CHILDCARE
Our Turn: Child care is vital to rebuilding the state’s economy
Working parents are drowning immediately . The second wave of the pandemic came in sort of a tsunami after many months of juggling work and child care under unprecedented and stressful circumstances.
Almost a year into this crisis, parents are still anxious about the way to keep their children cared for and safe, the way to continue meeting work obligations, and in many cases balance remote learning, too.
We all know that the last year has also laid bare deep inequities within the New Hampshire we already knew existed – including unequal access to quality, affordable, and safe child care.
Early2 care and education schemes including child care offer a supportive environment for healthy child development and prepare children for fulfillment in class and in life – also as allow parents to stay within the workforce. High-quality child care remains an outsized financial burden for several working families looking to seek out a secure and nurturing place for his or her children. This forces many families to form difficult choices about whether to stay within the workforce or leave because quality, safe, or affordable child care is out of reach.
Unsurprisingly, the burden of kid care often falls on women when their family cannot find or afford child care, and this has only been exacerbated by the pandemic.
The pandemic has also illustrated just how essential child care really is to our economy, when all of a sudden, nobody had it anymore.When child care centers and providers were shuttered and schools were closed last spring, it became immediately apparent how important child care is to a strong economy. Unfortunately, the pandemic also exposed the inherent fragility of latest Hampshire’s child care system and therefore the got to solidify this sector.
If left unaddressed, the pandemic’s impact on access to child care options is probably going to possess detrimental effects on children and families in ways in which will compound inequities within the future and slow our efforts at building a robust and future-focused economy within the New Hampshire . within the past year, New Hampshire women have lost more jobs than men, taken on more caregiving responsibilities, and served because the majority of essential workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic
