Abortion rights, women of color, and LGBTQIA+ people are under attack. Pledge to join us in fighting for gender justice.
When Parents Carry the Weight of Entrepreneurship and Child Care
You may have noticed that sometimes when you buy from a street vendor or stop inside a small business—like a restaurant, hair salon, or nail salon—there is a child present while their parent works. Perhaps you wondered why the child was there or simply assumed their school or care center was closed that day. However, the reasons parents, particularly self-employed small-business owner parents, take their children with them to work are varied and often tied to the unaffordability of child care. Behind many of these small businesses is a parent doing what they must to keep their business and home life afloat. Sometimes they are the sole owner, the only breadwinner of their family and child care isn’t in the budget or available that day. So, they bring their child along and make it work—because they have to.
Growing up as the daughter of a small business owner, I watched my mom work various jobs until she settled in her now self-owned hair salon. Through each one, I clearly remember her constant worry about finding someone to look after my younger brother and me. When stepping into her first hair stylist role, she only worked on weekends so she could still take care of us during the week. But once our livelihood depended on her sole income, she had to work every day—more than your typical 40-hour work weeks—and only asked for Mondays off. While she took the time to care for us during some of our most critical development years, she still faced barriers in trying to find child care for our family that would extend beyond the typical school hours. I have a vivid memory from kindergarten of being brought to her dad’s restaurant in a rush because there was no one else to pick me up that afternoon, and I have many more of sitting down in the back of her salon reading my books when she had no other option but to bring us to work.
I understood from a young age that my mom unfortunately had no other choice but to bring me to her workplace every now and then. While I could understand my own mother’s worries and struggles with trying to find someone to care for me and my brother, I didn’t yet understand how my family’s situation was tied to the unaffordability and inaccessibility of the child care system, particularly for families who work nontraditional hours.
Many families have no choice but to bring their children to their workplace regularly because of the hours they work. When you are the sole owner of a business, you have to be there at all times and that usually means working nontraditional hours that go well beyond your typical 9-5 office hours during the week and extend into the weekends as well. Almost half of all children in the U.S. have at least one parent who works non-traditional hours and 5 million children under the age of 6 live with a parent working outside traditional hours. Many small business owners fall under this category which makes finding child care an extremely difficult experience for them when only 8 percent of care centers offer care when they need it the most.
Even if a family can find care to meet their needs, it may be unaffordable. The cost of child care rises each year and is usually the same or even more than rent or in-state college tuition. In fact, families would need to make over $180,000 per year to afford the cost of infant care nationally, which is not the reality for many small business-owning parents, especially those who have low incomes or are single parents relying on their sole earnings to support their families. Small business owners also have additional business expenses such as buying supplies, ingredients, and even paying rent for the unit they work out of or that location’s separate set of bills. Additionally, small business owners lack health benefits provided by your “typical” employer such as covered health insurance or paid sick days, so they lose money when either the parent or child is sick. Parents frequently battle with the decision to stay at home with their child or bring them to work when closing their business for a day is the difference between losing earnings or keeping their family fed and bills paid.
Unfortunately, lack of robust federal investments in child care and early learning continues to put support out of reach for families. The child care system is under attack due to the chronic underfunding of child care assistance, threats to Head Start, and limitations on who qualifies for a child care tax credit or child care assistance. These attacks show no signs of slowing down, meaning parents will continue to face various obstacles when seeking child care. Unaffordability and inaccessibility in this case go hand in hand as complementary barriers small business owning parents face.
Now that I’ve outgrown the age of needing a caregiver, I notice other children in businesses who grew up similarly to me. They’re behind the counter playing games on their iPad at my campus’ most popular Thai restaurant and sitting down alongside their parents selling mangos and other fruit at parks.
Each story and business are unique, but they share the common struggle of accessing child care. Current cuts and threats to child care force families to make decisions about who will take care of their kids and ultimately leave parents with taking their child to work as the only viable option. With school out for the summer, the child care crisis is even more prevalent. We must invest in parents and caregivers, not make their lives harder by cutting essential support.
