Alex Bean, New Glarus (WI)

My name is Alex Bean. I’m a father of two boys; Isaac 6, and Dimitri 3. I work full-time, remotely since COVID started. My wife Kaylee is a cafe owner. We live in New Glarus, Wisconsin

During the Pandemic Kaylee and I worked remotely full-time, but we had both kids home. It was nearly impossible for us to devote even half of our attention to our jobs. She was able to get emergency relief through the Family Medical Leave Act to pay her salary while she took a month or two off to watch the kids, so I could focus on a job that was pretty new. That relief ran out, Wisconsin reopened, and her employer was like “well, the position’s changed, and we don’t think that you can give your full attention with the kids at home…either send them back to daycare or you can’t do this job anymore.” 

It’s been a hectic year trying to balance childcare at home, working at home, and everybody’s sanity. Right now our oldest goes to kindergarten in-person four days a week. In March we were able to get our youngest into a daycare two days a week. It’s amazing how he has been learning and developing– his academics (like letters and numbers), his memory and his description. When there’s conflict, he’s better at describing what’s making him mad or what he needs. It’s been such a huge thing for him to be out of our house and learning from new people, in this educational group environment with people his own age.  He loves it, and it’s huge for me to be able to focus on my work and keep the house from getting destroyed.

As an adult, you have so many responsibilities. If you can’t tend to them you’re going to have all that stress hanging over you, in addition to the cost of daycare and everything else. It adds a lot of frustration, and that inherently trickles down and impacts parent/child relationships. Having childcare is so helpful. I spend less time frustrating them saying not right now, daddy’s on a work phone call, not right now, I have work to do.

Our future childcare situation is a little murky, because we don’t have guaranteed spots during the summer. I don’t think there’s room in other daycare centers in town, either. A stay-at-home parent, that’s a full time job. Working a career, that’s a full-time job, too. To juggle both is not a way for people to live. 

We’ve been able to afford daycare, but it’s still a lot. Even before the pandemic it was a big strain. In 2019 we both worked an hour from where we live. We needed the kids in full-time care. We burned through savings, it was very tight. Over 30% of our income was going towards daycare — and happily, because The Growing Tree is incredible — but that puts a crunch on what decisions you can make for your career. It was more than double our mortgage. 

We live in a pretty small town. Daycare provides great jobs for people in New Glarus–and in neighboring towns–and those educators do a fantastic job. If we were to lose some of the childcare opportunities that we have here, I think people would stop living here. We would have fewer jobs and less community cohesion.

I love the connections our kids have made with the community. Our kids know many people that they see and remember — such a nice thing for them to feel safe. They learn social relationships with older kids, or kids who may have disabilities or have different ways of playing– all good for broadening their development. If I had a magic wand, I would add more staff and funding to enable my son to be there full-time, and to enable other kids who don’t have a spot at all. It’s a long wait list with no end in sight.

Full-time daycare feels like a distant memory. Even two days of childcare a week helps me know that I can get to the duties of my job, without feeling like I’m falling behind or may lose my job. As the sole income for the family right now, that would be devastating (Kaylee’s cafe isn’t providing us income yet). I’ve been working for the past year on COVID-19 testing. The more I’m able to focus on work, the more I’m able to help our state try to lessen the impact of this pandemic. After the last year it has become normal to juggle those things. That’s not normal. It shouldn’t be normal. 

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Interview and writing completed by Ann Imig. A collaboration of Kids Forward, Supporting Families Together Association, Wisconsin Head Start Association, and Wisconsin Early Childhood Association supported by Voices for Healthy Kids policy campaign and the American Heart Association.