Okay, a 2nd diary posting for me!  Woo hoo!

In the comments of my previous diary entry about me possibly reentering the workforce, someone said that I should be sure to :negotiate major participation from DH in the family/child/home care areas. Major participation--like 50-50 if possible."

In theory, I think that's great, but in practice, it can be hard to achieve.  I'm just wondering where everyone else is at with it?  (More on me after the jump.)

Longtime listener, first-time caller...

My husband and I live in Chicago, and are expecting our first child, a girl, in August.  We're currently in a search for a day care provider, as she will need care three days a week after I go back to work in October.  What I want to know--is there an etiquette to cold-calling providers?  I have made a couple of inquiries during the day and been rather coldly treated.  Should I call in the evening?  We're trying not to make enemies here...

Editor's Note: This is one of two stories on the same theme. Check out Dana's response just below. -Elisa

I do not read Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column on a regular basis, but I was disappointed at her personal vendetta against single mothers. In case you missed it, she recently went on a tangent on how single mothers are hurting their children, calling single parenthood a "national catastrophe." (Hey, with the Iraq War and impending recession, this would not top my list of concerns. But there you go!)

Studies have found that children born to single mothers are vastly more likely to be poor, have behavioral and psychological problems, drop out of high school, and themselves go on to have out-of-wedlock children.

While I do not doubt that a disproportionate number of single mothers live in poverty -- who the heck can afford to live on one income anymore? -- it is important to note that the mothers in question are already poor. Many have no college educations and were already living in poverty before their baby’s daddy came along. The fathers are also poor. My conclusion would be vastly different from Prudie’s: These children are poor because their parents are poor. Period. It is overly simplistic to solely blame the mother’s marital status.

Also, I am a big fan of the institution of marriage for the emotional security and financial perks it offers. But the last thing I would do to a sister or friend is encourage her to marry a guy she does not get along with or might be in trouble with the law or be in such bad financial straits it actually holds her back.  

I was chagrined that Prudie dismissed all this, saying she cheered on the ultrasound technician in the movie Juno for making disparaging remarks about children born into these circumstances.

Since many working-class men do not offer the financial stability they used to provide, women see little incentive to marry them. As (Sen. Barack) Obama said, "[M]any black men simply cannot afford to raise a family." (The out-of-wedlock birthrate among black Americans is close to 70 percent.) I'm trying to follow the logic here. I can understand that a woman looking to get married may decide that a man is such a poor economic prospect that he's not husband material (even if a husband with a low income is better than no husband and no income). But how then is that same man, or a string of them, worthy of fathering her children?

That’s right. Shame these women into becoming better mothers. Way to go, Prudie!

Except for Obama’s mother, she conveniently never mentioned the many single mothers who manage to raise successful children, probably because the economics at play would defeat her argument. Single mothers like Obama’s mother who had her parents nearby to help or celebrity moms like Angelina Jolie who have money to hire nannies don’t seem to have trouble raising well-adjusted children. I suspect it has to do with the fact they had resources to raise their children, more so than their marital status.

Rather than continue to kick down low-income single mothers who are already in the hole, may I suggest a hand-up? Prudie’s column could have been a call for universal healthcare, scientifically-based sex education in high schools or funds for high-quality childcare to help out single mothers. Instead, we were subjected to this clueless dribble.

During the height of the dot-com era here in the San Francisco Bay Area, many companies used to allow employees to bring their babies to work as a way to retain them. Once the local economy collapsed, many employers stripped the stock options and other perks, including this one, from their budgets.

Most recently, blogger Carla Moquin over at MomsRising raised the issue, saying that company productivity would increase if workers were allowed to bring their babies to work.

The impact on the work environment has been profound in these companies with structured baby programs. Babies improved morale--not just for the parents, who were obviously deeply grateful for the opportunity to keep their children with them--but for the office in general. Higher morale meant happier, more loyal, and often more productive employees. People started talking about their personal lives more and developed closer relationships with their coworkers, which led to increased cooperation and teamwork. In many companies, managers noticed that people were actually nicer to each other as a result of the babies being around. People--including many who really didn't want the baby program in the first place--discovered that a smile or hug from a baby was deeply rejuvenating if they were having a bad day, and they talked about needing their daily "baby fix..."

Babies-at-work programs obviously have many benefits for parents and babies, including easier breastfeeding, deeper bonding, lower day care costs, better financial stability, and increased social and intellectual stimulation for new mothers and babies. A "side effect" of babies in the workplace that could truly transform our society, though, is how regular interaction with babies (which was actually the "norm" in human history prior to the Industrial Revolution) rekindles awareness of our humanity in the workplace. It is likely that many more organizations will adopt baby programs, given the proven success of these programs in a wide range of companies, the extensive benefits of these programs, and the nominal financial costs for a business.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for family-friendly practices in the workforce. But, initially, I had a lot of questions about this arrangement. A new parent should be home resting and bonding with the baby, not stretching herself thin, commuting, trying to get work done AND caring for the baby. Why can't these companies let the parents take paid family leave? Or, let them work from home so that the baby can nap in its familiar surroundings?

Then again, it depends on what one does for a living. Not everyone has a job, in which working from home is possible. Take, for example, someone in retail or a waitress. As one of the posters mentioned in Moquin's piece, she works around heavy machinery and it would be unsafe to bring her baby to work. She wanted to know what MomsRising could do to make industrial jobs more family-friendly.

But the responses to Moquin's piece were overwhelmingly in favor of the arrangement. Dozens of moms piped up how it had worked for them with the caveat that is can be challenging, too.

Hi all,

Just in case you are already making summer plans, I wanted to let you know that MotherTalkers will sponsor professional childcare at the Netroots Nation Convention in Austin this July. Barring any last-minute drop-ins, who would pay a small fee of no more than $50, babysitting will be FREE. Woo-hoo!

Here are the hours covered:

Thursday, July 17 from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. (There is a scheduled party that night!)
Friday, July 18 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday, July 19 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday, July 20 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.  

The childcare will be provided by Corporate Kids Events, who cared for Eli at the BlogHer conference when she was a mere four months of age. They are fabulous!

Hi all,

I am sorry it's taken forever to get back to you on possible childcare at the Netroots Nation Convention in Austin, Texas this July. But I wanted to give you all a chance to look at the schedule and tell me for sure if, and when, you would use the childcare.

For pricing purposes, the group I tapped -- Corporate Kids Events -- has asked me for number of children, their ages, special needs and number of hours they require care. If you all could do me a favor, look at the schedule and let me know exactly when, and for who you would need the care, please let me know ASAP. Also, if your children require their own provider, please let me know, too, as that would determine how many childcare workers to have on hand. You can drop a line in this post, or e-mail me at elisa at mothertalkers dot com, or elisa dot batista dot com at gmail dot com. Many thanks! Elisa

With the housing market crisis, class issues have weighed heavily on my mind.

Everyone I know from career supermarket cashiers in New Hampshire to people living in $700,000 homes in the Bay Area consider themselves “middle class.” Most recently, MSN Money is running a series on the “middle class crunch.” I was not sure whether to laugh or cry because the first person account on the rising cost of childcare was by a San Francisco freelance writer.  

Wendy Brauner's rent clocks in at $1,800 a month -- what some might consider a great deal in San Francisco. But don't think Brauner is living the high life. With a son, 3, and another almost 6, she was spending $2,750 a month on child care until her oldest started kindergarten last fall -- nearly 20% of her household income.

"I was writing a check for $17,000 to the preschool and wondered why it sounded so familiar," she says. "Then I realized it was a few hundred off what I paid for my first semester of college at Wellesley. It's just an enormous outlay…"

The cost of child care in this country is one of those little secrets -- like leaky diapers and colic -- that parents just don't share with friends who are expecting.

Forget about the angst and expense of finding shelter that is safe and warm for your new arrival. I'm talking about the sticker shock of handing over a significant chunk of your paycheck every month just so you are free to work. That $2,750 a month for Brauner? That was after taxes, of course.
 
Yes, the federal government grants a tax credit of up to $1,050 per child for up to two children in child care. But that's annual: Brauner ran through it in less than a month.

So many people live in the city -- and Brauner’s case is not atypical -- but I can’t help but think this would be considered not only outrageous, but unattainable, in any other part of the country. So do “rich people” live only in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York? Or, is social standing relative to where you live in the country?

The article begged that question and raised one other important issue. It mentioned that various Democratic presidential candidates have offered tax credits for childcare and other family expenses, which I wholeheartedly support. But like the writer of this piece, I also realize it will not go far where I live.

Yes, once again, I will offer our services for a kids' room at Netroots Nation.

My wife runs the children's programming at Baycon, the Bay Area Regional Science Fiction/Fantasy convention, and we'd be willing to do that at Netroots Nation 08 as well.

This would not be a full daycare, but rather a children's room where parents can bring their kids for the kids to have something to do and the parents to rest. I'll look into childcare requirements in Texas, if they allow we may be able to go the full childcare.

I originally spotted this piece at MomsRising.org. Thanks to father Dana Glazer for the tip!

MSN contributor Eve Tahmincioglu wrote how it is more difficult for stay-at-home dads than stay-at-home moms to re-enter the workforce due to cultural biases against fathers who abandon the traditional “hunting” role to care for their children. Tahmincioglu previously touched on the subject when she recently doled out advice to SAHMs on how to explain a resume gap. Instead, she received these e-mails from stay-at-home dads:

Victor Gonzalez of Marietta, Georgia, wrote:

"I'm 41 and had been an at-home-dad for the last 8 years. When we got married both of us had very successful careers. When our daughter came along in 1999 we decided that the best for her and our family was for me to stay at home with her.

"Now that my daughter is more independent I am looking to go back to work, first on a part-time basis. Well, forget it. There is no way that anyone understands that a man can take time off his professional career to take care of the little ones.

"While indeed it's extremely tough for women to get back to work after a long time away, it gets even tougher for a man to do the same. Society has unwritten rules for dads that decide that their family is more important than corporate America."

It does, agrees Scott Haltzman, MD Clinical Assistant Professor, Brown University Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior.

"How does the workplace view a man that takes time off of his career to raise children? They tend to look at him as not having the kind of drive or seriousness of purpose that they would want in leadership positions," he says about what he sees as a pervasive stereotype.

A week ago, I wrote about a stay-at-home mother whose husband left her with three children under the age of four. She wrote to Berkeley Parents Network.

We all agreed the father is an immature asshole. And for the most part, she received sympathy and well wishes from BPN readers, too. Most readers recommended she move to live near family and friends, which many moms on MotherTalkers did, too. Most readers recommended she go after her husband for alimony and child support and thought she had a good case since they had been married 15 years and he is the one who left the marriage.

Almost all the moms told her to take time to mourn and then find a job and childcare for the girls. Some moms offered their e-mail addresses and help in the way of playdates and dinner casseroles, which makes me proud to live in Berkeley. Then there was this letter, which felt like a sucker punch. Talk about tough love:

The Toy Industry Association just published a list of toys recalled this year. Its toy safety website, ToyInfo.org, also published a Q&A with Joan Lawrence, vice president of the industry's toy safety division.

Everyone knows about the recalls of toys with lead paint. How big is the problem and should parents be worried about toys made in China?

The toy industry is very concerned that lead has been found in the paint in some toys. This is absolutely unacceptable. We have a new initiative to ensure consistent testing and inspection of products so that this does not happen again. For now, two facts can help parents assess the relative risks of toys. First, parents should know that toys are statistically among the safest products in a household. Toy recalls account for less than one percent of the 3 billion toys sold in the U.S. annually. Also, all toys sold in the U.S. must conform to U.S. safety standards, regardless of where they are made. Secondly, medical experts and toxicologists say that a child’s exposure to lead from a recalled toy would likely be minute under normal use. They encourage parents to focus instead on the primary sources of lead in a child’s environment – from paint in old homes, lead in old plumbing, and other environmental sources.

Okay. I understand the industry’s need for damage control. But lead in my children’s toys is unacceptable no matter how low the exposure. What a smarmy response.

The Nanny’s Children Part II: The community at Berkeley Parents Network continues to berate the woman who had a problem with her preschool teacher wearing her baby to class. Here is one more letter from the batch:

You asked if it's ''safe'' for the other children paying tuition. Your concern really isn't about safety, and obviously you have only one child, or you would realize that mommies carry babies while running after their older children on a daily basis.

Let me get this straight: these well-loved, respected teachers (your words) who are making minimum wage or close to it and couldn't even afford to pay for pre-school themselves, are in the wrong for bringing their babies to work?

Your real concern has to do with your cheapness - you feel ripped off. The truth is, you're getting terrific group childcare. Pre-school prices are significantly undervalued because teachers are not paid enough to live on. It's unfortunate that so many people get such great childcare at the expense of the provider, who ekes out a pittance.

It's not unprofessional as you say, and kudos to the director for caring about her community and having a heart. If you really think your child is ''getting the short end of the stick'' being in a situation where everyone is cared about, you should immediately pull your child out of that preschool and go pay as little as possible at some other preschool who is willing to sacrifice their needs for the sake of your child.

OR... you might try to look at it as we all live in this one big community, and we can all choose to be there for each other.

Well, we've just passed Columbus Day, and I was struck by this article about how few businesses observe this Federal Holiday.  Separate from how you feel about Columbus himself (another blog altogether), un-celebrated holidays pose a problem for working parents.