Alfreda, thirty-one, is one of many women facing the overlapping problems of unpaid maternity leave and insufficient childcare options. She loves waking up and walking across her bedroom to see her new son, M’Kai, greet each morning from his crib, “My favorite thing to do with him is to look into his eyes and talk to him because he’s a special baby. I really love when he gets up in the morning—he tries to see what’s new, adjusts to the lighting, and then he starts laughing. He laughs and he smiles really, really hard and gets cheeky—and I think that’s really cute. I’ve determined he’s a morning person. He really likes the morning.”
After a lot of soul searching, Alfreda decided to stay home with her second son for the first several months of his life. Using the unpaid federal Family and Medical Leave Act, she took a leave of absence from her job of the last seven years, and, as her workplace policy allowed, took 240 hours of advance sick leave (essentially six weeks), which leaves Alfreda with a paid leave deficit that will take two years to earn back. This also left Alfreda without any paid sick or vacation leave for those two years, and in a bind if she or either of her two sons gets sick.
Alfreda found that at six weeks she wasn’t ready to go back to work and leave her infant son in the care of others. She decided to stay home and care for him for his early months. In order to do so she had to make the difficult choice between going on welfare and taking out a loan. As of now, she’s planning to take out a loan against her future paychecks and is trimming her budget down to the raw edge of comfort, “I’m cutting back on groceries like bread, eggs, milk, and dairy. Things that cost a lot of money—things that are basically essential.”
“I’m also giving up ‘luxury’ driving or frivolous driving. I know I now have to go straight to my son’s school, pick him up and bring him back home,” says Alfreda. “If I’m visiting a friend in the area, then I’ll ask if I can hang out there until I have to pick up my son,” just so she doesn’t spend the extra gas money.
She’s committed to being a good mother and also to nursing her baby. She says the best thing about “being home with my baby is that I get to bond with him and nurse him. If it wasn’t for me bonding with the baby, seeing his growth, and the different things that interest him, I’d be back at work because realistically I have to go back.”
Her son, M’Kai, nurses ten to twelve times a day, and, unlike her older son who took a bottle easily, absolutely refuses a bottle. “The first time I tried to bottle feed him; he stuck his tongue out to block it. Then every time I tried to put the bottle in he’d move his tongue to stop the bottle. That’s how I knew I’d have trouble.”
Breastfeeding and paid family leave are tied together.14 It can 28 Motherhood Manifesto be quite hard, sometimes bordering on impossible, to regularly provide an infant with breast milk when the mother has to work full-time immediately after delivery. A Harvard report noted this fact, stating, “Research evidence has shown that paid maternal and paternal leave improves children’s health outcomes by making more time available to parents to provide essential care for their children. Paid maternal leave facilitates breastfeeding and reduces the risk of infections. . . . Countries with paid parental leave policies have lower infant mortality and morbidity rates. Paid leave policies also encourage the formation of bonds between parents and children, contributing positively to children’s psychosocial development.”15 In fact, in terms of infant mortality rates, the U.S. tied for thirty-eighth in the world with Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, and the United Arab Emirates in 2003.16
Alfreda’s also worried about putting her infant son in childcare, particularly when he rejects the bottle so vigorously. She’s having a difficult time finding an affordable place for him to stay when she goes back to work, although she’s been on several waiting lists for infant childcare centers since she got pregnant. And she’s concerned about how her son will be treated, “There are a lot of people who watch babies whose nerves are bad, and my baby has a piercing cry. So I worry that they will either just let him cry or not be nice. It just really scares me.”
The lack of accessible, affordable, quality infant childcare compounds the problems parents face without paid family leave. Many parents simply have to go back to work to keep their families financially solvent, yet early infant care is often difficult to find and is far more expensive than childcare for older children. In fact, a recent study found a widespread scarcity of infant-toddler childcare in all communities, but particularly in low-income communities, across the nation, and noted that “although finding good-quality infant-toddler childcare can be a critical influence on the well-being of infants and toddlers, finding good-quality infant-toddler childcare can be especially challenging for low-income families.”17
Without access to infant childcare centers (where, again, she’s been on waiting lists since she got pregnant), and without other options, Alfreda’s thinking of leaving her infant son with a friend of her sister’s when she goes back to work, “There’s this one lady that my sister knows. She’s kind of moody, but she’s really good with kids and I might have to use her. But I really don’t want to.” Yet Alfreda can’t live on loans for too long, and she has no choice but to go back to work while her son is still an infant.
Too many American parents must quickly return to work after the birth of a child. Without viable alternatives, parents frequently end up using low quality infant childcare in order to put food on the table. Often these parents worry about their baby’s safety and development. This concern is well-founded as studies show young children have a higher rate of cognitive development in the usually more expensive and inaccessible childcare centers than with less expensive informal in-home care.18 The 30 Motherhood Manifesto outcome of this early lack of support may be felt by this child as she/he goes through school and on into the future.