Gabrielle W. - Parent
“I'm the mother of a 5 year old and my husband was recently (2023) sworn in as a US citizen. He was undocumented for the first 3 years of our son's life. Affordability was a massive concern for us given that we were trying to afford the legal process for my husband to attain his green card. We do not have family in the MA area so calling upon relatives was not an option for us. Not working or operating as a single income household was not an option. Due to the prohibitive cost of child care we were unable to find care. Our solution was to both continue working, my husband 50 hrs/week and me 30 hrs/week with alternating schedules so we were able to care for our son together.
We continued to operate with this work schedule from 2017, when our son was born, through 2022 when our son attended pre-K for the first time. Throughout this period we had a one off sitter in 2018 for 2 months in an attempt for me to create more time for work. We quickly abandoned the sitter situation as we found, the increased income from working more went right out the window to the sitter. This (as well as the stress of the immigration process) contributed to anxiety and insomnia for both of us which meant we were not only missing out on valuable time together as partners but also burned out as parents. I can't stress this part enough. When exploring the possibility of hiring babysitters or nannys, not only did we find the cost daunting even though it was in-home, but the tax laws around reporting income paid to sitters and in-home child care were unclear and frankly there was no well written resource meant for the common parent to facilitate navigating that process.
Every single parent in our circle struggles with affordability even if their income is higher than our own. I have also heard absolute horror stories about wait lists in centers in Boston post-COVID.
One of the biggest concerns I have for some of these bills is that there will not be enough education/information available for families, specifically those who do not speak english or are in underserved communities around how to attain/access help for childcare and on the flip side, that the grants will be unwieldy for childcare facilities to apply for. While we would love to be able to have another child, we have decided together as a family to not add to our family due to the costs of childcare in our city. As renters and also living within the city of Boston, it is nearly impossible to be able to keep up with rising costs and care for our children well with childcare being this inaccessible.”