DOCTORS' LOUNGE
DOCTORS' LOUNGE
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WITHOUT CHILD CARE, NO RECOVERY AUTHOR Mary Barry, MD
As of February 2019, the cost of child
care in America ranged from 9%
to 36% of your annual income, depending
on where you live. Child
care in a commercial facility usually
costs more than the neighborhood
mom, who is paid for taking
care of other children at home, along with her
own. The US birth rate reached a historic low in 2017 and matched
it in 2018. Of the 2,000 parents surveyed by the New York Times,
64% said the ruinous cost of child care was their main reason not
to have another child.
A young couple with college debt plus professional degree debt,
trying to save for a house, turn up pregnant and fall into a financial
hole for the next six years or more. They pay on their loans, and now
they pay for child care and still then they rent, money that goes down
the rabbit hole with no hope of equity. Sooner or later, the mother,
not the father (in the majority), will become the stay-at-home unpaid
parent, losing her career trajectory, her chances of networking, her
useful and formative experiences, her chance at accomplishment
and better pay. In 2017, female doctors in America were paid less
than men to the tune of $105,000 per year.
The COVID-19 epidemic has sickened and killed many essential
workers – the stories out of New York City, Detroit and Chicago
testify over and over to that, not just the EMS, not just the nurses,
doctors, aides and therapists. The lesser-paid people who clean the
hospital, hand out the PPE, cook and deliver the meals, transport
the patients, who tend the pipes, the machines, X-ray equipment,
sterilizers and the grounds: they are dying too. They take the subway,
bus and little vans from the boroughs, too close to their fellow passengers,
too worn out to do anything healthy, shopping cheek to jowl
as best they can. The workers in nursing homes have faced the same
fate as the patients, since they bathe and tend them over and over
again; as of early May, one-third of US deaths came from nursing
home residents and workers. Many of these workers pay a quarter
of their annual income for child care. Many more of them depend
on aunts, grandmothers or cousins, who are thus not working at
any job with benefits or connections, and perpetuating the cycle
of living on the edge, with the fear of homelessness ever present.
As reported by Samantha Schmidt in the Washington Post,
women have lost 83% of the jobs in education and health sectors
and though they held only half the jobs in the retail sector, 61% of
all job losses there happened to women.
Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote back in 2003 that, “Having a
child is now the single best predictor that a woman will end up in
financial collapse.”
As I write this, we have just reached the Great Depression levels
of unemployment.
Everywhere, people are broke, desperate and anxious to work,
and at the same time, the sane ones are terrified of meeting the
public again. Governors face severe pressure to loosen physical
distancing and severe criticism for going either too fast or too slow.
It’s an impossible navigation, since those who refuse to believe in
the deadliness of the virus are the most likely to ignore masks and
embrace get-togethers. When the price of gathering is death, denial
is still their choice. Over and over I have read their sobbing loved
ones’ stories: “He never thought it could happen to him. He was
everybody’s friend.” When hundreds of thousands of us venture
out, the skyrocketing death toll can close us all down again…or
36 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE