Young parents are finding impossible to stay employed for lack of child care assistance. The jobless rate hovers near double digits. 6.7 million people have been unemployed for six months or longer, and yet some states are cutting back child care subsidies, making it impossible for some parents who lack help from friend or families to watch the kiddos.
Patty Siegel, executive director of the California Child Care Resource
and Referral Network, an advocacy organization told the New York Times: “We’re really reneging on a commitment and a promise that we made to families. You can’t expect a family with young children to get on their feet and get jobs without child care.”
Child care is one of the largest expenditures after housing in many low-income working families, absorbing nearly a third of total household budgets in families with working mothers and incomes below the poverty line
— $18,310 for a family of three. [U.S. Census data]
Data for last year has yet to be compiled, but federal officials and poverty experts assume the number of families eligible for help has climbed, given broad cuts in working hours and other sources of income.
You can read more about this growing problem here. The New Poor: Cuts to Child Care Subsidy Thwart More Job Seekers [New York Times, May 24, 2010] Thanks to Paula Aylward of Marshall, Michigan for bringing this article to my attention
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