Summary
Child care costs for many U.S. families during peak inflation in 2022 ranged from $6,552 to $15,600 per child, comparable to rent, according to Labor Department data.
These high costs strained household budgets, disproportionately impacted women’s workforce participation, and fueled economic dissatisfaction among voters.
While Kamala Harris proposed policies to reduce child care costs, Donald Trump capitalized on broader economic grievances to expand his voter base, despite offering few specifics on addressing the issue.
Pandemic-era federal aid helped stabilize costs but left parents bearing much of the financial burden.
The owners.
It’s not regulated and generally it’s hired as “low skill” (it really fucking isn’t) so they’re very replaceable.
The easiest money is made on old farts and new farts. Nursing homes care assistants are basically on minimum wage while the owners rake in the money.
It’s priced, what are you going to do? Not go to work and stay with your gran or child?
Really awesome that we as a society consider people watching our children at the most important part of their lives “low skill.”
Imagine what our test scores would be like if we considered them as important as hedge fund managers and marketing executives.
I am in the northeast and it is heavily regulated down to how many hours staff can be on duty and levels of staffing, the simple fact is that especially for those under twelve (where the rules are generally at least two people at all times for a group of ten, under three is literally 1 person per two children), ensuring that you have 10-12 hours of sufficient coverage (most ppl work 8-9 hours plus travel time to work) from background checked and fingerprinted persons while also feeding the children and keep a commercial building open is expensive.
I’m glad some places do it right!
Do public schools even have that ratio of adults to children?
Not in my neck of the woods, they are aiming for 25 kids per teacher eventually in NYC 🙄, and meanwhile some older NY folks say we baby the young cause they were upto 50 to a teacher when they went to school, like we shouldn’t try to progress.