Chantal and Harold Hinds are deciding when to have a second baby — with child care costs playing a big roll.
Chantal, 39, gave birth under a year and a half ago to her son, raising him in East Flatbush about a mile from where she grew up. She joined local parent groups on WhatsApp, the instant messaging service, and noticed a trend: Many families were waiting until their kids turned 3 to avoid doubling up on child care fees.
Currently, New York City offers pre-K programs for most, if not all families with children ages 3 and 4 who want it. Over the last week alone, both Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul have laid out sweeping plans to make New York more family-friendly. On Thursday, Adams gave his 2025 State of the City address: “Make New York City Best Place to Raise a Family.”
But affordable child care may be out of reach for the Hinds, whose son will be 2 over the summer. The city’s average cost for full-time child care at that age is $23,400 each year, according to New Yorkers United for Child Care, an advocacy group.
“Having access to free care for him when he turns 2 really impacts our family planning,” Chantal said. “We’re pretty sure we want to have another kid. I don’t want to have another kid at 45. So we’re trying to figure out when is the time that we want to do it, and a lot of that is dependent on if we can avoid a daycare overlap.”
Facing an affordability crisis across the five boroughs, the Hinds and more than 100 other parents are banding together to push for “Universal 2-Care,” a public program modeled after universal pre-K and 3-K for the families of 2-year-olds.
“I did not envision that there could be a possibility that I couldn’t raise my family here,” said Chantal. “But the older I’ve gotten, the more I realized that it’s hard. This is not the same Brooklyn it was when my family was on a single family income, and my mom was home with me until I was 3. That doesn’t exist anymore.”
On Sunday, the group will kick off their campaign with a “stroller brigade” at City Hall, where parents led by New Yorkers United for Child Care and United Neighborhood Houses will call on Adams to help make daycare more affordable and accessible — open for all work hours and within 15 minutes of home.
“I hear all the time from parents in NYC that if we can just hang on to 3-K, then we can stay in New York. We can stay in our apartment,” said Rebecca Bailin, executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care. “That ‘hanging on’ can be quite difficult for many people, many families. That’s why we’re launching our campaign to say: ‘It’s time for 2s.’”
At full scale, Universal 2-Care would serve 60,000 toddlers for $1.3 billion each year from the city budget, though Bailin predicted it would pay for itself over time by keeping families in New York to grow the tax base, parents in the workforce, and young children on track to build a strong future economy. Bailin’s ultimate goal is for universal child care to expand statewide.
Advocates have reason to believe that may be a possibility, though not imminently. On Tuesday, Hochul, who is up for re-election next year and likely to face a competitive primary, announced a task force of business interests, service providers and tax experts to “move toward, ultimately, universal child care” at a daycare center in Bushwick.
Adams during his annual speech on Thursday did not mention universal child care but touted his record — from offering all on-time applicants a 3-K seat by the fall, to slashing child care copays for the city’s lowest-income families from $55 to $5 per week.
“New York City is already a great place to raise a family, but as every parent knows, it’s not always easy,” Adams said at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. “These are big savings for hardworking families.”
Asked by the Daily News where Mayor Adams stands on universal child care, City Hall did not return a request for comment. A rep for the city’s public schools, controlled by Adams, stressed “the urgent need to invest in our youngest learners, supporting their development and easing financial burdens on families, as well as state funding streams to accomplish scale.”
That doesn’t help Stephanie Park, 38, who is still paying $29,700 annually on her 1-year-old daughter’s daycare, run out of the ground floor of a brownstone in Park Slope. The program shutters for the month of August, when Park needs to open her wallet again to keep her daughter busy.
“It was kind of a crazy, rude awakening once I started looking at daycare options,” Park said. “And, you know, like, I’m not going for fancy programs.”
“I love how New York City is an incredibly diverse city. I don’t want to raise my kids in the city that’s been hollowed out because most people can’t afford to live here. That to me is not an interesting place to live and raise my kids.”