CINCINNATI — The cost of child care keeps going up and it’s putting a strain on working parents.
Some parents are finding it cheaper to quit their jobs and watch their kids themselves instead of working and paying for child care.
“My paycheck literally would have went just to paying for somebody else to raise my child during the day,” said Sarah Rich, who lives in Delhi Township.
Rich now stays home during the day to watch her 1-year-old while her husband works.
“It was hard on me mentally in the beginning because I was used to getting up and going to work every day,” she said.
Rich found a serving job, which allows her to work evening shifts and weekends.
“It's nice being able to make money, but I'm exhausted all the time,” she said. “I don't know how single parents do it.”
Kelsey Jones is a single mother of two. Without family support, she said she would not have had any help with child care.
“I never qualified for vouchers or government assistance,” she said in a Facebook message to WCPO.
Jones recently went back to working two jobs to make ends meet.
“My one-job income alone isn't even enough to survive on,” she wrote.
Care.com’s 2023 Cost of Care Report found about two-thirds of parents spend at least 20% of their household income on child care.
“In some cases, it costs them more to go to work and pay child care than it would cost for them to just stay home,” said economist Janet Harrah with NKU's Haile College of Business.
Harrah said women are more likely the ones impacted.
Across the country, 13% of children have families that have made job changes due to child care problems, according to the latest report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
“If you're a single parent, you have no choice but to work, so you might start leaving your child home earlier after school,” she said.
Harrah said costs are rising because there are fewer teachers who are willing to teach early childhood education, driving the price per student up.
“Part of the reason we don't have enough of them is we're not paying them enough to want to go into that field,” she said “We’re going to have to come up with enough money to pay the people if we want to have the quality child care that we're looking for as a country.”
Because parents are “tapped out,” Harrah said to do that, the government will likely have to put money on the table.
Pandemic-era federal funding for child care centers expired at the end of last month, impacting 220,000 child care programs across the country, according to ABC News.
RELATED | Child care options could shrink, get more expensive when federal money goes away
In September, lawmakers introducedThe Child Care Stabilization Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. If passed, it would would provide $16 billion a year in emergency funding to keep child care programs afloat through 2028.
As for what parents can do, Harrah admits the options are not “great.”
“A lot of people obviously turn to family and friends to help take care for the child,” she said. “You see some families that you know, mom works, one shift, dad works the opposite shift, which is not great for family life either.”
Parents who qualify might also explore child care subsidies for low-income households.
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