Press Release: 2019-07-18

Women talk about the high cost of Massachusetts’ child care

“In 2017, Raya Kirby of North Adams discussed the difficulty of affording care for her newborn while working as a master’s level clinical social worker. Raya had to return to work 12 weeks after giving birth in order to support her family, but this was difficult given that the cost of childcare was ‘astronomical’ and there was a long waitlist for child care vouchers.”

Jill Ashton shared this story a few weeks ago at the State House hearing on early education and care.  Ashton is the executive director of the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, an independent state agency that gathers information on women and makes policy recommendations.

Two other stories that Ashton shared at the hearing are:

“In 2018, Ana Saravia of Barnstable spoke to the Commission about her struggle in trying to afford childcare as a single mother of four children, one of whom is autistic. She was forced to relocate due to financial constraints, which were compounded by the high costs of childcare.”

And:

“Michelle Rubin of North Adams who owns her own childcare business in Greenfield testified in 2017 that she sees so many families struggling to access affordable childcare, and said that no parent should have to choose between working and caring for a new child—but this is a decision they are often forced to make within the current early education system.”

Over time, the commission has heard a great deal about domestic violence, transportation, and housing, however:

“Increasingly we’re also hearing about issues around child care and the cost of child care,” Ashton told us in a recent interview. And the lack of affordable child care has a damaging ripple effect on women’s efforts to earn equal pay and become economically self-sufficient.

“Women are quite open about this being a challenge for them and their families. They are asking, How do I balance my responsibilities at work?  How do I balance my responsibilities to my family, specifically to my children? How do I manage elder care for my parents? There’s a sandwich generation of women who are trying to meet all needs.”

To help women manage, the commission is encouraging Massachusetts legislators to support An Act Relative to Affordable and Accessible High Quality Early Education and Care (H.470, S.288), a bill that is supported by a new coalition for affordable child care, one that’s led by the  Coalition for Social Justice and includes Strategies for Children and 40 other organizations.

The challenge of this work, Ashton says, “is how do we care for both families and children and ensure that they have quality, accessible, and affordable child care? And how do we also care for the early childhood workforce, which is overwhelmingly women? It’s incredibly important that those workers don’t become invisible when we are looking to meet the needs of families.”

The commission has gathered more testimony from parents and child care providers in its annual reports to the Legislature.

Please keep sharing these women’s stories with your elected officials. It’s powerful to tell the statistical story that child care can cost as much as a year of public college tuition. But it’s also important to tell the human story about women across the state who are carrying overly heavy loads.