Rebbie Brassfield: With some creative thinking from Utah and the LDS Church, this is the place that could solve child care

Do you know what we really should be asking the women from “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”? WHERE WERE ALL YOUR CHILDREN?

I don’t mean, “Why aren’t you supposedly Mormon moms spending more time with your kids?” I simply, practically, would like to know — were all of your kids at a day care during filming and, if so, do you recommend it? Or do you use a nanny, and, if so, does he or she have a sibling I could hire?

Forget the cameras and producers and Hulu money – what made the phenomenon of this show possible was a massive child care effort, and likely eight migraines in its wake.

This same migraine caused me to recently take a “career pause” — despite having as ideal a job arrangement a working mom could hope for. I was doing creatively fulfilling work as a long-term contract employee with an employer who supported me working flexible hours so that I could spend time with my kids. And yet the stress of managing child care was still too much.

This feels wrong to me as a Utahn, the state that just loves to brag about how quick we were to give women the vote. I genuinely believe Utah is in a position to fix The Child Care Issue, but first I’m going to complain about it.

Stereotypically speaking, Utah is full of women driving minivans and largely SAHM-ing. Some of us grew up thinking, “maybe I’ll be edgy and have a career” but then the cost of groceries jumped a million percent and now we all have to work, #GirlBoss or not. We must work, and we have too many kids to do it without help, and so what’s our next step? I’ll tell you.

The search begins

It’s online dating with 18- to 24-year-old girls named Breckstryn. You steal precious moments between snacks and playgroup and light-saber battles to message all the Breckstryns who have responded to your job posting and are asking less than $30 per hour. You finally set up a call with your favorite, during which you hit it off and think she’s the one. You offer her the position, and then she ghosts you, which feels more humiliating than it should. You spend the next few days overanalyzing your profile, trying to figure out where you went wrong, before healing enough to get back in the game.

So far I have pressed on because the few excellent nannies we’ve had give me just enough hope to believe there’s another one out there. But I have also hired a nanny who quit before she started. I’ve been on a phone interview with one who said, “Can you hear me OK? I’m in the bath so there might be an echo.” It was 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, and I was so jealous of her freedom to take to the tub on a Tuesday afternoon that she was immediately dead to me.

I should pause this rant to say that, of course, the nannies are not the only difficult part of this equation. I belong to several child care groups on Facebook (a platform I would love to abandon if not for these groups), and they have given me reasons to reflect on whether I, in fact, am the problem.

You’ll see posts like (I’m barely exaggerating): “We’re looking for a top-notch nanny with a graduate degree to spend organized, educational days with our two precious littles (3 and 18 months). You must cook from scratch, have experience giving CPR to an actively choking human, and own a minivan of your own. We are offering $7.50 an hour. Don’t bother applying if you didn’t finish college.”

It’s rough out there for all parties, which might be why several women I know skip the nanny search altogether and work during nights and naps. I salute these women and would email all their bosses to demand they get double pay — if only I had 10 spare minutes.

Now, let’s talk solutions, brought to you by a person with zero expertise on any of these issues.

Child care internships

Utah has an abundance of children, but it also has an abundance of students. Why not match this supply and demand to create a for-credit-and-maybe-also-pay internship? Parenting is such a demanding vocation to jump into with no training, and it would dignify our work by offering it as education. Maybe some students don’t want kids because of climate change. Maybe others want to major in home studies because all they want is to become a mother. Either of these parties stands to benefit from some actual experience. Have I given a single thought to the logistics? I have not. But I love the concept of helping young people pay their way through school in a way that so cyclically gives back to their community.

Convert Latter-day Saint chapels into day cares

They’re on seemingly every other block in Utah, and for most of the week sit empty. It’s not exactly a novel notion, but what if The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints started a pilot program in which its meetinghouses moonlight as day cares? Think of the resources already in place: closets of toys, a gym, a piano, plus pews for hide-and-seek. Women who need work could apply to run them, and women who need child care could hire them. They would have to be nondenominational, and can you imagine if they helped fill in the gaps between neighbors who attend church and don’t? If you’re sweating about the logistics, I remind you that I’m just the ideas person.

Create reentry programs for women with career gaps

I submit that nothing prepares a person more for the workforce than parenting. Think of all the soft skills you gain as caregiver: time management, problem-solving, resilience, creativity and crisis management, not to mention the annihilation of ego. What if all the tech bros in Silicon Slopes pioneered returnships in addition to internships? What if we normalized having “stay-at-home mom” on resumes?

People have their eyes on Utah more than ever, thanks to our MomTok friends. Let’s embrace our stereotype as the state with hordes of children and make something of it. Let’s give them something to talk about other than soda and swinging.

Rebbie Brassfield is a writer and creative director in the advertising industry. She lives in Saratoga Springs with her two young kids, where she spends most of her time picking things up. You can find her overanalyzing at @MormonsInMedia on Instagram, or see more of her work and writing at www.RebbieBrassfield.com.