Mom Takes Her Daughter To Work Because She Didn't Have A Babysitter — She Shouldn't Be Praised For It
No one should have to bring their child to work for fear of losing out on their paycheck.
Dusan Petkovic / Shutterstock; Reddit A photo posted on Facebook by the media group HOT 104.1 recently went viral after being reposted to Reddit’s “r/antiwork” subreddit. People used it to call out the breakdown of societal safety nets that should prevent something like this from happening.
The photo was of a mother working at the McDonald’s cash register with her daughter in her arms, and the description for the post praised her. The r/antiwork subreddit, however, called it disgusting.
The mom taking her daughter to work shouldn’t be praised — she should be helped.
According to HOT 104.1, via Reddit, the description read, “I can’t make this up times are tough for everyone but I salute this queen. She didn’t have [a] babysitter but still came to work. It’s real out here y’all.”
Instead of praise, the title of the post on Reddit read, “This is disgusting.” And they have a point.
Photo: Reddit
This woman should not be praised; rather, she needs to be helped. No mother should have to bring their daughter to work with them because they lack access to childcare.
When you’re unable to make the choice of staying home to care for your daughter and instead bringing her to work with you because you don’t want to miss a day of being paid, there’s a massive societal breakdown occurring.
As some of the commenters put it, we’ve turned these kinds of stories into feel-good stories when we shouldn’t. While we can praise the mother for trying to make it work, she shouldn’t have to try and make it work to begin with, so the fault lies with the McDonald’s corporation and our government.
“We've turned these stories of ‘6-year-old sells lemonade to fund his mom's cancer treatment’ into feel-good BS instead of an indictment of a system that is either horribly broken or working exactly as intended,” they wrote.
According to Indeed, the average McDonald’s Crew Member makes around $12.67 an hour. This averages out to around $24,000 a year. According to a ChildCare Aware report from 2021, the average cost of childcare in the US is over $10,600.
Do you get the picture? Imagine living on a salary of $14,000 a year!
Childcare in the United States is far too expensive, and it’s only getting worse.
In the United States, there is a childcare crisis that is worsening, and the reason behind it is complex and based on several factors including affordability, access, and quality of care.
The childcare industry is “Labor-intensive and requires a high level of staffing, raising the financial burden on centers and increasing the costs of care,” reports Gianna Melillo of The Hill.
“The high costs of running the business can preclude child care centers from paying employees competitive wages," adds Melillo, “resulting in high turnover or staffing shortages, which stretch centers' financial resources.”
It’s like a never ending cycle. One where low-income families and caregivers — like our McDonald’s cashier — are impacted the most.
The rising costs of childcare is simply unaffordable and unsustainable, but our government would rather argue over things like sex education books or transgender people than focus on a nationwide crisis that will affect the economic future of this country in the long run.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.