BY JULIE KASHEN | American families have long been struggling with out-of-reach childcare prices. Childcare costs the equivalent of college tuition, rent or mortgage payments. These costs often come early in parents’ working lives, when they can least afford them.
That’s if they can find childcare. Even before the pandemic wreaked havoc on the childcare sector, more than half of families with young children lived in a childcare desert, and two-thirds in infant and toddler care deserts, neighborhoods without enough childcare spots.
And early educators, who are majority women and disproportionately women of color, have long been severely underpaid for their valuable and complex work.
The tremendous gap between what parents pay, and what early educators earn, is a product of a broken market. It cannot be solved on its own. The federal government must step in with sustainable, long-term investments through reconciliation.
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