The Childcare Cliff Looms in South Carolina
Right in time for all this forced birth
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Our youngest started kindergarten this year, and I felt JUBILANT to know we would have 13 years of compulsory school days, with time to myself to work and write. When our oldest started two years ago, I felt really sad, like look, our baby is entering the portal to actual society and we can’t shield him anymore from unreasonable Southern expectations of child behavior! But he had a fabulous year at kindergarten, where he learned to read and be a human in society (mostly) and I’m extremely grateful to the Southern women who have been his teachers so far, not just because they are gifted educators that can convince my strong-willed child to do things I never could, but also because I know they’re dealing with so much BS, from Covid disruptions to Moms for Liberty to being really underpaid for what they do (i.e. create the foundation for society). Fun fact: Greenville County Schools gets to brag that they have the HIGHEST starting teacher salary in the state at $45k, a salary you definitely cannot live on unless maybe you’re living rent-free somehow or had no student loans.
Our women-hating legislature and governor last year, in attempt to act like they care about actual babies and parents, passed a law guaranteeing that state employees could receive up to six weeks of paid leave (for the parent who gives birth) and two weeks of leave for the other parent. Mind you, this is only for state employees, and does nothing for anyone in the state working for private companies. Like so many other things, they clearly didn’t talk to doctors or experts about how much leave to guarantee. As someone who has given birth twice (both c-sections) I know that six weeks postpartum sure isn’t pretty… lots of leaking and no sleep and really, no one wants you back then, especially not your NEWBORN BABY who desperately needs caretakers in order to survive.
Although the men in charge of our government and corporations really want just actual human development to disappear (apparently) and have us all be born in little pods and tended by robots, none of that is yet the case, and birthing humans and babies need care for much longer. The lack of federally-guaranteed leave for starting a family is just the beginning of the way America punishes parents. (The other solution, of course, that our white evangelical overlords really want is to force women out of the workforce and restrict them to the domestic sphere, just like Jesus said in Patriarchy Verse 3 Chapter 11 “And so the menfolk shall feelth insecure about their subpar job performance so let no women outshine them and relegate these wonton ladies to the home hearths with so many children screeching their own cries shall go unheeded”).
Despite this cute six-week gesture for some new parents, South Carolina remains one of the worst states to have a family, and this stands to get even worse in a month, when the federal pandemic funding that has been propping up our childcare centers is set to run out. Even before Covid, our system was broken, with parents having to fund the full cost of childcare in the US from birth to kindergarten (this is not the case in other rich countries, where the government subsidizes parental leave and childcare). A recent report by The Century Foundation projects without this funding, 618 childcare centers in the state will close, and approximately 50,000 children will lose care. While this may seem like a victory for the cool-looking Bob Jonesers who sneak into my coffee shop (we live really close to the campus, unfortunately) and look like West Coast hipsters until they whip out their worn Bibles and start talking to their bearded brothers about how God has just called them to be prosperous while the wife is home tending to the children (gets me every time!!), in fact, this is very bad for all of us, not just in terms of what will happen to these actual children, but of what it means economically for the families and for the state: $130 million dollars lost and $5.7 million in less in state income tax. It will also mean almost 3000 childcare workers will lose their jobs, most of them girls and women and a significant portion immigrant women and women of color (who have been exploited in this industry for a very long time).
From The Century Foundation.
Y’all, it’s such a mess. Groups like Students for Life and natural medicine activists are actively discouraging people from using hormonal birth control (on top of already DISMAL sex education in the state), childcare is inaccessible or astronomically expensive, and abortion care can land you in jail if you get caught. I’ve seen more pregnant students in the last few years at my small college than I have in my entire career, and while I’m all about people having children if they want them, and whenever they choose, and however many they want, I remember talking to one pregnant student a few years ago who told me they only qualified for $70 a month in food aid. To say there is very little support for young people having children is putting it mildly.
I guess all our patriarchal legislators were just too upset that lawyers and feminists were challenging their shitty abortion bans to notice, like Minnesota did (they shored up their childcare system with $750 million), that this childcare cliff was looming. Or maybe they think we need to just kick off our shoes and get back in the kitchen, or sell our babies to their suspect Christian adoption agencies. Whatever their scenario, living in this humid Handmaid’s Tale dystopia just isn’t tenable. Ever an electoral optimist, I’m pinning my hopes on some better results at the ballot box next year.
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Wow thanks for that graphic. Looks like our state, North Carolina, is looking like one of the worst states. My 8 year old just went back to school this week, at an independent school, with no afterschool. Pick up is at 2:15 which feels like the middle of the day. Every month it's different, every summer there is a new camp or not a camp, every week he may be sick, there is no consistency. So the default parent, myself, has to take part-time or freelance or whatever jobs will let me be able to be there for my kid with no backup care (unless my mother-in-law can take him so now I am forever reliant on my mother-in-law!).