Recently, The Cut published an article on the rise of parents opting out of daycare while still managing full time work. Understandably, it popped off (grab a cuppa and strap in for the comment section), and despite it being USA-specific, all the points really hit, because Australia, as we well know, is no poster-girl for childcare Narnia — and we’re not just talking about the revolving illnesses either.

Let’s look at the stats: Recent research from the Mitchell Institute found that 35% of the population live in what has been coined a “childcare desert”, where there are more families and children than there are centres., and a further 1.1million live in areas (remote or regional) where there is no childcare at all. Then there’s the staff shortages leading to capped class numbers, which makes landing a spot feel like a lottery win — except you lose money. And there stands the big pink elephant: the exorbitant cost, all which, according to the ABS, contribute to a decline in enrolling in preschool education. Somewhere along the way, daycare, the very thing that was meant to alleviate some of the pressure, just got… hard.

So The Cut article didn’t shock me. We’ve all been through Covid times, the homeschooling and no daycare that had to run simultaneously with full time work. We made it work — and we all survived. And I think as hard as it was, for some people it illuminated another path that they hadn’t thought was previously possible, where they could do paid work, full time, and also look after their kids. Throw in a cost-of-living crisis, and all the daycare roadblocks (illness, admin, logistics, emotions) and suddenly that path looked manageable.

The other reason the article didn’t shock me is because I’m living that life — and have been for five years. I’m a full-time mother, a business owner, and a freelance journalist. And, I’m one of a growing number of people in non-traditional work environments who are choosing to have the two jobs simultaneously. Yes, it’s patchwork, and it’s certainly not perfect, but our family is doing it nonetheless.

But, why?

To make it clear I’m not in anti-daycare. There is so much research to support the positive benefits of a daycare environment for social and emotional wellbeing of children and it’s enabled women to re-enter the workforce in a way that wasn’t previously an option for us. It’s the right choice for so many families in more traditional work environments but it just wasn’t the right choice for us in our unique situation. And that’s what it came down to for us: it was a choice, just like how I fed my sons or whether I chose to sleep train or not. But for some reason, of all the choices I’ve made in my parenting life, this is the one that is the most divisive, and and the one that compels people outside my household to voice their opinion the loudest. To the point that I rarely tell people because it’s usually met with shock or defensiveness, and I just don’t have the energy to feed judgement. And, if I happen to mention struggling with the work/parent juggle (like we all do), it’s usually met with “you should put your kids in daycare”, as if that will solve everything. Which, as any daycare parent would tell you, it does not, but there is a distinct lack of empathy because it was my decision to have my kids at home. Parenting and judgement about, well, everything sadly go hand in hand but this was something I was completely unprepared to defend.

About that unique situation: my partner, Phil and I have both been freelance since 2016. So by the time my first son arrived in 2018 we were well versed in the chaos and unpredictability of freelance life, and were also used to working flexibly. We also each own businesses, and while both of these things are a privilege and have a great deal many “pros” (flexibility, freedom of location) they also carry the weight of financial insecurity, no paid mat leave and plenty of other uncertainty.

The decision not to send our boys to daycare was partly practical but also a conscious choice for our family and how we wanted it to be. We had two parents at home working for themselves, so we were physically available, but also the cost of daycare was such that it would put more financial strain on our family to actually send them to daycare (because we’d then have to earn extra money to account for that). That was the practical part.

On the emotional side, we just wanted them home with us. We wanted to be able to travel with them and grow with them, and include them in our everyday life — the idea of this life was partly why we decided to have kids, and set ourselves up in a flexible working environment beforehand. At 37, I had children relatively late, and I was ready to be in that season with them because I knew I had only five years of that time (before school) and five years is a heartbeat. By the time my second son arrived, it was Covid, so while that had its own challenges, working with two kids at home was just normal life to us.

Annika, a creative director is in a similar situation to me, with two children at home, two parents at home with both a business and a freelance career. She explains that childcare was never really an option for her family either. “We always wanted to create a family structure where we got to spend as much time as possible with our children at a young age and that felt right for us,” she tells me. “Of course this was easier when we had one child and could work through her naps, but as she’s grown it’s just pushed us to look at things differently and change the structure of our work, rather than look externally. To be honest I think sending them to daycare would’ve been more of an outlay financially.” Chantelle, a photographer and mother-of-two, whose husband is also a photographer has chosen this path too: “I just didn’t see it as a need, because I was able to be at home with her, and I wanted to spend as much time as possible with her.”

The common thread between us all is that we’re all freelancers or business owners (often both) with two partners at home, something which, pre-covid may have seemed wild, but now errs on the side of normal.

Is it worth it?

For me, what Annika said really sums it up: yes it’s hard, but for us, it continues to be worth it. Is it easy? Hell no. But is parenting ever? Yes, I’d love more time to myself, yes I’d love not to work every night, but I’m also not willing to give up the time for that. So would I do it this way again? Absolutely. Like all seasons of parenting it’s so big when you’re in it, but then, it changes and your whole world shifts again.

My eldest, Yuki, started school this year, and my youngest has started sessional kinder for two days a week. Writing this, the newborn phase seems like a distant memory, but equally I feel really emotional that the time went so quickly and wish I had more time with them. At the same time, I’m also so excited by the prospect of writing more than a paragraph without someone coming to sit on my lap to “work” with me. I feel all those things at once, the push-pull, the exhaustion and fatigue laced with the joy and the love, because isn’t that motherhood? The books, and the articles can only take us so far, and the rest we have to work out for ourselves, which is exactly what we’re doing. There is no “right” way, just different ways of writing our own story of motherhood.