My latest column for the Minnesota Star Tribune is out today: “Child care is expensive, but no one is getting rich from it.”
Monday is “Day Without Child Care” in Minnesota. Child care providers, families and employers will raise awareness and lobby for policies that reduce the cost and improve the availability of child care for working families. Here on the Iron Range, they’ll hold a morning rally on the Rukavina Bridge near Virginia. Other events will take place at locations around the state.
I only wish there was a single, simple policy that would solve what most readily acknowledge as a real problem. In fact, our child care system is a convoluted mess created by a strange combination of market forces and cultural attitudes. You might say the same about health care, but as messed up as the U.S. health care system is, at least some of the people involved are well paid. That’s not true of child care, despite the fact that it costs parents between $10,000-$20,000 a year in Minnesota depending on where you live and the type of care.
I dive into this with my latest column. I remember the years my mother spent working as a child care provider on the Iron Range. We hope that caring, loving people are willing to work for peanuts to take care of the next generation. But hope is not a plan.
Affordable child care cannot be cast aside as just another social services issue. Child care is an economic issue. Providing proper care and early childhood education invests in something much bigger than just one child or one family. It creates the society of our future. If we shortchange this society, we will pay much more later.
Read more in the Sunday, March 2, 2025 edition of the Minnesota Star Tribune.
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