Child Care Crisis, Part 2

The shortage is real, and there are many ways to solve it

Photo by Tanaphong Toochinda on Unsplash

Dear readers,

Four months ago, I asked for your help reporting on the shortage of child care. Last week, my investigation was published in The Assembly, a digital magazine covering North Carolina. Here’s an excerpt:

Kylie Collins learned she was pregnant with her first child in March 2020, the day North Carolina went into pandemic lockdown. Collins is from Australia and her husband is from England, so they have no family members within a five-hour flight. They got on the waitlist for every child care center within a 40-mile radius of their Brevard home.

While they waited, Collins and her husband set up nanny shares in their home, with different babysitters caring for multiple children. This arrangement cost twice what a traditional daycare might and was “very, very stressful,” Collins said. She left her job as a camp director to work from home, thinking it would grant her flexibility. But every time her son cried, she was distracted. Then their long-term nanny left, and so did one of the mothers in the nanny share.

Collins and her husband considered running their own child care center, but they couldn’t make the numbers work. To earn a profit, they’d have to charge more than families around them could afford to pay. “We were so desperate to have consistent care,” Collins said.

Her desperation is echoed by parents and employers across the state. More than five families compete for every spot in a licensed child care center, according to the N.C. Early Education Coalition, an advocacy group. Transylvania County, where Collins lives, has space in those centers for just 12 percent of infants and toddlers with working parents, according to a 2022 study by the advocacy group the Child Care Services Association.

Read the full story here.

Special thanks to

Rebecca Gale

and the Better Life Lab at New America for supporting this reporting.