Convo #1: Molly Prentiss

On communes, co-ops and creative careers

Molly Prentiss is a writer and mother living in upstate, New York. She writes books, exquisite Instagram captions and runs a small shop with her husband. Her second book Old Flame is due out in April, and her second child in June.

Who are you other than a mom? What do you do for work, what do you do for pleasure? 

In addition to being a mom to Valentine (4) and another tiny human who is due in June, I am also a writer (of novels, essays, rants, haikus, etc), a freelance copywriter (for brands and businesses who want help making things sound good), and shop owner (of a tiny shop in the Hudson Valley called Tobacco Silva, which sells colorful handmade and found treasures, many by my husband, Forrest Lewinger, who has the ceramics brand Workaday Handmade). For business and pleasure I read lots of books, watch lots of movies and television, and search for beautiful things at flea markets, estate sales, thrift stores, and on Etsy. I love to cook, walk around big cities aimlessly, draw or write in my notebook, plant things, and rapid fire text with my friends. My greatest pleasure is sitting at a candlelit table with one or more friends or loved ones eating a never-ending delicious meal and drinking copious small cups of wine.

Do you currently have regular childcare?

My 4-year-old goes to a Montessori preschool from 9am-3:15pm. Three days a week, she stays for aftercare, which ends at 4:30pm. This amount of childcare (which is much less than I would need to work a full time job) feels utterly luxurious after years of cobbling together early childcare, which ranged from part time nanny shares to spotty help from my sister in law to regular old drop off daycare (part time). I have learned to work very quickly in my allotted childcare times, so as to compensate. What works about a preschool program is the consistency factor — barring illness or snow days, we have reliable care during certain hours, that doesn't disappear if a caregiver can't make it. But I find it hard to end my work day in what is considered by normal capitalist standards in the middle of the day in order to pick up my child — there is a fundamental rub here, when the school day ends at 3 and much of the world is expected to work until 6 or later. What's up with that?!

What child care model did you grow up with?

I grew up in a very interesting situation, well outside the "norm". I was raised in community — my parents purchased land with multiple other families in the 1970s, and created a kind of commune. Each family has their own house on the 10-acre property, and there is a shared main house, where there is a communal (restaurant style) kitchen. The group, which now consists of 3 core families, has dinner together every night; each adult member is responsible for one night of cooking a week. This arrangement meant that there was pretty much always available "childcare" — one or more of the adults could watch all of the kids at any given time, or pick us up from school. That freed up the rest of the parents to work or tend to other matters. The kids always had playmates. In terms of childcare, it remains the ideal in my mind. No one paid for childcare, the parents were not completely burned out, and the kids grew up with multiple adult influences and caretakers. My husband and I talk all the time about how we can recreate something like this, but haven't gotten there yet. Maybe someday we will move back to the community where I grew up in California, but for now we're going at it ourselves in upstate NY.

Have you looked to other mothers when making these decisions? Who?

Almost every family I know is constantly trying to puzzle together the various factors of childcare, career, etc. It is a systemic, societal issue that can rarely be "solved" unless there is a lot of money and/or compromise involved. The mothers I know who are thriving often have family help — a grandmother who lives nearby, for example. This model seems to be the most sustainable, as well as mutually beneficial for all parties: cost effective for the families, and fulfilling for the grandparent/caregiver.

I look to my own mother for inspiration on how to maintain a creative career (she is a radio producer and storyteller), while also dedicating herself to her family and children. Granted she had help from her community in a way I do not, but she paved the way for a type of decision making that has stayed with me: I have learned from her that I must follow my creative passions to their ends in order to be fulfilled, and that that fulfillment will make me a better mother and an inspiration to my own daughters down the line.

What would your ideal work & childcare arrangement look like?

My ideal arrangement would be a hybrid model that included both free childcare options and subsidies for parents who are caring for their children. For example, here is an ideal day: Drop my children off at a COMPLETELY FREE, vetted daycare from 9am-2pm, during which time I could work and/or take care of household tasks. Once my husband or I picked them up for school, we'd punch a timecard that meant we were on the clock, and we'd get paid for our childcare work by the government for the rest of the "work day", from 2pm-6pm. This way, whoever was doing the childcare would not be "losing" work hours (when in fact caring for children is a massive amount of real work), and the anxiety of money would be unraveled from the availability and accessibility of childcare. This would also ensure that small children would have a healthy and happy balance between a social school day and time with their parents. If and when we needed to work more hours than this allowed, we could hire part time caregivers (whose salaries would also be subsidized to ensure they were making a great living wage) to help on a part time basis.

Another ideal arrangement would be a co-op model, where multiple families join forces to create a childcare/work model that works for everyone. This might entail having an office for freelancers to work, while one of the parents watched a group of children, and then they'd trade off at a certain point. Of course, a model like this — essentially the pooling of resources — is only necessary when those resources aren't readily available in the first place...so let's go ahead and subsidize the shit out of early childcare, shall we?

What's one thing you'd definitely get done if you had just one more hour of care?

I would move my body every day, and maybe even hang out with my husband sometimes! Because I necessarily prioritize work so much when we have childcare, these things are first to fall to the wayside.