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After giving birth to her third child, my mum decided to leave her corporate career and become a teacher. The year was 1998. And her reasons were the same ones that push many women to step back from their careers today, nearly three decades later.
Before becoming a mum, I underestimated the requirements for caring for another human being, grossly. I worked remotely and still barely had enough ‘spare time,’ but somehow, I believed things would simply fall into place. I would work at full capacity and mother at full capacity, without losing too much sleep or anything else. After all, my mother did it for some time, and so did countless other moms I know. But a few months into this exhausting but fulfilling life venture, the scales began to fall from my eyes.
I grew up with my grandma living with us full-time. She was mostly responsible for our morning and bedtime routines. In her ‘younger’ days, she did a lot of our preschool drop-offs and pick-ups too. She prepped our meals, took care of us when we were sick, and became our second mom. So basically, I had two mums and a dad in our home.
We also had kind neighbours, friends, and extended family, so there was more than enough help to go around. A village, you say.
But still, with this entire ‘village,’ my mum struggled to keep up with a corporate job, because while we were very well taken care of at home, she hated being away all day on weekdays, leaving the house while we were still asleep, and getting back home way past our bedtime thanks to the infamous traffic in Lagos, Nigeria. Remote work would have fixed this today, but I digress.
The other ignored fact is that the village was an economic engine. My grandmother subsidized Nigeria’s economy and my mother’s employer with unpaid labor. She made it possible for my mum to work. And this is how most of the world functions—unpaid care work, mostly by women and grandparents, keeps the formal economy running.
In my current role, I have all the flexibility a corporate job could ever provide: remote work, flexible hours, respect for my time, and everything else I could ask for. But still, I start the week exhausted on Monday morning and run a work-parent marathon till Friday evening.
Why is it not enough? Because I don’t have the village it takes to raise a child. And most immigrants don’t.
And while I can take time off when I’m stretched thin at work, without this village, I must parent at full capacity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even when I’m sick. I live in Germany, where the system is set up for families with working parents to thrive, assuming every child has their grandparents around.
When my daughter’s daycare was short-staffed and threatened to shut down for a few days last fall if parents didn’t volunteer to keep their children at home, I saw parents write in the group chat: “My child can stay with grandma/grandpa, so I can volunteer.”
That seemed like a luxury to me. For our family, keeping a child at home often means one parent has to take time off work.
I did my best work last year when my mum spent the summer with us. I could easily put in extra hours, go on work trips, and even go on dates with my husband again. It was perfect. But with her short-stay visa, she could only stay in Europe for ninety days max at a time.
To keep skilled immigrants in the workforce, the system needs to enable parents to choose the kind of village they want to raise their children in. While I appreciate the privilege of having a slot in a daycare nearby, that’s not always the ideal village for me. Especially because this village makes my child—and eventually me—sick every other month.
And it’s not just about daycare. I had another baby a few months ago. He arrived two weeks early, and all our backup plans for childcare fell apart. Kids aren’t allowed anywhere near the labour ward, so after braiding my daughter’s hair between contractions, I went to the hospital alone. A few hours later, I gave birth to our son—also alone.
I even had to take selfies with him because the midwife was multitasking and no one else was there. Did I mention I was starving the entire time? The labour ward doesn’t provide food, apparently, because they assume partners will be there to bring it. When my husband finally soothed our cranky toddler, he rushed in briefly to hold the baby, while his friend waited outside with our daughter.
Here’s what doesn’t make it into the policy discussions about skilled immigration: loneliness.
Raising children far from family is logistically difficult and existentially isolating. My kids won’t know their grandparents the way I knew mine. They won’t have that anchor, that history. That’s a loss that compounds across generations. And then there’s the internal battle of knowing you are raising them in this beautiful, efficient country where we have everything except the people who matter most.
Most of these issues will be fixed if immigrants had more family members around them, but since the system only wants skilled workers, the only family members around will also be occupied with work.
And there’s the paradox at the heart of skills-based immigration: the system wants your labor but treats your humanity as an inconvenience. They’ll fast-track your visa because you’re a software engineer or a doctor, but when you need to be human—when you need to give birth, or care for a sick child, or simply need your mother—the system shrugs. It’s transactional until the transaction gets messy.
In my opinion, an ideal solution would be for Germany to offer immigrant parents of children under three a long-stay permit for one family member.
Think ‘au pair’, but instead of a stranger, parents get to choose someone they already know and trust. And the permit could last for three years per child, or until the youngest turns three.
This isn’t radical. Canada has a super visa program that lets parents and grandparents visit for up to five years at a time. It’s not perfect, but it recognizes that skilled workers have families, and those families matter.
And before anyone asks: Yes, the permit would be temporary. Yes, it would be tied to the child’s age. No, this isn’t chain migration or bringing in someone to claim welfare. The family member is providing childcare so the skilled worker can keep contributing to the economy. No, we’re not importing dependents. Fixing this allows the skilled immigrant to contribute fully to national productivity.
This could bridge the support gap for immigrant families, and enable more parents to stay in the workforce without sacrificing their well-being or their children’s care.
But that’s not the only path forward.
Companies could offer relocation packages that include family integration support. The government could subsidize care cooperatives specifically for immigrant families, creating networks where we support each other. Skilled workers could be allowed to sponsor their parents on work permits, so grandparents can contribute to the economy while helping with childcare.
The point is this: there are solutions. But first, we have to acknowledge the problem. Skilled immigration policy is designed for workers without bodies, workers without needs, workers without families. That has to change.
 | A guest post by
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