I used to work at an afterschool program. We kept the kids for three hours after school and a lot of parents who worked later than that would have babysitters and even daycare center employees pick their kids up. I'm not saying it would be easy, but I think splitting 12 hours between daycare and a babysitter would have been an option and it would certainly be better than leaving the kid home alone. It kind of pisses me off that the military would put parents in that situation to be honest.
Edit: my fat fingers and this phone made typos
Lots of civilians work 12 hour shifts and are able to afford and find child care for their children. As an E-6, BW earned a good salary and also received $1,700 housing allowance, free health care for herself and if the base had a clinic Taylor's health care was free, if there wasn't a clinic Tricare is very good insurance and covers a lot of well-child health care for 0 co-pay. There are plenty of single parents at a lower rank, lower salary, lower housing allowance that are able to budget their money to provide necessary day care for their child.
Anyone that enlists in the military -especially in this day and age - knows they can be deployed to a war zone, sent on temporary training missions, stationed overseas with or without their dependents, work 12 hour shifts, be assigned to night shifts, etc etc.
We raised 5 military brats and always found the military to be very supportive of families when the military member was deployed or when working 12 hours shifts. My husband was deployed twice to the gulf and was sent on training missions, leadership school.. I was given a support contact number to call if I needed assistance with anything.
We were stationed at Randolph AFB in Texas for 8 years and lived in base housing...throughout those 8 years there was always at least 2 families on our street that were stationed at Randolph for humanitarian needs - family member needing special medical care and the military member was encouraged and allowed to attend all Doctor appointments, etc etc. without taking a leave day.
My son in law is in the Navy and my 2 yr.granddaughter is autistic. They were just stationed in San Diego and assigned to a military housing neighborhood best suited for my granddaughter - fenced yard, alarm system on doors and windows - child safety knobs, outlets etc were installed before they arrived. My SIL will be deployed soon for 4 months and my daughter has already been contacted by family support to inform her of the extra services available during her husband's deployment.
Military deployments suck for everyone involved but my husband knew when he enlisted he could be deployed to a war zone and I knew when I married him that he belonged to the military 24/7. Just like I knew when we had our children that I could be a single parent for months on end.
In fact, when he was deployed to Saudi for 3 months, I was pregnant with our 4th child , our older 3 were 9, 7 & 5 years old. The base we were stationed at was going to be closing and my husband would be getting new orders a month after he returned from Saudi, the same month our child was born. There I was 7 to 9 months pregnant, working a full time job in retail, trying to sell our house and a vehicle before we had to move. Six weeks after my husband returned from deployment, we moved 1600 miles away when our daughter was 4 weeks old. It was hectic at times but I loved it, our kids loved it..
My apologies for the long post and I do not mean to single you out, I agree with everything else in your post but the part about the military. The military and the 12 hour shifts have absolutely nothing to do with BW neglecting her child and disposing of sweet Taylor like garbage.
