LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – It’s Parenting Connection Tuesday and 6 News is here for you with tips, strategies, and helpful reminders from local child development experts on how we can be better parents and guardians.
Today’s topic: How to build a personal child care village.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at how to handle what is now being considered a child care crisis across America, due to cost and availability. According to Care.com’s most recent Cost of Care survey, 43% of parents reported greater difficulty with finding child care providers over the past year. A big reason why is the pandemic, which drastically reduced the number of child care professionals – thus increasing demand and raising the price for available, affordable, and quality childcare.
The Cost of Care survey also found that 51% of families spent 20% or more of their annual household income on child care, and it’s now forcing parents to think about making some major changes to afford it, for example:
*31% of parents are now considering a second job
*25% were changing jobs
*26% were reducing hours at work
*21% were leaving the workforce
Grace Bastidas, editor-in-chief of Parents says, instead of changing your work life to pay for child care, she recommends forming a personal village of support.
“I think the first step is being OK with asking for help and thinking about ‘what help do I need?, where am I struggling?, and how can I help other parents in similar situations?’ because this is a give and take, right?”
…and that’s where we will pick this story up next week. We’ll get additional help and advice from Grace Bastidas on how to first form a personal child care village, how to maintain it, and list all the benefits that come with it.
