NYC NOW - Child Care Costs Take Center Stage in the New York City Mayoral Race

Episode Date: October 25, 2025

Child care in New York City can cost families as much as $30,000 a year, rivaling rent and pushing some parents to leave the city. WNYC’s Brigid Bergin talks with families in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park about how affordability is shaping the mayoral race.

Okay. So, Jene, I mean, when we talk about New York City and saying it's expensive, I know that's not any sort of big revelation at this point. But, you know, when you have another mouth to feed, things get a little bit more intense and more specifically for parents with small children. Oh, you're talking about parents with children, not parents with pets. Exactly. They're a different kind of mouths. But I was asking parents of children in Dittmas Park last week how they were making it, how they were getting. getting by. How are you doing? My name is Bridget Berg and I'm from WNYC. Oh, hi. I love WNNC.

Oh, great. That's an ideal start to an interview. I am out here talking to people about childcare. Okay. And so I just observe you with a child, so I think perhaps you have thoughts on the issue of childcare. In particular, I'm talking to people about it in the context of the mayor's race, like how big of an issue is it for you in your life and how you're thinking about the upcoming mayor's race.

mayor's rates? Well, it is a very big issue in our life. It's now surpassed our rent as the most expensive, our most, our biggest monthly expense. So this was Charles Scholl. He was walking home carrying this little cutie patootie named Lucy. She's 16 months old. She had a little brown ringlets, eating a purple popsicle. He and his wife both work full time and she's a public school teacher. So Lucy is in full day daycare. Can I ask, do you, have you calculated with the annual cost is for your child care at this point? We have, I don't remember what it is off the top of my head, but it's between 24 and 26 a month.

And Jeney, when he's saying 24 to 26 a month, he's talking $24 to $2,600. So we're in the neighborhood of $30,000 a year just for child care. Wow. I mean, honestly, Bridget, that's some New Yorker's salary, right? easily, easily. Now, those without kids, this might seem shocking, but that's actually around the average cost here in the city. Wow, $30,000 a year on child care alone. Bridget, I got to say, this doesn't make the Big Apple seem like the best place to raise a family. Well, I talked to a bunch of parents who are paying even more than that, and that's actually why a lot of families are

leaving. So when we talk about child care, though, Bridget, this certainly isn't an issue. that's a problem only for rich folks, right? No, this is a problem that applies to all parents. If you're lucky enough to have a family in the city or nearby, you might be able to lean on them. A recent report from the New York City Comptroller's Office found that one group really facing an acute squeeze are actually middle-income families, people who make too much to qualify for any subsidies but are still facing those crushing costs of housing and, of course, childcare. And then ultimately it means parents are facing these huge questions, should one of us drop out of the workforce?

And these are issues that apply to so, so many parents. From WNYC, this is NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre. For the past several Saturdays, we've been focusing on hot-button issues at stake in the upcoming New York City mayoral election, like public safety and housing. And this week, we tackle another wrinkle

in the complicated, persistent debate over affordability in the city, which is front and center in the race for mayor. Childcare. For a lot of New Yorkers, the cost of daycare has become so expensive that in some cases, it pushes families out of the five boroughs entirely. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, parents with children under six are more than twice as likely to leave New York City than those without children. Child care is second only to housing when it comes to the cost pushing families to the financial brink. In this episode, WNYC's Bridget Bergen takes us to Dipmas Park in Brooklyn to talk to parents

about how the cost of child care is impacting them and how it's become a key issue in the race for mayor. Child care is going to be a question of a government-provided subsidy, one way or the other. And I started 3K on the state side. So is child care? These are not negotiable things. or luxury items. They are the building blocks of any person's life in this city. So Bridget, you were in Dittman's Park while reporting on this story. What's that neighborhood like?

Well, Jena, it's pretty affluent. There are single-family homes. Some are these Victorian Queen Anne architectural styles, big old mansions. There's some nice restaurants. Prospect Park is within walking distance. Okay. All right. So definitely one of the nicer neighborhoods in the city. What were parents saying that you spoke to? Well, I spoke to parents who said they were working in jobs that paid pretty well, or, you know, at least they thought they did. But then after having a kid, they realized they weren't really on as solid financial footing as they thought they were. Like Charles Scholl, who we heard from earlier, he says his family is really just going to try to pinch pennies until they're eligible for that city-funded preschool. I think our plan is trudged through until she's old enough for pre-K.

you know, in a year and a half, basically. So that means waiting until their daughter is three or four years old, and that assumes that they can get a seat in their neighborhood at that point. So even when the city office reprograms, it's no guarantee. That's right. But what about parents who need to figure out something now? What are they doing? Well, I met a group of parents outside a daycare on Cortell You Road the other day having this very conversation.

This is Dina Solomon. She's mom to 15-month-old Luna B. We're actually chatting about because I have a nanny, and I was trying to get into daycares when she was smaller, but there's waiting lists everywhere. So we put our name on the waiting list before she was born, and then it took a while to hear back. Finally, when we heard back, we had already found a nanny at that point because I had to go back to work. No, Janay, this is someone who had options. She's got a solid job in marketing, lives in a community where you see lots of parents and families walking their strollers along the streets. Like, I feel lucky to have, like, a, a solid job and, you know, but, like, it really, you barely, like, have any type of, like, additional income for, like, vacations, for, you know, things like that.

This is 37-year-old Kavita McGinn. And for people who don't have kind of, like, corporate jobs, I'm like, how do you, like, how do you cover child care? just it seems pretty insane. I spoke to her outside of preschool that parents say charges around $30,000 a school year. This place is basically like second rent, you know. She was with her husband Kieran holding their little one, Ami. We really like our neighborhood and all our neighbors and things like that and we just see the place getting more and more expensive for everybody in our age group. If they want to have kids, they move out of the city to like be able to afford it. And, yeah. I don't know. I really think it's important for our like community to stay together.

And it, I think really disrupts people when like they can't afford to live in the city. I mean, I think New York is like losing its population quite steadily. And I think a lot of that has to do with affordability. Now he's on to something there. New York did see population dip around the pandemic, but it actually grew like. last year due to international immigration. But within the United States, more than 120,000 people left New York for another state, which made it one of the states with the highest number of residents leaving it.

And can you guess one of the main expenses driving them out? I bet it's housing. Yep. But the close second. Definitely child care. You guessed it. It's kind of hard to separate housing and child care, at least from a practical point of view. You need a roof over your kid's head.

you need a roof over your head. And if you got to go to work, the kids got to go somewhere, right? Definitely. And after talking to parents at the preschool, I realized having a kid was really kind of a radicalizing experience for some of them. They were wrestling with this issue of affordability in a way that they really hadn't before. Coming up, what happens when someone tries to harness all that frustration into a political movement? More on that after the break. I'm Rebecca, by the way, I have Enzo in the infant area.

Oh, you do? Yeah. Hi, this is Ami. Hi, Mommy. Hi, cutie. This is Rebecca Baylon. If having a kid is a radicalizing experience, she's the Che Guevara of child care. A revolutionary?

Okay, I might be overstating it a bit, but she's arguably done more than anyone else to make child care a campaign issue. I was meeting her at pickup time for her own kids' daycare. Hi. Enzo had a great day today. He's just spitting up a little bit. Like the normal amount, yeah? Yeah, yeah. This is where I met four-month-old Enzo, who they call Zoso, and, you know, some other nicknames.

Oh, he is the spit-up king of Brooklyn. We headed back to her apartment, and while she was nursing her little boy, she tells me what made her start organizing, and it was when Mayor Adams moved to cut funding for 3K. Oh, yeah. I remember this right at the beginning of the Adams administration. He said that, you know, pandemic funds were running out. It was a big thing. That's right. Baylon and her husband at the time wanted to have a child.

So Adam's decision felt personal. 3K was on the chopping block. And parents are spending $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a year depending on the neighborhood. every year per kid. And that makes it a top resonant issue for parents or people considering becoming parents. It is delaying them from buying a home. It's making it really hard to pay out student loans.

Sorry, the baby just spit up. She started a group called New Yorkers United for child care because she says this is a policy failure. Parents can't afford to pay more, and providers of child care can't afford to pay their workers on what parents can afford to pay. So we need the government to step in immediately because we're either struggling to afford it. We can't have kids or we can't have more than one kid. We're dropping out of the workforce. We're seeing a pretty big exodus of parents or people considering becoming parents leaving New York.

And that's middle working class families, that's upper class families. That's our tax base that's leaving New York City. That's the diversity. It's black families that are leaving New York City as well. So it's a real disaster. And Jene, Rebecca is relentless. When Mayor Adams proposed slashing funding for early childhood education in early 2024, Rebecca got YouTube star Ms. Rachel to release a video.

Parents are really struggling to find affordable. high-quality child care. Here in New York City, our mayor cut $400 million from early childhood education programs and is proposing more cuts. Also, access to the option of high-quality early childhood education is going to help the children for their whole lives and is literally going to create a better world for all of us and for future generations, and we just need to do it. Are you familiar with Ms. Rachel?

Oh, yes. my niece and nephew have put me on. That's right. You know, her influence among kids is pretty much unmatched. She's got more pull than Paw Patrol. Sure does. So after Rebecca helped arrange that video, Mayor Adams actually backed off the cuts. And now Mamdani wants universal child care starting at six weeks.

I'm sure Rebecca is all for that. Of course. What are the other candidates saying, Bridget? Well, Andrew Cuomo has criticized Mumdani for campaigning on pledges. He says he can't deliver. The former governor wants to expand access to 3K. That's preschool for three-year-olds. But he stops short of making childcare universal starting at six weeks.

Republican nominee Curtis Lewa really doesn't talk much about the cost of child care as part of his campaign pitch. Has Rebecca thought about how Mumdani would achieve his goal of universal child care? Oh, you better believe it. She says, take it by age group. In other words, we've already got pre-K for four years. year olds. We've got 3K for the threes, though most people agree that program needs some improvement. In her view, next would be for 2-year-olds, something that they're calling two-care. 3K and 3K has been a lifesaver for so many parents. That is the first step to universal

child's care. And those savings are real. Let's say you're spending $30,000 a year, which I am, that's $60,000 saved. So every time we can get an incremental savings by age, That's huge, for instance, by getting to that next age group. That's going to keep so many more people in New York. $30,000 a year times three? I'm staying in New York for those kinds of savings, and I think so many more people would be. Those savings are real, but, you know, it's not a guarantee that the program will actually happen. Which is why people like Baylon are trying to keep the pressure on, even as their hands are quite literally full,

and why so many of these parents are paying such close attention. to this upcoming election. Definitely. In fact, we all are. That's WNYC's Bridget Bergen. Thanks a lot, Bridget. Thank you. Thanks for listening to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. We'll be back on Monday.