EXCERPTS
Summertime throws into relief the mismatch between work and family life.
Working parents in middle- and upper-income families have stitched together activities for kids by now. Maybe the 6-year-old is enrolled in art camp and taekwondo, the 10-year-old is learning to code and improving her basketball skills, and a nanny or babysitter fills in the gaps.
But the gaps in care that frustrate well-off families over the summer are a constant in the lives of lower-income parents, who disproportionately work jobs with schedules that are not limited to weekday hours and can change unexpectedly. It’s a year-round second job to find safe, let alone enriching, supervision for their kids.
As part of a study my colleagues and I did on the child-care arrangements of parents in the retail sector, a part-time department store sales clerk told me that she had worked a different schedule each day the prior week: on Sunday she worked from noon to 5 p.m., on Monday from 2 to 8:30 p.m., on Wednesday from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. and on Saturday from 1:30 to 9 p.m.
Over 40 percent of American children live with a parent who mostly works during hours when schools aren’t open and traditional child care isn’t available — during the early mornings, evenings, weekends or overnight — and these work schedules are often changing at the last minute. Some parents choose these shifts as part of a shared caregiving strategy with a spouse, but most don’t have a choice.
Another participant in our study, a full-time cashier at a home improvement store and mother of a 4-year-old, told me in describing her schedule: “Everything is different and open. Nothing is consistent.” She takes her son to a home-based child-care center most days. But when she has to work nights or weekends, she relies on her mother, grandmother or cousin. “Without my family,” she said, “I wouldn’t be able to do it.”
In a 2015 survey of low-income families receiving government child-care subsidies that my research team and I conducted, 38 percent indicated that they received less than one week’s notice of their work schedule, 33 percent reported that their work hours varied either “sometimes” or “a lot” and 33 percent said that they either “sometimes” or “very often” had to go into work unexpectedly or stay later than scheduled.
Yet only 8 percent of child-care centers and 34 percent of listed home-based child-care programs offer care during nontraditional hours. And even these programs are rarely set up to accommodate families with last-minute or variable needs.
This mismatch between child-care needs and work demands forces parents to assemble a complicated bundle of arrangements, often with both formal and informal caregivers. These arrangements can be unstable and difficult to maintain, stress relationships and threaten the stability of already precarious work situations.
There are several steps we can take to address this problem.
One could imagine child-care centers that remained open 24/7 and accepted variable and last-minute enrollment. But widespread use of this model probably wouldn’t work. Few businesses could afford the staffing necessary to care for an unpredictable number of children. And many parents wouldn’t want to leave their kids at child-care centers over dinner and bedtime anyway.
A better solution would be to properly compensate informal caregivers, who are likely to continue to do the biggest share of child care. In most states, they can get reimbursed for serving families that receive the Child Care and Development Block Grant. But the funding only serves 15 percent of eligible families, and most of it goes to subsidize center care.
Ultimately, employers have to be part of the solution. Flexible work environments and family-friendly labor practices are critical pieces of the puzzle. Some employers have stepped up by giving employees more predictable hours and greater input into their work schedules. One experiment at Gap stores in Chicago and San Francisco showed sales and productivity increased as a result.
Beyond voluntary employer efforts, a few state and local governments have strengthened policies to support working families and have passed scheduling laws that increase the predictability of workers’ hours. Yet, so far just 10 states and around 30 cities or counties have paid sick leave laws. Only four states offer paid family leave. And only Oregon, Washington, D.C., and six cities have passed laws to reduce unpredictable scheduling practices. More should do the same.
Whether it’s just the summer or year-round, many families could use a great deal more help aligning paid work with caregiving responsibilities. Working parents need a fuller range of children’s programs and labor market policies that reflect the realities of work and family life.
Julia Henly is an associate professor in the School of Social Service Administration and co-director of the Employment Instability, Family Well-Being and Social Policy Network at the University of Chicago.