The typical child care worker in the US earns less than $12 an hour

  The American Families Plan, announced by President Joe Biden in April 2021, aims to make child care more affordable for parents. Importantly, it also seeks to ensure caregivers are paid a living wage – enough to meet basic needs given the local cost of living. If passed, all workers in child care and pre-K programs that receive federal subsidies would earn at least US$15 per hour. Preschool teachers and child care workers with similar qualifications as kindergarten teachers would be paid in line with what kindergarten teachers earn.

  Currently, child care workers who care for infants and toddlers tend to earn much less than those who care for older children.

The truth about President Trump’s track record on child care

  On January 20, 2017, reporters at The Washington Post interviewed people who attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration. One of the attendees was a single mother of two from Maryland who worked as a massage therapist; she said that she hoped Trump would follow through on his pledge to make child care more affordable. Yet four years later, as the coronavirus crisis enters its seventh month in the United States, parents are struggling to find child care as they work essential jobs or attempt to work from home while supervising children.

  Not only has Trump failed to deliver on his promise of making child care affordable for families, his administration’s inability to control the COVID-19 pandemic and provide adequate funds to safely reopen and fund child care has threatened the collapse of the entire industry. Due to these policy failures, many child care providers have been forced to shut their doors for good—and many more will follow suit if they do not receive federal help soon.

There is no summer vacation for parents in the "gig" economy

  Let the record reflect that I began writing this from beneath my wiggling three-year-old. I had barely cracked open my laptop when he did a backbend across my legs and slid upside-down onto the floor, with a smile so wide I could see the ridges on the roof of his mouth. One of his feet hit my chest and the other hit my laptop, nearly toppling it to the ground. He giggled, and I nearly had a heart attack. My computer is how I keep a roof over our heads, and I can’t afford to replace it.

  Welcome to summer break.

Two million parents forced to make career sacrifices due to problems with child care

  Child care is a pressing economic issue for working families across the country. At a time when 65 percent of young children have all available parents in the workforce, high-quality child care is a necessity. The exorbitant cost of child care has become a significant burden for parents who need it to support their families. Millions of parents must make an impossible choice between paying more than they can afford for child care; settling for cheaper, lower-quality care; and leaving the workforce altogether. Parents who decide to leave the workforce to become full-time caregivers stand to lose much more than just their salaries, earning less in benefits and retirement savings over the long run.

Black families work more, earn less, and face difficult child care choices

  Families across the United States are facing a child care crisis, but African American families are especially hard hit by the rising cost of child care and limited options for working families. Today, three in four African American children under age 6 have all residential parents in the workforce. By comparison, the rate is only 63 percent for non-African American children. For decades, African American women have worked at higher rates than other women, meaning that child care has long been a necessity for these families.