Katie D. - Parent
Please share your childcare story.
“I have two children ages 10 and 10 months. Due to their ages, we have very different childcare needs for each. My son, age 10, is in 5th grade during the day, and he attends a public afterschool program at his school three days a week. We are able to have him only attend three days since I work from home two days a week. We did this to save money on childcare instead of having him attend all five days. When he was younger, that wasn't an option, but now he can entertain himself in the few hours after school before my husband and I are done with work.
My daughter is 10 months old and in a family daycare four days a week. We pay $456 weekly, for a total of $1,824 monthly. This was one of the more affordable options we could find with a provider that we trusted. I work four days a week so I can spend more time with my daughter. My husband was laid off from WGBH this summer and is still unemployed; however, we needed to keep my daughter in daycare so he can actively job search and so we don't lose our spot in daycare. Many of the childcare centers had long waits or were too expensive for us so we don't want to leave out current situation.
With my husband's job loss, and frankly even prior to it, paying for daycare is a challenge. Our combined income when he is working is ~$180,000 and we still have trouble affording daycare in the Boston area with the high cost of living. We need childcare to be able to work and for our children to interact with other children during the day. We think they both benefit from being in childcare, but the cost is really insane.”
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 be life changing to have affordable, high quality early education and childcare. We wouldn't need to stress about the cost of childcare anymore. My husband and I tried for 7 years to have our daughter and one big reservation we had was needing to pay for daycare again. When our 10 year old son started public kindergarten we joked that it felt like we won the lottery when we didn't need to pay for daycare anymore.”
What else should lawmakers and policymakers know about your childcare/early education needs, especially as we recover from the COVID-19 crisis?
“My husband and I feel very lucky that even with his layoff we can pay for high-quality childcare. It's not easy but we can do it. We feel like everyone deserves to have the same access to affordable, high-quality childcare, no matter what their income is. Also, the vast majority of childcare providers we've worked with are amazing professionals who care for our children as if they are their own. They deserve to be paid the same as public school teachers and the state should help offset the cost for parents. In MA, the cost of living is so high it's a necessity to have both parents work.”
How has the COVID-19 crisis affected you when it comes to childcare? What are you concerned about as the childcare system reopens?
“It was hard to have afterschool closed initially and last year I wasn't comfortable sending my son to school, especially since I was pregnant. My husband and I were juggling work, his school, an childcare responsibilities and it was exhausting. Having him back in school was a challenge.
Finding a daycare for my daughter during the pandemic was very stressful and challenging. Daycare tours were stopped and I wasn't willing to send a five month old baby to a center I had never set foot in, so we weren't able to consider any daycare centers. I found one daycare provider who had an opening and was willing to give me a tour. She seemed ok, especially with such limited options, and we went with her initially only to find it wasn't a good fit. We pulled my daughter after a week, used family to cover for 6 weeks until we found our current provider through word of mouth. Several of the centers also had increased their rates and limited their hours due to covid, which was unworkable for us.”