What ‘Lucky’ Looks Like for Many Parents: A Patchwork Childcare Arrangement [PSMag.com]

Twelve million children under the age of five rely on childcare each day while their parent(s) work. Two of them are mine.

New America’s groundbreaking Care Report illuminated the myriad challenges parents face in securing childcare, among them that demand is too high to meet the staggeringly low supply of high-quality centers. And when high demand meets low supply, as any Econ 101 student can tell you, the price skyrockets.

For those of us making it work, there is usually an asterisk hidden somewhere, the too-good-to-be-true details that tell the whole story. The Care Report found that one-fifth of families have multiple childcare arrangements; my family counts among them. By my count, we have five different arrangements to care for our two children. As the Care Report reveals, finding a workable childcare arrangement is difficult at almost every income level. Subsidies, whether or not they come from the government or a business, play a significant role in providing high-quality care at affordable prices. But our societal inability to recognize these situations for what they are makes it easier to dismiss the very real disparities of those who struggle to work while also ensuring that their children receive the care they need.

[For more of this story, written by Rebecca Gale, go to https://psmag.com/what-lucky-l...4f6a873e4#.r0f05s18v]