Childcare Costs Squeeze Rural Families in US

Eight months before her due date, Angie Steinbach started calling day cares to reserve a spot for her baby. Nobody had an opening as far as Marshall or Willmar — both a 45-minute drive away.

Steinbach got on waiting lists When Steinbach’s boy was born, her husband — who had just earned a degree in computers — planned to stay home with their son. The couple didn’t find a way for them both to work until a relative tipped them to an opening at a child care in Granite Falls. Large parts of rural Minnesota don’t have enough child care for working families. 

Finding a place for newborns is especially difficult. And it’s not just a parenting challenge, it’s an economic problem.Some of the challenges faced by childcare centers are rising costs in running the center. Automating the major process in the center and reducing the dependence on more staff members will cut their monthly costs and improve their services.

Childcare management software helps childcare professionals with managing not just the enrollment, billing and invoicing but also with the major time consuming process related to staff attendance other acts related to the child care center.

More than one in 10 parents statewide, and one in five poor parents, report that child-care problems have kept them from getting or keeping a job in a given year. When parents can’t work for lack of baby-sitting, businesses struggle to fill jobs, young mothers and fathers miss out on precious wages and a thin rural labor force gets thinner.Many businesses are trying to adjust and fill the child-care gap in some way. 

Digi-Key, an electronic parts distributor in Thief River Falls, offers extra cash to day cares that will extend their hours into the evening for second-shift workers. The Gardonville Telephone Co-Op in Brandon is opening its own day-care center.

In Minnesota, 74 percent of children under 6 have both parents working, compared to a national average of 65 percent.As a result, demand for day care across the state is deep, but somehow, there’s not enough supply. The market for child care in rural parts of the state, especially infant care — isn’t working. Profit margins in child care can be as low as 10 cents per child per hour in the Twin Cities, and rural child-care businesses often operate at a loss.

The new infant room in Montevideo, on its own, will lose money, Hering said. Even with $10,000 from the city to build and equip the room, it will run $2,125 negative per month at $140 a week per infant, she said.