A Living Wage

I am the parent of a 15-year-old with autism. She is a joy and an enigma, my baby girl, and being her mom has changed me in incredible ways.

I wanted to make how I feel about my daughter absolutely clear because what I have to say today might seem a bit like I am complaining about the privilege of having her in my life. I’m not. My “beef” is with a system that makes providing for her, that makes creating a life that works specifically for her, almost impossible.

Today’s post was inspired by an email from my daughter’s school, explaining a new aftercare program available for parents unable to pick up their teens promptly at 3pm every day. In the email, I learned that this “service” would cost $15 to use (a kind of access fee, I guess), and then $10 for every 15 minutes the child spent in aftercare.

So let’s say I work full time, and would need my daughter to hang out after school until I can pick her up at 5:30 pm. The total cost of after care, per day, would be $100. For 2 ½ hours of care.

So if it’s not immediately obvious, let me explain why this is the most absurd number you’ve ever heard.

My daughter attends a private middle/high school for high-functioning autistic teens. This is only possible because she qualifies for a scholarship that (almost) covers her tuition. This tuition is more than I make in a year of teaching. Despite the high cost, the school does not provide lunches, or transportation, or before or after care. The school does not provide extra-curricular activities, sports, or an arts program. Or any kind of supplemental therapies, counseling, college prep, driver’s ed…you get the idea. All of those things still fall on the parents.

As a single mom and parent of a child with special needs, I can’t afford to be proud. I will ask for and accept any help I can get. I also can’t afford to take the most traditional route of full-time employment. Wages are too low, the hours too long. Right now, my income consists of the pittance I receive as a graduate student teacher and is supplemented with a soul-crushing amount of student loan debt, and that is how we’ve survived over the years. But that can’t go on forever. I need to get a full-time job.

But if I had a full-time job, my daughter couldn’t go to a private school because I wouldn’t be able to drive her there and back every day. She also wouldn’t qualify for her scholarship program. She’d be kicked off state health coverage designed for special needs kids. My other kids would lose certain benefits that being “poor” qualifies them for, as well. Most employers don’t offer benefits, or if they do, they are expensive and don’t cover many of the basic services that special needs kids require.

I’ve crunched the numbers, and working full time is a sure-fire road to disaster. Within months, we’d be sunk, financially, personally, educationally.

This is one of the great ironies of my life. Getting a better job would actually make our lives worse. What kind of a system do we live in, in which such a thing is true?

A system that makes it possible for employers to pay their people less than a living wage. Sure, I could go get a retail job for $8.25 an hour, absenting myself from my children’s lives, and we’d still starve. So I’d need a second job, which means working 60-plus hours a week, and letting my children raise themselves, because there’s no affording child care on that amount. Who knows how good of a job they’d do with that. I mean, they’re kids, right? I’d miss everything about their lives that is important to them. No soccer, no karate, no film camp, no swimming. They would have to drop out of all sports and extra activities, because no one would be able to drive them. We’d be stuck with whatever public school provides transportation to our area, and my special needs child would be thrown into a system that is designed to punish her for who she is, rather than support her needs.

So here’s a crazy idea: let’s raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Would that solve every one of the problems I’ve mentioned above? No, it wouldn’t. But it would be a step in the right direction, and people like me can’t afford another step in the wrong one.

And there are a LOT of people like me. We are everywhere. We are staffing the restaurants that the more affluent frequent on the weekends. We are stocking the shelves in the stores where you shop. We are an army of independent service professionals, maintaining everything from your yards to your shiny SUVs. We are the teachers, the soldiers, the public service workers, the backbone and the beating heart of this country. And we are struggling to survive.

We invest in our communities, in our families, and in the future of this country every day, raising kids with a sense of values and responsibility, contributing to the economy, paying our taxes.

We deserve a system that invests in us, that rewards us for our hard work and service and guarantees a life free from reliance on public assistance. We deserve a system that protects us from the greed and opportunism that runs rampant in big business. We deserve a living wage.

Would making $15 an hour mean that I could afford $40-per-hour child care? No. That is still the most ridiculous number, and unfortunately all-too typical: charging so much for so little (these are high-functioning kids, remember) represents of the kind of exploitative price gouging that families struggling to provide for special needs kids experience every single day (don’t even get me started on the prescription medication racket).

What it would mean, however, is that I could afford rent AND groceries AND utilities, and pay for all of these things myself, without state assistance or going into debt. What it would mean, for someone like me, is self-reliance, and the profound re-configuration of a citizen-identity from one of dependence to that of an active contributor. A society filled with contributors, rather than dependents, is a society that has a real chance to thrive.

And that is what I want, for my daughter, for my neighbors, for myself. To thrive.