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him full time, and the day-care centers in
her area were either full or too expensive.
She loves her job at Tipton Adaptive but
earns just $10.05 an hour, making ends
meet only because her husband works
75-hour weeks at his two jobs.
“We’re just seen as glorified baby-
sitters, when we’re probably one of the
most important parts of any working par-
ent’s day,” says White, 29. “We’re keeping
your kids alive, you know, we’re making
sure they’re thriving.” And yet she sympa-
thizes with parents. The cost of childcare
is what makes her pause whenever she and
her husband discuss having a second child.
Today, two-thirds of families with
children under 18 rely on both parents
to work, with many putting in longer
hours. Demand for childcare is at an all-
time high. But wages for childcare work-
ers have remained largely stagnant, in-
creasing by just 1% from 1997 to 2013 and
barely keeping pace with the rising cost of
living, according to a 2014 report by the
Center for the Study of Child Care Em-
ployment at the University of California,
Berkeley. During that time, the average
weekly cost of care for children under 5
more than doubled, according to the same
report. Recently, childcare workers have
seen a moderate increase in pay because of
new minimum-wage laws, earning a me-
dian hourly wage of $11.17 in 2018. But
childcare work is still among the lowest
paid professions, and families of care-
givers are more than twice as likely as
other families to live in poverty, accord-
ing to the Economic Policy Institute.
Many childcare workers are especially
vulnerable to exploitation because of un-
documented immigration status. Edith
Mendoza—a Filipino immigrant and
full-time organizer for Damayan, which
advocates for migrant workers—arrived
in New York in 2015 with the promise of
a good job, only to find herself cooking,
cleaning and nannying four children for
about $4 an hour, 80 to 90 hours a week.
“I was a slave,” says Mendoza, 53. “They
treated me as not fully human.”
Even well-paid caregivers make sac-
rifices when it comes to their own chil-
dren. When her son reached kindergar-
ten, Beckford paid a retired grandmother
to watch him after school in her home.
Beckford paid the woman about $60 per
week, and sometimes paid in grocer-
ies or sandwiches. It was not a licensed“The most
challenging part
is leaving my
daughter,” Baker
says of working
in childcare. “I’d
like to tuck her
in. You’re tucking
in another baby.”
After spending the
night with Howell,
she commutes
back to the Bronx
in the early
morning to walk
Nyiesha to school