Tanya Reyes, 43, is a teacher who lives in Altadena with her husband and their children. This transcript is based on a conversation with Reyes, and has been edited for clarity and length.
Reyes: At this moment, I don't feel like I'm making it because of the weight of child care. It's almost half my paycheck.
I have three girls. They're 7, 6, and 3.
I am a teacher. I work with pregnant and parenting teens with the Los Angeles Unified School District. I've been an educator for over 20 years. I was 24 when I started.
I love mothers. I love families. I love to serve people. That is my core love language, right? And I'm so lucky to do a job that genuinely aligns with my purpose.
But 100% like, I'm working two 15-hour days this week. I'm feeding kids every single week. For me, teaching is much more than just “let's grade a test.” Especially the kids that I work with, they need a lot more than that. And so yeah, pay me more, because I'm working hard and I'm volunteering a lot.
I bring in about $5,000 a month. My husband's a plumber, but things have really slowed for him, and I pay for our child care and that kills me.
As a kid who grew up on EBT and food stamps, in one way I'm like, freaking, life is good. Life is good. For my girls, they livin’ a bougie-ass life. My girl livin’ freakin’ good. But I have accumulated credit card debt that I did not have.
And at the same time, I feel very privileged, and I feel very lucky as someone who's coexisted in different class levels.
So I think I hold both things. I hold the self that came from a class where food was not consistent, working vehicles were not consistent. And now I have a lot of those things, but wanting to continue to move forward, I guess, in thinking about homeownership or debt reduction. Those parts, I feel like, oh, wow, this is hard.
So I struggle with saying, “I'm not making it.” According to what? Who defines that for us? I think because I work with poverty, and I have students who don't have food — how dare I say I'm not making it when I got food and safety and clean clothes?
Honestly, I define “making it” like I have safety for my children. Having each other at the end of the day is really what I would define as “making it,” for myself personally. In capitalism, America — maybe not so much.