The push to reopen America leaves millions of working parents in a child-care bind.
Lack of child care is quickly emerging as one of the biggest barriers to the economy bouncing back, says Patricia Cole, senior director of federal policy for Zero to Three, a nonprofit focused on early childhood development.
Though in many places they were not required to close, since the pandemic began, nearly half of child-care facilities nationwide have shut down, some of them indefinitely as the coronavirus forced families to keep kids at home, according to a survey of child-care providers conducted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children .
Summer camps and programs have also fallen on hard times and are being driven out of business. The ones still standing are trying to figure out if or how they can reopen safely.Child-care providers that have remained open to watch over the children of essential workers are stretched to the breaking point.
For Demetriss “Demi” DeShazior, a 41-year-old medical assistant in Miami, Florida, child care tops her list of concerns. Traditional backstops such as grandparents who used to step in to care for children while parents worked belong to populations most vulnerable to the coronavirus. “Parents who are being called back into work at this point really may find challenges in securing care or even, in some cases, securing the care they were accustomed to,” says Dan Wuori, director of early learning at The Hunt Institute, which has a database tracking state child-care policies.
Her makeshift office is a small round table in the corner of her dining room covered in stray crayons and device chargers. This single mother of two, ages 10 and 13, balances overseeing her children’s education and counseling Latino parents working in hotels and restaurants on how to find child care.
Conflicting messages have not helped parents make these tough calls. While President Trump pushes governors to work to reopen schools, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned in Senate testimony this week:"We don't know everything about this virus and we really better be pretty careful, particularly when it comes to children."
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