Chapter 1
Making the Choice: A Nanny
or Another Form of Child Care?

Beyond Mary Poppins: Child Care Options                      5

Nannies                                                                          5

Nannies Who Live In                                                      9

Au Pairs                                                                       11

Licensed Day Care Centers                                        12

In-Home Day Care Facilities                                       13

Preschools                                                                   14

Budgeting for Child Care                                                 15

Child Care Costs                                                          15

How Much Money Your Household Brings In             17

How Much Money Is Going Out                                  18

What’s Left Over                                                          23

Hiring Part-Time Nanny Care                                          24

Supplementing Part-Time Nanny Help With Classes
or Other Child Care                                                   25

Spending More of Your Time at Home                       27

Supplementing Nanny Care With Child Care Trades
With Other Parents                                                   30

ou may be pretty sure that your Number One choice for child care is hiring a nanny—someone who comes to your home (or even lives there) to take personal care of your children. But you’ve probably heard that nannies are the most expensive form of child care, and that having someone in your home for substantial periods of time, let alone living there, can be a challenge. Before deciding for certain that hiring a nanny is the best type of child care for you, read quickly through this chapter to learn the ups and downs of this set-up, as told by many who have firsthand experience. Take a look at other child care options, too; and examine your finances to make sure that you can afford hiring a nanny. This chapter will show you the big picture by explaining:

•  the range of child care options and their general advantages and disadvantages

•  the comparative costs of a nanny and other forms of child care

•  how much of your time or money you can put toward child care, and

•  ways to save money by supplementing nanny care, such as with regular play dates or child care trades for children.

Even if you feel absolutely sure you want to hire a nanny, keep reading. You’ll pick up some important tips on figuring out how much you can spend and how to bring the costs down.

 

Tip

How soon will you need the nanny? If you’ll need someone within the next few weeks, start moving quickly. Advertising for, preparing for, and lining up the right nanny usually takes from four to eight weeks. But don’t start earlier than that, because the nannies you’ll find will probably want to begin work sooner than you’re ready.

Beyond Mary Poppins: Child Care Options

Other than in-home nanny care, most parents also consider preschools, international au pairs (which we’ll also cover in this book), and day care centers (whether in a school-type setting or in someone’s home). Below is a summary of the advantages and disadvantages these options offer compared to nannies.

 

Tip

A blend of child care set-ups might be best for your child. Your choice of child care should take into account (among other things) your child’s needs and temperament. For example, a very shy child might benefit from the socialization a large day care center provides—but not too much all at once. (Studies have shown that shy children in day care produce more stress hormones.) Combining a few hours a day at a day care center with other hours spent with a nanny might be the best arrangement.

Nannies

A nanny is someone who, if she’s not invited to live with you, comes regularly to your home to provide individual care for your child (or children). Most nannies are women, though male nannies, sometimes called mannies, do exist. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll refer to both them throughout this book as “her” or “she.”

Having a nanny allows your child to remain in a familiar setting, with favorite books, toys, and food nearby, on a schedule that fits your work or other needs. Instead of having to rush every morning to make sure your child is fed, dressed, and out the door on time, you can simply turn matters over to the nanny.

Ideally, the nanny and your child will build a close, caring relationship. A nanny can start to feel almost like part of the family. This doesn’t mean your child will be stuck at home with no one but the nanny for company, however. A good nanny will take your child out to the zoo, the park, play dates with other children, and story time at the library.

Tips for Parents Working at Home

According to Susan in Washington, DC, who works with parents, “I frequently encounter a couple of misconceptions among expectant parents who plan to work at home after the baby arrives.

“The first one is, ‘I can take care of the baby at the same time I do my job.’ Unless you have a baby who sleeps constantly, that simply won’t work.

“Then the parents say, ‘I’ll hire a nanny and she’ll take care of the baby, but I’ll be around to watch over things,’ and I say, ‘That can be totally great and that’s what I did, but make sure you have a dedicated workspace.’

“If, for example, you have a studio apartment, and you’re planning to be in one corner, with the nanny and baby in another, it’s not going to work. Your child is going to demand your attention—and even if not, you may not be able to resist crossing the room yourself.

“With a separate room where you can close the door, a child under the age of about 18 months or two years will literally not realize you’re nearby. You’re out of sight, out of mind, and the nanny can capture the child’s full attention.

“After a child reaches that transition age, of course, sharing space gets trickier. I encouraged my daughter’s nannies to spend a lot of time out of the house, going to the park, or the library, or socializing with other nannies—they’ve typically got a whole network to tap into. But if it was a cold rainy day, or my daughter was sick, the day would be excruciating. I could hear her wailing and wanting me, while I was, say, stuck on a conference call. Luckily, those days were few and far between, or I might have had to rethink the whole plan.”

 

 

Tip

“We bought a zoo pass our nanny could use.” Dalia, the mother of two boys in Piedmont, California, explains: “That way, we made sure there was at least one interesting place the nanny could regularly take the boys without worrying about added expense. We also soon found that she was part of a network of other Laotian nannies, all of whom met regularly with the children at a nearby lake.”

Some nannies are additionally willing to perform light household chores, particularly those relating to your child. This might include doing the child’s laundry, preparing the child’s lunch and snacks, tidying up, and more. Of course, as we’ll discuss in Chapter 9, all of this should be negotiated in advance.

The attractive aspects of having a nanny come with a price. Nannies are by far the most expensive type of child care, typically costing at least $18,000 a year for full-time care—and that’s before you start figuring in bonuses, eventual raises, and reimbursement for incidentals. (Such incidentals might include, for example, her lunch when she takes the kids out, and the costs of gas when ferrying your children around, or even for the nanny’s commute, which some parents pay for.)

What’s more, the payment system itself is complex. Because you’ll be considered the nanny’s employer, you’ll have to pay Social Security and other taxes (discussed in Chapter 5). You may find yourself hiring an accountant or tax preparer for the first time. The exception, of course, is to pay a nanny under the table. Unfortunately, that’s not only illegal, but you’d lose the various tax deductions available in connection with child care expenses—and if the nanny happens also to be an undocumented alien, you risk her being deported on short notice. We’ll discuss the risks and realities of paying under the table in Chapter 5.

 

Tip

The more children you have, the more cost-effective a nanny gets. Unlike day care centers, a nanny doesn’t double or triple her salary when you add another child into the mix (though it will go up some). In other words, using a nanny becomes cost-effective when she’ll be caring for more than one child. So, if you’ve just had triplets, start reading the nanny ads!

Another disadvantage to nannies is the amount of unsupervised control they have over your child and home. Although this book will help you make sure you get an excellent nanny, the state doesn’t help you out with any licensing procedures, and taking that initial leap of trust can be unnerving. Cases of nannies committing child abuse, theft, or other crimes are infrequent, but they do occur. Less drastically, if the nanny gets sick or doesn’t show up for any reason, you may be scrambling to find alternate care that day. In fact, as you look for a nanny, it’s also worth collecting names of possible backup nannies.

 

Caution

Not every nanny is a professional nanny. As International Nanny Association President Pat Cascio told USA TODAY, “Professional nannies are career child care providers, generally women ages 21 to 50. They usually are college educated, often with degrees in early childhood development or education. The majority are trained in CPR and first aid; some are former pediatric nurses. Nannies work 40 to 70 hours a week on a live-in or live-out basis. The annual salary ranges from $22,000 to $60,000, depending on experience and location. Benefits often include insurance, paid vacation, and room and board.”

Nannies Who Live In

Hiring a live-in nanny, instead of one who comes to your home for specified hours only, adds a whole new set of advantages and disadvantages to the mix described above. Convenience and flexibility are among the main advantages. You’ll never have to worry about your nanny missing the bus or getting stuck in traffic. Although you can’t expect her to work around the clock, arranging that she do some night hours, or trading a couple of hours on one day for extra babysitting on another should be fairly simple. All of this comes at a price that’s less than you’d pay a nanny who does not live in. That’s a surprise to many parents, but it is, in fact, traditional to lower the salary in light of the fact that you’re providing room and board. However, you wouldn’t go so far as to subtract the exact amount that a local rental unit would cost. We’ll talk more about setting a salary in Chapter 4.

Not everyone has the space available for a live-in arrangement, however. Ideally, you’d want to offer not only a separate bedroom, but a separate bathroom, too. Even if you can offer both, there’s no question that you’ll be giving up some privacy and sense of family intimacy. Your nanny will see you at your best and worst and during hours of the day when you’d rather not talk to anyone, period. Jackie, a single mom living in the New York City metro area, says, “At the end of a tough week, I’d just want some time alone with my son—not to mention the fact that when the nanny was always around, I never got to be the ‘fun’ one, but was always the disciplinarian and the one who put him to bed. One way I dealt with this was to give the nanny free movie tickets and the use of my car, just to get her out of the house!”

Unlike the nanny who goes home after her shift, your live-in nanny won’t have the ability to leave work behind when her hours are done. If the day or evening has produced stress or the job starts to wear on her, or other personal issues come up, you may have to deal with the consequences.

Vivian, from Princeton, New Jersey, says, “We wouldn’t have had live-ins if we’d had a choice. We finished the basement so our nanny would have her own space downstairs. But we found with more than one of our nannies that, because she’d already built her life around our family, she’d want to hang out, eat dinner, and enjoy our company even when she wasn’t working. I was a medical resident when my first son was born, and was often on call, so I couldn’t come home from working 36 hours and start taking care of everyone.”

Questions about who interacts with and disciplines the child get more complex when a full-time nanny and the parent(s) are on the scene all the time. At dinnertime, for example, if your child has a tantrum and demands different food, who steps in? (Does it matter whether it was you or the nanny who prepared the food?)

And you’re bound to encounter some ego-deflating moments when, for example, you go to tuck your child in and he says, “Go away, Mom. I want my nanny.” By the way, this is normal—all young kids have moments of playing favorites and feeling particularly strong affections toward different people in their lives, and they don’t realize how harsh such statements sound. When it happens, just remember that things could be worse—you could have hired a nanny the child is scared of. Deep down, children know who their parents are.

Au Pairs

An au pair is a young person from another country, proficient in English, who has signed up with a cultural exchange program to both live with and provide child care for an American family. Because it’s a formal program, subject to U.S. immigration laws, you have a lot less leeway to set hours and rules than you do with a regular nanny. We’ll talk about this program in detail in Chapter 8.

Working Moms: Stop Feeling Guilty!

Vivian, a working mom and practicing psychiatrist in Princeton, New Jersey, offers this reassurance: “When you’re a mother, you’re a mother all the time—it doesn’t matter if you’re working. Some people will try to guilt you about things like missing out on your child’s first word. But you can be a full-time mom and happen to be in the bathroom when that happens!”

 

The best reason to hire an au pair is that it’s inexpensive. You pay a set amount, regardless how many children you have. You also pay various fees, but even after accounting for them, the cost works out to about $8 per hour.

If you like the idea of an energetic, educated young person living with you for a limited time at a low pay rate, this program might be for you. However, a common mistake made by host families is thinking they’re getting a nanny who’ll want just a few extracurricular activities on the side. They soon discover that all but the most homebody-ish of au pairs tend to expect lots of extracurricular activities with a little child care on the side.

Successful balances can be struck—most of the time. If, for example, you live in a remote location in a house with few amenities, and you end up with an au pair who was hoping for big-city excitement and weekend parties with fellow au pairs, don’t be surprised if your au pair leaves early—or you have to ask her to leave.

 

Caution

Many au pairs are still teenagers. According to Kay, a parent in Berkeley, California, “We’ve loved all five of the au pairs that we’ve had, but definitely had to get used to some personal quirks. One au pair, for example, was wonderfully creative and enthusiastic with our child, but as surly as any teenager when talking with us. And as soon as they’re off work, they’re usually either meeting up with friends or catching up with them via cell phone or the Internet.”

Licensed Day Care Centers

If you enroll your child in a licensed day care operation, you and a herd of other busy parents will drop your children off daily (or as otherwise arranged) at a small school-like location. The schedule is usually fairly strict, for a set period of hours each day. (Beware of late pickup fees!) Getting there by, say, 8:30 a.m. each day can be tough, but consider the flipside—a day care center can’t call in sick like a nanny might. You can count on it being there every day.

Expect a structured environment, with trained teachers and carefully planned activities. The center should be clean and safe, in accordance with state guidelines and subject to state inspections.

 

Resource

Interested in your state’s rules? See the National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care’s website at http://nrc.uchsc.edu. The best day care centers also receive accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC; www.naeyc.org).

A day care center can offer a lot of fun, stimulation, and social time for your children. Perhaps for you, too—some centers require or encourage parental involvement in field trips, fundraising, and more.

But day care centers can also mean less individual attention—not to mention more exposure to other kids’ colds and illnesses. The average child under the age of three who’s in day care picks up two illnesses a month. And if your child gets sick and needs to stay home, you’ll have to find alternate care.

 

Caution

Many day care centers have an age minimum. If you’re looking for infant care, you may need to start with something else—perhaps a nanny. Or, the center may charge more for infants and young toddlers than for preschool age children.

In-Home Day Care Facilities

Day care centers that are run out of someone’s home tend to operate less formally than their institutional cousins. While they require state licensing, this doesn’t mean much—the oversight and enforcement tends to be lax. (Some home-based day care centers do, however, seek extra credentials in the form of accreditation from the National Association of Family Child Care (NAFCC; www.nafcc.org) which conducts an independent review that can take up to three years.

Some are staffed by only one person—perhaps a grandmother with an empty nest, or the new mother in the condo across the way who’d like to earn extra income while staying home with her baby. Nationwide, around 44% of in-home child care providers have only a high school diploma or less.

A highly regarded in-home child care facility with a loving, nurturing staff, offers some distinct advantages. Such facilities are, by law, supposed to take in fewer children per staff member than the more institutional day care centers. The location may feel more like home to a child. And because the structure is looser, you may be allowed more flexibility regarding when you pick up and drop off your child.

There are disadvantages to a small setting, however. The caregivers will likely have no relevant formal training, and the quality of such facilities varies widely, depending in part on the person’s actual house and neighborhood. (You may encounter—and will probably quickly flee from—places where the kids are running around in the basement with the television on at top volume.) If the home is staffed by only one person, that person will have no supervision and no backup in case of illness or emergencies. As with institutional day care centers, exposure to more children means exposure to more germs.

Preschools

After your child has reached age three or so, preschool becomes an option. Similar to an institutional day care center, a preschool is a place where you deliver your child on a regular schedule, and he or she is cared for by trained, licensed staff members—in fact, teachers.

There’s a reason they call it preschool. The goal is not merely to keep the child occupied while you’re at work, but to help ready your child for “real” school. In keeping with that goal, you may find that the preschool hours are fewer than you need (for example, limited to a few mornings each week). You’ll have to fill the gap with other forms of child care. You may also find that parental involvement, as well as financial donations or fundraising, are expected.

Considerations for a Special-Needs Child

If you have a child with special physical or mental needs, you’ll of course want to take these into account when planning child care. Don’t make the mistake of hiding your situation. First of all, federal law gives you some protection, making it illegal for child care centers and home-based day care centers to discriminate (by refusing your child entry or charging more) unless accommodating your child would require unreasonable expense. (The relevant law is called the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA.) Secondly, in order to give your child the best care, the provider needs to know the facts.

The ADA doesn’t apply to nannies and other individual caregivers, however. They can refuse a job involving a special-needs child if they wish. As with a school or day care center or home, you’ll need to be straightforward in explaining your child’s needs—if for no other reason than to make sure the nanny has the strength and experience to provide adequate care. Be prepared to pay more than the local average for kids without special needs.

 

Budgeting for Child Care

In this section, we’ll look first at how much a nanny or another form of child care costs and then at whether these costs fit within your household budget.

Child Care Costs

Here’s a quick picture of the relative costs of different kinds of day care. The cost per child assumes enough hours to cover the time away from home of a full-time working parent.

 

Childcare Costs
Type of day care	Average monthly cost per child (Excluding fees, extra charges, or overtime for special circumstances)
Nanny	$1,500 to $3,033
Au pair	$767 plus agency fees, certain living expenses, educational costs, and possibly airfare; cost remains the same regardless of the number of children
Day care center	$250 to $1,250
In-home day care	$281 to $860
Preschool	$338 to $973 (but probably for fewer hours than you need, thus requiring supplementation with other forms of care)

 

A nanny is clearly the most expensive option. But before you make any decisions based on nationwide averages, do some research about how much nannies actually cost in your area. The amount varies depending on location, supply and demand, a nanny’s level of experience or relevant education (such as a childhood education degree), and your own household needs, including how many children you have and what tasks you expect the nanny to handle.

You may be surprised at what you learn about local nanny salaries—proof that it’s important to do your homework. For example, parents in small towns often discover that they actually have to spend more for nannies than their friends in big cities, despite salaries for other jobs being low in their area. The lack of a large immigrant community is often the key variable, reducing the pool of available nannies in many small towns.

Ask other parents in your area for cost information and look at ads in local papers and online sources like Craigslist. Ultimately, you’ll need to leave some room for negotiation with the nanny you’d like to hire, as discussed in Chapter 7.

The fact that nannies are expensive doesn’t necessarily mean you should give up on hiring one. If your lifestyle really demands a nanny, the other options may turn out to be more expensive than they seem to be at first. For example, if your workday is long and you travel a lot (causing you to pay frequent late pickup fees at the day care center) and hire a lot of evening babysitters, a nanny’s salary might start to look more reasonable.

 

Tip

You’ll get tax breaks for child care expenses. We’ll discuss how to take best advantage of the child care tax credit in Chapter 5. Also, ask your employer whether it offers a flexible spending plan (an FSA or “cafeteria plan”), in which you set aside part of your salary in pretax dollars to cover child care.

You’re also likely to save money on doctor bills by hiring either a nanny or an au pair. Studies show that children in group day care centers are at two to four times higher risk of coming down with various infectious diseases compared with children cared for at home. Those copayments and missed days at work can add up—especially if your child is prone to picking up every passing germ or has immune system problems.

Now let’s take a look at how much, in absolute terms, you can afford.

How Much Money Your Household Brings In

Before deciding whether you can afford a nanny, you’ll need to get a handle on your household income. We recommend creating a worksheet like the Household Spending Plan below. Budgeting software (like Quicken, for example) or a spreadsheet like Excel can make this task easy. If you’ve already done this, you can skip ahead to the hiring section below.

Using a worksheet like the Household Spending Plan, below, enter your household’s gross income (the amount before deductions like taxes, flexible spending accounts, and 401(k) withdrawals). Then, list those deductions. Doing so shows you where it’s all going. You may want to make adjustments to some of those deductions, if necessary.

Your main source of income is most likely a paycheck or self-employment, so look at your pay stub or business records to find the net amount. But your income may also include tips, royalties, rental income, dividends, regular gifts from family, disability payments, child support, and so forth. If you pay taxes on these (such as dividends), take those taxes off the top.

How Much Money Is Going Out

To get a picture of your spending, fill in all your regular or predictable expenses on your Household Spending Plan, such as food, transportation, entertainment, rent or mortgage payments, other debt, and more. Look over your old receipts, credit card statements, and bank statements. Try to figure out averages, for example how much you spend each month on restaurant meals or clothes. (Some software programs will do this for you.) Don’t forget any automatic monthly withdrawals, such as for your DSL line, DVD rental service, or gym membership.

Some of your most significant expenses may be yearly, such as your car or homeowners’ insurance. Divide such yearly expenses by 12. Other expenses may occur weekly, irregularly, or as a single lump sum, so you’ll need to play with the numbers to put them into monthly terms.

Regular bills and debt payments will be the easiest to figure out—but keep in mind that some will change over the course of the year, such as heating and cooling costs.

Cash spending can be the hardest to track. As Jean Chatzky, author of Pay It Down! From Debt to Wealth on $10 a Day told USA TODAY, “Most people pull out $100 or $200 from the ATM and lump it as ‘cash,’ but they don’t know where it goes.” Track your cash spending for a week or two and write it down.

Also include on your chart any regular deposits you already make into savings or retirement plans. And for your outstanding credit card balance, enter the minimum payment. (But recognize that you’ll want to work toward paying this off before too long, to avoid high interest payments.)

 

Household Spending Plan
MONTHLY INCOME
Household gross income	–$
Federal tax withholding	–$
State tax withholding	–$
OASDI/Medicare/State SDI	–$
FSA Withholdings	–$
401(k)/403(b)/elective retirement withholding	–$
Disability insurance	–$
Household net income	–$
MONTHLY EXPENSES
Expense type	Cost per month
Household expenses
Mortgage(s) (or rent)	$
Homeowners’ association dues	$
Insurance (homeowners’)	$
Property tax	$
Utilities	$
Water	$
Garbage	$
Gas	$
Sewer	$
Electric	$
Household furnishings	$
Household maintenance expenses	$
Appliances	$
Cleaning supplies	$
Maintenance supplies	$
Home office supplies (computer and printer, paper, file cabinets and folders, and postage stamps)	$
Household Spending Plan (cont’d)
MONTHLY EXPENSES (cont’d)
Expense type	Cost per month
Miscellaneous expenses
Legal or accounting fees	$
Gifts to charity	$
Other	$
Subtotal: Miscellaneous Expenses	$
Other monthly debts
Credit card minimum payment	$
Student loans	$
Unpaid bills on repayment plans	$
Other	$
Subtotal: Other Monthly Debts	$
Total of expenses and debts	$
Difference between income and expenses	$

 

What’s Left Over

Finally, subtract your total monthly expenses from the total net income you calculated earlier. Is the result enough to pay the average wage for a nanny? (We’re hoping it’s at least a positive number!)

If not, this budget exercise may have turned up spending patterns that you want to change. Start by examining purely discretionary expenses—those you don’t have to pay, or perhaps for things you aren’t really using, like cable TV. Many people can reduce what they spend on consumer goods, like electronics or clothes. With some trimming and shifting, your goal of hiring a nanny may be more reachable than you thought.

Hiring Part-Time Nanny Care

If the cost of hiring a nanny still seems out of your reach (or you simply don’t need full-time child care coverage), you might instead hire a nanny part time. Any remaining hours during which you need child care could be filled in with either:

•  less expensive forms of child care

•  more of your own time (perhaps by cutting back on your work hours), or

•  organized child care trades, classes, or play dates with other families.

We’ll discuss these strategies below.

Be prepared for a bit of sticker shock, however. Part-time nannies earn more per hour than full-time nannies (even when you pay them a salary, rather than literally paying by the hour). This compensates them for the difficulty in finding a source of income to fill their remaining hours. Most part-time nannies want to work at least four hours at a stretch for a minimum of 12 to 15 hours each week. So you’ll need to make sure that whatever form of child care fills the gap is inexpensive, to compensate for the premium wage you’ll pay for part-time nanny care.

An alternative to a part-time nanny is sharing one full-time nanny with another family, as described in Chapter 2. You could also simply help the nanny find another part-time job. Or, if you have space for a nanny to live in, there’s nothing to stop you from offering this even if the nanny works only part time (reduce your salary accordingly).

Part-time nannies can be hard to find, however, because they’re in high demand, especially since the recession began. Some parents report success by advertising at local colleges, where students need extra money and wouldn’t be able to work full time anyway.

Supplementing Part-Time Nanny Help With Classes or Other Child Care

You may be able to find a day care or in-home care facility that accepts children for the morning or afternoon hours only, or for certain days per week. Or maybe one of your own parents or in-laws lives in the area and would be amenable to regularly scheduled time with a grandchild. If so, you can advertise for a nanny who will work the remaining hours.

Enrolling children in classes may also help take the load off. You’ve probably already seen classes advertised for kids of every age, whether it’s to introduce them to music, physical fitness, or arts and crafts. If you don’t see any advertised in your area, don’t let that stop you. As Barry, a dad in Oakland, California, explains, “We found a local artist with a backyard studio who was both experienced in teaching children and willing to create a Friday afternoon art group for our and our friends’ preschool and kindergarten age kids. The kids make art for a few hours, she feeds them milk and cookies, and we get a break!”

You might even arrange to have the nanny pick your child up from day care or a class or drop the child off midday. This will free up even more of your day.

 

Should You Ask Grandparents to Fill In?

When Lynne Bolinger’s daughter and son-in-law asked her to care for their two preschoolers for nine days last summer, she didn’t hesitate to say yes: At 58, she’s a healthy high school English teacher who walks an hour each day in her neighborhood in Kokomo, Indiana. And, she adores her grandsons.

But taking full care of 2-year-old Noah and 4-year-old Drew was hard work, Bolinger says: “I was doing all the Grandma things, like playing with the boys, but I was also doing all the Mommy things, like doing all the laundry and getting the meals. I could not believe how exhausted I was at the end of each day.”

Millions of grandparents know just how she feels. They are regular or frequent babysitters for their grandchildren or, in a growing number of cases, share a home with grandchildren they care for—whether as a full-time substitute for a missing parent or as a senior member of a multigenerational household. Grandparent care often is good for children, studies show. But is it good for grandparents?

It can be, says Linda Waite, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and coauthor of a study of 12,872 grandparents. The study, published in 2007 in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Science, followed caregiving grandparents ages 50 to 80 for four years. Though previous, smaller studies had suggested they would see greater declines in health than their peers, this study found:

•  no evidence that caring for grandkids 50 hours a year or more causes dramatic declines, and

•  possible benefits for grandmothers who babysit 200 to 500 hours a year. They exercise more and get depressed less.

But it’s not for everyone. Some grandparents are in poor health, have other things to do, or “just can’t handle the noise and confusion,” says Sharon Brangman, chief of geriatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, and a board member of the American Geriatrics Society. Others provide care despite risks to themselves

 

Should You Ask Grandparents to Fill In?, (cont’d)

or their grandchildren, she adds. “I’ve had grandparents who have memory problems and I’ve had to talk to parents and say, ‘I don’t feel this is safe.’”

Brangman’s advice for parents and grandparents who are considering child care:

•  Have a frank talk. Repeat every few months. Include touchy subjects, such as pay and driving.

•  Make sure children and grandparents are up to date on vaccines, including flu vaccines.

•  Have an alternate plan for when grandparents or kids get sick: Your child’s cold could turn into a more serious illness in an elderly grandparent.

            Grandma on duty; Babysitting or fill-in parenting can be a blessing and a curse,” by Kim Painter, January 5, 2009.

 

Spending More of Your Time at Home

You, along with your spouse or partner, have no doubt already considered either reducing your hours at work or trying to work at home. If you’d previously thought such options wouldn’t work, now is a good time to reconsider. Even bosses who might not have been open to such an arrangement in the past may start noticing that flexible, family-friendly work schedules are the wave of the future. Or, the boss may be relieved, for financial reasons, to learn you’re interested in cutting your hours.

Here are the most common alternative work arrangements and tips on making the most of them:

•  Working part time. This means cutting your hours at work, for example to 60% time, which is typically enough for the employer to continue your health and other benefits. Take a careful look at your responsibilities and propose a plan to your boss in which you continue handling selected core tasks, but unload enough work that you don’t get stuck doing a full-time job for part-time pay.

•  Working flex time. This means shifting the hours when you work, for example from 12:30 to 8:30 instead of the usual 9:00 to 5:00. This can allow you to maintain your salary and hire a part-time nanny, or take a tag team approach to child care with your spouse or partner. Unlike many other options, flex time makes it visibly obvious to your boss and others that you’re still working hard.

•  Working a compressed workweek. Similar to flex time, this means doing the same job during different hours, but piling up a lot of hours on certain days. The classic example is arranging to work four ten-hour days instead of five eight-hour days, giving you one day a week off. Another good possibility is to work three ten-hour days and two five-hour days, giving you two afternoons off each week. Of course, these long days can be brutal, and mean many hours at a time away from your kids.

•  Teleworking. Teleworkers do the same job in the same number of total hours, but from home or another remote location. It works best for office jobs, where you can connect with the office via computer and other electronic technology. Depending on how much regular phone or email contact your job requires during the business day, teleworking can give you a great deal of flexibility as to what hours you actually work. The biggest challenges are convincing your boss that you’ll continue to get your work done—and then continuing to remind everyone of your high performance and eligibility for raises and promotions. Loneliness or longing for adult conversation can also be an issue, leading some parents to arrange part-time telework.

Work or Stay at Home? Moms Struggle Over Choices, (cont’d)

personalities have unique approaches and ideas on parenting,” Jarrett says in an email. “There’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer, but what fits best for you and your family needs. Stop ‘should-ing’ on yourself.”

            “Work or stay at home? It’s still a quandary; Moms struggle with guilt over their choices,” by Stephanie Armour, October 3, 2007.

 

Tip

About to have a new baby? Federal law guarantees eligible working parents 12 weeks of leave time after your child’s birth, adoption, or foster placement. You’ve got up to a year in which to take advantage of this. Unfortunately, that leave is unpaid. The law is called the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and makes you eligible to claim this leave if you work for an employer with at least 50 employees, have worked there for a least one year, and worked at least 1,250 hours during that year. Also check your state’s family leave law—it may be even more generous.

Supplementing Nanny Care With Child Care Trades With Other Parents

You’re not the only parent who’s looking for affordable child care. In fact, you probably won’t have to look far to find others like you: Members of your prenatal group, neighbors, and other parents at the nearby park are probably all considering their options. Some may be open to a regularly scheduled arrangement in which you take care of each other’s kids (sometimes referred to as a “babysitting cooperative”).

This concept is a step more formal than scheduling alternating play dates. You might agree on a time—such as every Friday, or on regular weekday afternoons—and then trade off either delivering your kids to your friends’ houses or waiting for them to drop their kids off at yours. If your schedules can’t be predicted so readily, you might work out a system in which you keep track of the hours (or half hours) that you do child care for other parents, then create a point system that lets you keep the hours in balance.

The system of scheduling and point keeping that you choose might depend on the number of families in your group. Many groups start with two or three families. But once they’ve got the basic administration under control, some work their way up to as many as 25 families—in which case, a system of flexible hours and times based on availability, plus tracking the number of hours that any one set of parents has given and received child care, tends to work best.

To create such a group, draw up a list of all the parents you know nearby, then figure out which ones meet all of the following criteria:

•  You trust them to be responsible and nurturing with your children.

•  Their home environment is safe and healthy (before raising the co-op possibility, you might do some reconnaissance; for example, schedule a play date at their house to give you an excuse to see it).

•  One of them works at home or part time.

•  Your kids and theirs get along well (if they’re old enough for this to matter).

For more information on forming a babysitting co-op, see The Sharing Solution, by Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow (Nolo).

 

Caution

Make sure state law won’t treat your co-op caregivers as “child care facilities.” In many states, anyone who provides care for more than a minimum number of children must obtain state licensing and follow various other rules. That’s probably more than you want to deal with, so look up the law and organize your child care group so as to slip out from under its reach. See the state-by-state links to laws at the website of the National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Childcare and Early Education, http://nrckids.org (click “State Licensing and Regulation Information”). You may be able to get the information you need straight from the “Definitions” section of the law. For example, Nevada’s reads like this: “NAC 432A.050 ‘Child care center’ defined. (NRS 432A.077) ‘Child care center’ means any facility in which the licensee regularly provides day or night care for more than 12 children.”

Bartering Helps Lower Family’s Child Care Costs

Cliff and Kara Petty learned that sometimes you can spend less—and gain much more.

USA TODAY and “Good Morning America Weekend” selected the Pettys of Sunrise, Florida, for the fifth and final Frugal Family Challenge, a 30-day exercise in saving money. The Challenge has helped ten families reduce their spending on everything from energy bills to groceries by hooking them up with financial advisers.

The Pettys’ challenge: cut their child care costs, which averaged about $1,000 a month for after-school care, day care, and babysitting for their sons Aiden, six, and Landon, two.

Cliff, a firefighter, often works 24-hour shifts. Kara, interim director for Miami Gardens Parks and Recreation, works full time and sometimes has late-night meetings.

It was not unusual for the couple to hire a sitter up to three times a week to come to their house and watch their children.

The Frugal Family Challenge matched the Pettys with Sheila Marcelo, CEO of Care.com, which helps people find caretakers for children and pets. She suggested that the Pettys barter with friends and relatives for babysitting services instead of paying a private sitter and return the favor by babysitting their children on another date.

Cliff and Kara took her advice—recruiting not only Kara’s sister, Angie Gonzalez, who lives about four miles away, but also friends, Cliff’s brother and sister, and his parents.

Now, Landon and Aiden are more likely to be found splashing around with four cousins in their aunt’s pool than with a sitter. Kara says for her sons, going to her sister’s house is “like a big field trip.”

And she has the assurance of quality child care that she can trust.

“It worked out for all of us,” Kara says.

Cliff says bartering for child care made a big difference for him. “I didn’t want to be that guy who’s putting their kids on people,” Cliff

 

Bartering Helps Lower Family’s Child Care Costs, (cont’d)

says. There’s no guilt, he says. “They were open to it because sometimes they need a break, too.”

When bartering time is not an option, Marcelo suggested that the Pettys have a sitter watch more kids than just their own—and share cost with other parents.

Over the month, the Pettys shaved about 20%, or $200, off their child care expenses. “It feels good,” Cliff says, adding that they’ll save the money or take a vacation.

Financial adviser Dave Moran, chairman of the Financial Planning Association of Miami-Dade, suggests they put that money toward retirement savings.

Marcelo notes that the Pettys “far exceeded their goal” of cutting their costs 10%. Next, she says, the Pettys should create a more formal way of tracking their time swaps, and, as an “insurance policy,” line up substitute caregivers who have been vetted.” It’s those unplanned crises that result in high spending on child care,” she says.

Kara and Cliff say they will follow up on the advice. But for now, they’re thrilled they created lasting savings in a short time period.

“I couldn’t be more happy; I think we balanced it right on the head,” Cliff says.

 

            “Bartering helps lower family’s child care costs,” by Michelle Walbaum, June 19, 2009.