Katy shared her story about the high cost of child care and her home state of North Carolina’s broken child care system at the NC General Assembly as part of budget advocacy day. Here is her story:

I’m Katy Rosenbaum, and I’m a proud member of MomsRising in Cary. I’m a working mom with an amazing 4-year-old son, Alexander. I’m here today because working families like mine are counting on our state legislature to pass a budget with the capacity to make the child care investments North Carolina urgently needs. Thank you for the chance to share my story!

My son Alexander  is kind, hilarious, and intelligent. He’s my best friend, and being his mom has been a transformative experience. It’s also opened my eyes to how broken our state’s child care system is. 

My husband and I both work full-time, and we need child care to stay in our jobs. We felt lucky to enroll our son at a high-quality program near our home. After all, we’d heard so many horror stories about families stuck on waitlists for years, because there’s a severe shortage of quality care in our state. 

The cost of child care was honestly shocking. For a long time, we could only afford to enroll him in part-time care. That meant two days a week, we had to figure something else out, which was enormously stressful. Today, the cost of his full-time preschool is about the same as our mortgage. That’s a huge strain on our family’s budget – especially as the cost of just about everything continues to rise.

At the same time, I know most child care professionals don’t make living wages. That is simply unacceptable. The teachers at Alexander’s program are the most important people in his life outside of his family. These are professionals whom we trust to care for our state’s youngest learners at a critical time for their development. They shouldn’t be working multiple jobs and struggling to put food on the table for their own families. But that is the reality for most child care workers right now - including the people who care for my son. 

At this moment, the future of child care in our state looks even more grim. Last month, COVID relief funding ran out completely. Our state used those funds to give small but much-needed raises to child care workers. Now, programs will either need to significantly raise tuition for parents or lower pay for their staff, which will force many care workers to leave their jobs. Many providers, especially in-home programs, will be forced to close classrooms completely. On top of that, proposed cuts to federal child care funding could make this crisis exponentially worse. 

As a mom, that’s terrifying. Let me say this loud and clear: Parents can’t afford to pay more for care. Care professionals can’t afford to be paid any less – they deserve living wages. And if huge numbers of child care programs are forced to close their doors, that will be disastrous for kids, families and our economy. It will force parents to quit jobs – creating a crisis for families and businesses. We can’t let that happen, and we can’t solve these problems without public investment that reflects the true cost of quality care. 

Child care is basic infrastructure that enables parents to show up at our jobs, care for our families and contribute to our communities. At this moment when the federal government is shifting costs to states, we need our state lawmakers to stand up for kids and families, and ensure that our state has the revenue needed to fully fund a budget that invests what we need in child care, health and nutrition, education, and the many other programs our state counts on. Thank you

Do you have a child care story? We want to hear from you! Tell us your experience here.