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- Caroline Mercer via Fortune | FORTUNE
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Childcare Costs Top $13,000 a Year as Voters Weigh Midterm Choices
ReChildcare Costs Top $13,000 a Year as Voters Weigh Midterm Choices
Rising childcare expenses are straining family budgets and emerging as a key issue in competitive congressional races, with both parties offering different approaches to relief.
Childcare costs have climbed faster than inflation in recent years, with the U.S. average for full-time care surpassing $13,000 in 2025, according to Child Care Aware of America. For millions of parents of young children, the expense now rivals rent or a car payment, and it is shaping how voters evaluate candidates ahead of next month's midterm elections.
In Pennsylvania's hotly contested 7th Congressional District, Jenny Escolastico, a mother of two children under 5, is staying home with her kids largely because working would not cover the cost of care. «What I would be spending on childcare would be more than what I would be making if I were working full time,» said Escolastico, an Air Force veteran who previously worked in human resources. «Childcare is another rent, another car note.» Even with her son now attending state-funded prekindergarten, returning to work would require after-school care for him and full-time care for her daughter.
Escolastico voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 but is now weighing whether to vote Democratic. She is among roughly 16% of voters in the district who were undecided as of September, according to a poll from Franklin and Marshall College. The district north of Philadelphia is one of a handful that will determine which party controls Congress next year.
Both candidates in the 7th District are making childcare part of their pitch. Democratic nominee Bob Brooks, a retired firefighter, has campaigned on establishing universal prekindergarten, expanding full-day kindergarten, increasing funding for Head Start and making more working families eligible for federal childcare assistance. «The cost of caring for the people you love keeps climbing, and nobody in Washington seems to notice,» Brooks said in a news release. The incumbent, freshman Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, a father of two children under age 3, has embraced tax breaks to lower costs. He cosponsored a bill to expand the federal tax credit for childcare expenses, a proposal ultimately folded into Trump's sweeping tax and social program legislation, which also increased incentives for employers that subsidize or provide childcare for workers. «I will continue to work together with both sides to ensure that working families get the resources, representation, and support that they deserve,» Mackenzie said in a statement.
Trump himself campaigned on cutting childcare costs using tariff revenue, a plan that has yet to materialize. More recently, he expressed skepticism about federal money for childcare. «We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare,» Trump told an Easter luncheon.
The urgency around early childhood policy accelerated during the pandemic, when daycare closures and weekslong quarantines exposed the financial precarity of the childcare industry. The federal government spent more than $50 billion to keep providers open, funding staff training, higher wages, protective gear and assistance for more families. In 2021, President Joe Biden proposed subsidies so most families would never pay more than 7% of household income on childcare, but the plan was narrowly defeated in Congress. Three years later, the last of the pandemic aid expired, and waitlists for childcare assistance exploded, forcing low-income households to sideline a parent from the workforce or forgo necessities to pay for care.
Since then, more candidates have campaigned on childcare solutions. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged to make childcare free for all residents. The Democratic governors of New Jersey and Virginia elected last year both campaigned on increasing childcare funding. The Democratic nominee for mayor in Washington, D.C., won the primary in June after proposing to cap childcare expenses at 7% of household income.
In Allentown, Lerin Hagenbuch, a registered Republican and special education teacher, wonders why the country has not moved toward universal childcare. She recalled searching anxiously for care so she could return to work, only to find some options would require her to take a second job. «There are staff shortages everywhere,» Hagenbuch said. «If these moms or dads who are staying at home were able to even work part time, what a shift that would be.»
About three-quarters of U.S. adults see childcare costs as a major problem, and 64% support the federal government providing free or low-cost childcare for children too young for public school, according to an AP-NORC poll from June 2025. The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, which advocates for greater government support for paid leave, childcare and elder care, has committed $60 million in election spending to elevate the issue.
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