Child care workers were vital for allowing other essential workers to stay on the job, but with more Georgia parents working from home, jobless or working fewer hours, demand has not yet returned. Some child care facilities report enrollment at 75% or lower.
For many families, 2020 ended up being a year with fewer child-care expenses. Now parents with unspent funds in their dependent-care flexible spending accounts are trying to figure out what to do.
Affordable, quality child care was hard to come by even before the pandemic and now even more so. It's not for a lack of ideas about how to fix it. Is this the moment those ideas are taken seriously?
The coronavirus did not create the struggles that working mothers face daily. But it has exacerbated them and made them more visible, forcing women of all income levels to make hard choices.
In the largest U.S. cities, at least half of all households have seen a serious financial loss such as lost job, wages or savings. Many problems are concentrated in Black and Latino households.
At least two-thirds of U.S. families are struggling to find safe and affordable child care as the pandemic rages on. NPR asked infectious disease experts to help sort the health risks of each option.
The economic toll of the pandemic has led to the loss of nearly a quarter million jobs for child care providers, nearly all of whom are women and disproportionately Black or Latina.