When it comes to the affordability crisis in child care, Lenice Emanuel says that it’s forcing families to take a hard look at their budgets — no matter their income level.

But as child care costs surpass the price of rent in some areas, those money choices are even more extreme for folks on the margins, explains Emanuel, executive director of the Alabama Institute for Social Justice.

“They're gonna say, ‘We had to make a decision whether my husband stays home or I stay home because we both work, and we still can't afford to pay the mortgage and child care,’” Emanuel says. “It's just exacerbated for marginalized people, because they were already contending with deprivation, so these issues are just basically compounding what they were already dealing with. That’s why this is like a national crisis at this point.”

A recent analysis of the 100 largest U.S. metro areas found that the cost of child care for a family with two young children is more expensive than the average rent in each respective market.

Care for one child costs, on average, about 25 percent less than rent, according to the data from LendingTree. That changes with the addition of a second child, pushing child care costs up to more than double that of the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in markets like Omaha, Nebraska, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The numbers are much the same as they were last year, according to the analysis, with average rent prices increasing slightly. The national average price tag of care for one child has increased by about $3,700 since 2017, coming to about $13,100 per year in 2024.

Despite rising costs, child care workers are not feeling those increases reflected in their paychecks. It’s a sector that continues to struggle with thin margins, low wages, retaining workers and insufficient subsidies.

Read the full article about the child care affordability crisis by Nadia Tamez-Robledo at EdSurge.