This was supposed to be a back-to-school piece about finding an afterschool caregiver — based on my own success story.
You see, I did everything right. I started my search in early July. I asked our friends’ sitters, nannies, and au pairs to open their phones and put out the bat signal. I turned to the local Facebook groups and wrote the kind of cheeky, spirited “Help Wanted” post you’d expect from a writer. I was hyper-specific with our needs — but flexible in what we’d agree to. I interviewed at leisure over the summer, before we’d really feel pressured. I hired someone great and our little one warmed up to her. Things were falling into place. I intended to share all this to ease other parents’ anxieties and prove that, yes, even though securing afterschool care is a calamity, these steps can help you succeed.
And then she quit, and I found myself in need of the very advice I was planning to give.
I received the text not long before school started. Our caregiver got into an accident and couldn’t work for the foreseeable future. I wished her well, of course, but didn’t ask many questions. This was out of my control no matter what.
Why Is Afterschool Care SO Hard?
For parents today, childcare is more than just a logistical nightmare; it’s a squeeze on our wallets. It begins with daycare and preschool programs, the costs of which have risen at nearly twice the rate of inflation since 1991, according to a KPMG report. Average babysitting rates have outpaced inflation, too, rising 4.5 percent over the past year according to UrbanSitter.com. Babysitters currently charge an average of $23.61 per hour nationwide, but that amount swings higher depending on the number of children, geographic region, caregiver experience, and expectations. In my area, I couldn’t find a responsible adult with a safe vehicle to care for our daughters multiple days a week for anything less than $25 per hour. And that would be the floor.
Childcare costs are skyrocketing for many reasons, but I’ll keep it simple. Many pandemic-era federal and state subsidies for childcare programs have run out. In those instances, the total cost to run childcare programs is borne by the providers and the parents, which with rising costs, can result in one of three outcomes: (1) the programs can’t staff as well, become less reliable, or close altogether; (2) parents stretch themselves to pay more for the same services; or (3) a parent fills the care gap. The number of full-time workers who have had to cut their hours to manage childcare issues is still above pre-pandemic levels, according to that same KPMG report. Most of the time, this doesn’t feel like a choice.
Enter the afterschool babysitter: a lifeline for those hours between the school day’s end and the workday’s end. With the value proposition for center-based aftercare not quite what it used to be, afterschool babysitters are in higher demand — so they can charge more for their time. Make no mistake: this moves our society forward in how we value caregivers, and that’s a great thing. But for the parents desperate to align with a reliable caregiver who can meet their needs — and most of all, their children’s — finding one can be a circus.
Every summer, the online message boards light up with hundreds of versions of the same post. Frantic parents — usually mothers — are looking for someone to pick up their children from school at 2:30 or 3 pm and shuffle them through the late afternoon until a parent can log off or make it home from work. Someone will kick their search off a month too soon, and as you scroll your phone, you’ll feel the anxiety leap off the screen and nestle into your brain: maybe I should start looking now, too. The digital race begins. When the original poster is a caregiver looking for work, you’ve got mere minutes before dozens of “PM’ed you!” messages filter beneath their qualifications. We’re all looking for the same person. Essentially, we’re bidding against each other.
The Value of an Afterschool Sitter
The value of an afterschool sitter, versus an aftercare program, lies in how they support the flexibility that’s expected from workers today. I find it interesting how much the discourse focuses on return-to-office mandates and “days in” versus “days out,” as if working from home somehow affords you the magic pill to be everything to everyone at every hour. Most employers expect you, the worker, to be flexible — notwithstanding the office you’re sitting in. Whether your train got delayed or your 3 pm Zoom from home is running overtime, most center-based aftercare programs have little tolerance for perpetual lateness. They also can’t help when your child is home sick and you’ve got an immovable deadline to meet.
For me, the biggest differentiator is that an afterschool babysitter affords my children flexibility, too. They can pursue the activities and programming they’re interested in without me having to measure the sacrifice of my own time to get them there. Maybe this doesn’t matter for a toddler (I’d argue it doesn’t). But when your 8-year-old earns a spot on a team that starts practice at 4 pm, try telling her she can’t participate because she needs to stay in aftercare until 5 pm. Sure, you can do it. We all do what we have to do. But if given the option, many of us would choose the same optionality for our kids that we want for ourselves.
I can hear the online trolls now. I’m sorry this lady has to actually parent her kids. But anyone who’s been here knows it’s not about that. Caregivers keep parents employed while enriching the lives of our children. And if they can shoulder even a fraction of the invisible load that we can delegate, they are worth every dollar we pay them.
The Cost of NOT Having Afterschool Care
When our prior afterschool caregiver finished her nursing program, we thought we could make it work. Our daughters were older, and our jobs were much more flexible than before the pandemic when she started with us. Last school year, my husband and I patched our calendars together and received my mom’s generous help three days a week. But leaning on our “village” wasn’t working. Finding a routine was hard. Establishing a consistent pattern of who would do what was even harder. My mom is not an authority figure, she is Grandma — and she didn’t want to be the bad guy.
Beyond that, there were invisible costs of not having adequate childcare for those hours. My husband and I both incurred them.
Every afternoon, one of us would have to stop working between 3 pm and bedtime. Even when we took turns, our to-do lists compounded. We worked every weeknight between 8 and 10 pm, just like pandemic times. We were always filled with anxiety; always drinking from the firehose. Always watching the clock for when we’d have to stop, and then counting the minutes until we could start again.
We lost opportunities to connect with people in person, for work and fun. It started to feel very isolating. We can’t quantify the toll it took on our business, because it’s not easy to quantify what could have been. But I know this: the hourly cost of an afternoon sitter is far below the lost opportunity cost of not having one.
The worst was the way I started feeling about our kids. I’m not proud of the dread that seeped in at my 30-minute countdown to pick-up. I don’t want them to remember a mom who seemed bothered by their presence. They didn’t ask for me to live in perpetual purgatory, my ears listening to their stories but my eyes on my screen. It just kind of turned into that, and boy, was I ashamed. I felt like I was losing at everything: my work, my relationships, my children. After feeling this way all year, I rediscovered what I once knew: spending two hours less caring for my children during my workday vastly increased the quality of the other hours I spent with them.
I realize how few tips can be offered to solve a systemic problem that’s far larger than us. We can only control what we can control, which includes figuring out exactly what we need and being relentless in finding it. It’s worth the mess. And if you can swing it, it’s worth the money to prevent the intangible costs.
Before you go, check out these celebrities who gotten real about their love for their kids’ nannies.
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