The benefits of workplace flexibility

It looks like workplace flexibility has more potentially positive
effects than just allowing workers a more sane balance in life and
therefore, the ability to focus more on the job when they are working.
According to this article, workplace flexibility is also very
important in allowing single parents to both earn an income and raise
their families. Why should we care? Because 40% of babies born last
year were born out of wedlock. It’s not good for the mothers, for the
children, or for society for those parents to live with an abusive
spouse or partner because they need financial support. Nor is it good
for the families to remain in poverty. My new employer does quite
well with workplace flexibility and I hope it’s a trend that more and
more employers will embrace as they see positive effects on retention,
morale and productivity. Now we need to find a way to provide
families with access to quality and affordable childcare, so these
parents can go out and make a living without worrying that their kids
are in danger or are receiving less than optimal care and attention.
On-site childcare anyone?

Dinner with an Icelandic Family

I was recently invited to dinner by a kind Icelandic family with three children, ages 13, 10 and 4. Over grilled fish, roasted sweet potatoes, and ratatouille, I was able to learn more about family life in this northern country.

I asked the mother, Gurri, about the numerous baby carriages. Were Icelanders having a lot of babies or were they just taking them outside more often? She thinks they are having more babies. “It’s become a bit of a trend, during the recession,” she said. “You see carriages and pregnant women everywhere you go.”

Icelandic law allows for three months maternity leave, three month paternity leave and another three months to be used by either parent. Children can get a spot in a daycare somewhere between ages one and two. Until then, they rely on parents, grandparents, relatives or “home-mommys,” which are in-home daycares where up to five young children can be cared for.

Gurri pays just over $200 per month for full-time daycare for her son, including a full menu of home-cooked meals. This is thanks to government subsidies. She had been working full-time when she became pregnant with her third. Finding it too difficult to balance three children with a full-time job, she quit and stayed home for a year and a half. Now she is back at work. She gets up at 6:30 to go to the gym before work, then works an eight hour day. Her son’s daycare is less than a block away from home and her daughters’ school is just around the corner, within walking distance. The entire family sits down for dinner together in the evening.

In the summertime, her two elder daughters are largely on their own. The eldest, who is very involved in gymnastics, spends much of her days training. The 10-year old hangs out at home alone, plays with friends and visits her grandparents, who live within walking distance.

Icelanders get at least 24 days of vacation per day. In addition, they get 2 sick days per month for themselves and two days per month to care for their children. “So when we call in sick, we have to specify whether we are sick or our children are sick,” Gurri said.

They spent several years living in the U.S. The short vacations and poor social support offered in the U.S. led them to return to Iceland. “It was a serious factor we considered when we were deciding whether or not to stay there,” she said. “We would go to Iceland to see family in the summer for 4-6 weeks at a time. That just wasn’t possible with the vacation available at a U.S. job. Also, the daycare is so expensive and it’s very hard with no family nearby. In the U.S., your friends become your family.”

All of the children seemed to be affected by the daylight which lasts until well past 11 p.m. The 10-year old had slept until noon and was wide awake. The 13-year old had been up until 4:30 in the morning and was exhausted. The four year old was up several hours past his bedtime. His mouth smeared with chocolate from dessert, he put on a Viking cap with horns and accompanied me to the bus stop at 10:30 p.m., looking out for monsters to fight along the way.

The family lives in a duplex in a suburban neighborhood. Their home is spacious and airy, but they have only three bedrooms and the four-year-old still shares a room with his parents. “I’d really like to stay in this neighborhood and find a house with one more bedroom,” said Gurri. “But they don’t come up very often and they are very expensive.” Another option might be to turn half of the heated garage into another room.

Even though everyone had been occupied during the day, the family managed to put together a nice meal and enjoy an evening together. The 13-year old made the dessert – skyr and marscapone cheese with maple syrup and berries. The father grilled the massive piece of halibut, which fed five with much to spare. And mom took care of the side dishes. They were relaxed and friendly with each other. They had recently returned from visiting family in Scandinavia. While they were gone, the 4-year-old had his birthday. But it’s important that grandparents and relatives are invited to the party, so they all assembled when they returned.

The quality of life appealed to me – the reasonably priced quality daycare, having everything so close to home, the close family relations, the reasonable work schedule with adequate leave and the ability to spend long, relaxing evenings together. It’s the type of balance I strive for.

the joy of being home alone

At this time last year, I was 8 months pregnant, still new to daily life in America. Mark was working long hours then and I was spending long, lonely days and nights at home. I could never imagine that one year later I would long for those quiet hours that flowed slowly from one into another.

Today Mirena’s mom had an important event to attend for work and needed more than our standard afternoon hours of childcare. So our babysitter went over to Mirena’s place and River went over there too. For seven hours.

I had seven glorious hours to myself at home. Only when I had the time did I realize how infrequently it happens. I had thoughts of great productivity. Not only was I going to get a lot of work done, I was going to cook dinner, make pesto, go out for lunch and send some long-overdue thank you notes. Maybe I’d even pick up a bit.

I didn’t manage all of the above. But I did get some work done, I did pop a ready-to-cook stuffed chicken into the oven, I actually did make and freeze arugula pesto. But I didn’t go out for lunch. No way was I going to leave during my quiet, peaceful time.

I’ve always liked it that River is at home with the babysitter and I can see him throughout the day. I like to be able to pop into his activities, to give him a quick hug, to breastfeed him when needed. But when he was gone for such a long time, I surprisingly found it a relief. A vast calmness settled over me. I had no one and nothing to step over, but could move freely through our small space.

When he came home, I showed him with hugs and kisses. I breastfed him. I talked to him. I took him on a long walk with a friend. But I really enjoyed that quiet time with only my own tasks to focus on and plenty of space to work on them. If Mirena’s family wants the childcare to take place in their home sometimes, I will not object.

Thoughts on Infant Daycare

Today I had lunch with two mothers and their babies. Both of these women had had experience with daycare before they had babies and neither of them want to put their infants into daycare.

Ellen used to be a teacher, but once she became pregnant, she knew she couldn’t find a teaching job. So she applied to work at a daycare in our area. It charges parents $1400 a month and has one adult for every four babies. She said the application process was extensive. At the end, when she was offered a job, she said the pay was $10-12 an hour and that she wouldn’t have guaranteed hours.

“I can make more at Lenscrafters,” she told them. And she did.

Now she wants to work more hours, but her mother can only watch the baby one day a week and Ellen isn’t willing to put her 9-month-old son in daycare.

Sandra did work at a daycare. She said it was a daycare that appealed to upper middle class parents, so people expected it to be good. She wasn’t impressed. She worked in the baby room and said there were not supposed to be any more than 12 babies there at one time. Nevertheless, they often had between 18 and 20 babies.

I asked whether parents complained and she said yes, then they would improve things a bit, then it would return to where it was before. She said that when prospective parents came to visit, the owners would tell her to take eight babies out for a walk in a giant stroller for eight they had. Once they were out of sight, the visiting parents saw a much lower caregiver-baby ratio.

She also told me that once, while wiping a babies face, the baby turned her head and Sandra’s marquis cut diamond ring scratched the babies cheek. She told the owner what happened and the owner decided to tell the parent that the baby had been scratched by a toy. Sandra told the mother what really happened and after the mother knew the owner was lying without apparent reason she pulled her baby out.

I asked Sandra whether she wanted her son in daycare when he became older, at the toddler stage. She said she thinks it’s fine then, that she only has a problem with it for babies.

My husband works for a company with a lot of engineers. It’s a very male-dominated workplace. Most of the females who work there and who have stayed on after having children have left their kids in daycare.

“People do it,” Mark tells me. I know they do. And I know it’s the best option available for a lot of people. And I know the kids survive and turn into wonderful people. But for my child, I believe that close, intimate one-on-one (or one on two) attention is the best thing for him at this age. I do believe that all children deserve this. And I think that, as a country, we fail to create the circumstances that give children the best start to life.

I think about the Canadians or the European countries where it is standard to allow at least one parent to stay with the child for the first three years (or a combination of the parents, so each takes a portion of the time off of work). After that, when the child is ready for socialization and interaction, there are government-sponsored preschools available. Due to the family leave policies, the child receives nurturing attention when they need it, they receive socialization and interaction when they need it, and the parent is able to continue on with their career when they are ready.

I’m also rethinking my assumption that private daycares are necessarily the best quality. Yesterday I read an article in the New York Times that claimed that 94% of nursing homes have health or safety violations. Like daycare, it made me think that should our society allow for caring for our parents, most people probably wouldn’t want to put their parents into one of these places if they could help it. The article also stated that the highest violation rates were at the private, for-profit nursing homes. Non-profits did the best job, followed by government homes. When my friend tells me she was offered $10-12 an hour to care for four infants and each parent is paying about $8.75 for the care of one infant, one wonders how much of the cost is going to quality and how much is going to profit.

All this is to say that I think the most vulnerable in our society, the infants and the elderly, deserve better. I know I’m living in an individualistic country. But I hold out hope that one day, people will realize that individuals are better off when people take care of each other.