North Texas parents hit hard by child care costs, new COVID-19 variant
Costly child care and COVID-19 concerns continue to complicate the lives of parents in North Texas during the holiday season as they make plans for a third year disrupted by a pandemic.
A group of child care providers who spoke to the Star-Telegram in late December said parents are struggling to keep their jobs, with the financial impact hitting hard around Christmas.
“I have a lot of parents that are trying to figure out whether they are going to pay, or whether they are going to go Christmas shopping,” Ashley Brooks, program director at Treasure Chest Learning Center in Fort Worth said.
Organizations across the county have provided assistance, including community action partners like the Como Center, Worth Height Center and Martin Luther King Center — but Cooper said with the current costs facing parents, those aren’t always enough.
“It comes back on us as child care providers to make sure that we are coming out of our pocket for those that are less fortunate to make sure that some of those parents can provide gifts for their children,” she said. “Or with us sometimes during Christmas we give some families free tuition for a week.”
1 in 3 parents choose between gifts and child care
An analysis by the personal finance website Penny Hoarder found that one in three parents made a similar choice between purchasing a Christmas gift and paying for child care.
Nicole Dow, a senior writer for Penny Hoarder, said a survey by the website also found that child care costs were not only affecting low-income families.
“You’re not talking about necessarily this just being a pinch for lower income families, but middle income families as well,” she said. “They’re spending a very significant chunk of their budget.”
In Texas, parents paid $777 a month or $9,324 annually, for infant care as of 2020 and $589 a month, or $7,062 a year, for child care, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Those costs are even higher in Fort Worth, according to analysis of costs by CareLuLu, which found that the average monthly cost for child care is $647 a month, or $7,764 a year, based on the rates of 190 home-based programs and 274 centers.
While the price varies by program, there are often few options available in a given area and rarely are any of them are cheap.
All child care options are expensive
Wendi Johnson, a psychology professor at Texas Woman’s University, has tried virtually every type of child care over the last decade for her four children, from in-home care and traditional preschool to Montessori and other specialized schools.
With two children now school-aged she is navigating child care amid a pandemic with 4-year-old twins.
“I would always say that child care is one of my least enjoyable aspects of being a parent, it has always been such a burden,” Johnson said. “There’s no other way to describe it, but the pandemic hit a new low as far as child care demands.”
With two incomes, and flexible jobs — Johnson said she has been able to make the situation work with a nanny. Others, including some of her students, don’t have that option.
“I think it’s absolutely crucial to find a solution,” she said. “I work with students who are single moms or you know, young families who don’t have that child care and they know they have to go to class or they have to do their homework or whatever. There’s just not that flexibility in cost or flexibility in schedules.”
For a growing number of parents, the burden of child care is driving them out of the workforce, or into different jobs.
High costs spur lifestyle changes
Emily Morehead, who worked for years in the nonprofit sector, took home about $50 a paycheck every two weeks after paying for child care.
With two incomes, she wasn’t in any immediate financial danger, but the situation became untenable, driving her to leave her job.
“That’s actually why I made the decision to open up my therapy practice,” she said. “With the hours of the nonprofit world … and I had given away all my sick leave to have the baby, and now he’s sick adjusting to day care, and he’s not even getting to go …”
“I left my full-time position because it made no financial sense for our family,” she added.
Since starting her own practice, Morehead has been able to schedule appointments to fit her schedule, and spend more time with her children.
“I can see moms at 7 and 8 a.m., then I can get up and play with my boys,” she said. “And I do evening appointments while they are sleeping.”
“So instead of having to do the full time traditional day care, we kind of restructured our whole life so that we could be with the boys more and we weren’t spending our whole paycheck on child care,” she said.
The Chamber of Commerce Foundation found 32% of Texas parents are facing significant disruptions with their employment due to lack of access to affordable child care.
Of those, 5% were let go and 7% quit their jobs as a direct result of child care.
“These data indicate that working parents of young children are making career decisions based on childcare needs, which may negatively impact their future careers and financial stability,” researchers said in the report, released early this month.
Morehead, who is happy with her new job, said she feels lucky to have been able to start her own career, adding that mothers also deserve to work.
“A lot of parents want to work, and I think parents deserve to work,” Morehead said. “I’m a better mom because I work. I have passion, my brain gets dusted off and I love working.”
“So when parents have to be put into situations because there is no paid time off (or) there is no quality care, they sacrifice their work, they sacrifice their passion, and therefore they lose themselves.”
For parents who are able to find access and can afford to pay for child care, there remains the threat of the omircron variant, with centers still recovering from the toll of the delta variant.
COVID-19 fears continue in 2022
Morehead, who had a child catch RSV just days after starting in a day care, is aware of the possible health implications of illness in child care centers.
“He was hospitalized for a week, and then was hospitalized again about a month later for other health conditions like ear infection, cold and all that,” she said. “So we probably spent three months tuition for about two weeks of school that he was actually able to attend.”
The episode also contributed to her decision to leave her job.
Jackie Hoermann-Elliott, an English professor at Texas Woman’s University, made plans to see her extended family in St. Louis for the first time in over two years this Christmas.
But just around Thanksgiving, the virus tore through her family.
“Our kids are really disappointed, but we made the decision to stay put because … trying to get three kids on an 11-hour trip up to St. Louis and then to have to be concerned about exposing them … I don’t feel great about it,” she said. “I’m grateful that we have the vaccines, and I am grateful that we have the boosters and we do what we can to protect our kids.”
With no vaccines approved for children under 5, parents of young children along with early educators and owners are on edge going into the new year.
While there have been few cases in child care centers so far this month, health officials predict a surge following the holiday.
Federal officials are looking to protect unvaccinated children by requiring masks and vaccines in Head start, a federally funded early education program run by local partners, like Child Care Associates. The move has been challenged in court by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
For now, Hoermann-Elliott is cautiously looking forward to vaccines being approved, and a more normal year in 2022.
“We have been here so many times before where you have to kind of hold your breath and let it out and say, ‘Okay, we’re going back after a holiday again, and we just don’t know, but we’re just going to watch for all the signs and symptoms and have to make peace with what we can’t control,’” she said. “So I don’t feel great about it. But I know it’s going to become like the flu eventually, so I’m just working on making peace with what I cannot completely control.”
