Getting Me Cheap: How Low Wage Work Traps Women and Girls in Poverty by Amanda Freeman

Author:Amanda Freeman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press

Safety First

In California, Aurora’s gamble to find childcare backfired, leaving her son in danger. She was nervous to drop her eightyear-old off so early in the morning with the woman she found online but didn’t see any other option. “So I met up with her and that was on a Sunday and I was like, ‘All right, Monday, I have to drop him off with the stranger, and at her home.’ We did that for a few weeks,” Aurora said. Then one day, she learned at work that her son was stranded at the bus stop. “I get a call from my eight-year-old … he is at this street corner and he calls me, and I’m on a job thirty minutes away. So I leave work to race over there to get him. I felt so much guilt; even though you did everything you could possibly think of doing, you feel terrible. They were so irresponsible.” Later, she found out the childcare provider had gone on vacation and left her twenty-year-old son in charge. He forgot to pick up her son from the bus stop. “It was too much, too hard on him and me. I had to leave,” said Aurora about her decision to leave the apprenticeship due to childcare crises.

Children’s safety was the number one priority for the mothers we spoke with, and probably for most mothers across the country, regardless of income. For poor moms, though, fears about unsafe childcare lurked behind decisions about work and school. Many recalled terrifying past experiences when they had witnessed neglect and poor conditions. One childcare worker in Georgia described low-cost care in which kids were left in crowded, unclean, and unsafe conditions, including “roaches and broken toys and having no time to change them [diapers] .” A mother in Denver reported that her child had been abused in a local daycare, and because of this, she would not send her other children to be cared for in childcare centers. Many of the moms indicated particular concern over poor conditions in daycare centers that accepted public vouchers. There were too many kids or too few teachers or buckets to catch water dripping from the ceiling. One mom in Denver explained that she had pulled her daughter out of a subsidized daycare after her complaints to the Colorado Childcare Assistance Program (CCAP) had gone unanswered. “I was afraid for her health. They didn’t even change her diapers all day.” She removed her daughter from the center but was unable to find another placement, so she lost her job and was being evicted for nonpayment of rent.

Several mothers talked about how hard it was for childcare workers to provide good care, regardless of their commitment to children. Understaffed, often housed in an inadequate setting, with staff paid poverty wages, it is not surprising that staff turnover in the childcare field is among the highest in the nation. Research has shown how detrimental the churning of staff can be, but as many moms point out, it is a demanding job that is undervalued and underpaid.

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