Lennice Emanuel, Executive Director of Alabama Institute for Social Justice has said, with respect to the child care affordability crisis, she has seen many families take a close and honest look at their finances over the past few years, in light of increasing costs for child care and how this has affected the decisions they have to make each month regarding their budgets and the amount of disposable income they have remaining to pay for everything from rent to food. In particular, many families have been forced to choose between paying their mortgage and paying for child care, which has created an extreme financial strain on those families, both above and below the poverty line. “Now people have to make those types of choices, like whether my husband stays home with the kids or I stay home, because we both work, but we can’t afford to pay the mortgage and child care,” she said. The recent cost-of-living increases, caused by many socioeconomic factors, are particularly acute and affecting the most marginalized people in our society. The financially marginalized have always been faced with additional burdens associated with financial deprivation, and recent events have created additional financial burdens. Because of this, it is obvious that a national crisis has been created due to this financial burden on child care and families.
of the 100 largest U.S. metro areas found that the cost of child care for a family with two young children is more expensive than the average rent in each respective market.
Care for one child costs, on average, about 25 percent less than rent, according to the data from LendingTree. That changes with the addition of a second child, pushing child care costs up to more than double that of the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in markets like Omaha, Nebraska, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The numbers are much the same as they were last year, according to the analysis, with average rent prices increasing slightly. The national average price tag of care for one child has increased by about $3,700 since 2017, coming to about $13,100 per year in 2024.
Managing Costs
Child care providers are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to deciding how to price their services, says Tyrone Scott, director of government and external affairs at First Up, an early childhood education advocacy group in Pennsylvania.
Child care providers are currently struggling to keep their prices reasonable for parents while also being able to provide fair wages to their employees. According to Scott, the average wage for child care workers in Pennsylvania is $15 per hour, which makes it difficult for them to attract workers who can earn $17 or more a hour with no experience or college degree working as cashiers or stockers.
Scott said, “The Wawa near me has a $5,000 signing bonus.” For high school students just graduating high school, they could earn $5,000 and start at $21 an hour working at Wawa. As a result, you are able to provide a much better salary than what our teachers receive, which is concerning.”
Scott indicated that inflation is causing many child care providers to struggle because of the increasing costs for all aspects of running a child care center, including food and liability insurance. For some child care centers, their liability insurance costs have multiplied by three times. Because of this situation, they have to choose between absorbing the costs of higher insurance rates and operating on smaller profit margins or passing those costs onto parents by increasing their prices.
Jasmine Bowles, executive state director of 9to5 Georgia, says Georgia’s child care system has long been underfunded — despite politicians’ crowing about the state’s billions of dollars in budget surplus funds. Administrative delays in state reimbursements to child care providers also force them to go without, she says, to ensure the learners in their care have everything they need.
“When our care providers receive their class of students for the day, those babies still eat, even if [the providers] haven’t been paid from the state for a month or more,” she says. “This really manifests itself in housing, food, and health insecurity for the very caregivers that our communities depend on.”
Emanuel says that Alabama’s formula for calculating how much of child care costs the state will subsidize doesn’t accurately reflect the cost, which leaves providers to figure out how to make up the difference. Those costs are often passed on to parents, but Emanuel says providers also apply for grants or take second jobs to keep their centers running.
“Because of the way the market rate survey dictates the reimbursement rates, a parent could be paying $400, but it’s actually costing the provider $900 a month for child care,” she explains. “Many of these women do child care full time, and they actually have side hustles in order for them to be able to provide child care.”
Child care providers are not spared from rising costs for their own kids, Emanuel says. One provider in her state reports paying 80 percent of her own income for care for her own children.
The Attitude Factor
With the widespread challenges in child care affordability, experts say that one barrier to getting more state funding to address the problem is both the public’s and lawmakers’ perception of child care — including who should be doing the caring.
Scott and Emanuel both say that there are large swaths of the public who don’t see the benefit of their states subsidizing child care, be it support for working parents or the advantages of giving kids a strong start in their education.
“I think that a lot of times in this state, people see child care as, ‘You had the child, it’s your responsibility to pay for child care,’” Emanuel says. “But if the pandemic didn’t teach us anything else, it taught us that it is critical infrastructure because, without child care, people are not able to go to work.”
Scott says one alliance that has helped get their message across is help from Pennsylvania chambers of commerce, who can describe how the lack of affordable child care options interferes with employees’ ability to stick to their work schedules.
Emanuel warns that a key part of child care funding debate is not just about funding and affordability, but also about the people who perform the work.
Bowles, in addition to being an advocate for early childhood education, is also a board member of a local school district in Georgia. Beginning at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, she was able to observe firsthand what happened when school resumed in-class instruction, and how schools were dealing with the impact of children who experienced a decline in both academic skills and social skills due to being out of school.
“When we have children back at school, it becomes evident how much the learning gap exists, and I think that became most evident with our youngest students.” Bowles continues, “Based on the example of my district, we are now rethinking what an early childhood program means and the role of a public school district in providing that program. This includes the creation of more pre-kindergarten classrooms.” All of society has a responsibility for early childhood education so that the “learning gaps” can be closed.
