This recently surfaced a few days ago and caught my eye. Now, I knew child care was expensive but it has been stated from the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies that child care in the U.S. for one year is equal to or more than one year of college! Is that not crazy?! The topic came out on Good Morning America. Click Here to see the article and watch the video about it.
This is a huge issue for families and women who have children. Who can afford such a thing? I mean, parents try to save for college and it turns out sending their children to school is the same as sending them to college...which isn't supposed to happen in 18 more years or so. What happened from the time child care was affordable to the present time where child care seems more like a luxury than a need?
I was researching online and rummaging through random websites that providers made or discussion boards and it seems one needs to understand what makes child care so expensive. First off providers need to pay for the rent or building and all things that would go into a normal budget- so utilities, insurance, pay for employees and insurance for employees. Then the equipment comes in. When taking care of children you need cleaning supplies, craft supplies, food for every age, safe toys and things like tables and chairs. It doesn't help either that a majority of child care providers are non-profit and do not have any extra money as well. Parents do not realize that when they pay for child care they have to pay for everything their child does- so it's like paying twice, once for being in your own home and another time for your child eating and playing somewhere else. If the costs for all those individual things have gone up, then so does rates for child care.
Child care providers are not paid well by any means and take many beatings just to make sure that children are cared for during the day. Most are barely getting minimum wage for roughly 12 hour shifts without any breaks other than nap time. Child care workers are saints in my book.
The other issue is when single mothers have low paying jobs or no jobs at all and on unemployment childcare is literally impossible. This is a huge strain on every family matter. Money is always a strain. Single mothers are prone to slipping into poverty and having low paying jobs, and once you slip in its hard to get out. If you work long hours for barely anything how do you feed your child and who takes care of it during the day? If you are looking for a better job who takes care of the child when you are applying places and interviewing? These questions are more easily answered when you have a partner or spouse but what happens when you don't have that?
I will leave you with this stack of information. Here is a website that gives a weekly rate of what child care costs in MN in the Twin Cities counties which is broken into cities on the chart. You can find charts like this for every state. In my home town it averages to be about $162 a week for an infant, $150 for a toddler, $138 for preschool and $128 for school age. Keep in mind when you go deeper into the city like Minneapolis it can be $200 or more for one week.
I would love to see more innovative ways to lower the costs of child care in the future for my generations future children. The way things are going right now, there is no way I could afford child care on top of my other bills. I'm sure it is like that for most people.
