The Childcare Crunch
Planning to return to work after you give birth to your baby?
Finding a suitable childcare arrangement can be the stuff of which parental nightmares are made. According to Educated, Employed, and Equal: The Economic Prosperity Case for National Child Care, a report from YWCA Canada, "In 2008, Canada had regulated child care spaces for 20.3% of children under 5 [and] 18.6% of children under 12."
The report issues a call to action: "Changes which can be fairly described as a social revolution have already occurred. The social infrastructure to support those changes needs to be put in place. Acting on this macro view — that the workforce is equally women and men and women have surpassed men in higher education — properly falls to the national government of the country.
"A national plan to ensure comprehensive access to quality affordable early learning and child care services is not a luxury, a frill or a threat to Canadian families. It is essential to Canadian prosperity, a crucial support for children and parents and should become as normalized in our social structure as the public school system as a choice for parents."
You can download a copy of the report (.pdf) from the YWCA Canada website.
This article originally appeared in City Parent.