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We have an historic opportunity to transform child care

Charlotte Observer - 11/22/2021

About a year ago, my husband and I welcomed our first child, Z, into our family. Becoming Z’s mom has been the most meaningful experience of my life. At the same time, it has opened my eyes to how broken our nation’s child care system is — and how urgently we need to invest in this sector to support parents, providers and our economy.

The $1.75 trillion social spending bill currently moving through Congress offers a rare opportunity to do all that and change child care forever in North Carolina and across the U.S.

For the first year of my son’s life, we tried to work from home while also caring for him, but that wasn’t sustainable. We needed to find child care.

We got lucky when it came to finding an open spot. There’s a high-quality program near our home, and they worked with us to enroll our son. The pandemic certainly made things more complicated; I wasn’t able to tour the facility and still haven’t been inside.

It was a relief to enroll him, though, because I’ve heard horror stories about families stuck on waiting lists for years. Across the country, there’s a painful shortage of child care programs. Especially during the pandemic, so many parents — especially moms — have been forced to leave jobs because they could not find affordable child care.

The cost of my son’s program was shocking. We decided to enroll him three days a week because of the cost. The other two days, we have to figure out something else, which is stressful. Though he’s in childcare part-time, and even with a discount from my husband’s employer, we pay more than $800/month for care.

At the same time, the director and teachers at my son’s program likely don’t make living wages. This is unacceptable. They are easily the most important people in my son’s life outside of our family. They know him so well. They care for him. They spend time, energy, and passion supporting his development. They’re doing one of the most important jobs in the world — helping raise the next generation. Why aren’t they compensated fairly?

I even considered offering to pay more to subsidize their salaries. But we can’t afford to do that and, at the end of the day, it’s not a sustainable solution because this is a structural problem.

At a recent briefing on a Treasury Department report on the economics of child care, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted that “child care is a textbook example of a broken market.” That resonates with me. Child care providers shouldn’t have to work second jobs on the weekends to feed their families, but many do.

At the same time, parents can’t shoulder the burden. In fact, the extremely high cost of child care is a major factor for my family as we decide whether to have a second child.

The math just doesn’t add up. We need federal support. It’s past time we treat child care as the public good and basic infrastructure that it is.

We have an historic opportunity to transform child care with the reconciliation package moving through Congress right now.

We must call on our elected representatives to help solve the child care crisis. We must make major investments so child care workers can make a living wage, so providers can keep their doors open, and so all families, regardless of income, can access the high-quality care they need. Families and providers have struggled for too long. We must build back better.

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