Organizing childcare as relative newcomers to an area has been really hard. We weren’t on any daycare waiting lists before our baby was born; we don’t have the local connections that can help you figure out how to separate the good facilities from bad.

Erin’s back to work, and I’ve been primary carer for a few months now. Honestly, were it not for the financial squeeze, I’d be very happy with this arrangement: the concept of paying money to someone for the privilege of spending less time with my child so I can work more feels inherently broken. Given the choice between spending time with my baby and spending more time at work, it’s a no-brainer: he’s only going to be nine months old once in his life and I don’t want to miss a single second. But, of course, it’s not really a choice. The mortgage won’t pay itself; food doesn’t magically appear on the table. You may be shocked to hear that a career in open source and the open web has not left me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams.

We had high hopes for a local Montessori school with an infant program. We love Montessori: a child-led teaching philosophy that emphasizes open-ended curiosity over rote learning and rigid compartmentalization. But Maria Montessori, the Italian physician and teacher who pioneered the technique, never trademarked the name, and it turns out that Montessori education in the United States has become a free-for-all. The infant program was resistant to us touring, but we insisted. I don’t think Maria had the broom closet sized room littered with broken plastic toys that we saw in mind; I’d like to think she might have frowned upon the infant carer who left the door open while she left the room, remaking that “it’s amazing, the babies never go through the doorway”. She might have at least raised an eyebrow at the nearby school run by the same family that was closed down because inspectors found over twenty safety infractions after a child died. Being a European, she might also have wondered why parents had to pay thousands of dollars a month for the privilege of leaving their baby there.

My point is: it’s a minefield. And, while we’re not independently wealthy, we’re still luckier than many. I have no idea how most parents do it.

Work-life balance takes on a whole other meaning when kids enter the picture. It seems like this is doubly true here in the States, where the work culture is markedly less humane. I have fond memories of my parents being around most of the time: first as students, which is why I grew up in Oxford and am stuck with this accent forever, and then as entrepreneurs running their own small pre-internet media business. There was always at least one parent around when we came home from school, and there was no talk of putting us in after-school programs so they could spend more time at work. School, come to that, started at a sane time, because the learning day wasn’t designed around parents needing to get to work at 8am. I was well-rested, well-fed, and would spend my afternoons drawing and playing. Sometimes we would walk over to the playground on Aristotle Lane (again, Oxford), or visit the commonly-held meadows beyond. All for free. We didn’t have a ton of money, but so what?

It feels so far away from this world of people asking for thousands of dollars a month to place our child in a murder corridor so that we can earn enough money to pay for it all. And this is years before we have to start worrying about the active shooter drills and performative busy-ness that seem to be hallmarks of modern American schooling.

I want to recreate that feeling of endless safety and open-ended creativity for our child. I also want it for us. I need that open, secure space to be creative for my own work and development, too, and I want the same for Erin. I want us both to have a strong relationship with our son for our own well-being as much as his.

There are a few things I know I can do. I’m permanently a remote worker for the next eighteen years at least. I can set strong boundaries around my workday. I can reserve time each week for my own creative endeavors so that I can show up refreshed and happy for his. I can learn to put my fucking phone downand be present. I can find ways to move my career towards making and selling things rather than advising. I can relax about my career ambitions and get serious about my lifestyle ambitions. I can take a step back and design a life around the way I want to live.

But there are some things that are harder to change. I can’t change the need for health insurance, the lack of support for parents with younger children, or the culture of performative productivity. My wonderful cousin Jonathan Neale remarked to me recently that a society that works for its inhabitants is actually rather easy to achieve if that’s what you set out to do; we are not doing that. We’re trying to produce more and more and more, using technology to go faster and faster and push that GDP number ever higher, without considering its effect on our quality of life. We’re pushing individual achievement over community health. We’re starting our kids off at school at 7:30am and leaving them in programs until after we get home from work so that we can produce. We’re forgetting to breathe, and in turn, teaching them that it’s not okay to breathe. This is a fucked-up thing to do to any human and it’s not something I wish for our son.

Not every country is like the United States, and we could move. Perhaps, eventually, we will. For now, though, it’s off the table, and we’re in the position of trying to figure out how to design a humane life in the midst of a culture that doesn’t seem to want to let us have one.