Maryland, U.S. are realizing that day care is an economic problem, not a women’s issue. That was before the pandemic.

Shanea Napper’s distress is evident in every line of the email she sent to Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young. “There is no way I can go to work and home-school my 8-year-old son, and I cannot afford to pay someone to do it," wrote Napper, a 35-year-old mother who made ends meet with two custodial jobs. “There are many single parents like me that need to know what can we do so we don’t have to choose between working and our kids' learning. I DESPERATELY NEED SOME HELP WITH THIS.”

The coronavirus may be the defining crisis of our generation. It has exposed and widened the fissures in the nation’s social terrain, including America’s bifurcated child care system. Every U.S. child between the ages of 5 and 18 is entitled to attend school for free. But child care is a for-profit enterprise for which most parents must pay, and pay dearly — when they can find it.

Experts say there’s been a gradual but growing realization over the past two decades that child care is an economic problem that crosses genders, races and income levels. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden recently unveiled a $775 billion proposal to fix the child care system, the first time a male candidate has made that issue a major part of his presidential platform.

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Source: The Baltimore Sun