Can You Afford to Go to Work?

 

There was a time I couldn’t afford to go to work after the birth of my girls who are a little less than two years apart. I was smack dab in the common dichotomy of most families, the desire to be available at home and raise my children and the needs of a growing family that required extra income.

 

My net income after all my childcare expenses was $266 a month if I worked full time in an office. So I opted to work from home. I was blessed to somehow do all the crazy shuffling involved in contract work and taking care of kids. At the same time it was incredibly stressful to live paycheck to paycheck and manage my work at home many a bleary-eyed night.

 My childcare expenses were more than our monthly budget for groceries, which is the same predicament for a majority of households with children. In a recent report covered by NPR, Lynette M. Fraga, Executive Director of Child Care Aware of America stated, “Childcare is an increasingly difficult financial burden for working families to bear.” She went onto say that unlike other forms of education families bear the brunt of early education costs.

 The other consideration in this dilemma is that childcare workers should be paid appropriately. Is childcare any less important than all the other services we spend significant time seeking out for our children? I think that health care and childcare top the charts when it comes to finding good providers for our kids. Childcare providers are nurturing our children’s growth in formative years so they are well deserving of appropriate pay. The question is how can we off set the burden to working families so they have the services and benefits available to continue to earn a living without short changing the child care providers? I would love to hear some innovative thoughts about this outside of grants. What are other solutions from pockets in the U.S. or other countries that are working to provide high quality affordable childcare? Please share your thoughts.

 

For further reading:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/11/04/243005358/child-care-costs-already-high-outpace-family-income-gains