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Description

Gloria digs into a devastating report on how the pandemic has affected women and their families with Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. The numbers in this NWLC report, “Resilient But Not Recovered,” are sobering. There are 1.1 million fewer women in the labor force today than there were in February 2020. More than 2/3 of the net jobs lost since the pandemic began were women’s jobs. Only 41% of mothers who left the workforce during the pandemic have returned to work, compared to 78% of fathers. Fatima tells Gloria why women are emerging from the pandemic in worse economic shape than men, what role child care plays in that, and what needs to happen to make things better for women — at work and at home.

Follow Fatima @FGossGraves and the National Women’s Law Center @nwlc on Twitter.

Read “Resilient But Not Recovered” from the National Women’s Law Center.

This podcast is presented by Neighborhood Villages, and is brought to you with generous support from Imaginable Futures, Care For All Children by the David and Laura Merage Foundation, and Spring Point Partners.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gloria Riviera, Fatima Goss Graves, Elisa, Lindsay

Gloria Riviera  00:00

There is a lot going on in the world right now. But don’t worry friends, because NEW DAY from Lemonada media wants to help you make your world a little better. And this podcast does exactly that renowned grief expert therapist and best-selling author Claire Bidwell-Smith is here for you. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Well, I want to say just come on in and take a seat on Claire’s couch. Because that’s actually how I feel when I listen. On Mondays and Wednesdays, Claire gives you one tip, just one actually quite manageable tip to improve your life. Like how to wake up better, I could have used that this morning, or how to manage anxiety. on Fridays, I mean, I love the tips. But Friday’s might be my favorite day. She interviews insightful, kind, interesting guests who share with you what they’ve learned about life. NEW DAY brings a fresh perspective on improving your mental health and sense of well-being joined Claire three times a week. It’s a simple way to clear your head and move forward. NEW DAY is available wherever you get your podcasts. Sinclair take your headphones off. Are we going to brush your teeth? Yes or no? It’s like a battle every night. And tonight is Friday. We made it. That’s the remnants of my COVID cough. Two of my kids had it. But thank goodness, we’re all healthy. I’m really glad that we got to Friday, but like the weekend, the weekend is coming. It’s just like a matrix of places everyone needs to be at the same time. So I’m going to tackle thinking that through tonight and try to get some sleep. Yeah, you know, parenting, there’s always something to add that actually requires parenting, especially with a 13 year old. Hormones are coming. Buckle up. Okay guys, that’s it. That’s all, that’s all I have right now. Oh, that matrix of where everyone needs to be basically the same time over the weekend. My oldest son is into Rubik’s cubes and he scrambles them and the other day I looked at it all scrambled and I said oh that’s like my life every weekend and trying to figure out how to make it all orderly. Somehow we get through every weekend. Hi guys, this is NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US. A Lemonada Media Original presented by and created with neighborhood villages. I’m your host Gloria Riviera. Fatima Goss Graves, she is our guest today. I have been lucky enough to cross paths with her here in there in DC over the years. She is the president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. She’s been there for a long time.

Gloria Riviera  02:59

And you’ll hear me during the interview because I stopped everything and I just say you’re such a boss. You’re such a badass. And she is. Her work is on issues central to the well-being of women and girls with a focus on outcomes for women and girls of color. She’s appeared and written just about everywhere. It feels like testified before Congress and federal agencies. She got her law degree at Yale. I told you she was a boss, and has two sons the same age as my boys. She comes from a large family with a history of taking on seemingly insurmountable challenges. Her father’s family is plaintiff’s took on Knoxville, Tennessee to successfully desegregate the school system. They’re taking on a just fight. Well that runs in her blood. I have a huge professional crush on her. And she’s like all the other guests on this show in that she is so smart. She is so well spoken and she is so approachable. I just want to curl up in whatever she has to say and let her wisdom, which she points out, the dots she connects in terms of this country’s social safety net, or total lack thereof. I want to let all of it sink in. Her organization recently completed a pretty devastating report. It is not ready it is on how the pandemic has affected the lives of women in particular women of color. It does have a good title; I will give it that. Resilient But Not Recovered. And the major part of why women are struggling and are still struggling is child care. You might hear that we are kind of down in the beginning of this conversation. I told you the report is not pretty, but hang in there because we do perk up, when we do laugh together. I really want to be her mom friend. I feel like she would be the kind of friend who would remind me that it is important to laugh. Sometimes, we all need to remember that, particularly in this uphill battle, we are all climbing together. Let me tell you, it is great to have someone like Fatima climbing right there along with us.

Gloria Riviera 

Hi, Fatima, it’s good to see you again.

Fatima Goss Graves 

Hi, how are you?

Gloria Riviera 

I’m good. You know, I’m like, I think we’re all, we’re all okay.

Fatima Goss Graves 

Indeed.

Gloria Riviera 

I love to start these shows with a question. What logistical issue did you triage in your head like, even before you got out of bed this morning? Or as you’re brushing your teeth or thinking about coffee or tea? What was going through your head?

Fatima Goss Graves

Oh, my. So, before I even got out of bed. I was at the same time thinking about whether or not I had planned out all of the summer camp weeks I need for my children.

Gloria Riviera  06:05

You’re in the summer camp hamster wheel phase.

Fatima Goss Graves 

I am, I was also thinking about how to make sure I had engaged the right set of folks around a really important hire we were making at the National Women’s Law Center. And then finally, I had received a really wonderful and beautiful note from one of my kids’ principles around how to talk to your children around the state of the world. Yeah. And I was questioning whether I’d done all the things.

Gloria Riviera 

Oh, yeah. Well, I’m sure you did most of the important things. Right? But that’s where we are, like we are we are getting through it. I mean, we have so much talk about, I read the report, I read several of the recent articles in which you’ve spoken about everything that we face right now. I want to know simply how you got into advocacy, activism, how you became a lawyer, what inspired you to do all of that?

Fatima Goss Graves 

So, I’m the first lawyer in my family. And since I became a lawyer, we’ve had other some of my cousins had become lawyers, and it makes me really proud. But I always thought about the law, not from the logistics of lawyering, but I thought about the law as a powerful tool. And early on, I wanted to be a part of that. And part of that was because my parents actually both my parents, but my dad in particular was he and his siblings were the named plaintiffs in a school desegregation case and Goss v. Board of Education against the Knoxville Tennessee School Board.

Gloria Riviera  08:01

And were they living in?

Fatima Goss Graves 

In Tennessee, in Knoxville, Tennessee. That’s where they grew up.

Gloria Riviera 

There were the main plaintiffs in that case that I did not read. I knew he was involved in that.

Fatima Goss Graves 

Yeah, he and his siblings. And part of the reason the family was chosen is, you know, the NAACP came to our family because it was a big family one, there were seven of them. And so they knew you may not run out of children anytime soon if these cases take long time. There’s always one more in the back, ready to go. And then, but also, my grandfather was a business owner, he was a barber. He had a barber shop in desegregated, the Black segregated part of Knoxville. And so when you’re thinking about the risks to take on, you know, he wasn’t going to lose his job. Now, there were other risks to standing up to White supremacy in that time. But he had a different sort of financial security because he worked for himself.

Gloria Riviera 

And he worked in the Black community. So you’re saying that the whole picture of who the plaintiff was checked a lot of boxes in keeping that family safe

Fatima Goss Graves

Right. It did. But not to say that it wasn’t scary to take on a system and to put yourself and your family out there in that way. But the story of taking on that case has been one that my family has always held with such pride, the idea that you have an duty and obligation to do for yourself but for your community to fight when systems are working against you. That is something that I learned at such a young age. And I thought, well, I want to be one of the lawyers that does that for lots of people that helps lots of people that takes on systems. And so I, I frankly didn’t even know that jobs like the National Women’s Law Center exactly existed when I was even when I was coming up in law school. But I really feel sort of, it’s a privilege and obligation and honor and responsibility all at the same time to do this work.

Gloria Riviera  10:28

Yeah. You know, when we met several years ago, and I’ve had the honor of moderating panels that you’ve appeared on, and I’m always struck by the wide array of topics the National Women’s Law Center covers, I know, recently, this report has been such a focus and was just released in March. Am I right? Resilient But Not Recovered. Yeah. I mean, it’s such a great title, first of all, and I will always have a journalistic streak in me. And that’s a great headline, that’s a great headline, not recovered. I was struck by how much; I was struck by many things. But how much childcare infused the findings? Can you just walk us through who your partners were in the report? What the goal was, I mean, you knew it was bad. But what did you find?

Fatima Goss Graves 

So I should begin with we track women’s employment monthly. So when jobs numbers come out, that’s something we did long before the pandemic. And the pandemic revealed a phenomenon like we’ve never seen before of in mass women, and more, especially women of color, leaving the workforce and not looking for new work. And so as we were approaching the two year anniversary of when folks started to shut down, and really positive stories around job creation, we had deep wonders and worries of what happened to the 1 million women who left the workforce, where are they? Why are they not back in? And what would it take and what is driving this?

Gloria Riviera  12:23

So, you had the numbers because you track it monthly? So you knew you knew they were bad?

Fatima Goss Graves 

We knew the numbers were bad.

Gloria Riviera 

And we’re starting February 2020, to February 2022. And you’re wondering, what is happening for those women? Because we’re you’re right, we were hearing these stories of, oh, we’re back to pre-pandemic numbers in the workforce, but it’s like, not necessarily true.

Fatima Goss Graves 

It’s just a more complicated story, right? There is a really positive story of job creation. But also we worried and we wondered whether there is a disconnect with how women were feeling it in their lives. And so we wanted to explore that.

Gloria Riviera  13:05

So what did you find?

Fatima Goss Graves 

So here’s what we found. And maybe it maybe if you are someone who has been shouldering caregiving, and work in this period, it won’t surprise.

Gloria Riviera 

At any point when you were reviewing the data was there, you know, head in your hands moment, or I didn’t know it was this dire moment. And we talk a lot about, you know, these very difficult realities. And we will get to what we will do about all of those. But I am curious about your personal reaction to what you discovered in this report.

Fatima Goss Graves 

So the thing that gave me, that surprised me the most was that in this period, every time schools close, childcare centers close, kids were sick, you saw more women leaving work. And really the thing that overwhelmingly hit me was that women are on the brink, that there were so many people who said variations of I’m barely holding on, that the cumulative two years of working and caregiving, an inconsistency is taking a mental health toll on them and an economic toll on them. And that leaving work becomes the only thing that seems like a pathway through and I thought we have to be sure that this group of women who are basically barely holding on many heavy was like scrambling structures together, that they see opportunity going forward, that we have the systems in place to make it actually possible for people to do what they have always done which is working care and that the invisible caregiving that women do for their families, and the underpaid caregiving that mostly women do for other families, that it’s not sustainable to go through a business as usual approach. It’s now all been made visible, like this is now in our bones. And we’re not going to forget this time, anytime soon.

Gloria Riviera 

Coming up after this break, Fatima, and I look at a statistic that shows 58% of women reported that the COVID-19 pandemic and everything that happened after that is having a negative impact still on their mental health. So the numbers that you found, they are so dire. But one of the stats that struck me two years in, February 2022, women were still short 1.4 million net jobs compared to February 2020. So that’s women accounting for like 68-ish percent of the net job loss 68 ish, like, that’s how so where are those women, and where is the lack in the social safety net programs, that doesn’t offer them anything?

Fatima Goss Graves  16:57

So, what is very clear to me is that we’re also having this conversation at a time when there are lots of jobs being creative, where, where you have investments, and some of these investments around jobs or in sectors where women haven’t traditionally been. And so there’s going to have to be work to transition. But what’s clear to me is that it’s going to take more for this set of women to come back, they’re going to need a stronger caregiving infrastructure to come back. And wages frankly, have to be higher, because the cost of care has gone up. You know, there’s lots of inflation conversations and conversation around the pressure of rising prices. Most people are spending the bulk of their dollars on housing and childcare. And the care parts of our budget become invisible, because the people see it as easy tradeoffs. But it’s not actually tradeoffs. For the women who left the workforce, it is either that you can afford to both have a life of work and care. Or you got to deal with the consequences. And it’s really important that we don’t see this as only a sort of casual choice. Among those who have privilege, this is coming at severe costs to families right now. Right. And so these words, I just want to make sure you understand, like, these were challenges that began with the pandemic. They existed before. It’s just that the pandemic made it also visible in crashing at the same time. And the toll of keeping it all together. When we finished our focus groups, I kind of wondered what like, how have the rest of the women managed to say, what’s the story and lesson there? And how do we make sure they can stay, too.

Gloria Riviera

You’re absolutely right. I mean, our season one of this show, came out in May, within weeks of the New York Times running a special section called Primal Scream, in which they went out and spoke to all these different mothers in all of these different situations. But I remember one image was the mom at her desk, at our kitchen table with I think the kid you know, in a bouncy chair next to her. It’s an acute image of unsustainability. Because before it was it was bad, right?

Fatima Goss Graves 

It was bad before but what I want people to really understand is if it was bad before, but now we’re in a situation where you know, about 58% of the women reported that its they are having a negative impact on their mental health. Tell us about that. So and I, when I think about what has been asked, especially of moms in this period, around holding it all together at work and holding their families together, there are breaking points around that. And we have to, I think every employer should be focused on that. But also our policymakers need to be focused on that. But also, what we learned in our study is that this has a cost right away on family’s financial situations, you know, for the women who we heard from including the you know, more than 66% of women who lost their job, or quit their job during the pandemic and are looking for work, their families situation is worse, very, very, are worried about making ends meet. And there’s a dramatic difference between what they are saying is their experience, and that of the experience of men. And the answer at the center of it really, is that women have always shouldered the disproportionate amount of caregiving in this country.

Gloria Riviera  21:25

So we know from the report, it’s, I don’t even know the right way to describe it. Particularly dire would be one way for women of color, you know, those numbers are horrifying, and unacceptable. But I want to shift to the social safety nets in this country and what you think needs to be done?

Fatima Goss Graves

Well, one of the things that we for sure, know, is that we are a country that can offer solutions when we want and need to, yes, yes, we saw that in the Cares Act in the first year, the pandemic, when we invested in child care, we put in place a national paid leave program, we supported families to the child tax credit, and more that gave some certainty and insurance for folks who are navigating the inconsistency of this time and the ongoing care crisis. And so part of what we wanted to name is that we actually know solutions that are available, that are teed up. And now what we actually need is the political will to get it done. Right. The other thing is that it is the responsibility of policymakers to move to action. And I do think women will be demanding that in an ongoing way. But there are also things that, you know, employers don’t have to wait to take steps to make it more possible for the women they have to stay. You know, before there’s a national paid leave program, you can put one in place, yes, you can have schedules that actually provide some flexibility, rather than just all everything in your hand. And you know, you have learned these last two years that it is possible to support people who are caregiving. They not only need to maintain that, but expanded even if it falls a little bit out of the public light, because the resilient piece of it the sense that we have from our research, is that resilient. Yes, but I don’t know for how long it is up to all of us to jump in.

Gloria Riviera  24:05

I think what’s happening in real time now is that women are looking at the benefits they had, unfortunately, due to the pandemic, but they came to light because they were forced to light. So the idea that you could have some flexibility in when you were in the office and what it then allowed you to do. So I’ve seen, I have a very good friend who said, Listen, I’m not going to get a promotion, you know, I’m learning what I’m earning. But it was a real benefit for me to be able to leave the office in the afternoon so that I could be with my children so that I could get then go give care. And she went back to her superior to say, to lay that out. It happened to be a man, to lay that out for him to say if you want me to stay because another issue we haven’t talked about is people choosing to leave the workforce because they’re not willing to give up the flexibility but what I’m talking about is naming the flexibility The as a concrete benefit, so if you want me to stay, this is how I need it to work for me so that I can also give care, which is another a convoluted cost, right? Going without that ability to leave it in time for pickup is another cost that’s lacking in the childcare system we currently have.

Fatima Goss Graves 

That’s right. And I think one of the things that people haven’t realized is that a range of systems that were in place, maybe not perfect, but in place before the pandemic, whether it was, you know, solutions around after care, or around summer or the many, many breaks, they all haven’t returned in the same way, right, and those that have returned are costing a lot more. And families are having to make different decisions about what is possible in terms of the patchwork quilt care needed for their families. So even children who are older families are still struggling to afford the amount of care to match the amount of work, right?

Gloria Riviera  26:06

I haven’t heard it said exactly like that. But to say it again, to be able to afford the amount of care to match the amount of work.

Fatima Goss Graves

Right. So one of the things that is the case is that some women are working, they’re just not working as many hours as they were before at the same level. And part of that reason is they can’t afford enough childcare to work any many more hours than they are, you know, all of these things are connected, including for care workers who also have care of responsibility. I don’t want to act like they don’t they Jemmy Sure do. Yeah. It is all connected. And is why when we think about care, we often we’ve used words like infrastructure, because there’s a giant math problem, families are really clear, they can’t afford to pay more, they’re already paying way too much of their income towards care. And the solutions aren’t paying workers less, A, workers aren’t willing to work for less. And that’s part of the care shortage, right? The pay is so low you’re struggling to get..

Gloria Riviera 

And these other places can afford to give raises. So they start looking real good.

Fatima Goss Graves 

And I, you know, listen, the reason folks are in the work of care is largely because they love it. I know they love providing care. And the question is, how do we make that work that were paid is sort of matching the dignity of that work. And if we do that, if we make the pain, the conditions match the dignity of the work, it’ll mean more families can have access to care. We need a third party to make that possible. Families can’t shoulder it by themselves.

Gloria Riviera  27:59

When we come back, Fatima pulls no punches, when I asked her what the likely overturning of Roe versus Wade will mean for women and children in this country. Plus your real child care moments, the voices of the no one is coming to save us community, those are coming up right after this. I mean, this is a comparison. That’s not even a comparison. It’s an example that I hesitate to point to you, but I spent time in China. And so clearly lots of things to disagree with, about what the government says you can and cannot do. However, one thing that they did was they provided care for little kids, my own son could go as, I think he had just started to walk from 7AM to 7PM. It was all provided, again, lots to disagree with about how they do things in China. However, in this one small area, there was an acknowledgement that people needed to work. So how could the country support families to enable that to happen, which is totally lacking here.

Fatima Goss Graves

You know, it’s so interesting is that we have not shifted our care structures to match the reality of work. It’s in some ways based on an image. I don’t know from what era but certainly not an era that existed today. I’m probably not an era for many women that ever existed. But the idea that school ends at three and you have to financially figure out what happens after that point doesn’t actually match the reality of most work. You know, lots of folks are in jobs that are shift work. So you maybe you don’t work every day, or maybe if you do, but your hours are not 9 to 3, or 9 to 5, maybe they’re 12 to 8. And, and that came to a head during the pandemic, because some of our workers who we were naming as essential whether it was healthcare workers, or workers in grocery stores, their hours actually weren’t traditional and are, as we were thinking about, what do you, what are the child care solutions need to be for these workers, it had to actually match their actual hours of work. So I maybe the differences in the system you’re talking about, is that they were matching the care to the reality rather than whatever image that we’re gripping and holding on to.

Gloria Riviera  31:09

Which is what you just said, a little bit ago, that the care has to match the actual working hours, right? That’s a fundamental starting block for how to change the system. I mean, there’s so much, I want to tap into your legal expertise and ask you, like, what is your recommendation? Where do we start? Where do we start to fix this.

Fatima Goss Graves

So the thing that I think we need to do right away, is ensure that the investments that we had, the investments in the rescue plan, that states understand that we’re going to continue to invest, and here’s why we have an injection of resources to stabilize our childcare sector. And if we are in a situation where all of that abruptly stops, because we can’t politically get it together to find long term solutions. I’m just imagining the havoc that is going to create in the care sector. So we have to do that.

Gloria Riviera  32:19

Okay. Okay, so that’s a financial.

Fatima Goss Graves 

The financial investment in care. So that’s one thing. So the second thing I think we really need to make sure that we do and be focused on is ensure that the many, many, mostly women who have been engaged in care in this time that they don’t suffer a penalty because of it, okay, that they don’t experience discrimination at work, that they don’t make forever lower wages and can never catch up. And some of that really is about enforcing our existing laws, like right now, you can’t discriminate against caregivers. I’m really worried it’s happening. So we have to do that.

Gloria Riviera 

Do you think that needs more laws, around protective laws around the workplace? Well, I

Fatima Goss Graves

think we need to see that, you know, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission bringing out new guidance, reminding employers, but we might, we actually might need more specific improvements, you’re seeing some states provide more protections for caregivers. So, I think some of this is going to continue to play out, we need to be hypersensitive to it. And we have to have a national paid leave program.

Gloria Riviera 

Yeah, I know. We just have to do it.

Fatima Goss Graves

It’s embarrassing. It was embarrassing before the pandemic that we were one of the few nations that didn’t have one. It’s now been revealed what high cost there is for not having one, we must have a national paid leave program.

Gloria Riviera  34:04

How do we make that happen?

Fatima Goss Graves 

So, what I would say anyone who’s listening should be thinking about is, you need to continue to tell your story of your experience of caregiving in this time, we cannot let this fall off. So one thing is sharing your experience. The second thing is asking your policymakers at every level at a local level, at the state level and at the federal level, what they plan to do about it. I think that people worry about contacting their leaders and that is the opposite approach that we should be taking. They are there to represent you.

Gloria Riviera 

And guess what? They want your vote.

Fatima Goss Graves 

They’ll contact you when they need your vote, you contact them when you need them to deliver. And I think they need to hear again and again that you still expect them to deliver on care. That message needs to be heard. And then the last thing that I will say about this is that there will be key moments in time when the issues pop forward. Sometimes it is a story. Sometimes it is the unemployment rate, sometimes it is the fact that your state or Congress is moving forward a bill. And I know you may have 100 things on your plate. So the 101 thing I’m going to add to it is to raise your voice then, to bring other people with you to seize that moment, to help push us over the edge because we are closer than we have ever been in history, to actually solving this problem.

Gloria Riviera

Your face just lit up a little bit. And I need to remind myself that we are in an optimal place to move things truly forward.

Fatima Goss Graves  36:05

And it can feel defeating, for people in these times. I want to acknowledge that. It is very possible to get into a position where you feel like well, there’s nothing I can do, or it doesn’t matter. But I just want to remind people that, that’s just not true. Your voice matters. Your vote matters. You matter in this fight, and it is worth it to fight for what you believe in?

Gloria Riviera 

Absolutely. I don’t want to end this conversation before we touch a little bit. I mean, I feel like this conversation could be over a cup of coffee or on a walk. But Fatima, what are we going to do? If Roe is overturned with all these children, being born into a system that does not have a viable childcare infrastructure in place?

Fatima Goss Graves 

So what I’m gonna say is gonna sound a little scary, I’m gonna give you this morning.

Gloria Riviera

Oh, my gosh, he’s looking straight in my eyes.

Fatima Goss Graves 

So, I believe Roe will be overturned, and we’re basically on a clock around it. And it is gutting to say, today, abortion is legal in this country. And it’s legal till it’s not. It’s legal into the extremist politicians when and so we’re basically on a clock around that. And it’s not lost on me that at the same time, we’re having this conversation around, how do we actually make it possible for people to care for their children and themselves, so families can thrive? We’re having a conversation around forced parenthood. And so that is a startling idea. But it’s where we are. And I want folks to know that banning abortion doesn’t mean that people have more children necessarily, actually, what the studies have shown is that most people who have abortion already are parents, and it just changes when they would have more children. So basically, what it means is that you’re forcing parenthood on people who have determined they don’t want it in that moment. And they’re less likely to be financially secure when they have that child. And they’re less likely to have the support, they think they need to do it. Our systems aren’t ready for that at all, we really aren’t. And so for those who’ve been sort of sitting on the sidelines, wondering, are any of these fights about me or for me? I just want to say it is for sure about you, and it is for sure for you. And it’s gonna take all of us to both, protect as many people as possible. Ensure as many people are safe and well and healthy. But we’re about to engage on a much longer fight around who matters in this country. Who’s in the Constitution or not? Whose futures are really determined or not, and I, whatever your motivation is, I would just encourage all of us to see now is a time to be a part of it.

Gloria Riviera 

Fatima, thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. Thank you for the report, Resilient But Not Recovered. Incredible headline.

Fatima Goss Graves 

Well, I’m so glad to be in conversation with you.

Gloria Riviera  40:09

What did I tell you? Right? So nice, so gentle and her delivery of how freaking dire the world is right now. She’s definitely who I would vote for as captain of any team down by a zillion two minutes to play and we’d win every time after a pep talk from Fatima. We will win this fight. I hated her report because it is so devastating those stats crazy. How is it that women are not even looking for jobs quote, unquote, post COVID? Or we post COVID My neighbor texted me to say she has it, anyway, surprise. Women are not looking for jobs because oh, yeah, right. They don’t have childcare. I love that Fatima also emphasizes the mental health cost. Remember, we are all paying for child care right now in super crappy ways. Mental health is one of them. Dysregulation in the home is another cost that is having a devastating domino effect. But Fatima is willing to stay in this fight because it’s what she does. It’s what her family does. Thank God for that. Thank you, Fatima, for the work that you do. Keep going.

Gloria Riviera 

All right now it’s time for my favorite part of every episode, your voices, your real childcare moments. Here are this week’s voices from the no one is coming to save us community.

Elisa

Hi, Gloria. My name is Elisa and I have a unique story. I work as a preschool teacher full time. And I also have a child in child care, and a child in a free public school pre-K, that’s six hours a day. And a child in elementary school. My youngest one takes half of my paycheck. And I dropped her off every day, early in the morning to watch her cry for me. And then I need to go to my job where I’m doing the same thing and I watched the attached children cry for their parents every day. But I am thankful for the ability for me to have childcare, but it is half of my paycheck.

Lindsay  42:34

Hi, Gloria. This is Lindsay calling from my driveway in San Diego. My daughter fell asleep. On our drive home from her speech therapy appointment. I try to schedule all of our appointments like this on Tuesdays, which is today and Thursdays because my older daughter who will be 4 in a month goes to daycare twice a week. And I can’t bring anyone else with me to these kinds of appointments. So I have to do it on these where she’s at school. We’ve been trying to get her into full time daycare for months and months. But it’s just so impacted in our area as it is everywhere else. That we still just are sticking to our Tuesday-Thursday spot. And my younger daughter, the one in the car with me. We were hoping would also get a spot soon. But when I dropped my older daughter off on Tuesday, her teacher was almost in tears because she had to tell me that spot that she thought she was going to get she no longer has. So we wait.

Gloria Riviera  44:05

Elisa, I hear you. What do I want to say? I want to say that first off, you are not alone. We have heard from more than one teacher going through what you are going through leaving a child crying as you walk out the door to go to your own job so that you can be the teacher soothing a child with separation issues. Does anyone else feel like that is just a crazy hamster wheel of inefficiency. It doesn’t have to be that way. I just had for this show a conversation on separation with Dr. Becky. She hosts the good inside podcast and I recommend you take a listen because Dr. Becky talks about how to approach separation as a parent. And Lindsey so we wait. That’s what you said, yuck. I have been there with the sleeping kid in the car. Thank you for taking a moment to share your story with me while your baby girls slept. And I really hope that the spots you’ve been waiting so long for open up and you and your family, get in there really, really soon. You know what put some good energy out there. Why not envision getting a call from someone who says she’s in. I know it sounds woowoo. But what’s wrong with a little woowoo in this crazy child care system? Thank you all for continuing to send us these Voice Memos every week. I love hearing from all of you. If you want to participate, it is super easy. Just whip out your phone record a voice memo and send it to me at gloria@lemonadamedia.com. I cannot wait to hear what you send. Coming up next week. I don’t know if you can hear how excited I am. But Allyson Felix will be on the show. Does that name ring a bell? Allyson is one of the most incredible athletes in the world. My producer mentioned this and I said, Yeah, you know, I know I follow her on Instagram. Literally, this show is not long enough to list all the Olympic medals and World Championships. She’s won and track and field. But I think her coolest achievement is happening right now off the track. She is fighting for child care access and Black maternal health and she will be with us to talk about a really awesome childcare grant. She’s teamed up with Athleta to create. And then the week after that, I will be talking to Lynette Fraga, I’m happy to call her a friend. She also happens to be the CEO of child care aware. All I have to say is wow, get ready to learn some stuff about child care in America. She knows it all. I think I came away from that conversation with at least three ideas for future shows. All right. That’s it for this week. Hang in there folks. I will see you next time.

CREDITS

NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US is a Lemonada Media original presented by and created with Neighborhood Villages. The show is produced by Kryssy Pease and Alex McOwen. Veronica Rodriguez is our engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me Gloria Riviera. If you like the show, and you believe what we’re doing is important. Please help others find us by leaving us a rating and writing us a review. Do you have your own experiences and frustrations with the childcare system? Do you have ideas for what we could do to make it better? Join the no one is coming to save us Facebook group where we can continue the conversation together. You can also follow us and other Lemonada podcasts at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back next week. Until then hang in there. You can do it.