Brianna P. - Parent

“My children are now 6 and 9 and we are still struggling to pay for summer camp with two well paying jobs. We started out young and had our first son at 22. Since our parents were still working (and still are) we had to put him into childcare full time so that we could work. Of course I was thrilled that he would be learning about social interactions but the bill was pretty hefty. When we had our second child at 25, we had to have both of our kids in childcare. We were paying more than $2,000 a month just to send our kids to daycare and preschool so we could work. It got to the point where my entire paycheck would go to childcare expenses. It made it extremely challenging to get ahead and because of that, we remained in my parents basement with our two children for 9 years. We couldn’t afford rent to r a mortgage on top of your insane childcare bill. We are now pregnant with our third child and do have a mortgage and make well over 100% AMI but I am incredibly stressed about the expense of childcare in our near future on top of summer camp. It is such a stressful burden and it’s debilitating to know you are working as hard as you can but you can’t afford necessary things for your family because you have to pay so much for childcare. Our summer camp is $750 a week for our two school aged children. My paycheck is $900 a week. That’s almost my entire paycheck again! Making childcare less expensive could be life altering for young families in this economy. I know it would be for us.”