A few months back, Career Pivot asked community members to share their stories of what it’s been like to navigate career transitions while balancing their caregiving duties. In July, we published the first article in our Parenting Through the Reset series and included another call for folks to share their experiences with us inside.
We are incredibly thankful to everyone who shared their childcare stories ranging from parents of toddlers to parents of teenagers. I wanted to hear these stories so that other parents living through career transition could feel seen in their own experiences, but also enable others to learn from these stories.
As any parent can tell you, caring for your children is a nearly all-consuming task of time and attention. When you need someone else to care for your children - most of us need to earn an income or have a break - it is expensive unless you have a reliable partner or family members.
Of course, when you are trying to rebuild a shattered career, you want to cut expenses. But, paid childcare is often something many of us cannot eliminate because it is so hard to find programs or centers with openings. Across the experiences in this post, childcare correlated with either (1) people caring for their children or (2) people finding reliable childcare, while trying to satisfy the demands of a job search or new career venture.
People’s experiences revealed the consistent silver lining of career disruption was a newfound flexibility for people to care for their kids. However, that flexibility was difficult to embrace as people struggled with the inner voice urging them to prioritize their job search over all other responsibilities.
The Caregivers We Spoke To
Joy Amulya is an independent consultant specialized in assessment, evaluation, and learning systems. She is a single parent who balances the care and mental health needs of her teenage daughter with her consulting.
Lisa Brancheau is a former USAID Foreign Service Officer who recently accepted a business operations role in higher education. During her career transition, she was the primary caregiver for her toddler with support from her partner and family.
Sacha Christianson is a fundraising consultant based in Germany who works with mission-driven organizations switching from multi- and bi-lateral public funding to non-traditional donors, blended finance, and innovative financing mechanisms. Her child attends part-time daycare.
Mike Greer is an independent consultant who advises education and nonprofit teams on program strategy, proposal design, and systems analysis. He has one school-age child and another pre-school age child in daycare. Outside of school hours, his kids attend before/after care programs and summer camps.
I myself work as an independent education research consultant. My kids all attend daycare or school, but this summer they have spent much of their time at home.
There are additional anonymous parents whose childcare situations included school-age children attending before/aftercare during the school year. Some of these parents were able to send their children to public or low-cost summer camps, while others opted to keep their kids at home during the summer in order to save money.
Today’s post will examine several areas that parents brought up during our conversations, including:
The biggest challenges they’ve had to face
The support systems they’ve built to maintain balance
The perspective shifts they’ve noticed as they’ve moved forward
As with our first post, the themes are illustrated by parents’ own words in order to remain authentic and honor their experiences.
Whether it’s a partner, family, or paid childcare - the ability to have childcare creates essential time and space for parents to find work. Parents shared how childcare gave them the momentum to find work and also the mindset to engage and show up in professional settings.
“The biggest challenge is the time consumed by drop off and pick up for school/daycare. On days when I’m responsible (usually two or three days per week), I spend about two hours of the days in the car related to drop off and pick up. This time spent (while necessary) takes away from my time to work or look for work. I feel as though my work or look for work efforts are always done with a metaphorical hand tied behind my back. In truth, I’m not sure how much the time constraints created by school and daycare are truly limiting me, but some days it is a source of frustration and a convenient thing to blame.”
“We thought it would be a good idea last summer to split between childcare for our 7 year old and job searching. With many weeks of last summer alternating between camp days with job searching and childcare without job searching, it led to a real lack of momentum on the job search which I wasn’t able to pick up until school started in the fall. The loss of job-seeking time for the anticipated financial savings was not worth it.”
“My increased ‘flexibility’ is very helpful to supporting our childcare situation. But unlike a full-time W2 job, I only get paid through consultancy when I put in the hours. Likewise, I only get potential job opportunities when I put in the hours of full-time job seeking as well. So my increased flexibility around childcare ultimately hurts my job search and professional efforts in ways which are difficult to quantify.”
“As the full-time caregiver for my toddler-aged son, the hardest thing was finding dedicated blocks of focus time (more than an hour here or there) to apply to jobs.”
“The largest impact on her [daughter] has been my stress levels and my lack of emotional availability when I just don’t have any bandwidth.”
“The close second challenge is being able to code switch from navigating the emotions and needs of my son with translating my prior professional experience to fit a resume.”
“When I’m trying to put myself out there [for jobs and consulting] and my kid has mental health episodes, it’s draining...when someone has anger and their inhibitions are down because they’re in this mode, it’s another thing to climb out of and so the biggest impact on me was just draining me. It wasn’t the only factor, but it was an additional factor in providing the kind of care that I always planned.”
Parents identified immediate support for childcare through partners, family, and friends as well as options for more affordable childcare through government subsidies and more affordable aftercare and summer camp options from local parks and recreation departments.
“Friends, including neighbors and other parents are a help because they generate activity for the kids. Little institutional support in the summer.”
“Husband, other parents in our neighborhood.”
“A spouse who supports both my very long-term job search and pitches in with childcare flexibility.”
“I have a group of former USAID colleagues who I have leaned heavily on during this time that are in similar situations and I am so grateful for that community.”
“We moved out of our house at the end of December and moved in with family. That’s caused a lot of angst for her, particularly. While it’s not great for any of us, I see it as we’re pretty lucky.”
“I almost didn’t want to go [visit friends in another state] because I didn’t want to keep talking about myself and the same story after so much time. But I’m still me to them. They don’t have any different perception of me. And it got reflected back to me - not in any explicit way - that I’ve been through all of this stuff, I’ve scrambled, and I’ve soul searched, and these people [my friends] have known me forever and they don’t see me as any different.”
“State sponsored day care, being on unemployment allows for flexibility in finding the right job not just anything to pay bills.”
“We’ve been getting all the needs met in terms of food and health insurance…when you’re 19, you can become a Medicaid household of one and she gets incredibly good insurance coverage through Medicaid. In terms of all the things that she needs, those things are okay.”
“For tweens and early teens use the school resources during the school year. Push (softly) activities to engage in. My 13 year old can use the gym for $40/month and that will help him in many ways if he fully engages. Phones with location on and working bicycles gets kids moving and reduces dependence on me for transport.”
“Low-cost and quality after school programs [through city parks and recreation].”
Overall, parents broadly shared the importance of accepting the limits on time that childcare places on a job search and also taking stock of how the household spends its time and money to make adjustments.
“I job search while my baby is at day care. 6 hours is a decent amount of time. I have also consulted part time during the 6 hour window.”
“I’ve reached a point where I’ve decided that whatever time during working hours that I can dedicate to paid work or looking for work is enough. When my kids are at school, I focus on my work and complete what I can reasonably do in the time available. When I need to get my kids or be with them in the evening, I’ve decided to be present and largely not complete work. There are exceptions on some days, but generally, I’ve decided to compartmentalize the time for work and parenting so that I’m fully present for each one. The fact that I’m underemployed, but self-employed makes it easier to decide when to work as I’m not accountable to set billable hours.”
“If I needed time to respond to an employer, watch a webinar, or prepare a job application. I had to learn to ask for it. For me it was also necessary to have time in my schedule pre-planned where I would be able to work on my job search. At the start of 2026 that was having 2-3 hours each afternoon where my parents or partner would watch my son. Eventually, we ended up paying for my son to be in daycare two days a week which was a great help although still felt like a ticking clock of trying to get as much done in those 8 hours two days a week.”
“Be intentional about what time is meant for work or looking for work as opposed to what time is dedicated to what your kids or partner needs. It is tempting to feel as though one is never doing enough professionally, but it’s also impossible to spend all of one’s time on work or pursue every single professional opportunity.”
“You are human and it’s ok to be visibly a parent while working on job searches or professional moves.”
“Working closely with my spouse to cut monthly expenses and do our best to survive on one income.”
“Conduct time-audits and financial-audits on yourself/your household about once a month…you do need to be aware of where the leading buckets of your money and time are going. If you’re not pleased with what you find, then make adaptations going forward. You can’t change what’s past, financially or relationally, but you can decide what happens next. It can be easy to get reactionary and be overly conservative. Try not to do that. You and your household are probably more resilient than you think.”
If you are in need of childcare for children too young to attend K-12, most states have a searchable database where you can look up information about local childcare providers. Want more details about a specific provider, be sure to cross-reference centers with inspection reports from state regulatory agencies?
If you’re a parent living in the DMV, here’s some sites you’ll want to explore:
My Childcare DC (includes inspection reports)
Maryland Family Network: (Check My Childcare inspection reports)
Finding Childcare- Virginia (includes inspection reports)
For school-age children, many school districts and schools offer aftercare programs. For example, Arlington County Public Schools has Extended Day, DC Public Schools has Out of School Time Programs, Fairfax County has School Age Childcare, and Prince George’s County has providers that work directly in schools. Local parks and recreation departments offer aftercare and summer camps for school-age children. There are a range of options in Arlington County, DC, Fairfax County, Montgomery County, and Prince George’s County.
Keep in mind that registration for these programs usually occurs in the spring or summer prior to the school year it is needed.
In general, Childcare.gov has a wealth of state-specific information and links about childcare for children of all ages. States across the U.S. also offer needs-based subsidies for childcare: DC, Maryland, and Virginia. For those of you living elsewhere in the US, check out ChildCare Aware’s Local Resources search tool.
Our personal financial situations play a huge role when we are dealing with life or career transitions. Financial habits can give us more flexibility and breathing room or weigh us down and limit our options. Whatever your situation is, we want you to know that you don’t have to face it alone.
We recently launched Your Monthly Money Cheat Code in collaboration with Rochelle Coleman from Second Stage Finance. She’s also hosting free Personal Finance Office Hour sessions on the last Friday of every month. If you’re wrestling with a personal finance issue and are looking for a free, non-judgemental space to talk through your situation, be sure to join us on August 28th!
RSVP: Personal Finance Office Hours
As far as financial advice focused on the needs of parents, here’s a few resources to check out.
JumpStart: This national coalition works hard to advance financial literacy across the country and offers many resources for parents and families.
Khan Academy: Their free personal finance course includes several modules focused on family issues.
The Joint Account newsletter: Heather & Douglas Boneparth use this newsletter to explore how our financial habits intersect with our family relationships.
Dependent Financial Planning: Families with special needs children face unique financial challenges. If that’s the reality you’re facing, you should definitely reach out to Liz Yoder.
Looking for more stories shedding light on what it’s like to balance caregiving duties with a job search? Well you’re in luck. This is the second piece in our Parenting Through the Reset series, and we’ve got more stories in the pipeline.
If you’re a parent or caregiver who’s navigated (or are currently navigating) as career disruption and would like to share your insights with the wider community, we’d love to hear from you about any topic. Here’s a few ways you can reach out.
You can fill out this form to share insights on the following topic.
Caregiving for Parents: Includes six (6) questions covering your current professional situation, caregiving setups, challenges, creative solutions, support systems, and direct advice.
Don’t want to type it all out? Let’s talk. You can schedule time to chat with me to share your experience.
Send me a direct message on LinkedIn, and I will provide you with a number to send over a quick WhatsApp voice note while you’re making dinner or driving.
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