Childcare Challenges Facing Today’s Parents

Across the U.S. and Canada, parents face a great many hurdles in trying to provide their young kids childcare. While seventy per cent of women are in the labour force, it’s evermore crucial to have access to decent childcare options. But is that the case today?

Below are just some of the challenges facing today’s parents with regards to childcare:

1. Daycare fees are higher than ever.
Depending on the age of the child, daycare costs can range between $800 to $1000 a month in most cities across North America. For a lot of parents, childcare fees are one of their biggest expenses, second only to mortgage payment or rent. The government helps out parents in relieving some of the financial stress by making a certain amount of childcare expenses tax deductible.

2. Not enough options for everyone
On the one hand, daycare fees have shot through the roof. On the other hand, there are too few regulated daycare options to choose from, with wait times as long as a year. This forces parents to go for unregulated options with nannies who are not certified with even basic childcare training. These types of facilities are often not monitored for health and safety practices and in some cases serious injuries have been reported. Considering the number of incidents involving daycare injuries, parents consider cutting back on their work hours and taking turns caring for the baby. As Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook, argues in her ground-breaking book Lean In, women shouldn’t always have to sacrifice their careers to become stay-at-home moms.

3. Childcare non-existent for single parents.
Single mothers (and fathers) face an even more dire issue of being unable to pay for childcare expenses on top of managing other child-related costs. These parents are most likely to seek help from relatives, friends and even neighbours thereby putting their kid under the care of someone untrained. In a lot of other cases, single moms who don’t have a high income are forced to quit their job because they have very little money left after paying for daycare bills. Maintaining work-life balance is out of the question for such moms, let alone going out with friends. Nonprofits across provinces and states are pushing for cheaper daycare options that are affordable for everyone but are finding little support. Reciprocal childcare may be a solution for single parents struggling to pay for daycares.

4. Daycare a bigger challenge for parents with multiple kids.
Studies indicate that there is a direct relationship between the number of kids and the likelihood of divorce, citing issues of childcare as the main reason for strain in relationship between parents. For mothers, it’s extremely challenging to care for multiple kids while holding a full-time job and are often faced with the dilemma of working and paying exorbitant daycare fees versus staying at home to care for kids themselves. For families where one parent makes around thirty to forty thousand a year or less, staying at home is a no-brainer because it would cost more to send the kids to daycare than the net income coming in. In such a situation, consider consulting a planner to figure out what the best option is for your family.