Nurse aides at Convalescent Center, a for-profit nursing home in a low-income county in Michigan, struggle to accommodate routine care of children, Using relative and informal care, and to deal with sudden, Urgent demands related to parenting. The nursing home has relatively rigid workplace scheduling and attendance policies and practices, based Upon state and corporate staffing rules and constraints oil labor costs, with some limited elements of flexibility. Both rigid demands to work all scheduled hours, regardless of unpredictable child-related urgencies, and opportunities to select the preferred shift characterize the work environment. The dilemmas of the nurse aides who are mothers are the consequence of public policies that fail to protect families from workplace demands, compounded by public health reimbursement practices that constrict staffing options at the nursing-home.
