NYT: Moms are losing work for one simple but shocking reason:
Posted June 7th, 2010 by Sarah FrancisLess than two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that more and more moms are losing their jobs and turning to welfare for one shocking reason: They simply can’t afford to work.
Can’t afford to work?! How could that be? Well, it turns out that too often the high cost of childcare is more than the pay that moms bring home. It’s a catch-22. Many modern families now need the wages of two breadwinners to put food on the table.
“It’s a blow to my own self-image and self-worth as a person who can take care of myself,” explains a mom in Tuscon. “I’m totally able, physically and intellectually, to continue working. But I can’t work without child care, and I can’t afford child care without work.”
There are federal programs in place that can help solve this child care crisis—but Congress needs to invest in them.
That’s why we’re launching a petition today urging Congress to put families back to work by investing in affordable, quality child care. If thousands of people (like you) join together by signing this petition we can remind Congress that working families are essential to our nation’s economic recovery.
As cash-strapped states slash funding for programs that help families afford child care, moms are often caught in a terrible bind – many can’t find work that pays enough to afford safe care for their kids, and they can’t work at all without safe care.
All you have to do is look at the numbers to see why investing in child care is key to our economic recovery:
- 71.2% of women with children are in the labor force.
- Child care is one of the major costs for working families; low-income families child care is one of the largest expenditures after housing, eating up nearly 30% of a household budget for a family below the poverty line.
We need to take action now. Cash-strapped states across the country are slashing programs that make childcare affordable for working families just when these programs are most needed. At least twelve states are making cuts to their child care assistance programs or child care quality initiatives. And as the New York Times reported, this means many moms have no other choice but welfare, slowing our economic recovery down even more and leaving kids in the lurch.
Existing funds are already stretched too tight, leaving teachers in a bind. Teachers and care givers already subsidize these child care costs by working for low wages and few benefits. Only 23 of 820 occupations reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics have lower average wages than child care workers. Over a third of child care workers leave the field each year, many because they can’t afford to do the jobs they love without decent pay and benefits.
That’s why families, child care providers, advocates and others are joining together to speak out for increased federal investments to make early care and education affordable.
Together, we can get families working again and care for our children. Sign on today!
http://action.momsrising.org/go/CCDBG_petition_2010
And please pass this link along to everyone you know. The power of thousands of moms standing together is so great even Congress can’t ignore it!
P.S. Thanks to National Women’s Law Center, SEIU and NACCRA for all the great work the do for moms and families!
9 Comments
June 14, 2010 at 1:16 pm by Lora WaltonI am blessed to own a childcare center in a small town in Oklahoma. I am licensed for 74 children and see the need first hand. I serve chidlren whose parents are on DHS assistance through the state as well as tribally assisted and private pay families. I currently have only one family that pays for their childcare unassisted by any agency. They struggle on a weekly basis trying to afford quality care for their children.
In Oklahoma, we have in place one of the nations top programs for encouraging quality childcare for children. Providers are compensated at a rate according to the level of quality provided at their facility. If a center is not striving to achieve quality, they are only compensated at the lowest rate available. As you improve quality and meet certain criteria the facility is compensated at a higher rate. I don’t know about childcare in other states, but I do know that in Oklahoma, just because a center takes children on assistance, doesn’t mean they do not provide quality.
The push in recent years is to provide funding to the public schools for 3 and 4 year old programs. This has put a serious hurt on childcare facilities. Let’s think about it, public schools are only open from 8am – 3pm in most cases. If the school does not have an afterschool program (which my community does not), there is a gap between the time children are released from school and the time parents get off work. Not to mention the days that public schools are closed during the school year, spring break, Christmas break, fall break, and summer break. If childcare centers are forced to close due to the schools taking away the 3 and 4 year olds, who is going to be there to care for the children when school is closed?
I also want to remind everyone of the birth to 3 factor that was mentioned above. It is critical that quality childcare be provided in these years. At the current time it is a struggle to find and keep staff that are trained to work effectively with this age group. Without increased funding, we will continue to struggle with this issue. If funding in decreased, it will suffer greatly. Quality is directly affected by funding. If we pour it all into the schools and don’t think about early care, these children will not be ready for the education they will get when they do attend public schools. Just something to think about.
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Anita Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 12:45 am
@Lora- thank you for sharing your story and for the good work you do. We appreciate you!
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“Also, show some entrepreneurial spirit. Why not start your own home based daycare!? You can’t go wrong with the “see a need, fill a need” approach. Once one mom takes the initiative to start a home-base daycare, she pretty such solves the problem in her area. One mother works for herself and the other mothers in the area benefit from the affordable childcare.”
Providing “affordable childcare” for her neighborhood means that one woman works many long, exhausting, stressful hours doing a vitally important job and being paid far less than she is worth so that another group of parents can go off to jobs where it is vitally important to the economy that they too are paid far less than they are worth. Both groups hobble along, barely able to make ends meet, while those higher up the food chain profit handsomely from their contribution to the economy. In my opinion, asking low income workers to solve social problems like lack of affordable childcare by what amounts to volunteering their services, only perpetuates injustice.
Beyond this, of course, is the issue of quality of care. It is a special and rare person who can provide quality, loving care to a large group of young children who are not her own, all by herself. We may pay them like they are a dime a dozen, but the reality is those who are blessed with the skills and disposition to do it well are very rare indeed. If we truly believe that young children should be cared for my others so that both their parents can work, then we need to make sure the most qualified and capable people are doing the job and they should be paid as well as other people with rare and special gifts, like MLB pitchers and pop stars :0). Instead their profession is consistently found among the ranks of the very worst paid in the entire economy.
I personally believe that a just answer to this problem can only be found with a radical reorganization of our country’s values. Anything less will be nothing more than placing band-aids.
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Anita Reply:
June 10th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
@Mom2GCNJ – Well said.
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Ditto, I’m all for helping, but not like this. Any woman who cannot afford childcare probably does not have the best job.
Education is a good idea, so more grants and scholarships to help single mothers go back to school is a great idea.
Also, show some entrepreneurial spirit. Why not start your own home based daycare!? You can’t go wrong with the “see a need, fill a need” approach. Once one mom takes the initiative to start a home-base daycare, she pretty such solves the problem in her area. One mother works for herself and the other mothers in the area benefit from the affordable childcare.
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June 7, 2010 at 2:49 pm by AniI’m for helping but not like this. Have you ever seen a day care center that accepts NCI or whatever it’s called – aid for families who need childcare – the centers are run down, the food is poor quality, the teachers are way under paid so they don’t do anything and the children that come from those types of places have a hard time adjusting to Public school and most have behavior problems. I don’t think the government should play a role. I think instead of investing in the daycare we shhould invest in the Mother – send her to school to get better educated so that she has more options will have a higher salary and be able to provide for her children. Most colleges offer daycare programs on the campus and the teachers there are actual teachers. I think the push needs to be for education. If we keep spending money on NCI and daycare centers that do lousy work we are not creating a better america. To really have an effect on this wee need to be thinking what will help everyone.
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Michelle Barish Reply:
June 8th, 2010 at 9:43 am
It would be ideal to send women back to school, but while they are back in school, how do you suppose these women will pay their rent? Or put food on the table? And “college”? What about the women who never finished high school? It would take years and years for them to get a college degree, and even then, in this job climate, a college degree doesn’t get you as far as it used to. Even a college graduate, with a “best job” as Maria put it, would still be faced with long hours and the dilemma of where to put her child after school lets out at 3pm.
Perhaps the solution is to put more money into afterschool programs. Clean these child care centers up, hire qualified teachers by paying a competitive salary, offer healthy snacks, and offer a safe environment for children to learn and play. It isn’t impossible, and we actually do have the money.
We have been spending between $9-$11 BILLION DOLLARS EVERY MONTH (that’s each and every month) on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Could you imagine if we had just some of that money to improve the lives of children? Problem solved. We can do it, and we can have all of these things, we just need to start fighting for them.
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Rosa Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
@Michelle Barish, $11 billion every month we are spending to protect your freedom and not make childcare more impossible than it already is. I know it is difficult to understand for some but that’s reality. If a nuke goes off or a major terrorist attack happens in any of our cities, even Welfare will disappear for good.
I know there is a childcare problem to be resolved but let’s not start attacking war money spending.
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Michelle Barish Reply:
February 10th, 2011 at 11:20 pm
@Rosa, I’m not sure if you know exactly how much money we have spent on the wars to date in Iraq and Afghanistan…I’m guessing you don’t. Well, it’s estimated that we are at about $800 billion in Iraq, and close to $400 billion in Afghanistan (so far). So, just over a trillion dollars. This is of course is not factoring in the cost of over 30,000 vets who are coming home injured and need serious medical care for the rest of their lives, or those who suffer from brain injuries of psychological issues who also need care. The number is astounding, and is a BIG reason why our country is so deeply in debt now.
We were fighting in wars we can’t afford.
I’m happy that you feel safer, but as far as “nukes” hitting our cities, you can rest assured that Iraq doesn’t have any. We spent several years looking, and well…there just aren’t any there. It was money wasted, we aren’t any safer now than we were when we went into these places, just poorer. Please, don’t take it from me, do some research, there are countless Generals and high ranking military officials who will agree with me.
It is time to start attacking “war money spending” aka the defense budget, and it is also time that our citizens stop letting fear guide them, and start getting informed.
PS- I am a proud military family member, of a Specialist in the Army, whose little brother served in Iraq for 18 months straight…I’ve read up alot on the subject and had plenty of time to think about it.
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