An AFSCME member and child care provider joined the Care Can’t Wait Bus Tour in Philadelphia this week to draw attention to the struggles facing parents and caregivers.
Latonta Godboldt, owner of Small Wonders Family Childcare and Learning Center in Philadelphia, said during the Wednesday event that parents of young children are not getting the help they need to find affordable child care or receive paid family leave from their employers.
“One of the main reasons I decided to open my family child care program is … the lack of investment in the first few years of life, from child care to paid leave, which have devastating effects on families, children and our workforce across the state,” Godboldt said. “I have watched parents in my program making sacrifices to be able to make ends meet during their most vulnerable time, but oftentimes their sacrifices are not enough.”
Care Can’t Wait is a coalition of labor unions and community partners seeking solutions to our nation’s care crisis. Among the coalition’s goals are creating over 1 million quality, union-protected direct care jobs to meet the high demand in the care economy; ensuring that no family pays more than 7% of its income for child care; and making sure that all working people have access to at least 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
The Care Can’t Wait Bus Tour began on Monday and will end Saturday, with stops in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina and Georgia.
Godboldt, a member of the AFSCME-affiliated Child Care Providers United – Pennsylvania, said part of the solution lies in establishing a national, comprehensive paid leave program to help parents make ends meet in their children’s early years.
“For a single parent, 12 weeks of paid family leave means three months of at least partial income while not paying child care costs,” she said. “For a couple, each parent may take 12 weeks for a combined six months. Infant child care costs an average of $1,320 a month across Pennsylvania. Over six months, that’s nearly $8,000. Paid family and medical leave would make a significant positive impact on a family’s budget for the first year of a child’s life.”
It's not just parents who are facing obstacles in the care economy. Providers and caregivers are, too.
“Many employers across the state are struggling to find workers, and the child care industry is no exception,” Godboldt said. “Except that child care providers cannot easily raise wages to entice people to work.”
Care Can’t Wait isn’t alone in calling attention to these issues.
On Wednesday, our nation’s surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, published an essay in the New York Times highlighting the stress and mental health challenges many parents face and called for new federal policies and programs to address this crisis.
Quoting a friend who told him that upon becoming a parent he was “signing up for a lifetime of joy and worry,” Murthy wrote: “Given the responsibility it entails, raising children is never going to be without worry. But reorienting our priorities in order to give parents and caregivers the support they need would do a lot to ensure the balance skews toward joy.”