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mine” for other socioeconomic challenges
in America. “It’s warning us of not just
a care crisis, and a childcare crisis, but a
larger crisis of what it means to live a sane
and balanced life that allows people both
to find dignity in work and also build the
strong, stable families that they hope to
have,” she says.
Indeed, what feels like a private ca-
lamity in each home is actually the re-
sult of some of society’s most thorny un-
solved issues—the often ignored rights
of immigrant workers, the persistently
uneven division of labor between men
and women, inequalities based on race
and socio economic status, and the glass
ceiling women face in the workplace.
Successive presidential Administra-
tions have done little more than enrage
parents with the lack of progress on the
issue, but a growing understanding of the
broader economic impact of the ineffi-
cient childcare system is finally leading
to more urgency to find a remedy. Pres-
ident Trump’s Administration has dou-
bled the child tax credit and the size of
grants given to states to subsidize child-
care. As the 2020 presidential race heats
up, a new raft of suggestions has been
launched, from Senator Elizabeth War-
ren’s well-defined universal- childcare
program, to commitments from Kamala
Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar
and Cory Booker to enact the Child Care
for Working Families Act, to Trump’s
proposed one-time $1 billion injection
to build out childcare infrastructure.
The only consensus seems to be that the
current situation is untenable. As Ivanka
Trump, who is leading the Administration
on childcare reform, tells TIME, “You’ve
got a fundamentally broken system.”To escape the paycheck-to-paycheck
cycle, Alcaraz is considering a new job
that would pay more but require her tomove her family around the country every
few months. She wants to have a sibling
for Paysen, but without higher pay, she
knows she won’t be able to afford the care.
“You’d have to pay double, and that would
be almost 45% of my income,” she says.
The U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services considers childcare “af-
fordable” if it costs no more than 7% of a
family’s income. It’s a figure greeted with
a dry laugh by most U.S. parents. Nearly
two-thirds of them—and 95% of low-
income parents—spend more than that,
according to a 2018 report by the Insti-
tute for Child, Youth and Family Policy
at Brandeis University. And the problem
has been growing worse for decades.
More than 60% of families surveyed by
Care.com in 2019 reported that their child-
care costs had increased in the past year.
The federal government has twice
attempted a comprehensive childcare
program— similar to those in Sweden orThe New York Foundling’s Crisis Nursery houses
children whose parents are experiencing an emergency.
“These kids become our kids when they come in here,”
says caregiver Dionne Carter-Granger; at home, her
husband takes care of their daughter while she works