Tamara Edwards: “Having a child should not be something you’re penalized for”

Story By: Bruce Poinsette

Illustration By: Paola De La Cruz

This story is made possible by a grant from the Oregon Community Foundation.

Tamara Edwards, like many single mothers, sits in a frustrating middle ground when it comes to childcare. She makes too much money to qualify for childcare assistance from the state, yet, if she were paying out of pocket to put her 3 year old in a traditional facility, she wouldn’t be able to afford food. If her son’s grandmother hadn’t recently started a small daycare from her home, Edwards doesn’t know what she would do.

“I would have no childcare if it weren’t for her,” she says.

Even with this daycare service, Edwards runs into a lot of challenges. The first is transportation. She works downtown and her son’s grandmother asks that parents drop off their children by 8 am and pick them up at 5 pm. Since Edwards’ office doesn’t provide parking, she has to use public transportation, which means she doesn’t usually get to work until 9 am and she has to leave at 4 pm. She has to make up hours either at night or on the weekends. Her son’s father looks after him 2 nights a week and every other weekend, which allows Edwards to work some full days.

Sickness can be a major disrupter because there is only one person running the daycare. Likewise, when Edwards’ son gets sick, she has no choice but to stay home. She has lost 3 weeks of work so far this year and had to delay starting her current job because her son got sick with COVID.

“It’s not a perfect system but I think I’m one of the lucky ones that has that help,” says Edwards.

She emphasizes that the costs add up quickly. This includes daycare, which she says is about $1200 a month, groceries, which are about $600 a month, and public transportation. 

Edwards often bikes to work to save money, with the added benefit that it builds exercise into her schedule. Time is one of the many hidden costs she faces. This can also include preparing food before she sends her son off to daycare, which can look like slicing and sectioning off different meals based on time of day.

Even researching daycares proved to be a major hidden cost. Prior to moving to Oregon, Edwards and her son’s father lived in Hawaii and put their son on a waitlist for one daycare facility when he turned 6 months old. The parents still haven’t heard back from that facility.

Trying to navigate COVID has been an ongoing and evolving obstacle. In the beginning, it meant Edwards had to work from home in her previous career doing storytelling and databasing for houseless community advocacy. Having to balance that work with keeping her son engaged in activities that countered the effects of pandemic isolation was an immense challenge.

“I was barely sleeping,” says Edwards. “I was getting 5 hours of sleep a night, if that, because I had to work when he would go to bed.”

Since changing careers and going back to onsite work, COVID and illness in general now present a looming roadblock because any individual in her son’s childcare network can throw off the whole system.

For what it’s worth, Edwards has had to get used to operating without extensive, readily available family support. She grew up in an immigrant family in the UK and moved to Florida when she was young. There, her immediate family relied on each other. However, they did have some relief because Edwards’ grandparents were able to visit periodically for 6 months at a time and she had some cousins who could help look after her. 

While she says she’s lucky to have her son’s grandmother’s daycare, she still emphasizes that her Oregon childcare network is incredibly thin compared to the already sparse circumstances in which she grew up. These experiences, however, help inform Edwards’ vision for an equitable childcare system.

First and foremost, she believes universal free childcare should be the standard. She also thinks free bus passes should be available for single mothers and that maternity leave should be extended to at least a year, such as in the UK.

“People don’t just start going to work when their kids are 5,” says Edwards. “They have to work the whole time. I was working since my son was 2 weeks old. I didn’t even have a maternity leave. I was working throughout the pregnancy. I had two weeks off because I had a C-section and I couldn’t walk.”

To take it a step further, she proposes one year of maternity leave where the first 6 months come with full income reimbursement and the second 6 months include 75% income reimbursement.

“I know that’s hard to do but it’s being done in other places,” says Edwards. “Is our current system any better? People are dying in our current system.”

She also thinks Oregon needs to re-examine income limits for childcare assistance.

Ultimately, Edwards thinks policy makers need to approach childcare more holistically. Specifically, she thinks policies should prioritize the most vulnerable parents. Instead, right now, she sees policy makers targeting and pathologizing these people.

“Having a child should not be something you’re penalized for,” says Edwards. “There’s so many assumptions when people are looking at this type of legislation that they forget about the most vulnerable people that this could help.”