Childcare is expensive, but providers aren’t seeing the rewards

For some parents, the average cost of childcare in Illinois exceeds the annual tuition for most of the state’s public universities.

By Meha Ahmad, Cassie Walker Burke
Parents with kids in daycare struggle with COVID-19 closures in Chicago area
Amy McCoy reads a book to preschoolers as they finish their lunch at her Forever Young Daycare facility, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021, in Mountlake Terrace, Wash. Child care centers once operated under the promise that it would always be there when parents have to work. Now, each teacher resignation, coronavirus exposure, and day care center closure reveals an industry on the brink, with wide-reaching implications for an entire economy's workforce. Elaine Thompson / AP Photo
Parents with kids in daycare struggle with COVID-19 closures in Chicago area
Amy McCoy reads a book to preschoolers as they finish their lunch at her Forever Young Daycare facility, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021, in Mountlake Terrace, Wash. Child care centers once operated under the promise that it would always be there when parents have to work. Now, each teacher resignation, coronavirus exposure, and day care center closure reveals an industry on the brink, with wide-reaching implications for an entire economy's workforce. Elaine Thompson / AP Photo

Childcare is expensive, but providers aren’t seeing the rewards

For some parents, the average cost of childcare in Illinois exceeds the annual tuition for most of the state’s public universities.

By Meha Ahmad, Cassie Walker Burke
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The economics of child care are fundamentally broken. Like health care, it will take a flood of public resources to help support a system that costs more to maintain than consumers can afford. That’s why currently, the cost of child care for everyone is going up. At the same time, childcare workers are notoriously overworked and underpaid. In Illinois, a quiet reckoning is underway led by a private-public group of advocates and government officials.

Reset digs into the reality of what child care workers do versus what they earn, why it matters, and what solutions may be on the horizon.

GUESTS: State Sen. Cristina Pacione-Zayas, (D-Chicago)

Jamila Wilson, a home child care provider, with SEIU Healthcare

Doris Milton, works in a child care center, with SEIU Healthcare