- Don't shake or hit the babies / children
- This is how much they can ask you to work
- Here, let us sort of teach you CPR
I bought her some travel guides (NYC, Philly, DC, Baltimore) for her welcome gift. Any thoughts as to whether that is sufficient, and if not, suggestions of what else might also be appropriate?
Luca, generously AND wisely, offered to take tomorrow off to finish various stuff in preparation for her arrival. We need to come up with a to-do list though.
*******
Yesterday I had the pleasure of the following exchange with a faculty member in my department:
Me: Our au pair is arriving next week.
Him: Oh! That's great you won't have to use daycare anymore.
Me: :-P
Me: Actually, she is in addition to daycare.
Him: Oh. (Disapproving look)
Me: Yes, obviously I am the worst mother ever.
Him: Haha. Uh-huh!
Me: Well, you can thank my geriatric parents.
Him: Oh, are they paying?
Me: No. They are too geriatric for me to be able to make them provide me free child care so that I can finish med school. You know, not everyone has that option.
I remember a few years back, there was this woman-physician-scientist talk (I think I organized it, actually...), and one of the panelists said that at one point she was paying 60K per year for childcare for her three children under the age of 5. When she said it, you could hear 90% of the attendees (and other panelists) audibly gasp. She immediately backtracked saying that, well her husband was a real estate developer, that was how they afforded it, etc. And then everyone else immediately went back to assuming that she was a rich asshole who hired that kind of childcare because she *wanted* it, not because she *needed* it in order to keep her job.
Guys, unless you have proximate and willing relatives who don't mind if you burden them with caring for your kids (and it IS a burden that many grandparents do NOT want), if you want to have a job that works you more than 9-5 -- and medicine is one of these jobs -- AND your spouse also has a demanding job, and you want kids, you don't have much of a choice but to pay out the nose for childcare. Sorry. This goes double or triple if you have more than one child. Even if you use daycare.
There was one family at my daycare who had 3 kids under the age of 5 enrolled, and every time I saw them, all I could think was that they were paying $5500 per month on childcare.
If my family couldn't afford the au pair and the daycare, we would either a) take out a loan to pay for it, or b) my husband would quit his job and we would take out a loan to pay for our living expenses. It's just that simple. Quitting medical school to stay home with my kid would be about the dumbest thing I could do right now from a financial standpoint. Not to mention it would make me ridiculously unhappy.
So, here we are paying 40K a year for childcare. Maybe one day you will too. And if you don't have to because you have relatives who want to help, perhaps instead of calling me a rich asshole / terrible mother, you should just be grateful that you have more options than I do, and reflect for a moment on how lucky you are. And remember that part of me hates you just a tiny bit, because I would LOVE to have helpful relatives and an extra 40K of income per year that I could spend on something else.
(Sorry -- just feeling a little defensive today. I promise I will try to stop complaining about the cost of childcare at some point in the near future.)
Complain away-childcare costs are astronomical and people don't get that a lot of families don't have the luxury of the village raising the child. It's not like India (which is a good thing, considering the role of women) where everyone lives in the same house, so the kids are basically raised by someone else.
ReplyDeleteMy mother stayed at home when we were tiny, because it was financially better that way for her. She had zero support in this country, a mother in law who made her life a living hell and whom she didn't want near us. My mother's parents would have been willing to help, but they unfortunately lived in India. And, frankly, my maternal grandmother raised 8 children, so she was burned out on child rearing.
So when you say you spend a large sum of money on child care, I don't think anyone should judge. You and Luca are doing what's right for you two, your careers, your daughter, and your marriage. Everyone else can go f*** off.
We have family nearby and they're awesome and helpful and I can't imagine doing MD/PhD with a baby without them. However, living near family means living in an expensive area where daycare is 25k/year for M-F 7:30-6 and our house costs roughly 2x as much as if we were closer to school and it's small so live-in help will never be an option. Also, I have to commute an hour each way to school so we just bought a second car. Day care is 12k in the area near school to put it in perspective.
ReplyDeleteOur parents are younger but this means they work so although they're happy to help, they aren't able to drop everything at a moment's notice. My husband and I split drop offs and we do pick ups 2 days a week and family handles the other 3. Once I start 3rd year in May, I won't reliably do any pick ups I'd have to be on the road at 430 because of traffic. Right now we're managing without additional help, but in the future we may need a part time nanny also ($25-30/hr here).
What I'm trying to say is that if you want to be a physician or physician/scientist and have kids, things get expensive fast if your spouse has a demanding job with or without family. My husband works 60-80+ hours/wk. If you add the cost of my commute, 2nd car, day care and the difference in mortgage we pay to be this close to family, we're > >40k/year. Having helpful family around makes things better but it's still hella expensive.
I'm sure someone will chime in and say we should have lived ro gone to school somewhere less expensive but then we'd need live-in help, a bigger house and both have a sh*tty commute (instead of just me).
Yep! Sounds about right. (You mean your parents need to work to feed themselves too?? How shocking!)
DeleteWe opted for an au pair because we have the space (yay philly is relatively cheap), and because the nanny would cost the same only would be less flexible. And we spent 40K this year too if you include the 2nd car we had to buy in order to attend the daycare Dylan got into.
Still, it's amazing how many 24 year old students will tell you that you're being ridiculously (not to mention unnecessarily) extravagant for spending so much on childcare. That you're SPOILING your children. That their parents never would have spent that much. That they know people who don't have to do that (they wish).
One of the reasons I will not consider applying to any NYC (and probably SF also) programs for residency is that we would not be able to have a live-in, and we'd be stuck doing what you're doing. It's a HUGE reason I'd like to try to stay here in Philly for residency (and then we have the problem with the schools sucking in a few years), or try to move to NC. But yeah, when you're applying to med school (or even residency), it's not like you have a choice where you end up a lot of the time.
PS -- I'm still jealous that you're parents are ever able to help, even if they can't do it all the time. Not in a bad way though.
Delete;-)
I agree. Having reliable family around beats having to outsource childcare. It's given me a peace of mind that allows me to get my work done while making my family happy. My point was mainly that having family around is better but it doesn't always save money.
DeleteNow that I'm writing (at home instead of at lab) I've had this conversation a lot:
me: i'm writing my thesis so I'm not coming in unless I have meetings
idiot: that's great! You're home with your son?
me: No. I'm writing...
idiot: *blank stare*
Because it's so easy to get work done when you're alone with a 1 year old.
We looked into nanny sharing and found a local "scientist" with a daughter the same age as my son. She seemed perfect until I found out she was anti-vax and into homebirthing. womp womp.
I hear you. I get, "Wait, you send your daughter to daycare? But you're HOME all day!" Or, "PhD is the perfect time to have a baby. You can save so much on childcare because you can work on your thesis and watch your child at the same time!!"
DeleteI was going to say the same thing about the nanny-share issue. My community is rife with "educated" people who are anti-vax. Nanny share and in-home daycare are very popular with this crowd because regular daycare requires vaccination, and babysitters are really freaking expensive. I think philosophically I would have so many disagreements with that kind of person that it would never work out.
My mother keeps telling me that the PhD is when she plans on arranging my marriage (OK, Mom...) and when I should have a baby because, "It's not like you're working that hard anyway. You'll be home in the evenings"
DeletePeople should be forced to live this life before they comment on it :)
Oregon has some of the highest childcare costs and our cost of housing is very high/salary as well. A lot of people nanny share which really helps.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with nanny share is that most people who hire a nanny aren't willing to pay taxes on her (and you have to deal with the neuroses of the other parents and vice versa). However, if I could find a person to nanny-share with who would be willing to go halvsies on the taxes too, then I would potentially be all over that.
DeleteI am puzzled. If you have an au pair, why would she need to go to daycare? Does it have to do with the amount of hours the au pair is allowed to work?
ReplyDeleteYes.
DeleteDo you pay the au pair by the hour or is it a flat fee even though D will be in daycare? How does that work? I have some friends who had an au pair but none of them used daycare too (I'm not judging you... I'm just saying the ones I know did it differently).
DeleteIt's a flat rate no matter how many hours they work. I've heard of people paying extra if they agree to work overtime, but technically that's illegal, so it's not like you can count on that.
DeleteCould you cut back daycare to parttime and pay less for that then?
DeleteI could probably cut back daycare by 1, maybe 2 days (1 day per week would be ~ $80, 2 would be about $160 per week), but I wouldn't necessarily be able to get those back if we ever wanted to go back to full time. We're going to suck it up for now, and see how it goes, since we've never done this before. If we had to do 2 kids in daycare + au pair that's probably what we'd do though.
DeleteI should add though, the max they're allowed to work in a given day is 10 hours, so if we went by the rules on the day we kept Dyls home, Luca would have to go into work late that day. I don't know how that would fly on a long term basis.
DeleteFYI, I usually picked up one of those bath-supply gift baskets from Marshalls or Target for our au pairs, and put that into their bathroom. I also usually gave them a small supply of nice stationery for letters home, or sometimes a travel journal, or something like that. In addition I would leave them the most recent copy of Philadelphia Magazine/CityPaper/Philadelphia Weekly, and a "welcome to Whitemarsh" information packet that we can pick up at the township office, and a PA Drivers' Manual (because even if they have an international driver's license, if they plan to drive at all, they need to know our rules of the road!).
ReplyDeleteThe worst ever new-au-pair arrival situation was 2001. Our au pair arrived in NYC on Monday 9/19, not the best timing really all things considered. We were able to drive to NYC and pick her up Thursday during the brief period the tunnels were open. So glad my husband didn't get stuck there! Then, within weeks of her arrival, we got a call from the uncle of our previous au pair, a lovely girl, that she had been killed in a car crash upon her return to South Africa. Our new au pair was the one who took and had to relay to us that message. I felt horrible for her. And of course horrible about the situation. But we are still in touch with her! She is a speech pathologist in Sweden now :) Lovely girl.
That's so horrible! I guess it's nice that her uncle wanted to call and tell you, though. That says a lot about the relationship your family had with her.
DeleteThanks for the gift suggestions -- really helpful!
Yeah, apparently he said that during the week Colleen was home in South Africa, she did almost nothing except tell stories about the wonderful baby boy she got to take care of, and that she clearly had loved him so much, they felt we would want to know.... I subsequently made copies of every single picture we had of Colleen from her time here, and made a scrapbook for her parents. I hope it was helpful to them.
Deleteand OH! I just realized! That shouldn't say Monday 9/19. Monday, 9/10 - as in the day before 9/11, in case that was unclear. Can you imagine arriving in NYC that day to start your year in America?
DeleteFYI, I usually picked up one of those bath-supply gift baskets from Marshalls or Target for our au pairs, and put that into their bathroom. I also usually gave them a small supply of nice stationery for letters home, or sometimes a travel journal, or something like that. In addition I would leave them the most recent copy of Philadelphia Magazine/CityPaper/Philadelphia Weekly, and a "welcome to Whitemarsh" information packet that we can pick up at the township office, and a PA Drivers' Manual (because even if they have an international driver's license, if they plan to drive at all, they need to know our rules of the road!).
ReplyDeleteThe worst ever new-au-pair arrival situation was 2001. Our au pair arrived in NYC on Monday 9/19, not the best timing really all things considered. We were able to drive to NYC and pick her up Thursday during the brief period the tunnels were open. So glad my husband didn't get stuck there! Then, within weeks of her arrival, we got a call from the uncle of our previous au pair, a lovely girl, that she had been killed in a car crash upon her return to South Africa. Our new au pair was the one who took and had to relay to us that message. I felt horrible for her. And of course horrible about the situation. But we are still in touch with her! She is a speech pathologist in Sweden now :) Lovely girl.
rant away! i will be the first person to say that spending $$$$ on childcare is worth it. SO worth it. and i understand completely.
ReplyDeleteUgh I wrote a whole long comment and blogger ate it. OK take two. So for gifts, I usually gave some bath products (gift basket picked up at Marshalls or Target), either a travel journal or some stationery, and then also the latest Philadelphia magazine & the PA Driver's manual from the DMV. If it weren't for the fact that we always made sure our au pair had a smartphone with built-in map, I'd have given maps too (the phone thing was just because my husband's business always has extras - their fleet of truck drivers use them and they have backups lying around).
ReplyDeleteBTW the worst au pair arrival we had was 2001. She arrived in NYC Monday 9/10. Imagine that. We were able to retrieve her from NYC by car on Thursday during the brief period of time that the bridges/tunnel were open. They closed right behind my husband afterwards! So glad he didn't get stuck there. The first night we left her alone with the baby (who was one year old at that point), she answered the phone & it was the uncle of our previous au pair, calling to tell us that that lovely 19 year old with the sweet singing voice had been in a fatal car accident. I mean, I was just feeling REALLY bad for this girl at this point (not to mention the previous one! I sent the dead girl's parents a scrapbook I made of EVERY SINGLE PICTURE I'd taken of her during her year with us. The one who was here for 9/11 we are still in touch with. She is a speech pathologist in Sweden now.