NYC NOW - Solving New York’s Child Care Crisis

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Child care costs are reshaping family life in New York City with many parents saying they pay tens of thousands of dollars a year. Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul is proposing to expand free child care for two year olds. In this episode, Janae talks to parents about the financial strain they're under, and WNYC’s Karen Yi explains what the plan would deliver, who would qualify, and why advocates warn that without more funding and better pay for child care workers, the system could crack instead of expand.

Welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre. For a lot of New York parents, child care costs are shaping big life decisions. Today we'll look at what New York State and the city are doing to make care more affordable. But first, here's what's going on. Mayor Zora Mamdani says now at least 16 people have died outside in New York City during this period of extreme cold. He's urging New Yorkers to keep an eye out for their neighbors and anyone who might be vulnerable to the elements. Conditions that people are living through, they are conditions that none of us should be comfortable with.

And so we're going to use every single resource at our disposal to continue to build on this work to open up more shelters, open up more beds and ensure that New Yorkers are staying warm. Mamdani says officials believe hypothermia played a role in 13 of the deaths. He says the other three appear to be overdose-related. City medical examiners are working to determine the official causes of death. Authorities say they have helped more than 900 people move to shelters or other indoor locations over the past two weeks. Mayor Mundani is pushing for higher taxes on New York's wealthiest residents to close what he described as a multi-billion dollar budget gap. Manhattan Borough President Brad Holman-Sigel warns the politics in Albany are tough, but he says the mayor does have a point. He notes the very top earners in the city of New York pay the same effective tax rate as the bottom 40%.

The top 1%, they earn $7 to $9 million a year. So that is a disparity that the mayor is pointing out. Wilman Siegel told CBS, New York, that new corporate taxes could be one area where Albany leaders in City Hall might find agreement, even in an election year. February is Black History Month, and the city is marking it with some free events across the boroughs. On Saturday, February 14th, you can join a guided tour of Seneca Village in Central Park that was once home to a thriving black community. For a list of other Black History Month events, visit our news site, Got the Mest. Stick around. We'll be right back.

The cost of child care is at the center of Governor Kathy Hochel's political agenda this year. You may remember during her 2025 state of the state address, the governor vowed to make child care universal. and affordable across New York. I want to partner with the legislature to put our state on a pathway toward universal child care.

That really matters. During this year's address, Governor Holkel doubled down on that. One year ago, I stood on this very stage and placed our state on the path to universal child care. Today,

I stand before you with a clear roadmap to show you how we'll get there. The Hockel administration has pledged a series of investments to expand low-cost options for children under five. One of those pledges is a partnership with New York City Mayor Zohran Lumdani to fund a free program for two-year-olds in the city and expand existing 3K and pre-K programs. Now, these policies still need to be passed by the state legislature, but for parents like, Jason Barney and Kendra Hughes, they look like relief on the horizon. How much do you think you're spending annually on child care? $20,000.

Yes, I know it. No, more than that. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, more, yeah. I mean, just daycare itself, $20,000. $25,000, I think. But then on top of it, you know, when the, like, daycare's closed, you know, because daycare's closed portions of the year, summertime. So it's, so yeah, so maybe it's about $25,000.

So this 3K program can really help you all. Oh, yeah, it'll save $25,000. Yeah, very tight right now, so we'll be looking forward to. First and at the scene. Jason and Kendra have a two-year-old daughter, and they'd love to see that $25,000 back in their pockets. Yeah, it's great. And it's awesome that it's coming as a cost-saving measure

because we do need to save it. Very much looking forward to that pain. Yeah. I wanted to know what these policies would actually mean for parents. So I walked around beds die at 7 in the morning, hoping to catch some parents when they had just dropped off their kids. Okay. talking about child care. Would you mind chatting with us?

Oh! Yes. That's Shania Francois. What kind of work do you do? I'm a school crossing guard. All right. And you have a little one? I do. He is two.

His name is seven. He just turned two, actually. I'm guessing that he's going to have a really big birthday party when he turns seven. Yes. Yes. Cute name. Shania is a single mother. Her son's seven isn't in daycare yet,

but she still pays for someone to help watch him while she's at work. She receives some help from the state through the child care benefits program, but she says it's not enough. How much do you think you spend on child care every month? I say about three to four hundred because I have the transportation every day and then the food so that's during the day and then after when I come plus his milk so yeah definitely pimperes all that add up yep and then I don't even think she's getting paid enough. Yeah you know I'm told that your child care is supposed to be about 7% of your income.

Do those numbers line up for you? No. No. I got that 7% number from one of my colleagues, WNYC reporter Karen Yee. You'll hear from her later in this episode. But she told me that child care isn't supposed to take up more than 7% of your check. Because you also got to think, right? Regardless if you work in a city job, a career job, anything, you're not making the amount to cover your expenses, your rent, your bills, and bills trickle down to a bunch of other things.

You got the phone bill, you got the Wafah, and then your child also is another bill, too, with their expenses. So, no, it would never. The parents I talk to, they're definitely paying more than 7%. You're saying to me that you're paying $2,500 a month that is more than 7% of your income. And just so you know, that's on the lower end of what the prices are around here because we looked for more and there's other places that go up to 3,600 a month. That's O'Reat Smith. Right now, her and her partners spend $2,500 a month on child care for their 20-month-old daughter. I mean, there's like programs like Head Start for low-income families, but it does, you know, not everybody qualifies for that. So even if you're two, you know, working parents, you're still going to pay a lot, especially if you don't have help from family. Like, we don't have help from families. You don't have a village here?

Nope. That sucks. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, that's okay. No village and no extra money falling into their account, she tells me. Auret says bills are so tight that she and her partner are reconsidering expanding their family. I would love to have more kids, but, you know, it's very, very hard. You know, when you have rent, car, all those things, and then you still want to pay for the child care.

I mean, we don't have a choice. It's not like unless we stop working, but in that case, then we can. can't afford anything else. There's a lot riding on the cost of child care for New York parents. All money comes from somewhere, and the money you spend on child care could be going towards a bigger apartment, or a summer vacation, or groceries, and gas. But for every single one of the parents I spoke to, it's also affecting how they think, plan, and dream about growing their families.

Here's Shania Francois again. Funny story, I want to have five kids. Okay, you do you. But I don't know if that's actually going to happen, okay? Because in this economy right now, no. No. And then even with my job, I'm like, I'm making it work because you, growing up, you know how to make things last

and save and make it work for you. You understand? But right now, no. I don't think right now having another child for me is not a time out there. After the break, I'll talk with WNYC reporter Karen Yee about what you need to know about Governor Hokel's child care expansion plan. Stay close. We pay $13 an hour. But when I enrolled in my son, I actually went to look for daycares when I was pregnant because I had heard that you had to like get on a wait list.

And it was just very hard to find a spot. So at the time, it was $12 an hour. But by the time we enrolled my son, I went up to $13 an hour. So it would have been 25K at that rate, but I think it's actually more. And I'm actually scared to do the math because I don't want to think about it. No, do the math. Do the math. Welcome back to NYC now.

I'm Jene Pierre. I'm back in the studio with WNYC reporter Karen Yeat, talking about child care and just how expensive it is. All right, so you're doing the match now. I'm scared. So $13 an hour times eight. times five times 52 weeks. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 27,040.

27,000? No wonder my bank account looks the way it does. Wow. No wonder this is such a triggering question for parents when I ask them. They're like, well. We triggered some folks, okay? Yeah. Can you relate to any of the parents that we heard from?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, the cost of child care is just... I mean, I knew it was a lot when I was a reporter before I turned into a parent. But I think once I became a parent, I like really, really got it. I really, really understood it because it's actually quite a lot to navigate as a parent because the system is like, it's like Frankenstein. It's like all these little pieces and there's private pay and there's free care. And then there's like all these programs you may not be eligible for and then you got to find one. And I think the other side of it is like I kind of, as a parent, it is unaffordable, right?

But as a provider, it's also unaffordable, right? Like, you know, as much as I pay for my child, that's $13 an hour, that's still less than minimum wage, right? And the women, the three women, they're wonderful women who take care of my son. Like, they're doing God's work. They're taking care of this 16-month tiny tyrant who is a handful. And they're doing it for multiple kids, right? And arguably, you know, this conversation that we're having is very important. But the most important job is raising my child, right?

And they should be compensated fairly. And so there is a huge sort of gap between, I can't afford to pay you more, but I know that you deserve to be paid more. Like these workers should be compensated for the really important and valuable work they're doing to raise the next generation of humans. Yeah. But then when you get hit with that bill every two weeks, it's just like it just drains your bank account, right? And I can totally relate to everything everybody was saying about, you know, family planning, having a few. future kids. I mean, we cannot afford another child even if we wanted one, right? I mean, children are just expensive. They just accrue all of these costs that you don't even think about

in addition to just the basic cost of care, right? And so, you know, here I am doing, you know, really hard work, right, every day, mostly to use my paycheck to give it to other women to take care of my child. And I think it's sort of hard. It's sort of hard to accept that. It's definitely hard. And a few weeks back, we talked about affordability here in New York City, But specifically housing affordability. And you're not even talking about your rent right now. Like, this is just childcare. Right.

I mean, child care is like another rent. I mean, it's sort of an untouchable, right? You issue your rent check, so you have a place to live, and you issue your child care check. So you can go to work to make money to pay your rent and then pay your child care, right? So it is a huge portion of our budget. I haven't, you know, I'm scared to do the math. But we pay, what did we say earlier? 27,400.

Oh, my God. 27,040. Sorry, give me a little. Take your $400. Okay. 27,040 a year. So what is that every month? My rent is a little bit under that, actually, a couple hundred dollars under. Wow.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. So what does childcare look like for you these days? Yeah. So we have our child in what's considered like a family home-based provider. And these are smaller spaces, right? So our provider only takes 10 kids and anywhere from infants to toddlers.

So what I like about it is it's sort of like mixed age learning where, you know, I think if you have like a more commercial daycare space, like if you think about like the big daycare centers, they sort of divide kids by age, right? So you have the one year classroom, the two year classroom, the infant classroom. So my son is in in the room with like two year olds. And now that he's older, he's in the room with infants, right? And that's really nice because when we first took him in he was six months and he was the baby, right? He wanted to be like the big kids. He would come home and I'd be like, where'd you learn that? He would just, I mean, I didn't teach you that.

I've been with you all day. And he would just come home, like, just learning all these milestones so quickly because he was exposed to these big kids and he wanted to be just like them. I swear he's a different child at the daycare. He does not behave that way in my house. Earlier, you talked about the fact that you were actually looking for a daycare while you were pregnant. Yeah. So the advice we heard from a lot of our friends who had had kids was. get a daycare spot early. And so I think I was maybe six, seven months pregnant, and they made a

spreadsheet. And a lot of them were like, we don't have space for another year and a half. Like, we'll put you on the wait list. A year and a half? One place told me, we'll put you on the wait list for 2026. My son is a year and a half now. So now I could have gotten that position, that spot. And so a lot of these places are booked because the demand is so high. And we found a great location, one that was sort of, if you can believe it, middle tier. It wasn't the most expensive in our neighborhood, and it wasn't the least expensive. There was one that was a little bit cheaper, but it was the logistics of drop off and pickup, which is a whole other world, was just it wouldn't work for us, right, if we have to get to work and come back from work.

Yeah, so. And I want to ask about that, like, when you're out looking at daycare, it's like, what are you looking for? Yeah, I mean, that, so my experience is probably different than many other parents because I had been reporting on child care for a while. So I was a little bit nuts. And I, you know, I knew how to look up licensing for these centers. I knew how to look up their violations. I knew how to background check, right? You knew a little too much.

That's not the norm. But I think for most parents what you're looking for, you know, they usually will give you a tour of the space. And it depends on what works for your family, right? I mean, there may be like cultural or language things that you're looking for. Like we liked that our center, you know, spoke Spanish. And so our son can sort of be bilingual, right, and learn and pick up Spanish as well as English. We liked that it was smaller and felt a little bit more comfortable as like as a home setting, right? Because you are leaving your child there, often very young, for most of the day.

I was talking to other parents about this too. And it's like, you kind of just go off vibes, you know? Like, we really liked the place we toured because they had all the kids sitting around the table and they were like playing nicely. and there was like some like, it was like classical, or maybe it was like New Age music. And I was like, this feels nice. Like they have it under control. And they just seemed like they ran a pretty tight ship there. Like sort of this very like disciplined but out of love kind of MO that we really appreciated.

Yeah. So before I went out to bedside to talk with a gang of parents, you gave me a really good pep talk about, you know, the questions that I should be asking. And you also led me to this federal guidance that let me know that child care should be 7% of the household income. In my reporting, Karen, I didn't meet a single parent who's spending 7% or less of their household income on child care. Everyone, including you, it seems, everyone's spending more. What does that tell us about affordability in New York City? I mean, I think I laughed out loud when I saw this statistic when I learned about this because it is so, like far from reality from what most parents pay.

I mean, I think at this point every single parent that I've spoken to, no one pays within this range. And I think what it says is that, you know, child care just is unaffordable, right? It's sort of this, you know, this system that we haven't quite as a country. I think this is a national problem, not just a New York City and a New York State problem. Have it really figured out how to invest in it, right? Like we've sort of decided that for some reason, sort of the public education of a child begins at kindergarten, begins at five years old. And I think like two different frameworks that I think is helpful to think about child's care and is, you know, why isn't sort of early childhood education consider that? If we can subsidize public education beginning K through 12, why don't we subsidize early childhood education, right? Because it is something that needs to be high quality that we need to pay people for and that, you know, is very important to a child's development, right? And sort of considering that as one framework. And then the other framework that I heard recently is thinking, about it as like infrastructure, right? Like we don't, we don't all necessarily have to individually

pay for like the roads we drive on, right, or the trains we take, right? And sort of similarly, child care as this service, right, that we all need. It's like, it's for the sake of our economy, right? We need child care in order to go work and do our jobs and, and actually like help drive and grow our local economy, right? But, and yet to work, we have to pay other people to take care of our children, right? And so I think those two frameworks are really helpful to think about, you know, why should child care be something that is subsidized and universal? Yeah, yeah. You know, also a lot of people that I talked to said that the cost of child care is impacting the way they think about their future. And, you know, this guy, Jason Barney,

who we heard from at the top, he was actually drawn to tears when I asked him and his partner if they wanted more kids. I just got a little motion with the question, just because, you know, you can't have more kids. you know, it's hard. It's really hard to have more kids and, you know, it actually factors into your decision-making, which I think is crazy. So parents make it happen, right, Karen? But when we talk about, like, having more kids, does that 7% hold if you have multiple kids? That, I don't know. I need to find out. But, you know, yeah, you absolutely, you do what you need to do for your kids. And a lot of the parents that I've spoken to, you know, this really factors into their family. planning, right? Like maybe when 3K was announced in New York City, which is free care for

three-year-olds, you know, then that means, okay, maybe I don't get pregnant until my son or my daughter now is two, right? So then when I give birth, they can go to free 3K and then I'll only have to pay one child's care for my infant, right? So it's a lot of like baby math that goes into figuring out how much longer you have to pay for this, even in my own family, right? My son is a year and a half now. And I'm like, okay, we only have to pay child care for another year and a half before my son can go to 3K. Countdown. Yeah, it is a count of like how many more months, how much longer. And I think it factors into other things too, right? Do you take a job that's maybe a little bit lower paying? Do you maybe not take certain big trips, right, those months? Do you think about how you buy

groceries? Because it is such a huge part of your budget that affects everything else in your life, especially as you see all these other things go up in price, food, rent, utilities, gas, your car, subway, there's. Yeah, it's a lot. And then, you know, I think ultimately, if you can't make it work, you see families leaving New York City and New York State. I mean, we've, you know, there's been reports that have said, you know, family site, housing and child care as the reasons for leaving New York City,

particularly families with children under five years old. So if it, you know, you do, like I said, you do what you do for your kid. And if that means moving to Pennsylvania or Florida or Texas or New Jersey, you have to do that. Yeah. You talked about baby math and parents, you know, considering, hey, my kid is two. Maybe I can think about having another kid. But now with the first two care programs launching in the fall, that baby math can change for some folks, right? But when that launches in the fall, there will only be 2,000 slots.

And advocates say that's only a fraction of the need. What does a truly universal two care program look like? Well, I think ideally, I mean, universal care means free care, right? The way the city has rolled out care for three-year-olds and four-year-olds, pre-k and three-k and three-k, is a school-day school-year program. And what that means is the program goes until 215, right? And I wish my workday ended at $2.15. Me too. You know, it does not.

And so ideally universal care is the care that you need to do your job, right, and have someone take care of your child, which means eight to 10 hours a day, right? Right now, we don't have enough funding to do that for 3K and pre-K. And so that's a really big question that we have. Will two care be just for the school day or will it be for the entire day, what they call extended day? And will it be for summer, right? Will it be for summer?

Because then you get into the whole, I haven't gotten to this part yet of parenting on a personal level, but like the summer camp, you know, the fight to get, the hunger games to get your kid into the summer camp slot. I don't know what that's like. But sort of like that math too, like even if you finally make it because your kids are in three, you got into a program that works for you. There's still, you know, maybe I got to pay extra for the kid to be there until five or six. Then I got to pay extra for the summer months, right? And so the cost doesn't always fully go away. And like I said, it's like this Frankenstein system, right? And so maybe you get placed in a seat that, you know, doesn't even offer extended day because they don't have the resources.

And so you got to pick up your kid at 215 or find somebody. Maybe you get a part-time nanny that can pick up your kid and other kids until you get home from work. Maybe you figure out how to work from home those days. It sort of alternate if you have a partner or if you have a family member. And so it is a lot of logistics. planning. And so I think ultimately in an ideal world, universal child care would sort of be, you know, a much more comprehensive system where, again, the burden isn't on very exhausted parents to figure out how to how to make the baby math work out for their budgets.

Yeah. Let's get back to the governor's expansion plan. What can you tell me about it? What does this plan actually look like for New York and for New York City? Right. So this was a plan to expand universal child care to two-year-olds in New York City by this fall. There will be 2,000 slots for 2-year-olds, and they're going to start in quote-unquote high-needs neighborhoods to start the rollout of 2-care. Wait a minute. What's a high-need area? I could argue that New York City is a high-need area.

Yeah, unclear. I mean, they could sort of pick it based on various criteria, maybe high needs because there's a lot of two-year-olds there or high needs because there's an affordability crunch there. I don't really know the answer to you. That's one of the big outside. questions we have for the administration. Very vague.

Yeah. So New York City will decide what are these neighborhoods. And then it'll roll out eventually over four years until full implementation. The governor says eventually it'll serve 30,000 two-year-olds. But there's questions about whether eventually it could serve more. And she's going to fund the first two years of the program. So it's going to be $73 million in the first year if state legislatures agree and pass her budget. and then $475 million in the second year.

And, you know, I think there's still a lot of questions like we talked about. Is it going to be a full day? Is it going to include summer months? What are the neighborhoods? And then another piece, we've been talking sort of a lot about the parent affordability side, but there's also the provider side, right? They're struggling too. They're not making ends meet.

They're not making a lot of money out of this business. A lot of them do it because it's a labor of love, and they've been in this for many, many decades. you know, will they also be able to get a share of these city contracts, right? There's different kinds of providers, some in school-based settings, some in center, kind of commercial spaces, and then some in homes. And the question is, how will the city make sure that they're contracting with these smaller providers? So there's both continuity, right? Like, you know, if my neighborhood is selected, I would love for my son to stay in that program.

I don't necessarily want to pick him up, put him in another program for two-care. and maybe put him in another program for three care, right? And then move him eventually to school. That's a lot of disruption for a tiny child. And so I think there's a continuity question, but there's also like a disparity question. Like will these smaller providers that are overwhelmingly run by women of color be included in this contracting process? And will they sort of make enough money, right, to continue to stay open and survive? Because many of them are sort of struggling financially.

Yeah. I want to get back to child care workers. a bit, but before then, I have a question about just how sustainable the governor's expansion plan is. You mentioned that the state will fund this for two years. Mayor Zoramam Dani was on a talk show recently and they asked, you know, where is the money for this going to come from? And I have the same question. So looking beyond two years, where is that money coming from? I mean, that is an ongoing question, right? I think Hocel, obviously, she's up for re-election. She does not want to raise taxes. She says she has enough money to launch this program with better than expected revenues. But I think it is going to be a tough question about

if you want to sustain, if you have a bunch of two-year-olds enrolled in free care, you can't just take that away, right? I mean, that's not going to be good for her or Mom Donnie, right? And so they're going to have to figure out a way to continue funding this. And so I think raising taxes is going to be one of the sort of key issues and potentially the only way to make this a long-term sustainable program that goes beyond, you know, the two-year-olds and eventually maybe younger or eventually maybe reaching more two-year-olds, right? Hockel has said, estimated about this will reach about 30,000 two-year-olds, but I know there's other reports that has estimated it could be up to 55, 60,000 two-year-olds.

And so that's almost double. Right. So that's just more money, right? A lot of more money is going to be needed for this. Yeah. What's going to be the biggest hurdle for child care expansion? There is a couple. I mean, you know, I've mentioned this several times, and it's a very fractured system, right? It's very wonky. We've sort of built child care in a way where we've just added different appendages over time, right? You have, you know, de Blasio announcing pre-K, then 3K, now 2K, there are multiple streams of funding, federal, state, city. There are, you know, there's also issues with, like, the feds sort of cutting back some of their funding. And so you have this, like, very frankentine, system that's reliant on different multiple funding streams. And then I think what's happened is

the burden really is on the parent to navigate what they're eligible for, whether they can qualify for this subsidy or that subsidy. We have a voucher program that currently has a massive, massive wait list of 15,000 families if you can believe it. And a lot of those programs overlap, right? Maybe you're eligible for a voucher, but you're also eligible for another federal program. Maybe you're eligible for an extended day program. And so it's just very complex. And I think the Mamdani administration is almost going to have to address some of like the complicated sort of fractured nature of this to truly get a universal system that works for both providers and workers in the long term and pays them a wage that is fair and decent and for parents, right? I mean, I think the one piece that is missing from all of these announcements and all of this sort of celebration we've seen in the last few weeks is worker wages, right? I mean, the fact that home providers, their take-home pay is $6 an hour is pretty shocking, right?

This is usually the owner, right? They own their home, they're paying rent, their take-home pay is very little. Then they have to turn around and hire assistance, right, to make sure that there's enough of an adult-to-child ratio. And those assistants make minimum wage, right? And so sometimes you have the owner making less than their hired assistance. And you also have, you know, mostly these are women in the field. working minimum wage, which is arguably, like I've said at the beginning, very important work, right? You are taking care of the development of children.

And so that, again, needs money, right? And so you cannot have, you cannot have a universal child care system if you do not have a fairly compensated workforce. Because no one's want to go want to go into this business when maybe they can go work at Starbucks or Amazon, better health benefits, et cetera. So you need to create an incentive for people to want to join this work as well. Yeah. So as we wrap up here, Karen, you know, the governor's expansion of child care is one part of a multi-pronged plan to increase state support for child care. As we look forward, what's next from here? So the two-care plan is just the first step. The governor has also announced she wants to do universal pre-K across the state by 2028. You know, or we can be in a bubble here in New York City, but, you know, pre-K is not. not all districts across the state have free care for four-year-olds. You know, and she's also announced some initiatives for creating that pipeline of child care worker, right,

helping them get degrees and certification and training. But again, no one's want to go through that. At the end of the day, they're just looking at a minimum wage job, right? So that's going to be really key moving forward to see if that becomes part of her budget, to see if in the future years to come, you know, the raising taxes question, if that's going to happen. And then I think, you know, the devil's in the details. We're going to have to see how two care is rolled out, what that's going to mean for parents, how they're going to message this.

I mean, who is eligible? How do you apply? Is your kid, you know, can you stay in your current provider? And then the other, I think, big, big challenge is, you know, the governor has said $73 million for the first year of two care for 2,000 kids. And so I think the challenge will be for the city, they're going to have one. pool of money, right, which is the $73 million that the governor has promised in the first year. Now, if they decide to give providers more money, right, to subsidize their wages, that means there's going to be less money to go around, which could mean fewer seats. And they've promised

$2,000 in the first year, right? And so that's sort of going to be the tension as we see two care being rolled out across the city. Paying providers more means that that money doesn't stretch as far. Right. It may not cover as many kids initially, right? But it may be for the long term because then you're creating a much more sustainable system. Yeah. That's WMYC's Karen. Karen, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks, Jenae. What does child care look like for you? Let us know. Hit us up at NYC now at WMYC.org. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening to NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre. See you next time.