I’ve been laying awake for over an hour, unable to get back asleep. I live alone, so “accidentally” waking my significant other and/or roommate up in order to have a conversation isn’t an option. And I don’t have any friends that wouldn’t by upset if i called them at 4 in the morning to discuss a problem that technically doesn’t exist for 3 years or so. So then I thought, hey, there’s that guy on the Internet. You know, the one that’s always up? I’ll tell him.
Hey… that’s YOU.
So the problem, in a nutshell, is that in 3 years or so my daughter will be going to school while I’m a working, single parent. (If you happen to be a working, single parent or a family where both parents work, I could really use your insight.)
Right now, I have a pretty decent situation. My employer is very flexible with my hours. Because my daughter’s mom and I do “every other day” custody, it means I can go in really late one day, and then go in to work really early the next. With her mom having the same schedule every day this means that my daughter is in the care of people other than her parents for between 7 and 9 hours each day. Not great, but not terrible either. And very similar to the requirements of public school.
If my employer wasn’t so flexible, then my daughter would be at school for roughly 10 hours each day. Throw in the fact that she sleeps 10-12 hours each day out of school, and that leaves 2 to 4 hours each day to eat dinner, take a bath, drive to school and back and actually enjoy each other. Again, not great, but at least it’s doable.
When my daughter starts real school, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I picked a random local elementary school as an example. The school hours are 8am to 3pm. That’s 7 hours and a set schedule. There’s simply no way I can make that work alone. And, unless her mom can manage to find a schedule as flexible as mine, having “every other day” custody doesn’t really help the siutation any.
So, as I see it, my options are these:
- Find a private school with longer hours and figure out how to pay for it. (2-4 hours of family time)
- Find an afterschool program that handles child transport and figure out how to pay for it (2-4 hours of family time)
- Become very close with a family that lives very close by that I trust with my child and that is also willing to help. Adopt that family as part of my own. Hope with all my might that neither of us every has to move. (5-7 hours of family time 2-4 of which I am present for.)
- Make an arrangement with another single parent (guy or girl), another couple, or a romantic interest and tie our lives and living arrangements together for the greater good of both families. (5-7 hours of family time. I could be present for nearly all of them, depending on my schedule and their schedules. Worst case, 2-4 hours I’ll be present for.)
- Work for myself with hours that I can set entirely on my own. (5-7 hours of family time for which I would, presumably, be present for all of them except in cases where I needed to work and had to find assistance.)
- Join a commune.
Options 1 and 2 are roughly the same, require the most money, the most stable of jobs, and the least amount of outside help.
Options 3 and 4 and better and then better still, but require more and more outside assistance. As you know, I’m very fond of raising my child “in a village” so these options are quite sutiable to me but require lots of outside assistance. Ideally, options 3 and 4 would work best together. Even better than that, would be having multiple families to suit option 3.
Option 5 is of course the best for allowing me to spend the most time with my daughter. However, it’s also the least stable of all since I’d be working for myself and would still require either a good trust worthy babysitter, or a nearby family to help out from time to time.
Option 6 speaks for itself.
All in all, option 4, with multiple option 3s and an option 5 kicker would be the best.
I’ve got less than 3 years to make it happen.
So, now the question.
To all of you single, working parents or coupled parents that both work: how do YOU make it happen?
In most of the single parent cases that I am aware of, extended family fill in all the gaps. This simply isn’t an option for me. My brother is also a single parent. My other brother lives in Vermont. My sister and her husband both work long hours and live far away. My mom is the most likely candidate to help and she’s made it clear that she’s not interested in doing so right now. If she manages to move to Rockwall and if I do to, then she becomes an option.
