Elizabeth J. - Parent
Please share your childcare story.
“Having safe, reliable, childcare is essential to how our family functions. Childcare means that my husband and I can go to work. Our family’s basic needs rely on us having two pay checks. But to us, work is more than that. Working allows us to contribute to our communities in specific ways using skills that we have spent years cultivating. We love being parents and raising our child, but we also enjoy the sense of autonomy that working affords us.
We have one child who is 13 months old and he attends a daycare center. We found the daycare through recommendations in our town’s moms’ Facebook group. We toured two of the recommended daycare facilities and based on the tours and conversations with teachers, we made our decision.
Daycare has been great so far. It still breaks my heart when I drop my son off and he cries, but our biggest challenge is when he has to stay home. He started daycare two months ago and has had to miss a lot of days due to illness (his own colds and a few sporadic COVID cases at the facility). When this happens my husband and I alternate taking time off work to be with him. We are fortunate to share this responsibility and also have employers who are understanding and flexible when we unexpectedly need to take time off. Having understanding employers is so important as we rely on two full-time incomes to afford childcare for one child.”
What would affordable, high-quality early education and child care mean for your family? What would be different if you had access to such a program?
“It would mean we wouldn’t be second guessing our hopes of having another child. We wouldn’t be crunching numbers and stressing out about childcare costs when we think about having a second baby. As things are now, with a second kid we will be spending 20% of our gross family income on childcare.
It would also mean that it might not be necessary for both my husband and I to work full time just to afford childcare. If one parent could cut back to part time work to spend more time with our child(ren) and taking care of all the other responsibilities that come with being human - cooking for the family, addressing the inevitable and constant home maintenance and repairs, helping aging parents, doctors visits and other personal appointments. All these things are important and take time but we usually have to squeeze them into the margins of our already busy days. Not having to work so much to afford childcare would allow us to actually live our lives not in a constant state of burnout.”
What else should lawmakers and policymakers know about your childcare/early education needs, especially as we recover from the COVID-19 crisis?
“I realize that when it comes to childcare needs our family is privileged in that we have two decent salaries that allow us to afford childcare for one child. We live in a town where housing costs aren’t too high which also helps us afford childcare. We can also rely on our kid’s grandparents to step in for supplemental childcare when necessary. But this is not the average situation. Many of our millennial peers do not see the appeal of having children as they would basically have to work just to afford the childcare that lets them work. Combined with other financial challenges (exorbitant housing costs, STILL paying off student loans) so many people of my generation don’t think they can afford having children. And sadly, they might be right.”