Another childcare rant - how do people do it?!

[SMLSML]

If you and your partner both work how do you manage childcare? My eldest started school in September and prior to this we had wraparound care in nursery. We now use after school club, however this is committee led and we've just had an email saying it's at risk of closure due to not enough volunteers. If you don't use after school club how do families make it work? Do grandparents help 5 days a week? Honestly sick of this country not helping working parents 🫠 the irony of parents needing to be on the committee to keep it open when you're already busy working and juggling a million other school bits and pieces is hilarious to me also 😅 it's something I'd love to be part of but have no idea how if find time... Any and all advice welcome!

It is really difficult OP. We are lucky that ASC at our school is very good. If it was to suddenly close we’d be screwed as there are 2 childminders left in our town who are both retiring this year. It’s not a university town so no real option of au pairs or anything like that. Really, one of us would have to significantly reduce or quit work. As we are both in skilled, pretty well paid, patient facing NHS roles it would be so short sighted for society for people like us to suddenly start quitting because the school day finishes at 3. Not to mention the reduction in taxes we pay. I wish we had the flexibility to just alternate our shifts like PPs on here seem to think is so easy, pretty sure the rota coordinators would have something to say about that 🙄

And you can plan all you want but things can happen. Friends of ours recently lost their childminder to a sudden diagnosis of metastatic cancer. She literally had to quit overnight. They are cobbling stuff together with grandparents until a nursery space is available. It’s horrendous for them.

I think your answer is in your post.
the after school club is run by volunteers.
you want them to work for free while you go out to earn money.
or you want the government to pay for it.

If You don’t think the government in this country isn’t doing enough then please feel free to move to another country.

Thank you! You summed this up far better than I ever could 😅 insane isn't it how simple some people think it is...

Course I know it because we spent the whole two years before primary school admissions on a rollercoaster of trying to sell, buy, rent, move somewhere with the kind of school and childcare options that would see us through. It wasn't easy AT ALL and we lost a lot of time and money we couldn't afford on places that fell through - was ready to move when burst waterpipes meant the rental place was withdrawn and we had to start over. However, we pushed on and found somewhere. Not my dream spot by any means but somewhere with more than one tiny school with voluntary afterschool care, because that would've felt way too risky without any other options around like relatives or childminders etc.

Partly what woke me up to the need to plan like this was Mumsnet itself and threads like this and the schools threads where parents are in a major mess because they choose to live remotely and don't drive and can't get their kids to school along unlit, pavement-less, bus-free country roads and so on, and somehow it's everyone else's problem to solve. Very few people can't move at all and often people no relatives nearby have chosen to live in a small village to raise their DC in that 'idyll' rather than having grown up there or being tied to it by caring for elders or somesuch. So yes, I'm guessing that the OP could move if it was really a priority.

I have friends who moved to small villages when their DC were little and I considered it then but even the fact that they were 30+ miles from the nearest hospital was enough to put me off because most kids have accidents at some point so that's a factor. Availability of childcare is also a factor, and the set-up described is minimal. It's not flippant or dismissive when it's the actual reason.

Another unhelpful post in this thread.

Gosh you're all out in force today.

Please provide OP with constructive help rather than ridiculous advice like moving country. Honestly some people are ridiculous. Say those words to a struggling friend and see how well that goes down.

Trust me, you'll be off the christmas card list for good.

The trolls are out in force today

It was a constant juggle tbh.

Both parents making flexible working requests to work around each other, plus an excellent childminder, plus help from gps, plus swapping childcare favours with other parents.

It wasn't much fun and I sympathise with anyone currently going through it.

No Grandparent help here, my job cannot be done from home, DH is 95% of the time not WFH. I moved closer to home job wise so reduced the commute time. Used a Childminder for first few years in Primary, then switched to after school club.

Is it easy? - not in the slightest.

Can you find out more what the volunteering would involve, everyone thinks they are to busy to do it, but you may find if you get involved you can change how it is run, less meetings, more suitable times for meetings may mean more parents can volunteer. Our PTA only ever held meetings at 930 am - and wondered why so few helped, new committee changed the meeting times got more on board.

Working full time with a family doesn't mean you can't volunteer, it is possible, it just needs a bit of looking at how you can make it work.

I've not read the whole thread but whenever a ludicrous post crops up i just assume they are a troll trying to wind people up.

What's the point in posting something full of criticism and judgement but then don't offer constructive advice??

Waste of time for everyone.

I just assume internet troll to stir the pot because there is no other explanation. No friend of mine would speak to me like that, if they did then they certainly wouldn't be my friend for much longer.

After school club is £35 a day? Ours is £4 in the morning and £7.50 after school.

Isn’t that better than demanding more of employers and fellow citizens, who all have their own priorities to fund?

They may have 3 children.

Based on 3 children at 11.50 each that's £34.50 so £35 a day wouldn't be an outrageous sum.

All the people saying OP should have had four different back-up plans - the problem is, like so much of parenting, you don't know what you don't know. I don't think it is particularly obvious to those who don't have primary school aged children that whether schools have any wraparound isn't a given, that if they have it the set-up varies massively across schools, and that childminder provision in an area is similarly so varied.

We looked at two schools for our oldest child, both of which said they had breakfast and afterschool clubs. I now know that I was very lucky because the one we chose runs them in-house and they're relatively cheap, incredibly flexible (you book as needed up to 24 hours before, never once has there not been availability), long hours. I now also know, through having friends whose kids go there, that the other one is always oversubscribed with long waiting lists to get a place at all and it is then a place on a fixed day that can't be changed, offered to the person at the top of the list with a 'take it or go back to the bottom of the list'. They also won't take the reception kids, which wasn't stated anywhere at all and every year comes as a shock to a lot of reception parents. The whole small town with these two schools with 90 children a year between them has three childminders, all of which have super long waiting lists, even though one of them I actively wouldn't want to use. As I say, I am currently very lucky and have great provision but no, it wasn't easy for me to plan it at the point of getting pregnant!

Gosh, we’d be screwed without breakfast and afterschool clubs tbh. I guess people get childminders but we live in a village so don’t imagine there are many around here. We also don’t have family close by who are able to help.

I don't know why you think other people don't get it. Most of us are parents, we're all doing the juggle (or have done it). It's not an issue unique to you. But whining doesn't help. Join the committee and/or prepare to do sort else. Simple it may not be, but that's life and it's common sense that villages don't have everything.

Hey @SMLSML I do see that it is not helpful for people to say that you should have done xyz. FWIW our planning for this issue started when DS1 was about three; I then worked in a senior role where the hours were inflexible so I dropped down to a different role in the same firm where I could start and finish early and dropped a day as well to give more flex. DH already worked four days starting late. That kind of planning is much more in your control and as I say, we were in a good position to ask for the flexibility, having worked for the firm for several years.

If your plan was that you both stayed in 9-5.30 roles that are inflexible as to time and workplace, while living in a village with no childminders or other care options, with a small school, and an after school club run by a volunteer committee – it’s open to disaster if the committee fails or if not enough ppl chose ASC. As you have seen. But it is what it is – you need to see what action you can take. Of course it's not as simple as moving house or jobs and this school may have been a great choice in many ways.

If I were you I would

• Offer to be on the ASC committee. Find out what it would mean and if it’s a two-hour monthly meeting, can you or DH can do that?
• Look at flexing hours – compressing into four days or stretching fewer hours over five days or dropping a day
• Consider stepping sideways into a role that can be hybrid or remote (these are all both you and DH btw)

As your DD gets older, you may find she wants to do swimming lessons, Rainbows, football club, dance class that happen at 4.30/5/5.30. Also the ASC even if you support the committee does seem to have an uncertain future.
What is your plan for the holidays? You may find you need to have a lot more flex than it sounds as tho you currently do (for example, a lot of the cheaper holiday cub options run to school hours). It’ll be a compromise – my career certainly took a hit but overall I think it was worth it.

I see @crossedlines comments that things were worse 30 years ago when they had DC – tbh they were worse than they are now 20 years ago when my DC were small. Covid has opened up wfh which would have made our lives easier. But we did what we had to do.

I completely sympathize. This is before the constant inset days, calls to collect early because of sick, calls because of incidents in the school.

I'm also a teacher and some parents of our more difficult children must get several phone calls per day. I have no idea how they manage it

Having a child in nursery was a walk in the park compared to school.

Grandparents still work fulltime and live 300 miles away.

We are just taking it day by day but wondering how sustainable this is.

£10 in the morning and £25 in the afternoon.

They do a £10 option in the afternoon but pick up has to be before 4.15 which is still unachievable with a commute etc.

Thankfully I wfh two days a week so it’s only three days of it. TBH I am quite happy with the arrangement as it’s good, it works, and I’m still £20k a year better off than when they were at nursery…!

The staff will be paid. It will be the parents committee who are unpaid.

The committee like the Op will have jobs and pay for their children who use the service. And with the nature of After school committees people want to pull out as they and their children no longer need the service.

They need new parents to step up and join the commitee I don't know how that is hard to understand.

WFH has made a lot of people's lives easier, it's true - but I do think it's made it actively harder for people who can't WFH. Around us there were a lot more childminders and also more things like holiday club provision when it was assumed that all working parents would need them. A lot of those never came back after COVID due to reduced demand, but I know people who can't possibly work from home and who find it a much bigger struggle now because of this.

I adjusted hours at work to accommodate drop offs and pick ups. School holidays could be a bit of a nightmare, but at least no worries around school days. Is this an option? Hybrid working now makes this sort of situation so much easier, but it all depends on your job and workplace flexibility.

I think anyone who has ever had children sympathises, and you are not wrong in a lot that you say. You will however not be able to reform the whole system, and you need to look at this pragmatically.

You can hope that someone else steps up, and the childcare can carry on as it is now, or you decide what is less hassle and causes you less pain...having no childcare or joining the committee. IME these roles are usually something like treasurer or secretary. Perhaps you can find out more about the roles that need to be filled and see if you could take one on.

Wow that's so expensive! Ours works out £19.55 a day, and I thought that was steep!

I'm married to one and I think teaching is actually one of the worst options for flexibility around childcare, though obviously the holiday bonus is massive. Is your DH a teacher too? I honestly think it is almost impossible to juggle it if you both are.

I once got in a weird argument on MN where someone told me that DH must be able to change his working hours to do the morning school run and it was just patriarchy to say he couldn't and so I had to... Alas, I don't think it's the patriarchy that means that his form can't register themselves!

Ask for flexible working.

or in my case.. I quit and got a part time job at the school that means I don’t have to pay bf or any childcare anymore.. woohoo I’m free!🤣

It is really hard. I’m a single parent.

This is my arrangement over a typical fortnight:
I do 10 school runs
My ex does 5
My mum does 5

At the moment I’m only reliant on after school club one day a week because of flexible working / the above arrangement.