Low-income essential workers who needed childcare help were left out
Research findings emerging from 2020 indicate that “almost one million children (974,000) below the age of six have no other adult caregiver in the household except a working parent”.
In reality, and looking back over the past eight months, the number of children affected by crèche and school closures – in cases where the caregiver was employed – is likely to be much greater when we also consider young children in Grades R, 1, 2 and so on.
The debate about the closure of school and pre-primary facilities centred on the impact on children. The study’s authors said “hundreds of thousands of these children would be left home alone in households without an adult caretaker if their employed caregiver was forced to return to work to earn an income and sustain her family”.
Attention was focused on the educational, health and safety needs of children when schools were closed and less on how mothers, as essential workers in low-income employment, managed caregiving over the past 10 months, especially when most crèches and schools were closed for longer periods.
Bongi, the 35-year-old mother of a sixyear-old girl, worked at a butchery during the lockdowns and school closures – butcheries were categorised as an essential business. As a single mother, she was in a predicament about where to leave her child – in Grade R in 2020 – while she was at work.
“Usually, she goes to school and after that she goes to aftercare. I come back from work at 5pm, collect her and we come home. That is the usual routine. But, during this time, I have had to stress and worry about where I send her during the day. The last thing I wanted to do was send her home to be with my parents (her grandparents), because they are old and do not have energy to look after a six-year-old and it is dangerous.”
Exposed to infection, at risk of increased stress and facing the added pressure of ensuring the safety of older family members, Bongi has had to make extremely difficult decisions. “But that is what I had to do … I had to send her to my parents ... I cannot even go [there] on my days off. Because of the work I do, I have gone to work every single day since the lockdown began … I would not live with myself if I went home and then maybe I have the virus and I give it to them.” Why was there no alternative for Bongi? In some countries, the state recognised the childcare needs of essential workers and kept open some childcare centres and schools. In others, activists and childcare organisations mobilised to support the childcare needs of low-income essential workers, or the state issued childcare payments to support alternative care solutions.
Almost a year into the pandemic, the childcare crisis is leaving mothers – who are essential workers in low-income employment – stressed, exhausted and less well off than they were before. The mothers are overwhelmingly black and live in areas the pandemic has hit the hardest.
Last week’s results of Wave 3 of the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) reminded us that roughly 3.4 million women (versus 1.7 million men) said that looking after children in June, when most schools and early childhood development (ECD) centres were closed, “prevented them from going to work or made work very difficult”.
The phrase “making work very difficult” is a gross understatement of the gendered and racialised struggles many low-paid essential workers have endured over the past year.
The NIDS-CRAM survey also showed that ECD attendance has not recovered to pre-lockdown levels and remains lower than in previous years.
Another mother, 32-year-old Angel, is a cashier at a supermarket in Mandeni. She has three children aged one, three and seven and, like Bongi, has also been extremely worried about childcare over the past few months. She heard that a woman was running a childcare service from her garage for working mothers in the area.
“She is helping all the mothers in this area,” said Angel, “because some of us really have nowhere to leave our children. I will not lie – I am scared that my children may get it [Covid-19] from being with other children and being at the garage. But they could also get it from me … I am a cashier. I come across so many people … I handle money. Sure, I take the measures, but you can never know for sure.”
The lack of attention given to alternative childcare solutions during the pandemic, especially for low-paid essential workers, demonstrates the state’s failure to recognise care work as essential work.
The temporary increase in the child support grant barely covered the cost of food.
The latest NIDS-CRAM findings indicate that hunger and food insecurity have worsened. Top-ups to the social grants were phased out from November 2020, and in any case did not cover extra childcare costs for low-income essential workers when schools and crèches were closed.
We support the calls for more support for caregivers through an increase in the child support grant to R585 per month, and we support the calls to remove the conditions of eligibility for the social relief distress grant that deny caregivers access to this grant.
In his recent State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa applauded the courage of “the essential worker, the carer and all those on the frontline who have kept our country safe, our people fed and our economy going”. He failed to see that the essential worker is also a caregiver, and when she is providing essential work she is also paying for someone else to provide essential work to care for her children.
This is a cost that is highly gendered and felt most by women in low-income employment. The economic empowerment of women referred to by the president in his address starts with recognising the true cost of such everyday “essential care work”.
The childcare crisis is leaving mothers stressed, exhausted and less well off than they were before
Nonzuzo Mbokazi is a recent doctoral graduate and Elena Moore is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town.