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There have been a number of variations of songs known as Merciless Summer season, from Bananarama within the 80s to Taylor Swift within the 2000s and although they’re whole bops, they’ll sadly additionally be a theme tune for the truth that summer time might be exceedingly merciless on the wallets of households across the nation.
Little one care is difficult sufficient to seek out AND afford in the course of the yr, and it solely will get worse (and extra costly in the summertime months). The typical American household spends upwards of $3,000 on summer time packages for 2 kids. [1] This, on high of the truth that little one care is already unaffordable for too many households with some households reporting paying a 3rd of their take residence pay to little one care [2]. The excessive value of kid care has lengthy been a burden for many households, rivaling the price of faculty in lots of states. [3] These statistics solely worsen for households of coloration – about 17% of Black kids and 16% of Latino children ages 5 and underneath lived with a member of the family who needed to give up, change or refuse a job due to little one care points in 2021. The identical was true for 10% of white non-Hispanic kids. [4]
The excellent news is that Congress simply re-introduced the Little one Take care of Working Households Act, which establishes a toddler care and early studying infrastructure that ensures working households can discover and afford the kid care they want to achieve the workforce and kids can get the early schooling they should thrive. It might jumpstart our financial system by creating roughly 700,000 new little one care jobs, assist 1.6 million dad and mom—primarily moms—return to work, and raise a million households out of poverty.
The Little one Take care of Working Households Act:
- Makes little one care extra reasonably priced for working households, by making a federal-state partnership to offer monetary help for extra households with kids ages 0-13
- Expands entry to preschool packages for 3- and 4-year olds, by offering funding to states to ascertain and broaden a mixed-delivery system of high-quality preschool packages
- Improves the standard and provide of kid take care of all kids
- Will increase wages for little one care employees by guaranteeing that each one little one care employees are paid at the least a residing wage and earn parity with elementary faculty academics with comparable credentials and expertise
- Higher helps for Head Begin packages, by offering the funding essential to supply full-day, full-year programming
This ongoing and worsening lack of entry to complete, high quality, reasonably priced little one care has had a devastating influence on the financial vitality and viability of households. Too many dad and mom– principally mothers– are pushed out of the workforce because of the lack of reasonably priced little one care. [5] Particularly throughout summer time, for some households, the answer to care has been for one guardian — sometimes moms — to go away the workforce and keep residence with the youngsters. That doesn’t sound like a lot of an answer to me.
We have to construct a greater future for all of us and our households. Let’s increase our voices collectively for little one care!
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