In less than one month I will be working again. Sniff sniff. Which means I have to get a move on with finding somebody to care for Gabriel. NOT AN EASY TASK let me tell you. Luckily my mom has so generously offered to watch the angel two days a week until we find a permanent solution. It is a huge committment on her part because she is battling Lyme Disease and can never really guarantee when she is going to have a “bad day.” But since my stepdad and sister are there with her throughout the day she is happy to have time with her grandson.
That brings my childcare search down to three days a week. Daycare is my first choice. So my mom and I started looking into the daycares around my area…that search quickly stopped when the cheapest daycare we found was $100 a day. When Ryan lost his job last October we pretty much blew through our savings until he finally accepted a job in February at $8,000 less than what he was making before. To put it bluntly: $100 a day is not an option.
So my mother in law put me in touch with the YWCA in my county in order to get a list of babysitters in my area. The first question the YWCA lady asked was “Are you calling to get childcare assistance or a list of providers?” Of course in my head I was thinking “both” but I knew what she meant so I asked for the list of providers. Then she took down all my information and asked me my household income. Ugh, why must it always be about money? After I told her what it is she told me there is a fee to get the list. A fee! Apparently they charge $0, 10, 20, or 30 for a list of babysitters based on how much you make. So after giving her my credit card information I decided it might be fruitful to ask about that childcare assistance she mentioned earlier. She said that based on my family size I wouldn’t be able to get assistance unless we made less than $2900 a month before taxes…so much for that. I should get the list of babysitters emailed to me by the end of the day. I wonder if they’ll only send me the names of sitters that they assume I can afford. I hope they don’t tell the sitters how much to charge based on my household income. I know, I’m being a Negative Nancy. I guess I really should be grateful that I have a job to return to. It sucks to have to pay an arm and a leg for childcare but it would be worse to be unemployed like so many Americans are right now.
wow. what a flawed system.
don’t you think that if women pulled out of our workforce because of this issue, our economy would suffer (to say the least)?
maybe it would actually be beneficial to offer REAL assistance to the big old middle class who was kind of tricked into the middle class lifestyles.
What a hard thing to do Tanya! Choosing a caregiver for the person we love the most in the world. And now you have to worry about what all this means.