“Is your daughter in daycare?”
That’s the question I have been asked since my daughter was about six months old. I get asked when I run into acquaintances or former colleagues, or whenever I meet new or seasoned mothers. And the answer I give depends on insecurities that oscillate between not wanting to feel judged for my choices, and not wanting others to feel judged for theirs.
If I say, “I don’t have a place for her yet,” I’m met with unsolicited advice on how to navigate the subsidized daycare bureaucracy in Quebec. If I give a partial answer –that I’ve enrolled my daughter in a private daycare for when she reaches the age of two and a half this September, I’m met with mixed reviews. “Oh, wow, that sounds expensive,” said one mother to me the other day. Some people are even more direct: “Why would you pay that price when we have universal childcare here?” And then I suddenly find myself justifying my decision to strangers. “Well, you get most of the money back in Quebec,” is one of my go-to responses. If I’m feeling a little defensive, I’ll scale up my assertiveness and say something like, “The daycare we found is the right fit for our needs.”
If I simply say, “Not yet,” I’m forced to contend with a barrage of questions that brush up against my deeper feelings about daycare in general. If I use the post-pandemic, Kafkaesque healthcare system as an excuse, it sometimes gives pause and shifts the conversation to the overwhelmed hospitals in Montreal, or the nightmare that is trying to find infant Tylenol in Canada. Or, what it’s really like to have a sick infant in Quebec right now. Anyone who currently has a baby or toddler under the age of 5 in daycare – anywhere in the world – knows that the risk of infection increases exponentially for the child the moment they start interacting with more children and the foreign germs they carry.
The concept of universal healthcare in Canada is wonderful. The reality in Quebec, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Here, the subsidized programs like daycare or healthcare leave major gaps in accessibility and quality, which is why many of us choose to pay for private services – on top of the public services paid for through taxation. Knowing that the public healthcare system will let us down, either through absurdly long delays or a shortage of family doctors, we find ourselves paying into what is now a two-tiered system: we pay our taxes to fund a struggling and overwhelmed healthcare system that is in desperate need of personnel and actual doctors; and then, in moments of desperation and fear, we pay private clinics that are suddenly popping up everywhere to deliver more efficient services with reasonable turnaround times, so that our children do not end up in hospital or dying because of an infection that is highly treatable when services are readily available.
The same is true for daycares in Quebec. We can pay $8.35 a day to have a child from 0-5 years old be in daycare full time from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Friday, and sometimes on weekends. These types of daycares are subsidized but the waitlists are long, and your chance of getting a spot in your daycare of choice, in your neighbourhood, within a year of registering your child, is slim. Which is why many parents circumvent the bureaucracy and enrol their children in private, non-subsidized daycares at $35/day or more. Either way, a percentage of our taxes contributes to subsidized daycare in Quebec, and we do get a portion of our money back through a tax credit if you opt for a private daycare. But of course, you have to be able to afford the private costs up front. And those who can afford to pay up front don’t have to worry about a waitlist.
All of these above-mentioned factors are reason enough, in my mind, to delay my daughter’s start date at daycare. But they are not the full truth.
The real reason why I did not put my daughter into daycare after my maternity leave is because I was not ready. I was not ready to transfer her care over to people who are overseeing at least eight other infants at once, however qualified they may be. I was not willing to let my daughter’s young immune system contend with illnesses it’s not yet fully equipped to fight off. I was not ready to sacrifice our time together bonding and playing, no matter the financial or professional cost. And our family did – and still does – sacrifice my earning power. From the time my daughter was born, I would squeeze in freelance contracts during naps and late nights. When my daughter turned one, I found a babysitter I trust who comes to our apartment a few afternoons a week, so I can get in a few more hours of work during the day, to contribute to our household income as much as I can.
There are many reasons for me to be in the workforce full time: Affording a home will require both of our incomes to pay down a mortgage. But even now, our household requires two incomes to afford the general high cost of living in a city in Canada, to cover the rising cost of groceries, gas and heating, and to support our children’s futures. And on a personal note, I also do not want to waste the professional experience I have gained over the last decade.
I spent my twenties working in film and television as a story producer and writer. I thought I would eventually become a filmmaker or a screenwriter, maybe both. I envisioned a life where I could not only do what I love but also have a family, and never have to choose between raising children and meaningful work. That vision evaporated in the last few years, as I slowly shed the girlboss skin that once dictated my every move – and that led to many false beliefs about my ability, as a woman, to have it all in a world waiting for me to step up, and show up, and lean in.
The moment I gave birth to my daughter, the rug of female empowerment was pulled out from under me. Here I was at 32 years old, after 17 hours of labour, the most vulnerable and most joyful I have ever felt, holding my daughter on my chest, understanding for the first time in my life what my human female form is capable of creating. And every decision after that moment now hinges on a single question: What is best for my daughter? Baby-led weaning or purées. Crying it out or co-sleeping. Going back to work full time, or working part-time. Working from home, or working at an office. Putting her in daycare or keeping her at home with me, for a little while longer. Not all of the choices are black and white. And the grey areas have led to many sleepless nights, as I have no doubt they do for most parents, and perhaps especially for mothers.
I have visited over 20 daycares in my city, near and far from where I live. I have read the articles that tell me that Canada only benefits from more women in the workforce, thanks to universal childcare programs. I watch my friends out-earn me and move forward financially, and be able to reach for an already unaffordable housing market in a way my husband and I cannot. And after every single visit, no matter how pristine the facilities or how caring the staff, I am still left with the feeling that this way of doing things – of raising children – is not how it should be.
The research from the last 25 years of Quebec’s childcare program is trickling in. So far, the outcomes for children who were placed in daycare under the age of three are discouraging, with some important exceptions for children from poor families. We devised a solution for women to have children without losing momentum in their careers. But the cost is proving to be steep across economic, cultural and familial lines. And the solution does not really solve the mother’s dilemma.
I have yet to meet a mother who wasn’t at least a little ambivalent about returning to work full time and putting her child into daycare. That ambivalence is rooted in something I know to be true for myself, as a mother, on an instinctual level. And it’s very difficult to name, let alone discuss out loud, in an era that demands so much from working mothers, while advising younger women to forego this rite of passage all together. A rite of passage, I might add, that also hinges the entire female experience on a single question: "Baby or financial freedom?" The subtext of these covert advertisements for choosing a career over motherhood is something like, “Give us your womb, and you will have limitless opportunities, vacations and once-in-a-life-time experiences.” And in small print it reads: “No take-backsies in the event of changes in emotional, psychological or personal circumstances related to age or the inevitability of human experience.”
At the core of my dilemma as a millennial mother – and why, I believe, the question about putting my baby into daycare comes up often – is the internal conflict I still feel about my work: I was raised to believe I could pursue my dreams only to discover that the thing I wanted most in the world – to be a mother – meant having to put my career plans on hold. How naive of me, I know. Female empowerment has proven to be nothing more than a fairytale when the biological clock strikes twelve. Still, the residual girlboss feelings linger, almost as though they’ve clawed onto my psyche. There are strong voices telling me to try – nay, to strive! – to be both a present mother to my daughter while doing whatever I can to advance my professional plans and get back into the game. This, I now realize, is the definition of being set up to fail. In her Twitter bio, cultural critic Anna Khachiyan writes “I’ve leaned in, and I can’t get up.” That sums up exactly where I’m at: You can find me sitting on my kitchen floor below a pile of dishes, next to toys and food droppings, while my laptop sits on the counter, slightly sticky and waiting for some attention.
To be clear, I would no sooner advocate for a return to the 1950s era of housewife domesticity than I would for eradicating childcare services all together, but I cannot shake the feeling that there is something faulty – or misaligned – about putting a baby into daycare. We have chosen to live in a society in which we have children only to raise them in large facilities away from the family unit where they spend most of their time because we can no longer afford to raise them ourselves. Or, maybe because we no longer believe we should have to raise them ourselves, given the convincing postmodern narrative that prioritizes individual pursuit at the expense of healthy attachment with our children. Even the wealthiest among us choose to outsource their child-rearing to live-in nannies – but that’s another story, for another time.
The progressive argument leveraged in favour of daycares will use the age-old adage that “it takes a village” to raise a family. And I believe that, too. But surely when we had a village, it was not a government-regulated and subsidized facility that managed a dozen or more children at the same time in one classroom with only three caretakers. And you probably didn’t get waitlisted. And I have a feeling grandparents were more involved.
Pivot to the progressive feminist viewpoint that seems increasingly against having children to begin with, and the family construct is seen as a physical and psychological burden imposed on me through centuries of patriarchal rule. A feminist viewpoint would also claim that child-rearing was mostly left up to mothers prior to the existence of daycare services. And that latter part is true. I bought into these arguments in my twenties, and they made me angry on behalf of women. Now, I see it very differently. My husband is a totally devoted and supportive partner and father, and for that I am immeasurably lucky. But I am the one who spends the most time taking care of our daughter – and I’m not sure I would have it any other way.
In the end, I dodge questions about when I’m putting my daughter into daycare because it’s mostly women who ask me, and I would never want a woman to feel judged for the choices she makes for her child. Instead, I withhold my honesty, and long for questions that probe deeper into the experience of motherhood. Questions about what it’s like caring for someone so little, and so new to the world; questions about how the experience of having a child has changed me as a woman, as a partner, as a storyteller.
The creating, the filmmaking, the writing, will come, I expect. I hope. I could not give them up, and motherhood does not entirely replace what they offer me. Nor do I think it should. But the goal posts for what constitutes a fulfilling life or meaningful work have definitely – and permanently – shifted. The world is not my oyster. It rests on its axis and spins with or without my input. So, at this moment in time, I can only speak to what I know to be true for myself as a parent: Every interaction my daughter has with the world is filtered through me. And that is reason enough to keep us together for a little while longer.
Will you or your child look back on your lives and think that time together or money was more valuable? If your extended family can't help you, why not move to an affordable area (like Alberta?) and live on one income. My children suffered when they where in day care, thrived when my wife stayed home. I've never regretted doing the hard, right thing, but have many regrets for selfish decisions.
Christina, great article thank you. Perched on the end of your tongue perilously close to tumbling out is a long forgotten, much maligned truth: Motherhood is the most important job in human society. The answer to your dilemma is relatively simple (albeit also heretical), ie reduce your family spending (and future spending ambitions) to match your income and get on with raising your child. Vastly more important than a bit more stuff and a fancier house.
Mark