By Rebecca Wolford, co-founder, Creative Habitat
I’ve had the distinct privilege of being a mom for six years and the distinct struggle of finding child care for seven. What I initially thought was my unique challenge to access quality, affordable and flexible child care, I now realize is one of the greatest challenges many women will face.
While working full time and expecting my first child, I spent my lunch breaks searching for different child care options that would allow me to maintain my career while also ensuring my child was in a safe, secure and enriching environment. I reached out to multiple providers only to find my name and the birthdate of my unborn child added to yet another waitlist. As my search deepened, I began to weigh the cost of my decisions both financially and personally. Was the expense and headache of trying to find child care even worth it? Would I regret missing my child’s formative years? Would my career growth provide the income growth I needed to balance my new child care costs or would I need to circumvent another way to make it all work out? Suddenly, no matter how I sliced it, no option was adding up. I went on maternity leave not knowing if I would return.
After my precious son was born, my priorities became clear. I decided I did not want to miss his formative years, and yet I also did not want to put my career on hold. I reached out to my employer to begin negotiating a flexible work schedule while still seeking a flexible child care option. Unfortunately most child care options were full-time and I needed part-time. Ultimately, it didn’t matter because his spot on the waitlists was still buried among other nameless birthdates left by other desperate parents trying to find a way to make ends meet.
Fast-forward a year. I eventually settled on a home day care and returned to work with a flexible schedule that allowed me to continue to grow in my career and even receive a promotion. It seemed I had finally navigated my way to the work-life balance I had worked so hard to achieve … and then we decided to grow our family. Early in my second pregnancy, the writing was on the wall. Even with my promotion, the financial and emotional cost of putting both kids in child care was ultimately not worth the strain on our family. Something had to give, and that something was my job.
Within months of my daughter’s birth, we made the move from Southern California to Des Moines and I was determined to create a new path forward for our family. I was eager to get involved in the community and to serve other moms who had faced the same child care struggles I had. I wanted to create a quality, affordable and flexible child care option for working moms. After doing market research, I quickly learned about the child care gap facing Iowa where demand far outweighed supply. I was shocked to learn how many Iowa communities were child care deserts where only 50% of the need was being met. Fortunately, there were multiple statewide initiatives to grow and develop the child care industry, which I saw as an opportunity to innovate and serve a need I had personally experienced.
In March 2018, after many community interviews, brainstorming sessions and viability studies, I started Creative Habitat, a nonprofit coworking and child care program designed to serve women business owners and remote workers with preschool-age children. This solution was designed as a co-op model to help other moms support one another while also partnering with community spaces to offer our programs and services. Creative Habitat was designed to “bring the village back” one community at a time.
As with any startup, building trust and rapport in the community is key, especially when children are involved. We launched our first pilot program in summer of 2018 with a group of women business owners who were committed to serving as a village of support for one another. They gathered weekly to support each other in business development and child care. Each week, they proved how a nonconventional child care solution can succeed. This community doubled in size the following summer, including the return of all of the families who participated in the pilot program.
This initial success was encouraging and inspired me to keep working through some of the challenges we were facing including lack of funding. While the initial pilot and subsequent program were self-sustaining, it became apparent that growing this vision to meet the greater need would require more community buy-in and grant support. Despite efforts to apply for grants, we received initial feedback requesting more data to prove the model.
We knew with more time to scale the success we had already witnessed we would be able to confidently prove the value of coworking and child care and gain necessary funding to help bridge the gap to meet the need for a flexible child care solution in Central Iowa and beyond. In the fall of 2019 the Creative Habitat board of directors started preparing for a scaled relaunch in early 2020, which sadly never happened.
It’s no secret both the coworking and child care industries have been greatly affected by the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article describing the rapid rise and now decline of coworking spaces due to pricey leases they can no longer sustain with many prior patrons choosing to work from home instead. The child care industry has been hit even harder and devastated by the pandemic. According to Time, many child care centers have shuttered completely while 86% of operating child care providers now serve fewer children than before the pandemic, resulting in less revenue. Furthermore, 70% of these providers have incurred substantial new operating costs to maintain health and safety standards, according to a survey from the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Despite efforts to “pivot” in this digital world, child care is and always will be a hands-on, face-to-face endeavor. Parents have found ways to cope while working from home with kids, yet the need and desire for quality, affordable and flexible child care is greater than ever before. As we emerge in our post-pandemic world, I can’t help but wonder, will there be a village of support waiting for our families on the other end? Will the community embrace innovative child care solutions to meet the need? As a working mom who has sought innovative ways to create work-life balance and find a reasonable solution to help solve the great child care dilemma, it is my sincere hope new solutions will be embraced so new moms don’t have to face old barriers.
Rebecca Wolford is a Gallup-certified strengths coach and co-founder of Creative Habitat, a local nonprofit designed to provide a nurturing environment for families to work, play and grow in a community through coworking and child care and strengths-based development programming and services. She can be contacted at rwolford@creativehabitat.org.
