Guess what word doesn’t appear in Vogue’s recent 1,000-word story on how Hilaria Baldwin takes care of her seven kids?
“Nanny.”
Or “babysitter.” Or “childcare.”
The story (accompanied by a nine-photo Instagram post that is also childcare-free) is one of those hour-by-hour summaries of a person’s day, starting with Baldwin waking up at 5 a.m. to head out for a run, and then ending at 8:30 p.m. with all the kids tucked into bed.
Baldwin and her husband, actor Alec Baldwin, have seven children together, from toddler age to 11 years old. But nowhere does the story mention all the household help the couple no doubt employs.
This isn’t just tone-deaf. It’s a giant missed opportunity.
Sure, for decades, women celebrities—and the media that covered them—collaborated to keep helpers out of the frame. There was pressure to perpetuate an idealized version of working motherhood, where women somehow do it all.
Admitting you had help was somehow shameful. Not to mention celebrity fathers were never asked about “how they manage it all”—just as male executives rarely are (although Fast Company has endeavored to change that).
National attention for the childcare crisis
But we’ve turned a corner. Childcare is finally part of the national conversation. For all working parents (not just moms).
Not just because of the “question heard ’round the world” that Reshma Saujani posed to Donald Trump at the New York Economic Club last month. Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First, made childcare a hot topic in the presidential race when she asked the Republican contender about his plans. (The issue also notably came up in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.)
All those Zooms during the pandemic pulled back the curtain on home life. For the first time, it became broadly apparent how much working parents struggle to make everything work. That tension is now one of the reasons there’s so much resistance to mandatory return to office. Most parents simply can’t juggle two sets of full-time jobs without some kind of support.
For some families, that means childcare. But that’s an expensive proposition, even for those who have the money. A report by Care.com this year found that a third of families are dipping into their savings to cover the cost of help. Two-thirds of families are spending more than 20% of their income on these costs.
And even when parents can afford care, the supply of qualified caretakers is dipping as demand shoots up. “The imbalance of supply and demand . . . is now at its most extreme,” Care.com’s report said.
Workplace flexibility can offset some of this. Marissa Mayer’s own experience as CEO of Yahoo famously, though perhaps unintentionally, highlighted this point. After giving birth, she famously brought her infant into the office with her. The arrangement gave her the ability to tend to her work and her family simultaneously. Other parents want the same—just from home, not the office.
The need for flexibility
Much has been written about the shortsightedness of CEOs who demand a total return-to-office. Many observers note that these orders often come from older male leaders with no firsthand experience of what it means to juggle home and work.
Lack of flexibility is one of the reasons senior women leave their employers, according to research from McKinsey and LeanIn.org. But the simple inability to access affordable childcare keeps many talented workers from seeking employment in the first place. And just this year, the surgeon general declared that parents are experiencing unprecedented amounts of stress as they try to juggle competing demands.
The false ideal of “doing it all”
There’s another reason publications like Vogue should start bringing childcare out of the shadows. We need to change our ideas of what it means to have help. For too long, parents, especially mothers, have felt guilt about not being able to “do it all.” But it was always a false ideal.
Vogue has often been a leader on women’s issues. They could have set a new standard here by normalizing the idea of having childcare. By showing how incredibly necessary it is—how it enables parents to manage their many responsibilities.
The Baldwins are reportedly gearing up for a new TLC reality series next year. Let’s hope it showcases the help these stars have in managing their family. Instead of keeping childcare in the shadows, they should bring it out into the open. It’s the only way our ideas will change about how necessary and central parental support is.