Real People of America: Meet Miriam
I took my grandson in two years ago when my daughter became ill. Over the last two years we’ve tried different things — he lived with my other daughter on the west coast for a little while, and then up in Philadelphia with his father’s family — but it’s been best for him to be here with me. I want to do what’s best for my grandson. I’m just afraid that I won’t be able to. Child care here is not affordable.
In trying to find child care I was amazed at how much it cost. I hadn’t had to worry about child care for awhile because my youngest is 28. And considering the wages they pay people here in Vegas it was astounding. The cost in a lot of cases came out to more than one thousand dollars a month. And if it’s that much per month for just one child, can you imagine for two, or three, or four? And if parents work another job to pay for child care how will they be with their kids? I’m very passionate about this. This affects the lives of a lot of women and men that need to be able to care for their children and still hold a job.
I’m a loan officer, which means my time is somewhat flexible, but I still have to get out there and work, or I don’t get paid. It is so difficult finding child care that I can actually afford for my grandson that I’ve had to basically put my work on hold to care for him. And that’s a problem. There are people that need to work, want to work, but you could spend every cent you make just on the child care. I need help with his care and I don’t know where to go. And I need to work too. It’s important to me.
One of my grandsons had to spend some time in the foster care system, and he passed away. We didn’t find out about what had happened right away, and that made it even harder. We lost him and then no one told us. It’s a loss I can’t describe or even think on very often. I sit with that in my heart every day. I won’t let that happen again. So my grandson is here with me. I don’t want him in the system when he has family that loves and cares for him. I can sit home with him all day but that’s not productive — or I can find child care for him, but that is not affordable.
This is America. More than ten million children are raised in single parent households. Four percent of all adopted children are being raised by gay parents. More than a million kids have a stay at home dad. Families look a lot of ways now, but you wouldn’t know it to hear some people talk. Many kids don’t just have a mom and dad who can always afford to have one parent stay home and one parent work. For a lot of reasons — physical or mental illness, drug abuse, poverty, the death of a parent — sometimes family members or the system have to step in and take care of children. My kids are grown but I have a moral obligation to take care of my grandson. I don’t want him to end up in foster care like my other grandchild. If I have to stop working and stay home or live off government support to keep him safe at home and loved, I will. But I want to work.
They should make child care affordable so parents and caretakers can continue to work and make a living. When kids are school age they should have before school and after school help. There needs to be a change to make it possible for people to put kids in child care that is affordable and safe. Society would be more productive as a whole if they made it possible for us to put our kids in care and go to work safe with the knowledge that they’ll be cared for while we’re gone and we can put food on the table when we come home. We’re talking about human beings. We’re talking about people’s lives. There is nothing more important than this. I’m fortunate to have a flexible job but the less time I spend doing my work the less money I make. This is a new career for me getting started. I have to do this — work for me and him, be here for him — until the situation changes. Other than that I’ll just commit to raising him until he’s a grown man.
#LetsGetReal #RPoA #paidleave #childcare
