The child care crisis in the United States impacts parents and guardians across the country, in rural and urban areas, in single- and two-parent households, in middle- and working-class families. As Time Magazine puts it, “for everyone except the very wealthy, child care is ruinously expensive.” This immersive article, by Katie Reilly and Belinda Luscombe, looks at the care crisis through the personal stories of parents and child care providers, and includes chilling statistics that show just how widespread the struggle to afford child care truly is. As the authors so aptly point out, millions of families, hundreds of businesses, and the entire U.S. economy are in desperate need of real, concrete solutions to make child care affordable.
Take a look:
The Childcare Crisis
ASHLEY ALCARAZ REMEMBERS when she started to regret entrusting her infant daughter Paysen to an unlicensed in-home day care when she returned to work. She found out her daughter had been sleeping on the floor in a house where dogs and cats roamed around, and she worried that older toddlers might step on the baby. After her request that Paysen sleep in a crib was ignored, she pulled her daughter out, but the day care had been the most affordable nearby option and Alcaraz had already used up her allotted three weeks of paid maternity leave—in addition to three weeks of unpaid leave—from the Iowa hospital where she works as an X-ray technologist. Desperate for trustworthy care, she enrolled Paysen at Tipton Adaptive Daycare in Tipton, Iowa, which was more expensive, at $640 per month—about 18% of her income—but the most affordable licensed childcare available. It was worth the cost, Alcaraz felt, because she could tell the staff cared about her daughter, greeting the 16-month-old by name each morning.
Still, Alcaraz, 25, and her boyfriend now often run out of money for groceries while paying the day-care bill. “Right now, it’s paycheck to paycheck,” Alcaraz says. “It’s a struggle.”
Read more: The Childcare Crisis (TIME)
Image via TIME
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