asks us, am I being overly concerned about agism? Should she just surrender and go gray or partly gray or whatever? She's worried about the professional consequences. Is there any tip to keep it easy and less damaging. There's some of embracing gray, she says, but people tend to talk about beauty and nature and not about the professional cost. So what do we suggest? She did, so, Sarah, you don't actually dye your hair, do you? I have never. I love this question. I like have been pondering because I just think it's so interesting and I have myself, so you know, I've never dyed my hair. I don't have very much gray. I mean, like I can find some grays, but and in this light, but no, it's really there's not that much gray, and certainly like not like obvious streaks or anything. People often assume that I dye my hair because it's kind of an odd color, and I feel like it's a color some people dye their hair. So I actually I brought this question to my manager. I was I mean, not the whole question, but I was like, hey, do you think that, like, if my hair starts to go gray, I should die it because it would like hurt me professionally. And he's like, he's like, first of all, how old are you? And second of all, don't you dye your hair? And I'm like, no, I don't dye my hair. And he's like, oh, yeah, you know, come to think of it, I've never seen your hair growing in any different colors. That makes sense. And then I was like, hey, but you know, like all the other doctors we work like, I mean not to like throw anyone under the bus, but like most people do not have their natural goal that I work with, and some are older. So he's like, oh, you're right. So he wasn't really able to answer me, although it was also kind of funny because he's like, you're forty one. So that's partly why I'm like, I don't who knows how old the people think she is, Like she thinks they think she's younger, but maybe they know people tend to figure that kind of thing out cultural references. I don't know who knows, But my other thought is this is such an interesting question. He also said to me, he was like, this doctor doesn't die their hair. I'm like, that's a man. I'm like, that is totally different, Yeah, because men can age gracefully and it's harder for us. I don't know the answer. I mean, part of me feels like she should just go gray and she can always like rediet, or like maybe she'll find that so much of her hair is gray that she could diet blonde with like much gentler washes or something. So I don't know. I don't know much about blonde hair from I think her hair was black as part of you know her, she's of an ethnicity that it would not really work to go blonde, you know what I'm saying. So I don't be that's true. It would be very I think people you know, it's a it's a very interesting question. I do dye my hair, and I however, I've been doing it since I was fifteen, so it's not because I was getting gray hairs. It's just that I wanted to have blonde hair like I had when I was a kid. And I probably have some grays, but I don't know that I have that many. I probably I have some, but I don't know, like, I don't know how many because it doesn't show up that much. And people do, as you said, dye their hair blonde because that is what you can hide gray with. I think it would be hard to dye your hair other colors to hide gray with as you go on. So this is a tough question. I guess if she thinks her organization is more open than a lot of others, it might be worth having a conversation with a really good stylist and see if there's a way that she could have some sort of hybrid hair, you know, that that has maybe some element of gray in it and then some element of the black hair in it, and see if there was a way that this could be done with like a really awesome cut that would would look you know, fresh and modern and not so much about the gray as just being very interesting and sophisticated. And then maybe that's an option I would I would suggest also looking through you know, magazines, any you know, files of photos places to see if there are examples of people who have some amount of gray that is blended into their hair in a way that folks professional and chic and all that good stuff. And then she could sort of have that hybrid for a while and see how it goes and see if that is easier to maintain when it's not her whole head having to be dyed so frequently. And then as time goes on, she might you know, switch it over more to the gray as people get accustomed to it and you know, realize that it's still her, you know, and that she's still doing as great work as she was. But as you can see from Sarah and I having a haying about this, we don't know, like we don't know the answer to this question. So I would love to hear from people in industries that have something of a youth focus, like the tech industry does, ones that tend to be more male dominated, again, like the tech industry tends to do. What you've done about dyeing your hair and going gray, and how you have approached that, if you have decided to just say, hey, I am who I am. My hair is what it is. I don't want to spend the time on it, and everyone can just accept me. If you have found some sort of hybrid solution or if you are doing the high maintenance one where you are dying it frequently to keep that youthful look, so please let us know and we will we will report back. I kind of think I'm going to try to just not start to dye my hair, because I feel like once you start, it's just that slippery slope and I already straighten and that's already pain in the button. Like I just I don't like the idea of like dying it and then at one point having to have this like gray line grow in. Like I think I'd rather just gradually have my hair get more mixed. Could work, I don't know. I know this question wasn't about me, but obviously we think certainly thought yes, yes, all right, well let us know. You can write to us, let us know what our listeners should do. We are real quick. We'll do our love of the week. I'm going to go with my hair dye, you know, Larel Preference nine and a half, a lightest ash blonde. I make the little streaks. I do my hair dyeing myself, so it's actually quite cheap. Doesn't take too much time either, because I can do it whenever I want, as opposed to having to get an appointment at a salon. So throw that out there as an idea. But it's hard for many people to do because you have to master certain like highlighting techniques. But if you practice on your own hair since you're fifteen, turns out you can learn, Sarah, how about you. My love of the week is buying baby gifts because even though I don't need to buy a baby stuff for myself, I just get so much joy every time someone has a baby and I get to shock the little tiny clothing. So I just bought a set of tiny ug boots with a matching blanket for someone and it's just the cutest thing cute. I hope the baby gets to wear them before they grow out of them. They always grow out so fast of everything. It's a problem with baby gear. All right. Well, we've been talking the layered approach to childcare and also about whether to let your hair go gray. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the sh shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.