CNBC.com
There already was a child-care crisis in America. Then Covid hit.
Child-care centers shut down. Working parents lost care and child-care workers found themselves without jobs. Parents, namely mothers, left jobs or reduced hours to fill the gap.
“Before the pandemic, the U.S. child-care system was in trouble,” said Mario Cardona, chief of policy and practice at Child Care Aware of America, an advocacy group that works with local and state child-care resource and referral agencies.
“Layer Covid on top of that and the system, as it stands, really ceases to work well for anybody.”
“The system has to rely on a patchwork of funding streams that place a high burden on families to pay the price of care,” Cardona said.