Parents Share Strategies to Afford Childcare

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By E.Baloyo , Parent Herald Jan 23, 04:51 pm

Photo: (Photo : Mandel Ngan/ Getty Images)

Parents are sharing strategies to afford childcare.

Recently, more and more parents have been sharing their strategies for meeting their childcare needs on social media platforms and online forums.

Mothers are coming together and sharing ways to help other families in similar situations. This type of content is becoming more popular.

With the increasing living costs and surging inflation, these strategies can be relatable to other families.

Strategies to afford childcare

Numerous parents are agonizing over whether pursuing a career makes financial sense for their families as they struggle to find affordable childcare.

According to Insider, Brittany Wilson-DeMarco, a 27-year-old parent of a 2-year-old boy, was searching for affordable childcare last year. However, the most affordable option she got was childcare which costs $1,200 per month.

The time she could gain from putting her son in childcare would have allowed her to get a full-time job, but she was initially hesitant. Before she could even decide for herself, the daycare spot filled up.

She started working around 35 hours per week at two distant part-time jobs to help pay the expenses.

She contacted her neighborhood YMCA, which, in addition to the $93 she pays monthly for her family membership, allegedly provides child care at a rate of $2 per hour for a maximum of two hours per day.

That's just one example of how parents nowadays, both mothers and fathers, especially mothers, are having a hard time trying to afford their child's needs.

More and more parents and communities are working together to develop strategies to afford childcare.

Some parents have experimented with splitting the cost of a nanny. The arrangement in which two or more families hire a single nanny to watch their children in one of the homes of the participating families is called "nanny sharing."

The children can interact and socialize with other children, which is a benefit many parents strive for in a nanny.

Furthermore, some families in a community have coordinated shared childcare with another family or founded a parenting co-op, an organization of between three and 20 families to rotate childcare responsibilities among a group of families.

Childcare shortage on the horizon

According to the Los Angeles Times, even to this day, almost three years after the pandemic started, parents are continuing to experience the financial strain of paying for child care.

If government leaders in the United States do not address the worsening care dilemma, the country's already poor economic growth might be exacerbated, especially given the historic labor shortages.

Caring for young children can be very costly. Numerous parents are struggling to cover the costs.

These are problems that parents commonly encounter in everyday life, but what is frequently overlooked is the emotional toll of this vital role and how some individuals have had to give up their professions and education to care for their family members.

According to the World Economic Forum, the United States will lose $290 billion in GDP in 2030 and beyond if the care economy continues to run without progress.