Jessica Secrest has a reminder for all the mothers and parents out there: When it comes to raising kids, you don't necessarily have to do it all alone.
"I think a lot of the time as moms, we feel like having other people watch our children is burdening them, and that's not the case," the mom of two told "Good Morning America."
In the last year, Secrest and her best friend of two years, Emily, have teamed up to do what she calls "child care swaps" with each other and their spouses.
"I will go over to her house and put her kids to bed, feed them dinner, read them bedtime stories, do the whole bedtime routine," Secrest explained. "As soon as I arrive, she and her husband leave -- like, I walk in the door, they walk right out … and then she does the same thing for me. And it's worked out really great for us."
The two moms, according to Secrest, live just five minutes away from each other in the Greater Grand Rapids area of Michigan and both have two children who are similar in ages. Secrest is the mom of a 3-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son, while Emily, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has two kids who are 2 and 3.
"Neither one of us have a huge support system outside of each other," said Secrest, who stays at home with her kids. "So, this has been a great way for us to get those regular date nights with [our spouses] without having to pay a babysitter and leave our kids with someone they're not comfortable with."
Secrest said where they live, child care is expensive and can start, on the lower end, at about $40 a day for a young child or about $270 a week for a less expensive daycare, which would total nearly $13,000 a year.
Data from the National Database of Childcare Prices, released in January, corroborates this, and the findings show that "childcare prices are untenable for families across all care types, age groups, and county population sizes" and that the current system "is reliant primarily on overburdened families and underpaid childcare workers." NDCP data also shows that the cost of child care steadily increased across the U.S. between 2018 and 2022.
Aside from the financial benefit, Secrest said she wanted to speak out about child care swaps on her TikTok to encourage other parents to take care of their mental health and keep their relationships healthy. Her video post has since been viewed over 1.1 million times.
"I didn't think it was anything super revolutionary, but I thought ... I could share this to help somebody else, have that light bulb moment go off for them that it doesn't have to be this hard," Secrest said.
Initially, when her friend Emily broached the idea last year, Secrest said she thought it would be a burden to her friends, but then her son's therapist suggested the same thing a couple of months later and Secrest said that's what changed her mind.
"Before I had Emily, I probably went on a date night a year with my husband. I rarely was able to get away just one-on-one with my spouse -- same for her -- unless we were paying a lot in child care, and that was just not realistic for us," Secrest recalled.
"So, I had to step outside of myself and say, 'Why do I feel like I'm burdening her with my children, [but] when she asks me to watch her children, I don't feel like it's a burden at all?' … I think it takes a lot of reworking your brain [to remind yourself] that you don't have to do this alone," she added.
Since then, Secrest said she and Emily have started doing child care swaps every month, and as much as they plan it in advance, they also try to stay flexible with each other.
"It was getting me into that mindset of like, we can share this burden together. We can share the children together, we can parent together and do this where nobody feels like they're overwhelmed and overloaded. We'll even do this if one of us needs to clean our house. 'Drop your kids off. I'll watch them. That's OK,'" Secrest explained.
The arrangement has worked out so well that Secrest said they plan on keeping it going for the foreseeable future.
"Honestly, it's so much easier to function as a family if everybody's getting the relief they need and everybody's getting the breaks they need," she said.
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