this woman’s work

You are browsing the archives from 2003 July.

Thanks for reading me despite my typos. I’m cutting back on my coffee intake and it looks like my spelling, grammar and syntax left me with nary a look back. (I just typed “wtih” instead of “with” but caught it; I’m nto not catching all of them. Have patience with me!)

My decision to be home with Noah was less about whether or not I wanted to work and more about I didn’t want to put him in daycare. Because I used to work in daycare, I have very strong opinions about what constitutes quality care and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever find a situation where I would happily put my children. (This doesn’t mean that I have anything against daycare in theory — just in practice — or that I think other people should feel the same way I do. I get angry about it because I think that working parents need better and more affordable child care options. I don’t know what the answer is to that.)

Another selfish reason that I wanted to be home was that the thought of someone else caring for Noah made me really jealous. I wanted to care for him. I wanted to work, too, so for the first six months I took Noah to work with me and worked my other hours when Brett was home with him. Eventually when Noah got bigger my boss said that he couldn’t come anymore so I quit.

Having me at home was financially disastrous. For the first year, Brett was making $19,500 although he did get a second weekend job after awhile. Even when he got a job with better pay, we were still making less than we needed and so we sunk deeper into debt. It isn’t until now when I’m making enough money to start paying off that debt that I face how deep a financial hole we created.
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