And so it was …
This phrase, often used in fairy tales or movies when one of the main characters resigns to an interim of less than ideal conditions, is meant to glance over minor details so the consumer can get to the good stuff.
On Thursday morning, my wife, Amelia, was struggling with resignation, and she didn’t consider the interim upon which she was suddenly embarking as “minor” at all. In fact, she might have hit all the stages of grief twice by 7:20 a.m., when I left the house with two Sudduth Elementary bound children for the daily grind through carpool. There, my wife remained with our 2-month-old daughter, Pfeiffer, where they enjoyed the last half-hour or so before a long-dreaded moment.
Maternity leave was over. Amelia was going back to work, and Pfeiffer would now begin spending the workday hours with a babysitter. And so it was …
In the immediate term, this “babysitter” is Amelia’s mother, who doubles as our landlord and next-door neighbor. But in August, Pfeiffer will go to day care, and that is a subject no one speaks of in front of my wife in safety — at least not lately.
For me, this isn’t that big of a deal. I’ve been leaving the baby at home with Amelia to go to work every week day since the child was three days old, and I’m also no stranger to the day care game.
But Amelia is giving up a lot, and no amount of maternity leave would have prepared her for it. She’s giving up feedings; she’s giving up smiles and she’s giving up time with a person who has featured prominently in the center of her world for almost a year. Not only did she carry Pfeiffer for 37 weeks, she’s directly cared for her daily for the last nine weeks while I served as a barely adequate backup as needed. My wife and Pfeiffer are as close as any two people can be, and now Amelia must begrudgingly remand her daily care to her mother, and later to virtual strangers. Because of that, she must resign to the possibility that Pfeiffer may say her first word, take her first steps or experience another developmental landmark elsewhere, leaving her to hear about it secondhand.
She must do all of this so she can work, and so we can keep our two-income household functioning properly.
While I acknowledge I’ve played this up like a walk down The Green Mile, I also know that we’re among the lucky ones. In Mississippi, roughly 48 percent of children (about 326,000) lived with single parents as of 2013, according to kidscount.org. Many of those parents live near or below the poverty line, which in Mississippi is just more than $23,000 per year for a family of four. Programs are available to mitigate costs for some low-income families, but others who aren’t considered low-income pay through the nose for childcare.
The going rate per-month in Starkville is between $460 and $500 per child for those who pay full price for all-day childcare — whether it’s for day care or preschool. That’s admittedly way less than the service is worth, but still quite the assault on the monthly budget, especially if you make only a few dollars a year above the low-income threshold.
Before you can pay the fee, though, you have to actually get your child into a day care. This can sometimes be tricky and frustrating.
When I moved to Starkville in February 2013 as the single parent of a 4-year-old, she went straight into a day care/pre-k program with no waiting. Again, I was extremely lucky. I just didn’t realize it at the time.
My wife and I placed Pfeiffer on waiting lists for day care when Amelia was only three months pregnant hoping we could get her in somewhere by June. No dice, we found out. We’d have to wait until August. Thank goodness we have options in the meantime, but I wonder what people do when they have to work, have no family locally and have to scrounge for private babysitting on the fly.
On a related note, we also added Pfeiffer to the waiting list for a preschool program for 3-year-olds last fall. The child wasn’t even born until February, and we were apparently only just in time.
In fairness, the plight of the day care facilities — including what they charge and their limited number of spots — is hardly their fault. They’re often doing the best they can for the least amount possible to cover their costs. The problem is that in a state where single-parent households make up so much of the population, and in an area where so many two-parent households contain two professional parents, the demand for adequate child care far outpaces the supply.
Why this is, I’m not entirely sure. Parents, at least in Starkville, stay on the verge of screaming from the rooftops about the shortage, but the gap only seems to be widening. The programs that exist are pretty solid, but if you have a spot for your kid in one of the programs, cherish and covet it. In Starkville, it’s a lot like having one of Willie Wonka’s golden tickets, at least until more programs pop up.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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