Minnesota parents are drowning in high child care costs. Lawmakers threw us a brick this session.

I was sad but not surprised to see the recent headline “Proposed child care subsidy program… will not receive major funding.” I was expecting it: More than one lawmaker, when asked whether child care affordability would finally be addressed this session, has replied “it’s not a budget year.”

How nice it would be if as a parent I could just tell my child care provider, “I’m sorry, I don’t have the money for this month’s tuition. It’s not a budget year.” 

As a parent of five children under the age of 6, every year, every month, day, and practically every minute, is one in which I am thinking about our budget. 

My wife and I pay about 50% of our annual family income for child care. That’s many multiples of the 7% that the federal government (and the state of Minnesota) deems as “affordable.” 

If the Minnesota Legislature were to fund child care so that no family pays more than 7% of their family income, child care costs for our family — based on income and number of children — would be $0. I cannot overstate how life changing this would be. 

Our family grew quickly, and the financial strain of child care grew with it. We dreamed of a big family, but we didn’t know we’d have five children under the age of 6 in less than five years. Our first two children were planned. Shortly after our second, our third came to us through a kinship adoption. That process then led to us becoming foster parents in which our final two arrived. 

Half of our children have child care funding from their experience in foster care. We pay for the other half. Foster families are eligible for Early Learning Scholarships. The Child Care Assistance Program covers what the scholarships don’t. Regardless of where the money come from, we find ourselves piecing together a financial puzzle to ensure each one of our children has access to high-quality care.

Once children are adopted from foster care, parents are responsible for filling in the gaps. Early Learning Scholarships do not cover the full cost of care for a year. Last year, we were paying $600 a week for two kids to attend full-time child care. Our son’s scholarship then ran out, and we made the decision to keep a 5 year-old and two 4-year olds at home while working full time because we couldn’t financially survive care for all three kids. The months we spent juggling care for our kids and maintaining our jobs waiting for our son’s scholarship to restart were incredibly hard. 

Even once his scholarship restarted, we kept two kids home because the high costs of child care didn’t work for our family anymore. As we potentially become the permanent home of our children still in foster care, we build up the readiness to cover the child care gaps in the future. With the growth of our family comes the knowledge that we may spend many months in the future simultaneously working and parenting full time. Many people experienced this for some months during the pandemic. We’re doing it indefinitely. 

We’re exhausted, and we’re not alone. Many parents have been forced to leave the workforce due to the cost of child care. Others are barely scraping by. Minnesota families deserve better. We are a wealthy state. Our recent surpluses are due in large part to the work of Minnesota families and the spending of average Minnesotans that translated into corporate profits. Minnesota families should not be struggling to afford their lives while corporations rake in record profits.

If our child care expenses were $0, we would finally feel like we’re not drowning. Right now, as we try to “balance” our own health and wellbeing, generate income, work full time, and provide early care for our kids, it feels like we are mostly gasping for air between waves. Sometimes we dip under the water, sometimes we’re floating a bit more above, but we never leave the water. 

If we didn’t have child care expenses, we could actually walk out of the water and onto the beach. We’d lay a blanket down, feel the sun, and maybe even buy some shovels to build sandcastles with our kids.