Anonymous
July 19, 2026Childcare solutions used & satisfaction
If you needed childcare in the past 10 years, what childcare solutions (e.g., childcare center/nursery, nanny, family support, adjusted work schedule, etc.) did your family end up using? Are you satisfied with the availability of childcare options in your country of employment, why or why not?
I used various solutions, including family support, childcare center/day care, and part-time or living-home nannies. To be honest, I am not satisfied with the availability of qualified and professional nannies in my residence country, because the availability is quite limited, especially after Covid and due to unfriendly visa/immigration policies in the US, which makes it extremely difficult to find qualified and reasonably priced nannies.
Joined multiple waitlists?
Did you join multiple childcare waitlists while searching for care?
No
Biggest challenges & their impact
Looking back, what were the biggest childcare challenges (e.g., long waiting times, affordability, quality, location, etc.) your family faced? How did these challenges impact your work and family life?
While there are many options for day cares, such as day-care centers, it is still very challenging for the working parents to find coverage outside the 8~9 hrs of day-care coverage. Consider a tenure-track AP job which usually requires more than 10~12 hours of work daily, 7 days a week. This means that one needs additional childcare/baby-sitting outside the open hours of day cares, in particular during weekends. Additionally, whenever the child is sick, s/he is required to stay at home, meaning that the parents must take a pause on their work and spend the full days and nights with their child. This becomes more challenging if there are more than one child in the home and during the flu season when the children take turns to become sick.
One thing to change
If you could change one thing about today's childcare system, what would it be? (For example: access, affordability, quality, employer or university support, emergency backup care, or anything else.)
Top priority from my perspective: flexibility. That is, for tenure-track faculty who is also a new parent, they need more coverage during weekends or when their children are sick.
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