00:00I just never thought, oh, I wouldn't be working.
00:03I remember being pregnant.
00:05And at work during COVID, and then we had her, and we're like, oh, my goodness, it's a lot.
00:10She's a mother of three who left her full-time job in hotel management in 2020.
00:15A few months after her first child was born, she quickly realized that the cost of a
00:20nanny or daycare would eat up most of her paycheck.
00:22The cost of child care was so much, although we could have
00:25probably made it work and broke even, it didn't make sense to be gone.
00:30All day and to pay such a chunk of your salary to child care.
00:35For families in New York City, Trasova's story is far from unique.
00:38The soaring cost of child care.
00:40Child care has become a deciding factor in major life choices.
00:43In New York City, infant and child care.
00:45Child care averages as much as $26,000 a year, forcing parents.
00:50To drain their savings, delay buying a home, or even quit their jobs altogether.
00:54That pressure.
00:55The price tag is more than double the national average, according to federal data.
00:59In 2022.
01:00New York City lost $23 billion alone in economic activity as parents.
01:05Quit their jobs, or scaled back their careers to manage child care.
01:09After Trasova's
01:10own experience of giving birth and lacking postpartum care, she trained as a doula and started
01:15her own business, giving her more flexibility.
01:17But after welcoming twin boys, child care
01:20child care costs became overwhelming again.
01:22Recently, I was offered a position.
01:25a student working here in Queens, but after speaking to their CFO,
01:30the salary just didn't make sense.
01:32We shopped around a few days.
01:35New daycares, especially in the area where I would be working.
01:38They either didn't have seats.
01:40Or the cost would be $3,200 to $3,600 a month for twins full time.
01:45A week after the inauguration of New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani, he and New York
01:50Governor Kathy Hochul launched a program called 2Care intended to support working parents.
01:55like Trasova.
01:56This will be felt by expanded subsidies for tens of-
02:00thousands of additional families.
02:02It will be felt when parents look at their bank accounts at the-
02:05end of the year and see that they have saved more than $20,000 per child.
02:10When it launches later this year, it's expected to support nearly 2,000 children.
02:15New York City.
02:16Childcare advocates say the program is a significant step, but university-
02:20universal childcare hinges on funding.
02:22New Yorkers United for Childcare estimates that the program-
02:25for two-year-olds costs the city more than $1,000,000 a year.
02:28The program for two year olds costs the city more than $1 billion a year.
Comments