ALUMRISE

Dodging taxes has been in the news since the Daschle debacle.  Unfortunately, little missteps can hurt a big career.

The biggest misstep of course is a working family hiring help – or “Nannygate,” quoting a funny comment from a friend and colleague that I came across on Facebook the other day.

It’s common knowledge that despite “knowing better” many public officials do hire off-the-books household or childcare help and suffer the consequences when it comes time to take public office. So why do they do it? Surely they “know” better, right?

Let’s face it - Nannygate is the dirty little secret that many working families today could not survive without, whether or not they are public officials.

The math on child support and working families decrees that the trued-up cost of even average help can keep a productive contributor at home. In many cities, women must earn up to $15/hour (before taxes), simply to cover the cost of hourly help with family needs. Many bright and talented contributors decide it’s better to cease to work and stay home. If they find a more cost effective solution that creates some support and residual income – such as a fixed-price childcare helper - many take it and worry later about any consequences.

In our society today, mothers and fathers alike are forced to develop their own creative solutions to step the gap created between longer commuting and work day schedules and the shorter school day. These range from the “live-in” invisible housekeeper/nanny, to the paid or unpaid grandma or grandpa, to hiring some college kid to drive kids between school and afterschool programs to keep kids occupied until the family can get home. The horror of latchkey households and child predators has made it harder to allow families to send even older kids home alone after school.

So why can’t we find better solutions as a society and government to support our families and help keep the economy on track? ALUMRISE believes we must band together as a society to find better ways to support working families, either by improving childcare math and/or creating social systems to help such as better subsidized, safe, after-school care. (Let’s think about elder care, here, too).

We also believe that promoting natural, logical private sector solutions — such as creating opportunities that better tie to real family days and family lives, via more flexible arrangements — is a pure and noble goal to strive towards.

Companies also are wising up to this approach, based on a combination of skills shortages and cost needs and starting to realize the “ALUMRISER” is not a second-choice solution, but instead a viable and powerful flexible resource in a changing economic landscape.

If nothing at all is done, frankly, we’ll all cease wanting to aspire to goals such as Public Office and Becoming the Next President and instead be quite content with being the next victim of “Nannygate.” What a crying shame.

Tags: Aassia Haq, flexible workforce, founder/CEO, mothers, nannies/childcare