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Child care is expensive. It can be more expensive than a mortgage, rent or college tuition in a lot of places. It is also in short supply. New York City's mayor has gotten a lot of attention for promising universal day care. NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports, it is part of a larger trend to help parents with this enormous expense.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: In Queens, New York, Mansie Meikle feeds her 6-week-old baby while we talk. She had planned to return soon to her job as a home health aide, but...
MANSIE MEIKLE: I've called places up to six miles from here, and they don't have any space for babies. So it's an indefinite wait.
LUDDEN: She's the sole earner as a single parent and qualifies for a child care subsidy. So being out of work longer is tough.
MEIKLE: I can't even think of what that means financially right now 'cause I still have bills to pay.
LUDDEN: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's goal is child care for all from 6 weeks and up. But to start, the plan is to expand a free preschool program to include 2-year-olds. When he announced that in January, Governor Kathy Hochul said the state will pick up the tab.
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KATHY HOCHUL: We're taking the unprecedented step to not just commit for the 2027 budget, which I'm working on right now, but also the following year as well to show you we're in this for the long haul.
LUDDEN: That's on top of billions to expand child care statewide. But will lawmakers keep the money coming? That's the key question for a growing number of places, says Elliot Haspel with the independent think tank Capita.
ELLIOT HASPEL: Can child care funding, much like funding for our public schools, be set aside, or is it going to constantly just be budget-cycle battle, which is going to get rough?
LUDDEN: He says the pandemic's mass disruption of child care made clear how much local economies rely on it, and that's boosted public investment, not just in blue states but also red ones like Texas and Montana. Several have created trust funds for a permanent stream of money. Notably, New Mexico is tapping its oil and gas revenues with an ambitious goal of free child care for all. Other states have passed targeted tax hikes, like Vermont where businesses struggled to find workers.
HASPEL: They passed a small payroll tax - 0.44%. Most of it's paid for by the employers. And interestingly, you actually had employers in Vermont basically asking the state legislature to tax them because they were having such a terrible time.
LUDDEN: In Cincinnati, working mom Rebecca Dixon faces that brutal calculation. Child care waitlists were so long when her son was born, she just kept working remotely. She's managed for more than a year, but it's really hard, and she's decided to stop for a while.
REBECCA DIXON: Just from a financial standpoint, if we do put him into a day care, I'm essentially working to pay for that day care. And for us, it doesn't make sense.
LUDDEN: In January, pricey San Francisco announced it will expand free or subsidized child care to families who make up to $310,000. It's tapping a commercial real estate tax. Other places use taxes on gambling, cannabis or tobacco, but none of that revenue is guaranteed.
PATTY COLE: One of the reasons why the tobacco tax funds are kind of waning because people stopped smoking.
LUDDEN: Patty Cole is with the childhood development nonprofit ZERO TO THREE. She thinks eventually the federal government will be the only solution for steady funding to serve children everywhere, but the growing patchwork of programs can help the country get there.
COLE: It's really hopeful that we have these kind of pioneers, and hopefully they're going to work through some of the thorny problems so that when we get the rest of the country there, we have lessons learned that we can point to.
LUDDEN: One of the biggest thorny problems, raising pay for providers who make poverty wages. Tara Gardner heads the Day Care Council of New York and says it's tough enough to keep people, let alone recruit the many more needed to scale up.
TARA GARDNER: Our centers often find themselves training staff who will then transition to New York City public schools because the pay is higher, the year is shorter and the benefits are better.
LUDDEN: And that leaves parents like Mansie Meikle in Queens stuck. She's glad about the new push for universal care but wishes it had happened sooner.
Jennifer Ludden, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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