Finding Day Care - By Erica Hanke-Young

Our family's greatest challenge was finding day care. My husband and I are in our forties and did not expect to have children. We moved away from family for work and we both work full-time jobs. We looked online for day cares and could not find any that accepted children under the age of 2, and a colleague warned me that the waiting lists were extremely long. We got on three waiting lists for day cares in Edwardsville in January 2022 and our daughter was born in March. Neither my husband nor I received leave from work, however, I had worked for the library long enough to have five weeks of vacation and many hours of sick leave built up.

In August we were still on waiting lists for day care and none of them could tell us when our child might get in. A retired friend agreed to take care of our daughter while we worked but only three days a week. Luckily, I was able to work from home two days a week, but it was really stressful not knowing if I'd still have my job for long. Luckily, a space opened up at KinderCare in Edwardsville that October. Not only do we have to travel far for day care, it’s also expensive, costing us over $21,000 a year. I barely make enough to make it worth the expense. If I made any less I would need to quit my job and be a stay-at-home mom.

I feel like the thing we need most is information on child care early enough for us to make a plan. I've already started thinking about preschool. If preschool is a few days a week for only a couple hours, transportation between preschool in Granite City and daycare in Edwardsville could be a problem with full-time jobs. I will need information and enough time to figure out what to do for our family.