Many rural families squeezed hard by child-care shortage

Many of the families who need child care the most
can’t get it. (Photo by Andrii Zorii, Getty Images)

The lack of available and affordable child care continues to be painful for rural families who are trapped with a single income because the second parent needs to stay home with younger children, reports Megan Leonhardt for Fortune Well. "Nearly one in three rural Americans (31%), including 75% of parents, have personally faced at least one type of child-care challenge, and 11% have had to leave the workforce as a result according to a new survey conducted by the Save the Children Action Network (SCAN), a bipartisan political advocacy group for children, that polled 1,006 respondents living in rural areas or small towns."

The dilemma is a circle of frustration and financial struggle. Breanna Dietrich, a stay-at-home parent from Wheeling, W.Va, pop. 27, 0000, told Leonhardt that she put her now 17-month-old on a daycare waiting list before she was born, and a slot has yet to open: “I’m a mom of five, and my husband works, and he works out of town a lot of times, too. So it’s just me. And I am financially not able to work, which sounds crazy.”

Without child care, "the family has relied solely on the income her husband earns as a utility-pole inspector, but they have struggled with rent, food, and bills—especially amid high inflation and the formula shortage earlier this year," Leonhardt reports. "But many of these parents not only struggle to find available child-care options, they struggle to afford it."

Christy Gleason, the executive director of SCAN, told Leonhardt, “The more we can make affordable child care available to families, then the more they’re able to look at their budget in a different way, because childcare is such a huge cost driver for families across this country, including in rural communities." Dietrich told Leonhardt, "Most people in our area, I will tell you right now, cannot afford $700 or $800 a week [for child care]. That’s more than my husband makes."

The 2023 federal budget includes "$2.8 billion in new, additional funding for federal early learning and childcare programs, including a 30% increase in Child Care and Development Block Grant program funding, according to an analysis by nonprofit First Five Years Fund," reports Leonhardt. "The CCDBG program is set to receive $8 billion (a $1.8 billion increase over FY 2022), while Head Start and Early Head Start and the Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five programs get more modest funding increases, but will have budgets of approximately $12 billion and $315 million for FY 2023, respectively."

While child-care shortages and affordability will not be solved through 2023 funding or current government programs, some communities have outlined their own way to reach longer-term solutions.