Hi, I'm Corey Turner. I'm Ania Kaminets and this is NPR's Life Kit.

So here we are. We're four months into the pandemic and we're working. Most of us,

vast majority of us have to work. We need somebody safe for our kids to be. We would love for them

to be using their time well, to be learning, to be interacting with other kids, with other responsible

adults obviously. And at the same time, you know, a lot of our schools are going to be remote only

in the fall. So we're all trying to figure out what do we do now? Yeah, it's really tricky and

there's no one rushing in with a bunch of cash apparently to solve all these problems.

What we can offer in this episode is a way to think through your needs and your kids needs

and hopefully come up with your best possible options.

We have a childcare crisis in the US and it precedes this virus. This is old news for

millions of Americans. The virus makes it even worse and it's important to take stock of what more

you're going to need with schools likely closed, at least intermittently for months to come.

Like how many hours do you need in your day to get stuff done? Do you think you can handle

kids at home full time or kids at home part time on your own with your partner is an adult in

your family going to have to step back from work? Yeah, and is that automatically mom or have you

actually had a conversation about it? You know, I want to point out for women for a second that

those of us who take time out for caregiving a lot of times we just calculate, you know,

what we're earning versus what it costs for childcare. But it's not just your salary for this month

or next month or this year or next year. It's also advancement, right? So stopping out of work can

have lifelong consequences for your earning and wealth and career. It really is an investment.

And I think that's something to think about when families are doing this kind of back of the envelope

calculation. There are also a bunch of other factors that are worth considering now that I think

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