With the rise in remote work, parents of young children are finding new ways to navigate the work/life balance. Even with more flexibility about where they work, they may still need space to focus and help taking care of their children.
To fill that need, a new child care model is cropping up. It combines coworking space for parents with on-site daycare.
Le Village Cowork — Milwaukee’s first business of this kind — opened this month in Brewers Hill.
In some ways, Le Village looks like your typical daycare. Teachers roll play-dough with toddlers in one room and sooth crying babies in another.
The unique part is that parents of these children (trying to ignore the occasional sounds of crying) are working on laptops in a brightly-decorated room next door.
"It’s been like the perfect fit to have a place where [my son] can come, get daycare, but then I also get a place to work as well, as a remote worker," says Carolyn Weber, a part-time bookkeeper.
Weber and her 18-month-old son, Quentin, have been coming to Le Village for half-days for a couple weeks. Quentin goes to his classroom, and Weber sets up her computer next door.
"It took a little bit to settle in, but he’s been having a good time," Weber says. "To be able to have a space where you can have your daycare and be able to get away from the house and focus on your work is really a hard combination to find."
Like a lot of parents, Weber struggled to find child care. She’s been on two daycare waitlists since before Quentin was born.
The owner of Le Village Brewers Hill, Kellie Overton, wants to help parents like Weber.
"That’s what we’re about — is having the flexibility for working parents, but even more specifically working moms," Overton says. "To give them the opportunity to be professionals, advance their careers and also spend time with their children and raise them the way they want to."
Here’s how it works. Parents can sign up for half-days or full days, 3-5 days a week. Around 11 a.m. each day the parents, who are on-site in the coworking space, have lunch with their children, which gives the daycare teachers a break.
Depending on the child's age and the number of hours per week, costs range from about $500-$1,700 each month. There’s also a $200 charge for the coworking space.
Overton got into this business after being on the other side of it. She was a new mom who signed up to attend the original Le Village location in Chicago in 2021. It was exactly what she needed at the time.
"Being new parents can feel incredibly isolating, especially being a new mom," Overton says. "I was struggling with postpartum depression, I was struggling with imposter syndrome. I didn’t know how I was going to go back to work and do both things. And I couldn’t believe a place like Le Village existed that gave me the opportunity to do both."
When Overton's family moved to Milwaukee, she worked with Le Village Chicago founder Daniella Cornue to open the Brewer's Hill location.
As Overton shows me around, her 2-year-old son Ian runs up to her and gives her a hug.
"I love working," Overton says. "But I love my son, and I want to be around him. And I also sometimes don’t want to be around him. And I don’t want to feel guilty about that. I can go see him if I want to, and I can go focus and work if I want to."
Wisconsin has an affordable child care shortage, with more than three children under age 5 for every one licensed childcare slot.
Le Village is exempt from applying for a Wisconsin child care license, because parents on are on-site, Overton says. But, she says Le Village still follows state rules about child-to-teacher ratios.
Overton expects to have all 35 slots at Le Village filled by the end of the year. The demand has been so strong that she is already thinking about opening another location in Milwaukee’s Western suburbs — putting this new child care model in reach of more families.
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