The high cost of affordable, quality child care

Guests: Mary Graham and Joya Misra

Last week, in his State of the Union address, President Obama focused the nation’s attention on the high cost of quality child care calling affordable options a “must-have” for working families. This news came as no surprise for many parents around the country for whom child care can be as expensive as a public college tuition. Complicating the issue is low wages for workers, what some call the “motherhood penalty” for women who drop out of the workforce because they simply cannot afford child care, and a lack of safe, quality programs. Today on Radio Times we’ll talk about the dilemma many families face when it comes to caring for their children while they work and the policies that might be implemented by the government and employers to address the issue. Our guests are MARY GRAHAM, executive director at Children’s Village Child Care Center in Philadelphia and JOYA MISRA, professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Massachusetts.