Earlier this month, a mother in North Augusta, S.C., was arrested after authorities learned that she had dropped her 9-year-old daughter off at a nearby park while she worked her shift at a McDonald’s restaurant. That news, along with a flurry of reports last week that she was fired from her job — later found to be erroneous — prompted public debate about the the difficulty of finding and affording child care.
One sympathetic woman, a stranger to the mother, even began a crowdfunding campaign on YouCaring.com called “Support Debra Harrell.” To date, it has raised nearly $40,000, far exceeding its $10,000 goal.
The kindness of strangers is always welcome. But what working mothers really need are systematic ways to find and afford safe, local care options for their kids. While many parents scramble to find care in the summer months, especially for older children out of school, it’s a year-round challenge for families with kids younger than preschool age. Twelve million infants (from birth to 4 years old) are in daily care with someone other than a primary parent, according to the Census Bureau.
[For more of this story, written by Courtney E. Martin, go to http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/child-care-and-the-overwhelmed-parent/?src=xps]
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