Why We Think Babies

Rebecca and Ryan A. are working parents juggling careers and parenting their two young children. They have encountered obstacles such as the high costs of child care – and limited availability.   

Rebecca and Ryan didn’t ask to start their family during a global pandemic. “We both work from home and so that’s kind of how we juggle the child care situation,” said Rebecca. “We’ve tried multiple times to get the kids into a daycare. And it just hasn’t really worked out some of the times when we have found an opening. It either costs too much, or logistically it was too far away that it didn’t make enough sense for it to work.”  

Rebecca recalled turning down employment opportunities due to child care struggles, “I had a job two years ago that was part-time and needed to be more full-time. I needed to get my son in daycare, and the only opening was like 45 minutes away. It was over $1,000 a month and that just didn’t make sense.” Now that they have two children, Rebecca works part-time as a college professor and cares for the children during the day, while Ryan works full-time from home and provides child care on the evenings when Rebecca works.   

Rebecca said, “We’re very hardworking people. We’ve done everything that society has told us to do. We went to college, we got the degrees, we work. He works full-time plus teaching classes. I’m working part-time while taking care of the kids full-time during the day. We volunteer in our community, we have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. We are doing what we’re supposed to be doing. And we are still struggling to give our children the basics of what they deserve.”  

The family is “advocating for some type of subsidized child care from the government…in whatever form that that can even look like. Michigan has a great Tri-Share program where the parents pay a third, the government pays a third of the cost and then the employer pays a third of the cost [for child care], but our employers don’t participate. Even something as simple as that could really make a huge impact and making the Child Tax Credit permanent which can help with the medical bills [from] having a baby in a hospital.”   

Although Rebecca and Ryan still describe working parenthood as “difficult and busy and exhausting,” they acknowledge “We are in a position where we are able to help advocate for others. [Families] are so busy, they are so consumed right now with either having to look for a village to help raise their kids or they’re struggling to get by financially, and we understand those struggles.”  

“We’re in a place where we can share our story and help just advocate for ourselves and for others, because a lot of people don’t understand what’s going on right now.” 

Florida native Nicholas T. is the father of two young boys and an advocate for accessible and affordable child care. His experiences navigating the challenges of the child care system have fueled his passion for reform and support for families facing similar struggles.   

Nicholas and his wife both work full-time as public school teachers in the school system they grew up in. When their now-five-year-old son, Nixon, was born, the school they worked in allowed parents to bring children to an on-site child care program. After three years, due to budget cuts, the family lost access to child care, and Nicholas, his wife and other teachers scrambled to find care.   

The family found a family-based child care nearby for their new baby, Lincoln, and struggled through a mixup at a local Florida UPK program that allowed them to enroll Nixon, yet realized at the last minute that he was too young to qualify, giving the family just days to find another child care option. Like many families, they made it work, with a little help from good old fashioned luck. “The care center that we found for Lincoln was gracious enough to add Nixon to the three year old room because they had just expanded from an in-home center to an actual facility. So it was all luck at that point.”  

Nicholas believes that American families should not have to depend on luck when figuring out how to work and care for their babies. ”We’ve been extremely fortunate,” said Nicholas, “But I know there are families out there that don’t have luck. There are families out there that are struggling worse financially with more kids. I feel like it’s my responsibility to champion them and open the eyes of people to how much of a struggle it is.”  

Despite being part of what may be considered a successful middle-class household, he and his wife have encountered significant financial hurdles in securing quality child care for their two children, which one year totaled as much as $25,000. Their experience highlights the broader issues of affordability and accessibility in the child care system. Nicholas says that, due to the high cost of care, the family struggled, “to buy groceries, pay for school clothes for the kids, just necessities that we needed.”  

Nicholas advocates for increased public funding and support for child care facilities, emphasizing the need for policies that enable qualified individuals to open new centers. He also pushes for policies that address the root causes of affordability issues, such as shortages in funding for child care subsidies and the limited child care slots in communities. By amplifying the voices of families like his own, Nicholas strives to effect meaningful change in the child care landscape, ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive.  

“We as a country need to do something to make sure this care is accessible to others. Studies are pretty clear that when children get that experience that early they benefit from it immensely… kids who don’t have the opportunity to get into a daycare or pre K facility of quality where they can learn and play and socialize are worse off and I feel like we owe it to our children of the country to do something about that.”