By Lauren Weber and Rachel Feintzeig
Darrell Ford's supervisor calls him almost every day, asking
when he'll return to his building-maintenance job in Duluth,
Minn.
"We don't have an answer because we don't have anyone to watch
our son," says his wife, Tasha Ford. Mr. Ford cares for their
4-year-old son, Elijah, while Ms. Ford works from home for
UnitedHealth Group Inc., helping mental-health providers file
claims.
Because Elijah has previously had respiratory problems, the
Fords pulled him out of his day-care center in March when the scope
of the coronavirus pandemic was becoming clear. The Fords would
place Elijah in home-based day care, but none in their rural
Minnesota town have space for him, and searches on Facebook for a
babysitter have been unsuccessful.
Some legislators and commentators worry that generous
unemployment checks will discourage people from going back to work,
but many U.S. workers are coping with a more quotidian barrier: a
lack of child care. As the novel coronavirus blazes through the
country, most schooling has moved online and thousands of day-care
facilities have shut down, either by decree or because demand has
cratered.
Now, as some governors loosen restrictions and companies call
employees back to work, parents are scrambling to find care. As of
early April, nearly half of child-care facilities nationwide had
closed completely, and 17% remained open only for the children of
essential workers, according to a survey of 5,000 child-care
providers conducted by the National Association for the Education
of Young Children. Schools in 40 states have been ordered to stay
shut through the end of the school year.
Today a coalition of business and early-childhood-education
groups is asking Congress for targeted stimulus designed to ensure
that day-care centers remain viable. Even before the pandemic,
day-care centers operated on thin margins, says Sarah Rittling,
executive director of the First Five Years Fund, which advocates
for stronger early-childhood education and is a member of the
coalition. "Now, without money coming in, the industry is really on
the brink," she says.
Many day-care facilities cannot survive if enrollment falls
below 85%, says Michael Madowitz, an economist at the Center for
American Progress who studies the child-care industry.
Given that the approximately nine million day-care slots
normally available in the U.S. are already too few to meet demand,
the coalition groups say, any loss of capacity will put extra
pressure on parents who must have child care to stay in the
workforce. "Child care is underpinning all of that," says Ms.
Rittling.
Millions affected
At Young at Heart Learning Center, a day-care and before- and
after-school program in Charlotte, N.C., enrollment has dropped
from 43 children before the pandemic to 14, according to owner
Vickie Collins.
Some parents have opted to stop sending their children to the
center, either because of fears they would get sick or because the
parents are working less and don't need as much help. Others were
forced to pull their children out in early April after Ms. Collins
received a letter from the state specifying she could only care for
children of essential workers.
Ms. Collins worries that the drop in enrollment could lead to
less funds from the state; most of her clients are low-wage workers
who qualify for free day care from North Carolina, money that gets
deposited directly to Ms. Collins based on attendance.
Millions of workers with young children can't work without
someone else supervising their children, in arrangements ranging
from schools and day-care facilities to babysitters and
grandparents. In 2019, more than 50 million U.S. workers had
children under the age of 18; almost half that number had children
under age 6, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For single parents, the options are especially slim. Ingrid
Johnson, a sheet-metal apprentice at a Huntington Ingalls
Industries Inc. shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., leaves for work at
around 5 a.m., and used to drop off her two sons, ages 7 and 8, at
the one day-care center that opened early enough to watch them
before a van brought them to school. Now, with schools and day care
closed, the boys stay home and are supervised for a few hours a day
by Ms. Johnson's 12-year-old niece.
"She's not the age I would like her to be, but it's the best
option I have left," says Ms. Johnson, a single mother who found
her job last year after completing a training program offered by
Moore Community House in nearby Biloxi. She also bought her boys
tablets, "so I can call and chat with them during the day to make
sure they're OK."
Ms. Johnson has been able to scale back to two full days and two
half days of work most weeks. That reduces her paycheck, but it
gives her some time to catch the boys up on their schoolwork.
An overwhelming job
Childcare as an economic and workforce issue is gaining
attention with business organizations, says Ms. Rittling. For
example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is a member of the
coalition seeking to raise the issue's visibility. But individual
companies have been slow to help employees with what is typically
considered a private problem for families to solve alone.
Some employers are offering extra support in light of the
pandemic. Mindy Nelson works in client services for
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Atlanta. The firm will reimburse up
to $2,200 of emergency child-care expenses, but Ms. Nelson, a
single mother to a 5-year-old, hasn't yet tapped it. "I don't have
anywhere to spend it," she says.
So far, she is working from home and managing her daughter's
online classes, but school ends in a few days and she expects most
summer day camps won't operate. She hopes to hire a babysitter to
fill the gaps.
Rachel Otis, who works for a church in Jacksonville, Fla.,
returned from maternity leave to her digital-communications job the
first week in March. She soon found herself struggling to juggle
the job with parenting her 4-month-old and 2 1/2 -year-old.
The home day-care facility where she and her husband, a nurse in
the intensive-care unit at a local hospital, send their toddler
daughter closed for the second half of March as the novel
coronavirus gained speed in the U.S. Then, last month, Ms. Otis's
husband began treating Covid-19 patients at the hospital. The
couple decided to keep their daughter home for a few weeks to
reduce the potential for exposure of her day-care provider and the
other children there to the virus. At the end of April, with her
father off the Covid-19 assignment, the toddler started going back
to day care part time, but the couple is limiting her attendance to
days when work obligations or other circumstances leave them little
choice.
Working, parenting, managing the household and supporting a
spouse on the front lines has been overwhelming, Ms. Otis says. If
her husband gets assigned to the Covid-19 patient area again,
they'll pull their daughter out of day care for another stretch.
But Ms. Otis says child care is crucial to her career. "It's the
only way I'm able to continue to work," she says.
Ms. Weber and Ms. Feintzeig are Wall Street Journal reporters in
New York. They can be reached at lauren.weber@wsj.com and
rachel.feintzeig@wsj.com.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 07, 2020 06:44 ET (10:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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