NewsNation, November 2023
It has been a month since billions in federal child care relief expired, and the situation is getting tougher each day for parents and providers. Child care costs are skyrocketing, leaving providers with no choice but to raise their prices or close their doors. The situation is putting a huge strain on parents who have already been struggling to afford child care, forcing some to quit their jobs.
“For my two boys, it’s about $3,000 a month,” Julia Foley, a mother of two, said. Foley said it costs her family about $36,000 a year to send her children to day care. “I would literally be working just for child care,” Foley said.
She is in the same predicament as thousands of parents across the nation: Either give up your career, try to find a job where you can work from home or forget having a family altogether. The Biden administration has already requested an additional $16 billion in new child care relief, but Congress has yet to sign off on it.
