WBJ editor Brad Kane writes about the challenges of balancing work while standing in as a single parent for a week.
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For about a month, my wife and eldest daughter had been asking me if they could go to the International Festival of the Arts at Walt Disney World, as they had never been to this spectacular annual event I went to with our sons in 2021. Money in our family has been tight lately (with our energy and grocery bills rivaling the mortgage as our biggest expense), and Disney is expensive, so I had been saying no.
Yet, they found roundtrip tickets with Southwest Airlines for significantly cheaper than a week’s worth of groceries, agreed to stay with family friends, and even got free transportation with my mother-in-law. So, we all decided: The two of them should go and have a great time. I love the way they smile when they’re at Disney.
The only problem was the dates of their trip were the three days before WBJ sent its Feb. 20 edition to the printer for publication, typically the busiest time in my work schedule. Still, I figured I could handle being the only and full-time parent to three young children at home, while working my full-time, deadline-driven job. It’s sort of a single-parent fantasy camp for me, one I know will end after a few days.
When you read in the story "Worcester nonprofit Edward Street pushing for structural change to child care funding" by Staff Writer Isabel Tehan about how child care is an economic problem both nationally and locally, let me tell you (from my firsthand experience in getting this edition ready for the printer) child care is definitely, 100% a business problem. No wonder working professionals, particularly women, left the workforce in droves during the early phases of COVID when in-person schooling was shut down. Parenting young children is far beyond a full-time job, and throwing in a paying full-time job makes life all but impossible.
To prepare the Feb. 20 edition for publication, I had to find time when my children didn’t need me to drive them around, make meals, or build stair slides. Much of my work on this issue (including writing this column) was done after midnight. While the quality of the work never suffered, this is not a sustainable situation for more than a few days. I have no idea how actual single parents handle it, especially those who have to pay for child care. If 50% of my salary was going to child care just so I could have the opportunity to work full time, I wouldn’t do it. I would net more money by working part time or freelance, while getting to spend more quality time with my children.
The child care crisis is a business crisis.
