Care-Sharing and Other Novelties

By Rebeldad Brian Reid

My adult life has been full of lucky breaks. I met the right woman when I was 20 years old. I bought a house in 2000, right when the real estate market here went from hot to you've-got-to-be-kidding me. I had two healthy babies.

Up there on the list of lucky breaks is a woman named Hope. Hope has a daughter about the same age as my eldest, and we were caught together in the same uncomfortable position when our girls were infants: We both wanted to work part-time from home. We were both creative types (a writer and an architect), so the working-from-home part wasn't the issue. The trouble was with finding part-time care. Daycare centers, by and large, required a full commitment, even if I only wanted a couple of days of care. And the cost (and scheduling) of nannies wasn't something either of us were eager to take on.

So we began care-sharing -- Hope took the girls two days a week, I took them two days. It was not an arrangement without anxiety or complication, and we spent a lot of time figuring out ground rules -- Who would make the lunches? (The hosting parent.) How sick was too sick? (Only the stomach flu was allowed to scuttle the day's arrangement.) How much shuffling of schedules was permissible? (Next to none, lest the slope get too slippery.)

But it all worked out, and it worked out for years. It's the kind of arrangement that I'd love to wholeheartedly tout as a solution for these complicated times, where part-time care is either impossible to come by or impossible to afford. But there is a lightning-in-a-bottle thing aspect to this: finding another parent with close-enough values and another kid who can play nicely with yours for 30-plus hours a week isn't exactly a sure bet.

Despite my enthusiasm for the concept, I've seen very little written about care-sharing, which is too bad. I know it won't work for everyone, but it seems that the more options we can throw out there as possibilities, the better work-family balance solutions will be available. Has anyone else found other care solutions that go beyond the usual at-home parent/daycare/nanny/grandparent realm?

Brian Reid writes about parenting and work-family balance. You can read his blog at rebeldad.com.

By Brian Reid |  August 24, 2006; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  Childcare
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