Sharon Jackson, a longtime home-based childcare provider in Millbrook, Alabama, cares for infants and toddlers every weekday from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. In the evenings, she reopens her program, extending her hours as late as 11 p.m. to care for children whose families need extra support. 

And at least one weekend per month, she provides all-day care to several children whose parents have to report for duty at the Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

Jackson is also licensed to provide overnight care, which she does occasionally as needed. 

Through these unconventional arrangements, Jackson provides “nontraditional hour care,” and as her schedule suggests, it can take a lot of different forms. Nontraditional hour care is a poorly understood yet widely sought form of early care and education, generally defined as any care being provided before 7 a.m. and after 6 p.m. on weekdays, and any hours on the weekends. 

It’s estimated that about 40% of children under age 6 with working parents spend at least part of their week in childcare during nontraditional hours, according to a report from the Urban Institute, a social policy research nonprofit. The report, which analyzed household survey data from the National Survey of Early Care and Education, found this type of care to be more common among children from low-income families or in single-parent or non-parent households, as well as infants and toddlers. 

Families have a diverse range of circumstances and needs when it comes to care, especially working families with young kids. Sometimes, one parent can cover while the other works, or a relative such as a grandparent can step in to help. But in other cases, families must seek more formal arrangements. That’s where providers like Jackson and Desiree Reid come in.

Reid has been a licensed home-based childcare provider in the Bronx for about a decade. Before that, though, she had a long career as a financial manager — a role that required her to work late into the night and on weekends at times. In other words, Reid needed childcare during nontraditional hours before she became a childcare provider herself. Back then, when her son was still very young, she’d scrap together help from her mother and godmother during the week, and on the weekends, she’d take him to work with her and they’d hole up in her office. 

So when Reid opened her own childcare program and realized a lot of her families were doing shift work and needed flexible hours, she found herself adjusting her schedule. 

“At first it started with maybe one parent saying, ‘Oh, Ms. Desiree, I have to work till 8:30 tonight,’” Reid recalled. “What am I gonna do? Say, ‘leave your job, come get your kid and figure it out?’ No. So I extended my hours.”

The vast majority of nontraditional hour care is provided in homes, through a mix of licensed and unlicensed caregivers. Data varies, but across multiple sources, unlicensed care — and particularly unpaid unlicensed care — is the most used nontraditional hour childcare arrangement, followed by licensed home-based care, and then licensed center-based care. Erikson Institute, a graduate school in Chicago focused on early childhood education, cites data from the 2019 NSECE survey which found that about 8% of centers and 34% of listed homes provide some form of nontraditional hour care, while the rest of the care supply is found in unlisted homes, often provided by relatives, but also some nannies, neighbors, friends and babysitters. 

For licensed providers, the shift into nontraditional hour care tends to come organically, as it did for Reid. Because home-based care is typically provided in a smaller and more intimate setting, providers often develop strong personal relationships with the families they serve. So when one family has a schedule change or needs extra help, providers may be inclined to accommodate them — sometimes without any additional pay, said Juliet Bromer, research professor at Erikson and University of Delaware. 

Different types of nontraditional hour care tend to get “lumped together,” Bromer said. But that can conflate the distinct experiences of providers caring for children during early mornings, late nights, overnight and on weekends.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about nontraditional hour care as this monolithic thing, because it isn’t,” said Bromer, who has studied this domain in Illinois. 

Each type of care comes with its own sets of challenges, routines and objectives. During weekend care — the most common time for children to be in nontraditional hour care, according to the Urban Institute — many providers tend to offer children more downtime than they would during traditional weekday hours, said Diane Schilder, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who led the think tank’s research on nontraditional hour care in 2023. That reflects what parents have said they want during weekend care for their children: a greater focus on play and rest, much like they would have if their parents were able to be with them. 

That’s true for Jackson, the provider in Alabama, who said the biggest difference in how she runs her program on the weekends, compared to a weekday, is that she gives the children more time to relax. 

“The schedule has been so rigid during the week,” Jackson said. “I get it. They need the downtime. … They need that time to just rest.”

What that looks like in practice, she said, is extended time outdoors and more free time to do activities like puzzles and drawing. Just because their parents are at work, she said, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get to unwind like other children do during their weekends.  

In New York, Reid’s weekend care is occasional, and a bit less predictable than Jackson’s. She cares for the children of immigration lawyers, taxi drivers and nurses. Often, one parent is available on the weekend to care for their kids when the other is not. But sometimes, their schedules will overlap and they’ll ask Reid to help. 

“As long as they can give me advanced notice and I’m available, sure,” Reid said. 

“I have staff, so if I need to step back, staff can step up,” she added, noting that she has one full-time and four part-time teachers to help with 14 children. “When I didn’t have staff, that was a different story. Oh, my gosh, that was exhausting.”

Reid and Jackson, like most providers who offer care during unconventional hours, also care for children during traditional hours. Cynthia Davis, a home-based provider in Washington, D.C. who operates 23 hours a day, distinguishes between the two by calling one her “traditional shift” and the other her “twilight shift.” 

When she shifted into childcare a couple of decades ago, she decided that she would serve children from low-income families, whatever it took. 

“If I was going to have a program, I wanted to be sure I could serve all parents, regardless of what their shift was,” she said. 

With her program located near a police station, a fire station and multiple hospitals, she has served children at all hours of the day — from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., from 3 p.m. to midnight, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. “That’s the hours some of the parents needed,” she explained. 

It’s a lifestyle that might wear on some people, but Davis enjoys it. “I’m a night owl,” she said. “That’s why I love overnight care. I love being up at night. Everybody is quiet. Nobody is disrupting you. It’s the daytime that wears me out.”

When she cares for children overnight, her adult daughter who works at the program handles morning care so Davis can get some sleep. “It’s why you need staff,” she said. “You have to balance it out. If you don’t have balance, you’ll drive yourself crazy.”

The most children Davis has cared for overnight, she said, is six. Eventually she learned that she couldn’t really care for infants overnight, since their sleep isn’t well established and they tend to wake the others. “Over time you learn how the children’s patterns are,” she said, noting that she’d strategically place an early riser farther from a child who sleeps in later. 

When children get dropped off for an overnight shift at Davis’ house, they must be bathed and ready for bed. She finds out from families what their bedtime routine looks like on a typical night — books, music, a bit of TV — “so we can mimic what you’re doing at home.” 

Most children sleep in twin-sized rollaway beds; she also has cribs, elevated cots, floor mats and air mattresses. She will put the beds out in the common area — spread throughout a spacious living room, dining room and back room — before the kids go to sleep. Then Davis posts up in her comfortable recliner chair. She has a refrigerator and table right next to the chair. She does not sleep when the babies sleep. 

In the morning, Davis helps the children brush their teeth, get dressed and eat breakfast. 

Soon, as she begins to think about winding down her working years, she plans to move away from traditional care and only offer the “twilight shift.” She’s a night owl, after all. 

Some center-based programs do offer care during nontraditional hours, but it’s uncommon and the programs that do so primarily serve a specific population, such as the children of shift workers near a large manufacturing plant or military base. 

“There are very, very few center-based programs that offer late night and overnight care,” said Bromer. “It’s unpredictable. No one needs overnight care every night.”

Many home-based providers will request a week’s notice or a few days’ notice for nontraditional hour care, but when families’ schedules are constantly changing, it’s not always possible. That is incompatible with the staffing setup in most centers, Bromer noted. 

Then there’s the practical reality, which is that most families seeking care during nontraditional hours — especially late at night, very early in the morning and overnight — want their children to be in a residential home, not a fluorescent-lit commercial building. 

Most centers don’t have space for beds, pointed out Natalie Renew, the executive director of Home Grown, a national collaborative of funders committed to improving the quality of and access to home-based childcare. What they have, instead, is thin cots. If given the option, many families would likely opt for rollaway beds like what Davis has in her home over “flimsy cots” in a center for their child’s overnight sleep. 

“In a home-based environment, children are an extension of the family, eating meals in the home, watching Jeopardy,” Renew said. “That’s a little more intuitive.”

For parents who work unconventional hours, it helps a great deal to know their child is sleeping in a bed inside someone’s home, even if it’s not their own, said Jackson. 

“It gives that parent more of a home feeling, versus in a commercial property, where it’s more of a business,” she said. “Families need us. They need the continuity of care. They need to know their babies are being treated with the utmost of respect.”

In many places, it can be hard to come by licensed providers offering care outside of standard business hours. Davis recalled a mom who would take the bus from southeast D.C. to her program in northwest D.C. to drop off her 6-month-old baby before going to her job as a security officer. She had to switch buses along the route, and when traffic was bad, it would take her two hours door to door. 

Access is one of the reasons that care from trusted family, friends and neighbors is by far the most popular option for parents who work nontraditional hours. (It is also the most popular care arrangement for families during traditional hours.) This could look like two neighbors who both work nonstandard hours taking turns watching each other’s kids in their homes. It could be a family friend helping out for a small fee. Often, though, it’s a grandparent or other family member.

These types of informal arrangements make up the “bulk” of nontraditional hour care, said Bromer of Erikson. Parent surveys have found that they prefer this care type for its flexibility, affordability and nurturing environment. 

“It’s not paid care,” in many cases, Bromer added, “but it is childcare.”

Tonia McMillan is an FFN provider in Southern California caring for her grandchildren during nontraditional hours. McMillan had a nearly 30-year career as a licensed home-based provider, during which time she did occasionally provide care outside of standard hours to families. She retired from that career in 2023, feeling ready to close that chapter. 

But then McMillan’s two adult sons — both single dads — had new babies on the way. At the time, she and her sons decided to “all get under the same roof” to help each other with expenses, and that included childcare. 

Today, McMillan lives in a five-bedroom house with her sons and two of her four grandchildren — now ages 9 and almost 2 — whom she regularly cares for in the evenings. During their dad’s late-night shifts with a trucking company, McMillan feeds them and puts them to bed. Some days, if he gets home especially late, she’ll also get the kids up in the morning, give them breakfast and get the older one to school. It works well, she said. 

“The only difficulty for me is my age,” said McMillan, who is 67. “Having to lift car seats in and out of cars … That’s part of the reason I retired. There’s such a physicality to doing childcare that people don’t realize. But here I am again.”

There are days when McMillan has to make sacrifices to be able to care for her grandchildren — she’s very social, she said — and that can be discouraging. But she loves that she is able to help and said she’ll keep doing it for as long as her son needs her. 

Still, she doesn’t view it as charity, and she doesn’t want others to see it that way either. McMillan gets about $1,200 per month in subsidy reimbursements from the state of California to take care of both children. 

“I don’t want to see this role being downplayed or portrayed as ‘you’re the grandmother, it’s your duty,’” she said. “That strips away the importance of this work — how it fills a void, how it takes care of a gap. But it also binds families and makes them stronger and able to do what needs to be done for their children, for their household. It is such an important role that serves such an important purpose.”

McMillan emphasized the importance of being able to provide childcare to her grandchildren in a space that is both theirs and hers. She can put the two children down in their own beds and then retire to her own room. 

“I can walk around in my moomoo,” she said. “I don’t have to worry about if my hair is combed.”

But the value runs deeper than that, too. 

“The comfort of being in a familiar surrounding with a familiar person who loves them unconditionally, it matters,” McMillan said. “My son doesn’t have to worry about calling or checking in, any of that. Just the trust factor alone carries so much weight. It carries so, so much weight.”