Kathmandu, Feb. 3: With schools and childcare centres across the country closed because of the latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, working parents are in a tough situation. Parents, especially those living outside of the supportive sphere of joint families, are having to make a difficult decision – stay home and look after their wards or earn a living at the cost of their kids’ care.

“Only a few offices have introduced work from home provisions this time so we have to leave home to work and earn,” said Usha Limbu, mother of a nine-year-old boy. “But if we (the parents) leave then our children will be alone at home.”
It was quite the question Limbu, a resident of Samakhushi, Kathmandu, was facing. Fortunately, though, she was not the only one facing it. Many of her friends and neighbours were also beset with the same problem.
“So, we put our minds together and devised a you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours system,” she said.

Limbu and her husband have partnered with nine other couples from their neighbourhood to form what she calls a “parental childcare network.” It sounds fancy but the concept is quite simple.
Each couple takes turns watching all the other couples’ children. “This way, one couple need only miss office once or twice a month; which gets covered by our workplaces’ paid leave provisions, and our kids also get the care they need,” she said.

It was Limbu’s neighbour and sister-in-law Sixita Adhikari that came up with the idea. Talking to The Rising Nepal by phone, Adhikari said she saw a YouTube video about parents in Minneapolis, United States of America, doing something similar and shared it with Limbu who then proposed the idea to her friends.

Limbu and her peers are not the only ones to adopt the “childcare network.” Bidur Shrestha, who lives in Tikathali, Lalitpur, also watched the same video Adhikari watched around a month ago and thought of implementing it for his benefit.
“All the parents of the kids who go to the same pre-school as my three-year-old daughter have a Viber group,” he explained. “I shared the video in that group and recommended we set up a similar network and everyone agreed.”

Now, Shrestha and 23 other couples look after each other’s pre-schoolers on designated days. “This way, we can work all day at peace knowing that our kids are in safe hands,” he said.
The children are also happy with the system, Prakash Maskey, a parent in Shrestha’s group, said. “They get to be with their friends and play around instead of staying at home alone,” he said. “We also give them educational exercises and make sure they are up to date with their schoolwork.”

Limbu said this “childcare network” allowed working parents to have their cake and eat it too and suggested other people with young children to consider adopting it.