This System Was Never Meant to Hold Us

I originally wrote this piece for the Liberatory Wellness Network blog, where it was first published on August 29, 2025. As that network has since sunset due to financial strain, I’m sharing it here as part of my ongoing effort to archive and steward my work.

Just days before giving birth to my second child on May 28, 2024, I was still navigating work that could not wait. I coached teachers, troubleshot assessments, and managed prodromal contractions while waiting for a broken elevator to finally be repaired. At a public school in Austin's eastern crescent, the elevator had been broken since at least August 2023. I began formally advocating for its repair in February 2024, though teachers and administrators had raised concerns long before I arrived. It wasn't fixed until August 2024 — nearly a year after it was first flagged, despite consistent advocacy throughout. That elevator became a metaphor. Support often arrives too late, if at all, and those most impacted are left to endure the consequences of systemic neglect and chronic underfunding.

When the elevator stays broken long enough, the extra burden becomes the job — even for those who cannot access the stairs.

When I became a teacher in 2010, I believed in the promise of equitable education—not only for students, but for the future of our families. I imagined a path where I could grow as an educator and raise children within a system grounded in care, community, and justice. But now, as a parent of two children under five, I see that vision slipping further away. For Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled, queer or LGBTQIA+, immigrant, and single parents, the system’s gaps are wider and the stakes higher.

Education is hard, and educators enter this work knowing that. The real burden is how caregivers are asked to give beyond what any human can sustain while serving their students, families, and communities. Schools depend on the invisible labor of educators who continue to show up even as the system refuses to hold us with care.

The Weight We Carry Together

This isn’t unique to education. Friends I know in private tech companies and nonprofit organizations have shared stories of taking their full parenting leave only to be quietly let go upon return. These experiences highlight a widespread pattern across industries: workers are encouraged to become parents but punished for doing so. Whether it’s losing access to benefits, being passed over for promotions, or facing subtle retaliation, the system undervalues the needs of parents and caregivers.

Coaching teachers while pregnant and raising young children as a queer, neurodivergent, disabled educator taught me one thing: staying present for myself and family while being a “committed” educator is nearly impossible.

When my first child was born, I took a significant pay cut to move into a more flexible role at a public university, largely for access to affordable childcare. Even then, the logistics were overwhelming: a single car between my partner and I, long days that began before dawn and stretched past 5 p.m., and constant juggling just to keep our family afloat. For many educators and caregivers, especially those without institutional flexibility, the options are even narrower.

I moved into a public education role that reflected my justice-oriented values and offered leadership I could trust. In the middle of that transition, I found out I was pregnant—and that it would be an extremely high-risk pregnancy—a reality that would test every part of my professional and personal life. Even then, securing basic accommodations, like access to a functioning elevator, remained a struggle. My doctor advised bed rest, but that was not possible. I could not stop working because I needed income, health insurance, and job security. At the time, my partner had also recently been laid off, so I was the sole financial supporter. Like so many others, I kept going even when it was not safe. Though my principal was understanding, it was still left to me to consult lawyers, send emails, gather documentation, and attend meetings—just to secure what should have been guaranteed protections. That elevator was finally repaired the summer after I gave birth. By then, it was too late for me, but it mattered for those who came after. That’s how systemic neglect works: forcing individuals to shoulder impossible risks in the hope of making the path slightly easier for the next person.

Seven weeks after giving birth, I returned to work during a critical accountability year at a school facing systemic inequities and resource gaps, in order to maintain our health insurance. Even with a supportive principal, requesting chestfeeding accommodations from HR felt like asking for special treatment rather than exercising a basic right. When essential support for working parents and caregivers feels optional or burdensome, it exposes how deeply the system is designed to extract our labor without caring for our survival.

And then came childcare. After weighing the pros and cons of who would work or stay home to care for our daughter, we ultimately created the most Tetris-like setup imaginable to juggle childcare, work, and chestfeeding. I received time-bound, limited accommodations at work, so my partner decided to stay home during that period. I continued working, arranged for a lactation room, and they would bring our daughter twice a day so I could feed her. This routine continued for 10 weeks, until it was time for me to begin parental leave. We coordinated the timing so my partner could begin a new job just as I started my 12-week unpaid leave. At that point, we would switch roles — I’d stay home while my partner returned to work.

After juggling at-home childcare for six months, we managed to secure a rare spot in a daycare that my son attended with the advantage of sibling priority. The daycare was across town and opened at 8 a.m., which required us to buy a second car so I could be on time to my job. Between $2,500 a month in childcare costs and new vehicle expenses, my paycheck barely covered the basics. Like many educators, we were stretched financially and emotionally past our limits. And I know I am not alone.

Across the country, educator-parents and caregivers face impossible logistics: years-long childcare waitlists, school and work schedules that do not align, care costs that outpace salaries, and inconsistent (or nonexistent) lactation support.

The profession was never designed for us to thrive as both caregivers and educators. What looks like personal failure is actually the predictable outcome of systemic design—a structure that forces families to cobble together survival and then blames them when they cannot sustain it.

Extraction, Not Care

Education is often billed as “family-friendly.” Educator-caregivers sustain students and school communities together, but the infrastructure rarely supports the families and caregivers who make that possible.

Try finding childcare that aligns with an educator’s hours, school location, and salary.

Try pumping breast milk in an unlocked closet during a 20-minute lunch break, hoping your supply holds.

Try staying home with your child’s fever, only to realize your leave was already exhausted before your parenting leave even began because that is how the policy is written.

A 2022 RAND study found that nearly one in four teachers were considering leaving the profession, with caregivers—especially those under 40—citing burnout and family responsibilities as key factors. Meanwhile, a 2021 EdWeek survey found that only 32 percent of schools had designated lactation spaces for educators returning postpartum, despite federal requirements. And what recourse exists when these rights are ignored? Pursuing legal action often demands funds, time, and energy—resources that are especially scarce during the critical period of pregnancy and early parenting. These numbers simply affirm what so many of us already know: schools (and workplaces in general) are structured around workers without caregiving responsibilities, even though the majority of the workforce is made up of parents, guardians, or family caregivers.

Each year, fewer educators with young children remain in the profession. New teachers often arrive child-free, while mid-career educators quietly exit, worn down by a system that treats caregiving as a liability rather than a strength. Their departure creates teacher shortages, breaks mentorship chains, and erodes the institutional knowledge that stabilizes schools. Those of us in the six-to-fifteen-year window—the educators who should be leading and sustaining the next generation—are most often pushed out. Research shows mid-career teachers are especially vulnerable to burnout and attrition, particularly in high-need schools. Nationally, about 8 percent of teachers leave the profession each year, with another 8 percent transferring schools, often citing excessive workload, limited support, and lack of professional growth.

Education has always depended on caregivers to hold it together. Yet instead of honoring that labor, the system normalizes exhaustion and erases the human cost. Sacrifice is treated as the price of entry. We are told our care is bottomless, our bodies endlessly resilient. But this is not a matter of individual grit. It is a design that extracts labor from those who nurture, while withholding the resources, policies, and dignity we deserve. This is what happens when we prioritize productivity over humanity.

And we see this trend in other ways in the education sector. When positions that once supported communication or family engagement are cut, there is no acknowledgment of the relationships disrupted or the families left scrambling. When pay and recognition are tied to test scores, the invisible labor of retention, relationship-building, and healing is erased. The very things that keep schools alive are treated as secondary, even though without them, nothing else would hold.

The Legacy of Sacrifice

Public education was never designed to support caregivers. It was built on caregiver sacrifice. I see this system from the inside: the expectations, the exhaustion, the invisible labor that many educators experience. 

The work asks us to give more than is sustainable. Emotional labor is expected and undervalued, and educators are often stretched beyond capacity while caring for students, families, and sometimes additional work outside school. 

These patterns shape policies and workplace culture, making burnout, career exits, and inequities predictable. Pressures compound for caregivers of all identities, with research showing that gendered expectations add extra strain and correlate with higher stress and depressive symptoms (Stengård et al., 2021; Gan et al., 2025). When we normalize burnout and policy barriers for caregiving educators, we do not just lose teachers. We lose stability for children. We lose mentors. We lose the relational fabric that makes learning possible.

Recognizing this legacy is essential to imagining a liberatory, community-centered education system—one that values care, collaboration, and the full humanity of every educator.

What Liberation Could Look Like

Research confirms what we already know: workplace supports like flexible scheduling, affordable childcare, and paid leave are essential not only for retaining talented educators but also for fostering thriving learning communities. The Learning Policy Institute finds that schools with strong support systems see both higher retention and stronger student outcomes, showing that care for staff and care for students are deeply intertwined. Some districts are beginning to respond. For example, Dallas ISD’s Educator Pathways initiative partners with early childhood centers and a Child Development Lab School to provide on-site childcare for educators, while San Antonio ISD has introduced flexible job-sharing models that allow experienced educators to remain part-time rather than leaving the profession entirely. These strategies are thoughtful, responsive, and within reach for all of us. Paid leave, affordable and accessible childcare, and real lactation spaces are not luxuries—they are baseline human dignity. A truly liberatory system would treat care as infrastructure, not an afterthought. Liberatory wellness asks us to imagine a system beyond mere survival. It calls us to name what has been extracted from caregivers, educators, and families, and to rebuild structures that allow communities to thrive together.

At the federal and state levels, the solutions are clear—and long overdue:

Compensation that matches the local cost of living: Increase salaries to reflect the true cost of living in our community and value the invisible relational and emotional labor educators and parents provide that sustains our students, schools, and systems.

Proactive protections for caregivers: Policies must ensure pregnant and postpartum staff are supported, rather than waiting for legal threats or medical emergencies.

Lactation accommodations: Every school and workplace serving educators should provide clean, private, lockable spaces with refrigeration across all grade levels.

Timely ADA compliance: Accommodations must be enforced consistently to safeguard health and safety.

Affordable, accessible childcare: Supply must meet demand with equitable enrollment policies and on-site childcare for working caregivers.

Leave policies that reflect caregiving realities: Educators should not have to deplete sick leave to recover from childbirth or care for young children.

Training for leaders and administrators: School staff must understand the rights and needs of pregnant and postpartum employees.

Flexible staffing models: Create part-time or hybrid roles for educators, instructional coaches, and district-level employees, so caregivers can remain in the profession without sacrificing well-being.

Without coordinated action across federal, state, and local systems, we remain trapped in cycles of burnout, attrition, and systemic neglect.

The Personal is Political

This isn’t about one broken elevator or one parental leave. It’s about building a public education system that honors the full humanity of educators—their bodies, their families, their identities, and their contributions beyond test scores. We must move away from treating teachers and staff as interchangeable labor units and instead design structures that sustain the people doing the work.

My story is not unique. Thousands of educators and caregivers across the country are navigating the same terrain quietly, often without recognition. Yet these stories rarely make headlines. The same systems that fail parents are the ones failing children. If educators are forced to choose between caring for students and caring for their own families, everyone loses. I became a teacher believing in education as a path toward justice—for our students and for our families.

Fifteen years later, I am still here. But I’ve learned that this job was never built for us.

Now, it’s time to rebuild it for all of us.

Sources & References

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039

Gan, Y., He, X., & Zhang, Z. (2025). Exploring gender differences in workload and job performance: Insights from junior high school teachers. BMC Psychology, 13(1), 184. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-02439-z

Goldstein, D. (2014). The teacher wars: A history of America’s most embattled profession. Doubleday.

Learning Policy Institute. (2016). Solving the teacher shortage: How to attract and retain excellent educators. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/solving-teacher-shortage-report

National Center for Education Statistics. (2022). Teacher turnover: Stayers, movers, and leavers. U.S. Department of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_slc

Pew Research Center. (2023, May 17). How Americans view the impact of parenthood on careers. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/05/17/how-americans-view-the-impact-of-parenthood-on-careers/

Stengård, J., Mellner, C., Toivanen, S., & Nyberg, A. (2021). Gender differences in the work and home spheres for teachers, and longitudinal associations with depressive symptoms in a Swedish cohort. Sex Roles, 85(5–6), 345–358. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-021-01261-2