Jury Duty and Baby Sitting

Do you have to do the jury service? In England if there is a valid reason (like no one to look after your child) then you can get out of doing it.

take the kid with you to see if you can be excused

Some courts offer childcare for parents summend to juryduty. Call the court and see if it is offered.

I've been excused from jury duty twice here in Howard County because of childcare. I don't remember exactly what the procedure was...but there was a place in the form to explain your request to be excused...or maybe it was to "postpone" jury duty? I imagine you would be excused/postponed too... in whatever county you're in.

I'm also SAHM and in the earlier days it was unrealistic for me to suddenly come up with childcare for mine when they were younger... It's even more difficult when you don't know if you may or may not need to go in to serve.

Look at the jury duty summons paper carefully. There should be a list of reasons you can ask to be exempted from jury duty. In most jurisdictions, anyone who is the sole (in your case, you are "sole" during the daytime) caregiver for a young child can be excused from jury duty on that account. I highly doubt that any court will force you to serve if you are a young child's full-time caregiver, which as a SAHM you are; however, the burden is on you to alert the court to your situation and request the exemption as soon as possible. There should be a web site listed on the jury summons and you should be able to go on that site and apply for an exemption. Do it soon so you don't get fined or whatever. But you should not have to serve. It's a privilege to be able to do so, but it is not supposed to be a hardship for families.