My parents never dreamed of calling Chicago their home, and who could blame them? For two generations, my family lived in Uganda until the dictator Idi Amin shattered their world. An order was issued: All people of Indian descent must leave Uganda within 90 days or face death.
My mom, pregnant with my older sister, and my dad came to Chicago with $10 in their pockets. Their hard-earned engineering degrees were no golden tickets in the United States. And like most immigrants, they took the jobs they could get, not the ones that they were qualified for. My father worked as a machinist in a factory, while my mother sold cosmetics.
Back then, child care in Chicago was around $50 a week, a cost my parents just couldn’t afford. Which meant I became a latchkey kid, anxiously waiting for my sister to pick me up from middle school so we could race home and lock ourselves inside until our mom returned home from work.
I often think about how my mother must have felt every afternoon at 3:45. Did she worry knowing her kids were home alone? Of course she did, but she had no other choice but to make sacrifices for our futures. My parents’ struggles mirror so many parents today, and the price of parenthood has gotten only steeper.
Illinois is the 11th most expensive state in the United States for child care. No matter where you look in Chicago — or the country, for that matter — parents are fighting a losing battle against soaring child care costs. Ask any parent what rises to the top of their budget, and I can guarantee they’ll tell you how the cost of gas and groceries doesn’t even begin to compare with the cost of child care.
I could give you countless facts and figures about the cost of care. But that doesn’t hit at the heart of this issue. At the center of this crisis are mothers trying their hardest to make this system work. I recently spoke with two moms living in Chicago, and here’s what they had to say.
“My son was born in 2019. The western suburbs of Chicago were already a barrage of waiting lists and limited options for folks looking for quality child care,” Sarah told me. “Sure, I could reserve a place at my desired care facility, but there was a catch. I had to start paying for a spot for my infant during their yearly enrollment in August, many months prior to his actual birth. But I’d have a spot. The monthly cost? About 85% of my mortgage payment, or around 20% of my monthly salary.”
“We have two children and are paying 160% of our mortgage to have them in day care so we can both work full time,” Kate said. “We both love being parents AND are both proud of our educational and professional accomplishments. We don’t want to give those up, but the financial strain of being able to work as a parent is a constant source of anxiety.”
Let that sink in: 160% of your mortgage going toward child care. The relentless cycle of jumping through hoops, sitting on nail-biting waiting lists, all for the faint hope of securing care. No parent envisions a future shrouded in financial and emotional turmoil. No new mother ever picked up their newborn and said, “I can’t wait to plunge us into debt over your day care.”
It doesn’t have to be this way. Congress and the new administration have the power to fix the child care crisis. But so far, our new leaders are refusing to act. Instead, they’re turning their backs on families by blocking funds from Head Start programs and proposing to cut the only tax credit working parents can use to offset the cost of child care.
Too often, parents — especially moms — are forced to bottle up their anger and resentment toward a broken system that constantly works against them. We make sacrifices, leave hard-earned careers and pull our hair out as we try to balance the budget one final time, all while plastering on a smile the moment our kids step into the room.
Parents should be outraged right now. Politician after politician promises to make it easier for families, yet we never see meaningful action. It’s always, “Maybe next term, next bill, next proposal, next time.” Parents are done waiting.
So what better way to unleash our outrage than to scream it from the rooftops, or because it’s Chicago, a billboard on Interstate 290. If you hop in your car right now and drive down I-290 toward the 25th Avenue exit, you’ll see a vibrant green billboard that reads: “PRESIDENT TRUMP, FAMILIES NEED A TAX CUT FOR CHILD CARE.”
I can already hear the comments: “What good will a tax cut do?” And the truth is, right now, not a whole lot. That’s why my organization, Moms First, is pushing the administration to expand the existing tax cut for child care. Families want their leaders to do something about the cost of child care. And if we don’t hold them accountable, they’ll continue to do nothing.
As Kate shared with me: “We need affordable care. This is literally the future of our country. We need to collectively do better.”
And that’s the point: Making sure families can afford quality child care would benefit us all.
I refuse to watch another generation of mothers make the same sacrifices my mom made. The millions of families — just like Kate’s and Sarah’s — who are living in a constant state of anxiety as the cost of child care continues to rise deserve to have their voices heard. We need a massive, billboard-sized outcry from parents to get the solutions we deserve.
If the politicians continue to sideline us, we’re going to make it impossible for them to ignore us.
Reshma Saujani is a leading activist, the host of the podcast “My So-Called Midlife,” the founder of Girls Who Code, and the founder and CEO of Moms First.
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