What Are You Doing for Childcare Right Now?
This post may contain affiliate links and CorporetteMoms may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

I was emailing with a friend recently who lives in a state that is still very closed, and she noted (as I’ve seen readers note anonymously in the comments!) that they couldn’t do the “two working parents and no childcare” thing and quietly brought back their nanny, who now lives with them during the week and goes home on weekends, driven by my friend’s husband. I think a lot of people are doing similar things — quietly — and so I thought we’d take an anonymous poll. What are you doing for childcare right now? As states open up, what are you planning to do for the summer? (I debated adding a separate “screentime/running wild” option, but really, isn’t that included in half of the answer options anyway?)
(The first poll is below; if you can’t see it please try this link…)
And let’s take a second one — what are you planning to do for childcare over the summer? If your daycare is open, will you send your children? If camps are open, will you send them? (If you can’t see the second poll, please try this link…)
Do tell, ladies — what are you doing now, and planning to do in this summer?
I live in an inner Chicago suburb with a high COVID rate, so we’ve continued to socially-distance strictly. I have a 2 year old, and I’m 35 weeks pregnant with Baby 2. We’ve been fortunate. Both husband and I are working from home while watching our son. It’s been tough and has required a lot of late nights/weekends working, but we’ve made it work and we still get paid. I have 2-3 weeks vacation that I need to use before June 30, so I’ll be starting my maternity leave in mid-June (only 2 more weeks to go!). My maternity leave goes through the end of October. It’s all unpaid (except for the vacation in the beginning), but at least I have a guaranteed job to return to. My husband gets 8 weeks of paid leave, plus his office just announced he’ll be WFH until September.
I feel good about child care right now. But, if a second wave comes, I’m not sure how I can manage watching a baby AND a toddler while working from home in late fall. I’m a school district administrator, and we’re basically on-call 24/7 to deal with anything and everything. I’ll figure that out when it comes time. My son was previously in a daycare center. We had been paying 50% tuition each week to reserve his spot, but recently stopped because we couldn’t justify the cost. I’m hoping there will still be space for him when it’s time for him (and baby 2) to return, but again, I’ll figure it out when I get there.
Our preschool wasn’t able to open for the summer due to limited interest / too many people out of work, but we hired my daughter’s favorite teacher as part time in home care. She didn’t want full Temecula but it’s better than what we have now which is nothing
My husband and I both worked from home and split childcare for our 15 month old for two months. We were pretty successful, but of course there were some stressful days. I’m an Executive Director at a non-profit with a building under construction, so I had to go back to work two weeks ago to oversee our move to the new space (everyone else is still wfh). We got lucky that my 18 year old niece had all of her spring/summer plans cancelled so she could come live with us and provide childcare so my husband can still get work done while I’m gone. We pay her a small stipend – definitely not the going rate, but we’re also cutting expenses and saving up so we can afford a regular full-time nanny after she goes home. Our daycare is re-opening next month, but we’re going to keep our babe at home as long as possible to avoid the extra exposure.
I responded “stay at home parent” for both, although it’s not fully accurate. I’m still working from home, but doing about 20 hours a week while I can distract my kids with TV or at night. My husband has left for deployment, and we have no family nearby, so there’s no help for me. We also live in the Bay Area, which is one of the early epicenters.
To make life more fun, we’re moving across country in a month. I expect that, once we arrive in our new home, I will continue to work part-time while the kids stay home with me. I’m very worried about relaxing quarantine orders and resurgence, and have been eyeballing just homeschooling for all of next year. I’m hopeful that the new school district will implement an online option, but if they don’t, I can’t say for sure that I will send the kids to 1st and preschool. I also acknowledge that I have the privilege of working for a company that allows me so much flexibility, and that we’ll be able to afford having me stay home at part-time (well, in the new location. Definitely couldn’t do it here.).
I’m a day late but chiming in for the small “babysitter/neighbor” cohort. We were doing a combination of the two working parents + limited family help, but it got to be too much. Our very beloved babysitter two blocks away has been isolating with her family and watching only one other neighbor kid, whose parents are also WFH, so just this week we decided we were comfortable sending our toddler back. We can’t afford a nanny, so sending her to this very small group is the next best thing. I am keeping it quiet though, for reasons stated above– concerned about judgment from others (for example, my dad asked whether they are attempting to social distance at the babysitter’s house. Um… no? Explain how you do that with a toddler?).
This month my kids spent 6 hours each weekday with my parents.
My preschooler is Dennis the Menace.
My parents are older and at higher risk because of medical reasons.
As long as DH and I WFH & social distance, they’ll help care for the kids.
So we’re trying to WFH as long as possible, otherwise this will be off the rails like it was in March/ April.
Not sure how long this is tenable.
Why isn’t there a poll option for those who are doing all of this by ourselves? E.G. those of us married to an essential worker spouse or single parents. I’m working full time from home AND watching my toddler AND homeschooling/trying not to kill my kindergartner. I acknowledge the pandemic is hard for everyone but it really grinds my gears when it’s assumed there are two parents at home to split the working and child care. I’m doing both and dang this is freaking hard!
Our child is at a Bright Horizons and they are just starting to reopen locations, but have told us the CDC has cut their capacity in half and so there is a waitlist to return (and no communication on when that will change). I’ve poured through the CDC guidelines and can’t find where they actually say that, so that’s frustrating. Basically, we are in limbo and the lack of communication is stressful.
What am I doing about childcare? Crying, mostly. Two full-time plus parents, 6-year old boy who misses kindergarten terribly. Grandparents would likely help if I really pushed it but they are older, immuno-compromised, and risk adverse – they have some concerns, even though everyone has been following strict social distancing / stay at home for months. I don’t want to force anyone to provide (free) care to me if they’re uncomfortable.
I’m having a baby in July so we’re just in survival mode until then – afterwards, I will be primary for newborn and 6-year old, also not great but vastly better to not be expected to function at work where I oversee a 150-person department.
This fall, when school / daycare may or may not open – who the F knows.
Yes, I foresee the same thing happen. I am in the forego 3-k camp even if it opens (which we were excited about started in the fall). I have had people disrespect social distancing at every stage of this crisis and it has made me distrust opening my family up back to the wider world. 9 out of 10 times that Ive stepped out of my house to walk around my block since March I have the burden of dodging people who are maskless or just sauntering past us without a care in the world (families, couples, solos, don’t matter). The burden is always on me, husband, child to cross the street and practice extreme vigilance. I don’t begrudge anyone who chooses otherwise, but people have proven to be untrustworthy w/r/t official public health guidelines so I cannot get comfortable placing my child in group situations as a result.
I’m in VA too, and I told a group of preschool mom friends that my babysitter was coming back last week, and one replied, “Is that safe?” So then I had to explain why I thought it was safe. To which she replied, “I’m sorry if I made you feel defensive.” Not another way to feel after asking that question. So that’s why people have been having nannies or babysitters come back “quietly.” I feel like the pandemic is going to create a whole new mommy wars between moms who start to have babysitters come back, let their kids play with the neighbors and otherwise return to some semblance of normal life and moms who plan to homeschool next fall even if schools open.
I don’t understand why you would have to have your nanny work for you “quietly.” We have 3 kids ages 5 and under and a full time nanny. She hasn’t stopped working for us the whole time. My state’s (VA’s) stay at home order provides you are allowed to go out to go to work and to care for others, so it’s allowed. I wrote a letter stating that she works for us and commutes to work that she could keep in her car if she was stopped for violating the stay at home order. My 5 yo lost her pre-K and her activities and my 4 yo lost over 30 hours per week of autism therapies, but at least they and my 1 yo still have their beloved nanny and my husband and I can still do our jobs. I’m grateful my household could keep our tiny corner of the economy running by keeping our nanny, our house cleaner and our yard services.
Oh ladies I am so over trying to work while watching my 10-month old. Every week I keep hoping that our daycare will announce it’s opening, but not yet! We’re trying to wait it out but we might have to get a sitter because we’re barely holding it together.
We were both miserable (especially me) so we hired a trustworthy neighborhood teen to watch our kids for 3 hours a day while we both focus. We’re switching on/off the rest of the time. I hope to send my youngest back to daycare at some point, maybe in late June or early July. The school-age kid is going to have an old-fashioned summer at home, I guess. He’s doing a few virtual camps; we’ll see if those go well or if they’re more hassle than they’re worth. I would say most in-person camps in our city have been canceled.
Mostly splitting between two working parents, which is miserable. My parents live driving distance away and visited in May and plan to keep visiting regularly until daycare reopens (which is currently a big question mark – maybe July? Maybe August? Maybe never???).