 | | Josefina Lopez painting with children at Ohana Family Child Care.Virginia Lozano for The New York Times |
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"We are the essential to the essential." |
— Belen Lopez, the owner of Ohana Family Child Care in Vista, Calif. |
In Her Words is highlighting the stories of child care providers from across the United States. You can read the full series here. |
One day last April, Belen Lopez woke up at 2 a.m. to drive to the nearest Costco. |
She needed to stock up on toilet paper, bread and fruit, and she knew the lines outside the store got long very quickly. She also wanted to get in during the allocated essential worker shopping hours because later in the day, most things were out of stock. |
They didn't let her in. "I wasn't considered an essential employee," Ms. Lopez, 44, recalled. "I argued; I spoke to the managers and the supervisors and still, I had to wait until 10 a.m." |
Those items she wanted to buy were essential for Ms. Lopez's business — she runs a child-care center out of her home called Ohana Family Child Care. And she needed food for the children she was looking after, including one whose parents both worked as doctors at a hospital and a Covid ward. She had even carried her child-care license with her to show the Costco workers that she was shopping for work, not for herself. |
"I've always said we are the essential to the essential. Without us, there's no nurses, there's no doctors, there's no infrastructure, because they need care for their children," she said. But that experience waiting outside Costco opened her eyes to the fact that even in a crisis, others don't see her that way. |
 | | Posters in English and Spanish telling children to wash their hands at Ohana Family Daycare.Virginia Lozano for The New York Times |
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"I'm not a babysitter; I don't sit at home, watching TV while these children are just doing what they want," she said. "I do instructional work and I prepare a curriculum. I go to school, I take trainings, I take coaching, I work with the San Diego county of education so that I can prepare my children for preschool." |
Before the pandemic, Ms. Lopez looked after 10 children of all ages, from a 2-month-old to an 8-year-old who would spend afternoons with her after school. One toddler spent several nights at her place in 2019 when his mother went into labor to give birth to his baby sister. All her children call her husband "papa." |
An analysis by the Department of Education found that, in 2019, about 18 percent of the children across the country enrolled in some kind of day care arrangement were cared for in residential-based centers, like Ms. Lopez's. While that seems like a small slice of the industry, it is a crucial segment that provides a safe space for parents who work nontraditional hours, are in low-income jobs or live in rural communities, according to the National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance. |
Ms. Lopez used to charge up to $250 per week for children aged zero to 2. She had three other women on her payroll — a cleaner and two assistants — and, because she didn't have to rent a space, used to make a healthy profit of about $8,500 a month. |
Now, a year into the pandemic, she has burned through her savings to stay afloat and is about two months away from shutting down her child-care center permanently. |
At the outset of the pandemic, seven families pulled their children out of Ms. Lopez's center, leaving her with just three — an 18-month-old and two 3-year-olds. Most of her client families had lost their jobs and could no longer afford to pay for child care. But closing down on the three other children, when their parents needed her most, was not an option. "I can't shut my doors on them. They're a part of me as much as I'm a part of them," she said. "I don't see it just as a paycheck." |
So to keep things running, she applied for a P.P.P. loan and a grant from the Small Businesses Administration. She got a total of $3,800, which helped her cover payroll through April. Then she had to let go of her staff and do everything herself. |
 | | Belen Lopez walks outside with her students to check on trees that they planted at Ohana Family Daycare in Vista, Calif.Virginia Lozano for The New York Times |
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Every day since, she has been waking up at 4 a.m. to prepare breakfast and lunch for the children, and lay out her teaching plan before the three children arrive at around 7.30 a.m. After a packed day of activities — exercise, story time, play time, snack time, nap time — their parents start picking them up at 5 p.m. Then Ms. Lopez goes through and disinfects everything in her house to reset for the next day. |
In August, she asked her daughter, Josefina, 21, who plans to attend college later this year, to help out every now and then. |
The fees that Ms. Lopez charges for those three full-time children amount to just over $1,800 a month. In September, when some schools opened back up, she took in one more 6-year-old child on a part-time basis — dropping him off at school and picking him up — and receives about $132 a week in government subsidies to look after him. |
Food alone for the three full-time children costs her up to $600 a month. Extra sanitizing equipment and utilities more or less eat up whatever is left. She had applied for a second P.P.P. loan and was denied. She used to be able to give herself a paycheck of $2,300 a month, but can no longer afford to do that. |
"It's getting to the point where I'm considering, should I just start looking for another part-time job?" |
Here are three articles from The Times you may have missed. |
 | | Claudia Spellmant, a transgender activist, fled Honduras in 2013 and now lives in New York City.Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times |
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- "Trans women live their lives in a vortex of discrimination and violence." Outraged by a long-ignored slaying in Honduras, lawyers are urging a human rights court in Central America to force governments to better protect transgender people. [Read the story]
- "Nobody ever told me this, my mother never told me this." Why is perimenopause still such a mystery? Our parenting columnist digs in. [Read the story]
- "It made me deeply uneasy." Ruth Franklin looks at the downsides of men writing about men — especially in the world of literary biography, in which literary agents and executors dole out access to prestigious writers or their papers based on opaque criteria. [Read the guest essay]
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In Her Words is written by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Judith Levitt. |
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