[D13Fd]

Yes, the child care problem is huge. My kids' daycare is short-staffed due to staff being out sick, which means they have to combine the classrooms at times. Then when one child in a combined classroom tests positive for COVID, all of those kids--and all of the teachers--are sent home for the isolation period. This results in more short-staffing and more combined classrooms, which leads to even more opportunities for COVID exposure.

It's a cascading failure, and it doesn't stop there. The parents end up watching their own kids and have to call out of work themselves (or work remotely at greatly reduced capacity).

[toomuchtodo]

It's a policy failure. Government should've paid a parent to stay home and provide childcare for their kids until under 5s could be vaccinated, instead of what we have now, which is a broken, dysfunctional childcare system attempting to keep itself together (and failing, both due to wages being too low to make the work worthwhile, spread of COVID, etc).

I don't know how you convince anyone in the current environment to be a childcare provider or teacher, when there are robust alternative employment options available that pay more for a better work environment.

[rdtwo]

In the us we’re still a in 1950s Backwards mindset that a woman’s place is at home with the kids in the kitchen and our government services are based around that. At the same time it’s basically impossible to not be poor without two incomes.