Child care is a frustrating calculus for working parents, who must weigh if it’s financially feasible to keep working or if they have to leave the workforce to care for their children. Families spend an average of over $8,000 per year per child for full-time child care, a cost that has increased by 26 percent in the last decade and more than 200 percent over the past 30 years, not nearly in line with wages. In a 2022 survey, 63 percent of parents reported that child care had gotten more expensive over the past year. In short, it’s increasingly difficult for parents to pay for the care they need to be able to work—and the pandemic only exacerbated an already strained situation. Soon, with federal aid for child care drying up at the end of this month, millions of children will have nowhere to go, and parents will be forced out of work.

Women (Not) at Work

The pandemic demonstrated that working families—especially mothers—suffer when quality, affordable child care is too limited, costly, or outright unavailable. When the pandemic upended routines, including in-person education going remote, a shocking 4.2 million women across the country left the workforce, largely to support their children—a full million more women than men.

Philanthropy Can Support Public Funding

Within the philanthropic community, women’s funds have long tracked the economic impact on women who can’t find or afford quality child care. Women’s funds—community foundations created with the goal of accelerating progress by investing in the leadership of women and girls, especially Black, Latina, Native American, and other women and girls of color—have been at the forefront of directing funding to organizations working against the underemployment of women.

For example, the Iowa Women’s Foundation’s Child Care Solutions Fund helped train more providers, leading to 350 additional child care slots in the state. Similarly, the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative’s Raising Child Care Fund supports community organizing across 17 states to make more affordable, high-quality child care slots available for families and raise the wages of early educators, who often make poverty-level wages despite being essential workers supporting the country’s entire parental workforce. One of the fund’s grantees, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice in Louisiana, was instrumental in getting a small local property tax increase passed that will fund 1,000 new infant and toddler child care spaces for low-income families.

Child care is a frustrating calculus for working parents, who must weigh if it’s financially feasible to keep working or if they have to leave the workforce to care for their children. Families spend an average of over $8,000 per year per child for full-time child care, a cost that has increased by 26 percent in the last decade and more than 200 percent over the past 30 years, not nearly in line with wages. In a 2022 survey, 63 percent of parents reported that child care had gotten more expensive over the past year. In short, it’s increasingly difficult for parents to pay for the care they need to be able to work—and the pandemic only exacerbated an already strained situation. Soon, with federal aid for child care drying up at the end of this month, millions of children will have nowhere to go, and parents will be forced out of work.

The federal government must act quickly to preserve and increase funding for child care. As those who work with philanthropists committed to improving child and family wellbeing, we add our voices to call for federal action knowing that no amount of private investment to create innovative strategies can replace a stronger federal commitment to public support that makes access to quality child care more equitable.

Read the full article about child care becoming a national emergency by Elizabeth Barajas-Román and Shannon Rudisill at Nonprofit Quarterly.