July/August 2022 - 109

Coping with Childcare Shortages
In this issue we will be discussing the difficulties of finding
childcare. For those of us that have older children, this has
always been hard, especially choosing the right option. There
are so many guilty thoughts we parents conjure up as we
make what we think are going to be life-altering choices for
our child. For those of us that are facing
that challenge now, COVID and the
economy are making what has always
been difficult, nearly impossible. It
Takes a Village checks in with two
parents that have recently gone
through this process.
Gisele Passalacqua, P.E., works at AECOM
and has worked in the industry for six years.
Gisele, what was your experience
when trying to find daycare?
My daughter, Sophia, was born in June
2021. I took 20 weeks of parental leave
and returned to work in November. At
that point, both my husband and I were
working full time while my parents
were taking care of our daughter. As fulltime
working parents, we knew that eventually we would
have to find either a daycare facility or a nanny for Sophia.
We've been lucky enough so far to have my parents around to
help, but my parents were going to travel for a few months, and
it was time to look for different care. So, we finally faced the
question: daycare or nanny? Here is a brief summary of my
search for both.
I T TAKES A VILLAGE
Welcome back to It Takes a Village, a column brought to you by the Women in Deep Foundations Committee and compiled by Ann Beaver, P.E., a
geotechnical engineer for the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
One of the reasons for these lengthy wait lists is because, where
I live in Central Florida, the population has been growing at a
very fast pace for the last few years, especially during the
pandemic. Demand for any type of service, including daycare,
has also grown. However, the growing pace of the population
Drawing by Peggy Hagerty Duffy, P.E., Hagerty Engineering and Interim CEO of ADSC
(demand) is much faster than the growing pace of businesses
and services available (supply). That explains the long waiting
time for enrollments in daycares. There aren't enough of them
around to serve the population demand. This is probably
happening in many places around the U.S. as well.
Allison Filas works at Skanska and has been working in the industry
for 13 years.
First, I started looking for nannies online at care.com. The pay
rate for the best candidates was about $25/hour. Considering
that I would need the service for five days a week, at least
eight hours a day, that would cost me $1,000 per week. For
some reason, I was not expecting it to be that high. I quickly
started looking for a daycare to compare the costs. After
making a list of all the daycares near my house (not many), I
called each one and asked a few questions, including their
weekly cost. I was actually shocked to hear that the daycare
prices were more affordable, varying from $210 to $270 per
week, which is about one-fourth of the nanny price! One thing
I did not expect was that the best daycares had a waiting list of
one to one-and-a-half years and they asked for a partial down
payment of the registration fee (about $75 to $100) just to get
your name on the wait list. Unfortunately, there was nothing
we could do, but add our daughter's name to the waiting list
and...wait.
Allison, did you have a similar experience?
I also had similar issues when trying to find a daycare for my
Sophia. We were lucky and got her into one. But another issue I
had is that, besides the fact that there are not enough daycare
facilities to keep up with demand, the daycares here in the New
York city area also reduced their hours due to COVID, and even
now have not increased them back to prepandemic hours. I'm
not sure what the reason is. For example, the daycare I sent
Sophia to had posted hours of 6:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. during
prepandemic days and now its hours are 7:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
With the reduced daycare hours, it is also necessary to have a
back-up care plan in place for the days when we need to work
late or due to our child being sick or the daycare being closed.
We have had to deal with a lot of juggling over the past two
years, due to either our daughter being out of daycare with a
cold or the classroom being shut down due to a COVID
DEEP FOUNDATIONS * JULY/AUG 2022 * 109

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July/August 2022

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