And more than 1 in 3 adults in households with children say they have experienced serious problems meeting both their work and family responsibilities, according to an NPR poll.

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

One in 3 families with young children is facing serious problems finding child care. That is according to a new poll conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. As Congress debates expanding child care and universal pre-K as part of President Biden's Build Back Better agenda, NPR's Anya Kamenetz has been reaching out to families who are trying to find daycare and figuring out how to afford it. Anya joins us now. Good morning.

ANYA KAMENETZ, BYLINE: Good morning, Scott.

DETROW: So many parents with young kids are hearing that and saying, yeah, that sure checks out. But let's take a step back and explain why it is so hard to find and afford child care.

KAMENETZ: So safe child care for young children is inherently expensive, right? One person cannot safely watch more than three or four infants or toddlers at a time. Personally, I have trouble with just one, but hey. And the United States ranks near the bottom of all the rich countries in how much we publicly subsidize child care. So in this sector, there's low wages, low availability and high prices, all at the same time.

DETROW: And COVID certainly made this all much worse. What has happened over the past year and a half with child care?

KAMENETZ: So at the very beginning of the pandemic, a lot of existing child care has had to shut down or else reduce their capacity because of COVID safety. And as the economy starts to open back up, you know, there's a labor crunch right now. And a big chain like a Chipotle or Costco - they can afford to raise wages. But the little daycare on the block can't afford to do that, so they're having trouble hiring.

DETROW: Yeah. What does this all mean for parents?

KAMENETZ: Well, one thing that it means is that my colleague Mansee Khurana reached parents who had their kids with them while they were on the phone.

NATALIE SALDANA: I'm working, but you hear her in the background. Or she wants me to do stuff. Or, you know, she needs to be - get fed, or she needs to go to sleep.

KAMENETZ: That's Natalie Saldana (ph) and her 18-month-old daughter. Saldana is 22 years old and lives in North Carolina, and she's one of the respondents to NPR's poll.

SALDANA: Being a single mom and a full-time student, it's not easy to be able to spend $700 on child care a month. month.

KAMENETZ: So she says full-time daycare would cost, like, as much as her rent, basically. And Saldana is going to school online for civil engineering. She also works from home selling insurance. And she does have some help from her family. But she says it's all a lot to juggle.

SALDANA: And I have to really try really hard to do all of that while I'm taking my finals or while I'm going to school.

DETROW: I feel like so many people can relate to that, trying to have that adult phone call with the background noise and commotion and everything like that. But does this poll give us a sense of just how common this is, what the data is behind this?

KAMENETZ: Yeah. So in NPR's poll, 34% of families with children too young for school report they have experienced, quote, "serious problems" getting child care in the past few months, when adults needed to work. And across all adults with households with children, 36% said they're having some trouble balancing work and family responsibilities.

DETROW: As President Biden desperately tries to sell this agenda, he has made this argument that this is tied to infrastructure, in a way, that the economy would be held back the more parents are struggling to find child care. How does that check out with the facts?

KAMENETZ: You know, I know you watch these numbers closely, Scott. The latest job numbers in September showed another 300,000 women leaving the workforce altogether. So all the jobs have been gained by men, and that's on top of losses during the first year of the pandemic. And that's the biggest seasonally adjusted drop since September 2020. So it's almost become, like, a seasonal hit, where men are gaining jobs back. And women continue to lose them. And that's really down to, a lot of analysts say, how we allocate caregiving responsibilities in this country. So yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of families like Saldana's that are going to be watching what happens with the Build Back Better agenda.

DETROW: NPR's Anya Kamenetz, thank you so much.

KAMENETZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.