Intergenerational child care is not an option for everyone, which is why some parents need help from government.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Rosel Kim is a lawyer living in Toronto.
Last summer, I found myself in a position that’s become all too common in Canada: Despite signing up for daycare options early in my pregnancy, my maternity leave was winding down, and I still didn’t have child care lined up for my 11-month-old daughter.
Luckily, my partner and I were provided with a solution: my parents generously offered to take care of her. But I had my hesitations.
Growing up, my parents – especially my mom – fit the stereotype of the strict Asian immigrant parent that still endures today. My memories of my early years in Canada include arguments with them about sleepovers (not allowed) and my grades (rarely high enough). I worried that they’d be too strict or too cold with my daughter.
In the end, we took my parents up on their offer. But what surprised me was how they embraced taking care of my daughter: that is, with real tenderness.
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My daughter quickly formed a deep bond with them. Some of her first words were “halmi” and “halbi” – her version of halmoni and halabuhji, or grandmother and grandfather in Korean. My parents were attuned to – and even accommodated – her big toddler feelings, like when she got upset about dropping rice on the floor because she wanted to use the spoon all by herself. In effect, my mom and dad adopted “gentle parenting” – a style in which parents calmly meet children and their emotions where they are, and which I’m inundated by every time I open Instagram.
Meanwhile, I found myself struggling to be gentle with my daughter – and with myself. Every day felt like a new challenge as I had to adjust to her constant changes and tackle endless meals and appointments. I simply did not have time to learn all the things social media told me I had to know to be a “good parent” – and somehow, on top of that, I had to add work to the mix. Feeling out of control, I started projecting my stress in unhealthy ways – including by occasionally being short with my daughter. I had started off worried that my parents would be too harsh, and then found myself feeling like I was becoming them.
This was particularly disappointing to me because I was so familiar with the issues faced by working parents. One of the first cases I managed at a gender-equality organization was about the impact of caregiving on women workers. I knew how workplaces systematically devalued “female pattern employment” – that is, the way that many women have to work part-time because of their caregiving responsibilities. In many workplaces, the ideal worker was “unencumbered” – meaning, most often, a man who did not have such responsibilities and could therefore work full-time. And while many of today’s parents make more money than their parents did, the rapidly increasing cost of living and education means that many feel that they can’t ever provide adequately for their children.
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I understood all that before I became a parent. Yet here I was, struggling with the unhealthy expectations I had placed on myself to excel both at work and at home, and feeling disappointed when I fell short. Even I couldn’t understand just how crushing the caregiving burden was, until I had to do it myself.
This is where parents need help from government. The Canada-Wide Early Learning Childcare (CWELCC) program has significantly eased the economic burden for parents – daycare rates for infants in Toronto went from about $100 per day to about $22 – but the uncertain future of CWELCC beyond 2026, combined with the soaring cost of living, is leaving many families stressed and stretched. Further, a promise to add 250,000 child care spots across the country by next year appears to be far from achieving its goal.
I am fortunate that my parents could give us the gift of intergenerational child care – and that their gift has brought us closer together, too. The intimacy that grows from sharing meals and updates about my daughter every day has also led us to share more openly about ourselves. I now have a new appreciation for the struggles my mother went through as a working mom in South Korea – a very unusual thing to be, in the 1980s – and as a new immigrant parent who didn’t have familial help. Watching my mom and dad become loving, generous grandparents has been an important reminder to me that we are all capable of evolving; they’ve inspired me by showing what is possible when you’re allowed to be your full self while raising a child.
But intergenerational child care is not an option for everyone. And of course, it’s different for retirees without professional commitments. And they’re no longer facing the hardships of being new immigrants. They have the freedom to pursue caregiving with eagerness and an abundance mindset.
Today’s parents are expected to be everything, everywhere, all at once, a burden that fails to account for systemic shortcomings. We need to find a way to structurally support more women and gender-diverse workers to be their full selves – because right now, it remains too difficult to be a gentle parent in a society that does not treat parents gently.
