Addressing the Child Care Crisis With Gloria Riviera

0:00 hi i'm dr becky and this is good inside i'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children [Music] i love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away one of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to

0:31 us in that moment so even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside we remain good inside hi gloria so good to have you here becky i'm so excited to be here thank you for having me why don't we start with you introducing yourself tell everyone listening who you are and the types of things that interest you

1:02 oh my gosh who am i i am a journalist i have been for many years my first job out of college the only job i've ever done uh i am a mom of three i have a 13 year old an 11 year old those are boys and i have a little girl who's six i am a wife a daughter a friend i really enjoy being a friend um i think the biggest thing my father would say about me uh is that i do too

1:31 much i can hear him in my head now he's no longer with us but i can always hear him say slow down slow down us moms we we like to do a lot too much don't we yeah yeah i like to pack it in you know in your kind of experience as a journalist what are some of the issues you've been researching or tackling recently recently i've been looking at the child care crisis in this country and that has

1:57 been sort of the penultimate experience of my career in journalism i was drawn to two things long form investigative stories and i was also drawn to people and i think one of the best pieces of advice i ever got was from my first boss i'm 48 years old i don't know how many people will remember this name but sam donaldson he was a white house correspondent here in dc he

2:28 told me the best thing you can do as a journalist is just be quiet and listen and you can think about it in terms of network news if you think about sort of as the camera pans to the journalists during a big interview and it sort of makes me chuckle because you know they're all those nods like understanding nods but it's also a method it's like i'm not going to say anything so you can speak and it's in those

2:56 pauses that we often get the best stuff so i've certainly asked a lot of questions as i've investigated the child care crisis but i've done a lot of listening and and that's proven to be a good a good method that's i mean it's so similar in my field as a psychologist and definitely it's one of the most important things as a parent right is to be curious and listen to your kids right and wait for that pause

3:27 yeah so the child care crisis i mean i'm not going to ask you to sum it up in 10 words but can you sum it up in in 15 words oh my gosh you could have more than 15. more than 15. okay so i'm going to answer that from the perspective of where i am now which is having done season one which really looked at how we got into this mess right how did the u.s get to a place where it is ranked

3:54 pretty much last along with our pals in papua new guinea literally the only other country that's ranked as low as we are in terms of what we do for parents when they become parents right what we do for people when they become parents i believe the child care crisis is the most acute social safety net crisis the united states is facing right now if we can solve that if we can support people if we can

4:25 make them feel like they are not alone when they become apparent everything in this country will get better that's how i'd summarize it i mean i could go on and say listen post covid most people across industries are back to pre-covet employment levels except in child care people have left and they're not coming back because we don't have fair wages we're talking about poverty level wages for teachers

4:56 it's been too difficult to keep the doors open and what we really need is accessible high quality like really good and this country has done it before we have done it during world war ii we did it we know how to do it high quality accessible affordable child care that's what we need with options for people i have so many so many follow-up questions and thoughts the one that's loudest for me right now is when when someone becomes a parent they

5:27 feel so alone they feel so alone you're saying right aloneness is something i think about all the time i feel like it's the enemy of growth is feeling alone and a feeling and an experience you're saying becoming a parent as it relates to support and having the care around you that the whole family system needs to thrive that's completely absent yeah yeah i mean i listen i have done a lot of thinking about the times in my life when

5:55 i have felt alone and they are never well the way i was experiencing my aloneness for many years was never positive for me right like we can experience solitude in a really beautiful way that is not what i'm talking about right now um and i you know i really struggled with whether or not to take this job because i am a white woman with a college education i speak from an enormous amount of

6:25 privilege we were able to have care my mother was very present when my kids were young and it was still hard for me i was employed i didn't take a maternity leave my company didn't have a maternity relief i took disability because like as of five minutes ago you're still disabled from working when you become a parent which is a whole secondary conversation we could have about perspective and corporate perspective so i i eventually did take the job and i

6:57 chose to tell the story frankly because i think you know i have the bandwidth to do that now and so i want this conversation to be out there for everybody everyone and i've done a lot of listening to people who have far fewer options than i had when i became a mother i i guess to a certain extent i'm sort of saying this out loud for the first time like i am engaged in having this conversation

7:27 because i i just don't think a lot of people can have it i think that parents are too tired to have it right like they've got a lot on their plates and i'm thinking about how this all connects to just the stories like you mentioned stories like the stories you heard around this crisis yeah on a weekly basis i hear stories from parents who talk about how bad they are feeling how rough it is in terms of the stories i hear from our

7:56 listeners we get these voice memos every week we play them on the show and all we've asked is just send us your moments like the the highs the lows the challenges where you are and every single one of them has been really rough to listen to they're all hard you know and i hear a lot about tag team parenting and how that's perceived because child care is prohibitively expensive several families come up with this tag

8:26 team parenting model so that somebody's always home and a that's tiring b the child and there's a young woman who testified in front of congress saying i just want to be with my family all together so that's a cost right we're not paying in dollars but that is a cost of the way our child care system is set up but see the first voice memo we got talking about this the woman said

8:57 you know i'm worried about our us i'm worried about my husband and me and what happens to us when we come out of this i've heard some people say they are looking after themselves but it's a very small percentage give us all some baseline education like what is the child care system here why is it so much worse than what you see in other developed countries like let's just try to get on all of us get

9:26 on somewhat of the page you're on through all your research yeah well if you're anything like me i realized i sort of blacked out once my kids were of school age right like they were in school we got through those early years like don't need to go back there however a lot of people are very much still in those years and essentially right now this country doesn't do anything for you until your child is ready to go to school so it's

9:52 like great have the baby but there's no one i mean our team laughs about like there's no one to hold the baby could somebody just hold the baby for me because i need to brush my teeth or take a shower or you know go to the grocery store all those things that make life work is just so hard because there's no one to help us so then when you think about the options that are out there

10:17 family child care and somebody said something to me early on that was so smart she said you know think of child care like infrastructure you know roads and bridges that's how we get to where we need to go so child care is actually infrastructure child care is as integral to people getting to where they need to go as having access to transportation is or having a road that is safe to drive down yeah child

10:48 care is infrastructure in the same way roads and bridges are infrastructure it helps us get to where we need to go without it we can't move we can't be out in the world doing all the great things that would happen if that was a given right and it makes me think about someone in their house who is thinking like i gotta i gotta get to the grocery store and then there's no roads and whether they would immediately think

11:15 i am i'm the worst person ever right i'm horrible or i'm lazy or if they would think like why why do i live somewhere with no roads like i know how to do something about this like i feel like this is not just my individual problems right when i walk out there's just fields everywhere they're like wait yeah like right there yeah with child care and i'm speaking from the perspective as a mom we feel like why can't i get more done

11:44 or like why can't i do the things i want to do right we we do personalize it and blame ourselves yeah and you're giving a really important perspective so for everyone listening here whether you have a young baby or you have a toddler if you have a child who's pre-school age right think about the moments you've been so hard on yourself i can't believe i didn't get this thing done i said i was gonna get to the store i said i was

12:13 going to run this errand and just notice that narrative and then think about if you lived somewhere where there wasn't a road and there was no access to public transportation and just think if you would say to yourself wow i am so lazy or if you'd say i'm i'm mad like i feel like i need something i don't have what is this i think that's that's really powerful to reframe that so thank you we always like to say what the what like

12:43 what the what how you know just not having somewhere to take your child and we can talk a lot about all the great things that can happen in those early years where the brain is just so mushy and it's just taking it all in and the data is there that's the thing that drives the reporter in me crazy it's not like we don't have the data the data shows all sorts of amazing things happen like kids are more likely to graduate from

13:12 high school they're more likely to enter the workforce and oh by the way by the way the parents are also able to go to work and pay taxes and and be a member of a functioning society that supports work and i this is a this can be kind of a controversial thing to bring up but i did live in china for many years and there are lots of things that we can say about the way chinese the chinese government makes

13:39 decisions that we don't agree with however i remember coming home one night in beijing it was about seven o'clock and right outside the school entrance where all of these bikes and scooters because it was pick up time because the government has made it available to everyone uh a school for their child starting very young when their babies from 7am to 7pm that's flexible so 7pm was the pickup time and it was just swarmed and i thought like what are

14:08 all these people doing here they were picking up their child who by the way had dinner and a nap and were you know ready ready to settle in for the evening so a lot of different countries for vastly different reasons some good some bad who knows they've identified child care as part of the infrastructure they've identified it as a way to help people and our country has missed out on that it really is kind of amazing right like

14:36 sometimes in i feel like the last time i talked to you there was this too but you you say it in a way that it makes me like stopping my tracks like wait like i'm looking at the same thing but looking at it differently like you have a baby and then everyone's like good luck yeah i don't know like if that like yeah it is so hard to raise a child and i get to share my own experience like

15:07 those first number of months for me and everyone has their season with their kid or their seasons that are really hard but like the baby stage for me oh it was so dark it was so hard it was so hard i remember thinking like is this what everyone like is this the thing everyone talks about like so glowingly you know um and i too have so much privilege and so much access and so i did have access

15:35 to child care that i could afford and i did have a parent who was involved right my own parent who was very involved but being home and taking care of a child and kind of saying i didn't even realize this but i'm swapping my former life for this other life because it is a 24 7 all-consuming job and there is no infrastructure to support me in my basic needs as a human being

16:06 like that is really unfair it is a really unfair thing yeah i spent a lot of time being really mad the first thing i got mad at was um baby showers i thought why do we have that baby shower i i did get a lot of very cute things but i actually i don't really need a baby shower what i need is after the baby's born that's when i need the help and you know i think that right now in this

16:32 country we just have a few things upside down like you can go out and get lots of degrees in early education you can be very well educated to be an early educator in this country but the job market is bleak i mean you want to go out when you spend all this money on your education and earn poverty wages nobody wants to do that like what are the numbers the numbers are like i think i'm in dc they just raised

17:02 minimum wage here but you're looking at minimum wage as the starting salary for early educators in this country by and large and actually during covid we have heard from listeners who say uh well first if you are the owner of an early child care center or you operate one in your home uh this other person who told me about child care infrastructure also said like that's a woman-run business right you are supporting a woman-run business so we've heard from a lot of those women

17:35 who say i have raised wages right they want to be competitive it's almost broken them some of our listeners have closed their doors they operated centers but they're just struggling to keep people when places that can't afford to pay people more like your starbucks like your amazons like your targets you know i mean no no shade on them they're able to raise the hourly wage to 15 an hour 17 an hour

18:05 like child care just can't do that i love talking to really like very smart people like you who wide in my perspective and this might i feel like maybe you're insane becky obviously but i just want to state this i will get paid more going to work at starbucks then i will go working at an early childhood education center yep true 100 yeah a lot of the providers that we speak to have double shifts and so they

18:31 go to their child care center they take care of babies and toddlers and then they go work a shift at a starbucks or they go drive a bus like bus drivers earn a lot of good money in a lot of cities so yeah that that that happens for sure and i always say as host of this show we work with some very smart people um our partners are neighborhood villages and they look at how to support the

18:54 existing infrastructure and and i always laugh because they're probably tearing their hair out because i ask exactly those kinds of questions i say okay wait a minute are you saying xyz and whomever i'm interviewing will say yeah i am i mean i just learned about subsidies so i didn't really understand how they work and we spoke to a woman named camille bennett in alabama and she said that a lot of these providers right okay so they are looking for kids

19:23 who are on subsidies that means these kids are getting um they're paying less than is normally charged but the provider is still getting that money because it comes from the state right so the state is the one that says okay you get a subsidy you don't and by the way applying for subsidies is a very rigorous red tape process but a lot of people do it so a lot of these providers these these early education schools or these family

19:49 care centers they don't get paid on enrollment so in the fall when they have like 25 kids enroll in their class they only get paid by attendance right so if that kid doesn't show up for a day like guess how many kids didn't show up during covid you know a lot the process for that provider for salt in many cases they're just not gonna get paid but even if they fight for it it's like i don't understand that i

20:19 don't understand if the money has been set aside to support these kids attending early education centers why why aren't providers getting that money so some in some places the fight is about let's get paid on enrollment not on attendance but like how crazy is that and the investigative journalist in me is like where is that money going you know where is that money going and i'm now thinking glory about the other side too because i know there's

20:46 parents listening who are thinking yes those you know people who work at early childhood education centers need to get paid more money and i already can't afford the child care like i get it if they get paid more money my rates go up understandably right it's still a business right how it is now and i can't afford i already feel like this is what i hear from a lot of women it's not worth it for me to work because

21:13 i would bring home less than i would have to pay a child care center yeah so can you speak to that side a little bit as well the cost to individual families yes first of all i would say and i grew up with a lot of these women in my life i am related to a lot of women who choose to stay at home and and that's the hardest job there is we hear that a lot

21:35 but like truly that's the hardest job there is um so i also speak to a lot of women and i put myself in this category i am a better person whole person because of what i get from my job like i am a happier parent i'm a happier partner i'm a better friend i mean i would argue across the board that i am a better person because i work so

22:06 we all know the child care situation was dire before covid and kovid really put everything into tech and color it was just like a big spotlight on parents and their experiences with child care and i remember when our first season came out it was right when the new york times ran a special section called the primal scream and it profiled a bunch of moms from different walks of life all at the end of their rope like people were just

22:38 i mean fried doesn't even start to describe it and the needle has not really moved if anything the child care landscape while there's a lot of great talk around build back better and what this administration might do now we're really in a waiting period with that so i i my hope is that well my number one hope is that people who listen to this show feel less alone right that's what we're hearing like thank you

23:08 uh you know i i don't feel like i'm in this by myself i'm like okay that's a good starting point you are not in it by yourself and and then we hear we hear the pressures of work building and and with no child care solution so like someone's in you know welcome back to wherever they were working but there's no noise around what to do with the child i think that's why we're seeing a rise in tag team

23:36 parenting where parents are left to figure it out which again is a cost right it's like we just spoke to someone who's the dad had been offered a job but he chose to drive uber because that had flexible hours around his wife's shifts yeah so bananas doesn't have to be this way that's that's what my new hashtag is guess what does not have to be this way so let's jump there a little bit one of the things i know about our listeners

24:03 here is that they love understanding concepts deeply and then they love translating that understanding into like action strategies like what can i do what do i do with this right and one of the things i think you just outlined that is actually an important action is just to say to ourselves my struggle around child care my struggle to figure out my schedule and my tag team parenting or uh is it worth it for me to work relative to how much i have

24:29 to pay and where's equality child care there's action and saying like this is not my individual problem this is not my individual fault there lacks infrastructure for what my family system would need to thrive and right now yes i'm coping with that but if we can remove fault and blame that that can make moments instead of feeling completely impossible feel really really

25:00 really really challenging which we want things to feel better than that but we don't enter into a shame spiral right i mean i would share the first thing i sort of sheepishly realized about myself was that i was not a child care voter before i could not have told you how my congressman well i live in dc so how my representatives in the various places that i've lived how they felt about child care and i grew up in a split

25:25 household so i had one parent was a republican one parent was a democrat we had lots of interesting discussions around the dinner table so for for everyone like are you a child care voter is that your number one question like we just we have a whole little we have a little book downstairs because we're having um votes right now in dc for our ward representatives and i'm like i gotta read that thing and figure out how they feel about this uh

25:50 before before they get my vote so that is one thing and somebody actually said like whenever she hears that someone's having a baby she's not going to send a gift she's going to call her representative because like you don't want if you're a representative or you know running for whatever it is if you think you're not going to win because of your stance on child care or how loudly you use your voice to represent the people who elected you

26:14 like that will make you maybe make a few different decisions so anybody listening here another point of action is is to watch just put that into you know something concrete for everyone listening what should they do today yeah i mean i think you should figure out who is up for election wherever you are uh make sure that you vote but make sure you get on the website just type in child care in that person's name and you know

26:42 listen if you have two minutes to do it it's helpful it took me a lot longer to figure out how my representative felt about child care in the end it was like she was very aligned with um the current president biden's proposals it did take some time but i eventually got there it was actually really funny because i actually recorded the calls i made and you could hear like i'm going to transfer you to this person i'm going

27:03 to transfer you to that person at one point i was like oh you just transferred me to that person and now i'm back you know it was a little bit of a hamster wheel but eventually i got the answer so that would be the first step figure out you know where you live how do your representatives feel about child care what else anything else that you encourage people to do or what can they do i mean this is it's

27:26 such such a massive issue right and something that affects every fiber of our being right i guess that's the thing about infrastructure is it's a foundation right so part of our foundation is missing right wherever you live if you type in community organizing and child care you will find a place i guarantee you there are people in your community working to solve this crisis and we've gotten voice memos from listeners in the car after their shift

27:54 ends one woman said you know i've got my poster i'm wearing my t-shirt she was showing up in the community to ask for better child care and i think that's like i i was never i i never worked in community organizing the first time i really gave it good thought was when barack obama was running and it's so important numbers are important they send i mean talking from a network news perspective you think of that shot that that

28:26 one shot that maybe might make the local news and it's 50 people 100 people you know whatever it is that's the shot that's gonna make the story so showing up is really important and then also you know volunteering your time or signing the petition in season one we spoke to multnomah county in oregon the tiny little county they just won universal pre-k3 and it was an uphill battle during covid but one of their key moments was when they

28:57 went around during covet and got signatures so that's a community organizing to collect a group represented by signatures like that's that's for any parent out there you have a minute to sign your name yeah you know that led to change which is which is wild to me but also very humbling and just for everyone listening who might be thinking oh wow that sounds like that sounds so hard or i've never done something like this before

29:28 right just remind yourself there's nothing you there's nothing you have to do and this is an issue right the child care crisis is an issue that probably impacts every single day of your life right and i think it it makes living life with kids so heavy and so individualistic right and i think as a step one just separating like this is an infrastructure problem

29:59 not an individual family problem is hugely helpful to your personal mental health right and then the next things you're describing gloria are like here's actually how we can have impact on societal um and infrastructure change right now letting people know this issue matters i can make this something i vote on right i can say that this issue is toward the top of my list yeah i mean i think if you have you know half an hour just last night

30:30 our next door neighbors hosted a candidate for our ward representative and i went to the meeting and i asked how do you feel about child care and that is something that i had the time to do last night to run next door it didn't take a lot um but i also think wherever you are i just learned about this i told you like i'm learning as i go childcareaware.org is a national organization wherever you are you can join it and

30:58 they have a fantastic website and it you can go on there put in your zip code and it will tell you every different option that you have for child care and right now i guarantee you if you find somewhere that looks interesting and you call them and you say like this is what i can pay for one day a week people are open and flexible and listen i'm not saying i'm not guaranteeing it will work i'm just saying it's somewhere

31:22 that you can go to find out the immediate options for you a day an hour just call and ask yeah have you heard stories of that type of flexibility i've heard stories of providers who are doing anything they can to keep their doors open yeah so that that opens up you know at least a conversation but at the same time you know that's juxtaposed with this need to be paid on

31:52 enrollment right so it's it's a tricky path to navigate but it's it's there to explore so toward the end of a kind of interview with someone or conversation i like to leave listeners with three main things to be thinking about or action or just kind of you know we all get to this place like oh that was all really important can someone you know distill it down for me uh so we like to make that easier so if it's okay with you i'm

32:23 going to ask you to give one in three and i can come in with number two um so when someone and saying goes into their day like yeah what is what is one thing you want them to take from this conversation that child care is your right it's a social service that is your right and we we just have to convince the country to fund it and know that we've done it before in world war ii where all of a sudden people

32:51 thought oh wait women have to go to work to support the war effort oh their kids are going to need care and this country had basically pop-up child care for hundreds of thousands of kids so we know how to do it it is possible i want to take that and turn that into a mantra as a number two point right so for all the people listening here who have young kids or whose kids are in school and you're thinking okay well i

33:19 have school but i wish we had options you know for that 3 to 7 p.m hour like you were describing i think reminding yourself this feels hard because i don't have what i need not because i'm doing anything wrong and i think our listeners will notice that feels similar to a mantra i personally use all the time this feels hard because it is hard not because i'm doing something wrong

33:51 and that one will work too but reminding yourself my child care struggles i was never meant to have to deal with this completely on my own and in other places that's not the case and removing that personal fault can really help tolerate the distress you know in those tough moments yeah and i mean i can come off of that very easily because it makes me think of my own mom and i was raised by a single

34:21 working mom and when things got tough and i'm laughing now because i'm remembering coming home from the movies and all the pipes had burst in our house and i was like oh no and she goes you know what i think today overall we did a good job we'll think about the pipes tomorrow and now we always say like we're doing a good job and and you know lord knows parents have been doing a phenomenal job by and large

34:51 and i i just think you know what is possible if we got a little help you know if we got a little help and we felt fully supported i said we would do three but i'm gonna take your third and elevate it because i think that's something we just don't tell ourselves as parents i'm doing a good job i'm doing a pretty good job i wonder if like everyone listening if we all like looked into the mirror and like locked

35:20 eyes with ourselves and maybe in that moment you're locking eyes with a part of you that like needs to hear that right and you say to the mirror looking into the mirror for me i'd be like hey becky you you're doing a pretty good job you're doing a good job and i always think like i could say that to any parent i say that to a lot of the parents in our platform and our membership and yet sometimes i hold back cause i

35:48 say you know what it's not gonna actually mean as much as if you look in the mirror and hear the words from the person you need to hear them from which i promise you isn't dr becky it's uh it's you it's you and i think um i think that's so important so thank you for for leading us to that point my pleasure i mean we we are doing a good job i am doing a good job i'm

36:10 looking into the zoom right now looking into my own eyes i'm doing a good job gloria where can people find more of you find more about you find this amazing podcast you have all the things you can find no one is coming to save us on anywhere you get your podcasts you know apple spotify wherever it is um and go look it up i highly recommend season one it's all about story and season two is talking to the smart

36:37 people or who are you know collectively going to help us change things well thank you it's always a pleasure to talk with you i learned so much and look forward to our next conversation absolutely me too thanks for listening to good inside i love co-creating episodes with you based on the real-life tricky situations in your family to share what's happening in your home you can call 646-598-2

37:09 or email a voice note to goodinsidepodcast gmail.com there are so many more strategies and tips i want to share with you and so many good inside parents i want you to meet i'm beyond excited that we now have a way to connect and learn together head to goodinside.com to learn more about good inside membership i promise you it's totally game changing and follow me on instagram and facebook at dr becky at goodinside

37:41 for a daily dose of parenting and self-care ideas good inside with dr becky is produced by beth rowe and marie cecile anderson an executive produced by erica belski and me dr becky if you enjoyed this episode please take a moment to rate and review it or share this episode with a friend or family member as a way to start an important conversation let's end by placing our hands on our hearts

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