Courtesy photos
The pandemic tore the scab off our collective caregiving wounds. Inadequate sick and family leave policies don’t meet Americans’ needs. The workers who deliver care for children, elders, and the disabled are overworked and underpaid.
These narratives crack open a window on the deeply-flawed system that Americans confront every day.
Catherine Lieberman, child care provider, Fletcher, NC
Even before COVID-19, maintaining a child care center is a challenge. There becomes a threshold where there’s no more that parents can pay. So, you can’t raise the tuition any more, but you have to raise it enough to have a highly educated teacher who you can give an appropriate wage, and still keep the lights on, and keep the water flowing, and make sure the building looks appropriate and the driveway isn’t falling apart, and you have equipment and supplies.
Early education is often walking a tightrope between running a business and doing what we know is appropriate for care for young children. When the pandemic hit, we chose to stay open, but we had to make some very tough financial decisions, including taking me off the payroll. I have not taken a paycheck since March 16. The challenges for early care were there already, and the pandemic just put a spotlight on it. I am hopeful that the pandemic will help people understand how important child care is. —Blaise Malley
Cathy Belair, grandmother of two young children, Fletcher, NC
I am a teacher and my husband works early shifts, so the first challenge was to find a place that would take the kids at 7:30 in the morning. When we did find centers that had the hours, the programs were not as robust as I would want. There was nothing affordable that had the hours and the capacity to teach to the depth that we wanted. It’s unaffordable for most people, and we were just lucky that we had some savings to dip into.
Even once we found the place that we wanted, we had to get on a wait list. I put the first child in at six months old, and I barely made it. And this was for when she turned three. If I hadn’t heard about it at the right time, there’s no way I could have gotten into that program. The second child, even before she was born, I had her on that list.
We basically paid oodles and oodles of money to put them in a good place that had the right hours. We were sacrificing our retirement so that they could have a good early education, because as a teacher, I know how important the first few years are. —Blaise Malley
Leigha Rosario, early-childhood educator, Baltimore, MD
Leigha Rosario understands the importance of quality child care. “When I was younger, I did not attend child care and I found myself shying away. I was very quiet and reserved because I was not as advanced as some of the kids in my grade. I had to go to speech [therapy] and stuff because my language was not as advanced as other children were.”
Now, she works as a teacher for two-year-olds in the Weinberg Early Childhood Center, a center managed by Downtown Baltimore Child Care. Rosario notices that she has trouble connecting with many of the parents who are preoccupied with other issues and who do not appreciate the value of early care. Since the pandemic, Leigha’s class of nine kids has been reduced to three, and overall enrollment at the center has been reduced by a third to a half. On the other hand, parents are more aware of the difficulties of caring for children and more curious about how they should do so. In the aftermath of the pandemic, Rosario says it may become more clear that “everyone would benefit from the government providing child care.” —Blaise Malley
Mackenzie Leech, disability care provider, Crystal Lake, IL
Just before the pandemic, I started a new job as a home care provider for a high school–aged boy with a developmental disability. When the pandemic hit, I became the main person providing his care. The shift to online schooling meant he’d spend more time in the house, and the abrupt change in his schedule created a new level of discomfort, which made the transition quite challenging at first.
But my experiences prepared me for it. I started providing care for disabled individuals when I was 16 and began a job at a special recreation center. It’s oftentimes a thankless job, but I think most people in the field aren’t doing it for a thank you. When I was going into first grade, I was placed in a learning disability class due to my reading level. I connected with the individuals with disabilities in my class who inspired me to pursue this line of work.
While I find fulfillment in this job, it’s fatiguing for many and has a high turnover rate. The shifts are long. Support is often limited. And the clients’ behaviors can be unpredictable. Those I know in the field hold a great deal of passion for their work. However, passion should not be an excuse to withhold adequate compensation for those providing this type of care. —Alex J. Rouhandeh
Stan Chen, restaurant owner, Syracuse, NY
The coronavirus pandemic hit my restaurant hard. With less dollars making their way to our register, we decided keeping our babysitter was no longer feasible and decided to start bringing our kids to work.
Sometimes I give them chores, like clearing tables or peeling carrots, so they have more to do and can feel like a part of the business. When my wife or I are unable to have our eyes on them, our employees offer us help. Though it’s not an ideal situation, we’ve had a lot of fun spending extra time with them, and I think for the most part they’ve enjoyed being able to spend their time around us.
My wife and I know we’re lucky though. We cannot afford to offer our employees the same option, and if we didn’t own the business this would never be feasible. I think if child care was cheaper, more couples would be able to make a dual income, which would help alleviate a number of financial struggles. However, I also don’t think this cost should be placed on people who choose to not have kids. Perhaps a fair way of providing child care, without adding a substantial financial burden, would be through reforming the school system by implementing universal pre-K and offering extended hours. —Alex J. Rouhandeh
Kendra Scalia, disability care receiver, Newburgh, NY
I was born with a disability called spinal muscular atrophy. When I finished my graduate program, I got a job. By any standard, you would look at my income and say I was doing very well, but almost 25 percent of my income was going to pay [caregivers’] salaries, as well as their health benefits and insurance programs.
I had gone through a medical procedure in 2012. I was in bed for two months, and my body deteriorated. When I got out of that, I needed significantly more help, more than double the amount of time that I was using prior, and I could not afford it as well as pay my rent and my bills. I was really forced to leave my career so that I could receive the amount of care that my body needed in order to stay healthy.
I lost all of my consistency and care because the folks that I’ve been paying out of pocket were earning over $18 an hour working for me, and going back onto the Medicaid funding program, at the time, they would be earning just $11 an hour. Every single one of them had to turn the job down and find work elsewhere. It’s been a continued theme of difficulty in my life, eight years later. Finding people to work for a low wage and no benefits is almost impossible. —Shera Avi-Yonah
Susie Rivera, nursing home employee, New Braunfels, TX
I started this work in 1986. My first job was taking care of a lady in San Antonio. After she passed away, I didn’t know what to do, so I started working in nursing homes and I got a lot of good experience there.
Before the pandemic, I was working between 100 and 110 hours a week, mostly because my wife retired. She was a forced retirement because of her health. She worked at a nursing home almost 30 years, and she was no longer able to perform her duties because of health issues. I was kind of forced to work all these hours to provide her health insurance.
Right now, I’m working roughly 80 hours a week. But you know, it’s really strange. I’ve always been used to working a job and having a part-time job or little job on the side, and I could do it. And now it just seems like, it’s so stressful now, our working environment. We’re really paying close attention to the folks we take care of because we don’t want them getting sick. They’re scared of catching the coronavirus. They’re the vulnerable age, they have health issues. Even my wife, I don’t want to bring it home. She has health issues. It’s really a lot of stress on caregivers. —Shera Avi-Yonah
Liz O’Donnell, author, Dedham, MA
I was experiencing what I now know is the caregiver creep. I was working full time, I had two kids, I was married, pretty busy life, and my parents were in their eighties and needing more. I was mowing their lawn, driving them to doctor’s appointments because they had stopped driving, I was sorting pills, you know, some household chores. I thought that was pretty busy, and then they got sick.
My dad was in one hospital. He was then admitted to a geriatric psych unit, and that’s where he was indeed diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia. I was told he could never go home again. In the meantime, my mom, I had moved her into an assisted living near her house because you can do respite care for 30 days at a time. Well, while she was there, she was sent to the ER with stomach pain. The local hospital sent her up to Boston, where she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and given three months to live.
So it was a really, really intense, you know, the next I’d say three to six months. I moved my father into memory care, I moved my mother into assisted living. I was going to their house, digging through piles of bills and paperwork to find, where do they have a will, and do they have a burial plot? There were medical diagnoses to deal with, there was financial information to deal with, there was end-of-life planning to deal with.
And I was the breadwinner for my family. I was trying to hide the fact from my boss just how bad things had become, because I knew she would say, you should take a leave of absence. And I was terrified to hear her say that. —Shera Avi-Yonah
