Heather Visnesky: Solving our child-care crisis

As a working parent, I understand the importance of high-quality, consistent early childhood educators. When my oldest child was born, my husband and I soon realized that the cost of quality child care was nearly equal to my take-home salary. The math just was not mathing, so we made the decision to sell our house so that I could stay home and take on freelance projects in between nap times.

I didn’t return to full time work until eight years later, when I took a lower paying position because the working hours were compatible with my children’s school schedules. Even then, cobbling together child care for out-of-school times such as summer, half-days, snow days, etc., was consistently a challenge, so much so that I decided to become an entrepreneur, which allowed me to be home when my kids were, with the trade off being that I lacked financial stability, employer provided benefits and of course, there were no sick days and no paid time off. If I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid.

Unfortunately, the child care situation has only gotten worse since then, and it’s because of these experiences that I choose to work in a position where I can support working moms as an advocate for equitable and inclusive workplaces — and child care is an essential component of that. I’m very fortunate to be in a position to support and advocate for other working mothers, and as part of that, I hear a lot of stories from moms about their struggles securing quality, reliable, affordable child care.

Carli, a mom of two who, along with her husband, works in health care, told me how in just 3½ years of parenthood, she and her family have already been through four child care centers — she shared that closures, staffing and the pandemic have been obstacles to reliable child care, putting them in a constant state of desperation when it comes to figuring out how to secure care for their kids while they care for their patients.

Another mom, Amanda, shared that her child care costs are more than her family’s mortgage and were raised 12% last year. She worries that they aren’t able to save for their children’s future education due to the high cost of current care, as there isn’t anything left.

The bottom line is that high-quality and reliable child care is something that is critical to the modern-day workforce. When parents stress about not having reliable, affordable and quality child care, their work suffers, their productivity plummets and they have difficulty advancing in their careers. Most importantly their overall parenting and mental health suffers due to being in a constant state of worry and uncertainty.

We have a lot of systemic issues facing our child care sector that must be addressed from a policy standpoint and from an investment standpoint — especially as it relates to the teacher shortage.

Pennsylvania child care teachers don’t earn a livable wage, making only $29,088 annually. Child care earnings fail to meet the cost of living in all 67 Pennsylvania counties. I value our children’s early childhood educators. They are taking care of our most precious resources, our children, and they deserve to earn a living wage so they can thrive and take care of their families.

As a parent, I appreciate the efforts to make child care more affordable for families like mine through the Expanded Child Care Tax Credit. However, we need to invest in the supply side — our child care teachers — because they are the cornerstone of a quality early learning experience.

Heather Visnesky is community engagement manager at MomsWork in Squirrel Hill.