I listened to No One is Coming to Save Us on my walks the last several days and found it generally interesting and informative. Notwithstanding the pundits who held forth on their areas of expertise, the most memorable nugget of wisdom for me from the Gloria Riviera's young son - famous last words at the end of the last episode. I don't recall his exact phrasing but in the best way that a child could say it, he asked his mother what is the point of her going to work to some place just to pay for a sitter to take care of him in another place. That question hit hard and took me back about fifteen years in time when J had asked me her variation of that very question. I am going to guess this is top of mind for any child in that age group who has a working mother and therefore needs childcare during the day.
J was very lucky to have her grandparents around her until four and a half years old. Her daycare days were the bridge between that age and kindergarten. Even during that period, the grandparents were around during summer. In summary, the "problem" in J's case was relatively short-lived and yet I was asked this question during one of those gaps where there was no family to take care of her. This is clearly a big deal. I was never asked why do you leave me with grandparents so you can go to work - it was not a valid or logical question so it was never asked. But when the care-giver was paid for their work and not family, the very point of my working for a salary was brought into question. For a child it does simply not compute and that was my big takeaway from the podcast. Riviera's son had said it all.
A lot of time and effort in the podcast was focused on what the government should do to help every working mother who needs help caring for a baby. I raised J alone as a new immigrant and a single mother in America so I am well aware of the challenges though mine were not nearly as dire as other mothers I have known over the years. Multi-generational, joint and extended families are a mostly untapped resource and should be talked about a lot more in this country. Government has a definite role to play but families can help their own out too.
I was blessed to have my parents pitch in for J and have known friends who had two sets of grandparents helping out with their kids. My friend L, also a single mother, travels extensively for work for decades and has raised two kids along the way. Her sister and parents live in the same town and were her reliable support system. I was disappointed the importance of family was completely ignored in this podcast besides a nod to villages in Africa where indeed the whole village parents the children and there is no concept of a child being the exclusive possession of its birth mother. I wish the lessons learned from that observation had translated to actual calls to action for those in America. Not to generalize but no matter how wonderful a paid care-giver, if there is a loving grand-parent, older cousin, uncle or aunt who is willing and able to step in for the child whose mother is working, they would generally win hands-down. What is possible in an African village likely isn't in American suburbia but it is well worth the trouble to figure out what is.
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