A couple days a week the calm of Hannah Parke’s house in Grand Rapids gives way to a little bit of chaos. The kind that's bustling with activity, bursts of belly laughs and loud demands.
Parke’s two year old son, Marlow, and his friend Avery were taking turns on a swing shaped like a saucer when the pair spotted Ellie on the sandbox. Ellie was busy digging for buried stones with a small plastic shovel.
“No, no, no — I don’t want that!” Marlow yelled, hoping to catch her attention. Ellie didn't look up. The shovel kept scraping through the sand. Avery, already restless, wandered toward the garden at the edge of the yard.
Hannah knelt beside her son, her voice soft.
“How about we go check the garden? Maybe there are new strawberries.”
He looked up, grabbed her hand and smiled — relief spreading across Parke’s face as she successfully managed to avoid a meltdown.
Parke has always liked kids, and has lots of experience running a summer camp program, but she didn’t ever expect she’d be running her own daycare at home.
“It became clear to me two weeks after he was born that in order to find consistent, reliable, what we felt was high quality care for an infant, was easily going to be half my salary,” she said.
These days, she takes care of three toddlers, including her son, two times a week.
When Parke’s son was born, she was making around $60,000 per year working at a local nonprofit. She said she wanted to go part time and stay home, but then the costs of daycare would be more than what her family could afford.
“We started doing the math and it was like, I could run this home program part time and be home, and be a presence in our households as our kids grow up, and the money came out kind of about the same,” Parke added.
By the time Marlow was four months old, Parke had managed to get through the licensing process to become an in-home child care provider, thanks in part to a Michigan program designed to recruit new child care entrepreneurs and help existing ones grow.
Making it easier for parents like Parke to become in-home childcare providers is one way Michigan has been making big investments to address the state’s child care crisis.
“We’re in a pickle” when it comes to child care costs
Since 2022, the state has spent $1.4 billion to expand access to child care for families. To date, the number of slots for child care for kids thirteen and under has grown by more than 25,000 as the number of licensed child care providers has mostly stayed the same, according to state data.
In most states, caring for one infant can cost more than public college tuition. In Michigan, families can expect to pay an average of more than $200 per week for full time child care. That’s if they are able to find care at all, according to Chana Edmond-Verley. She’s the CEO of Vibrant Futures, an organization in West Michigan working to increase the number of child care providers in the state.
“When families are having to pay 20%, to 30%, to even 50% of their household income, it’s more than a mortgage, it’s more than college tuition — we’re in a pickle,” said Edmond-Verley. “We’ve surveyed families and about 61% are saying they cannot afford it.”
She said in many parts of the state, there are at least three children for every available child care spot.
“It’s hurting families and young families who want to go to work and want to start on their careers, but they need someone to take care of their children, or they decide not to have children, or they decide to postpone,” Edmond-Verley added.
“The family growing as a whole would make me nervous.”
In Muskegon, the financial costs of having another kid are a factor for Stephani Smith. She and her six-year old daughter Shanelle are part of a Michigan program that helps cover child care costs for middle-income families by splitting expenses between the state and employers — leaving families to pay only about 33% of the total cost of care.
“For me it was like a weight that I didn't have to carry any more,” she said of the program.
As of June, more than 250 Michigan employers participate in the MI Tri-Share program and more than 800 families are enrolled statewide.
Her child care costs dropped from around $200 to $80 a week for part-time afternoon care for Shanelle, who attended a free preschool program in the mornings at her local school four days a week. Despite the savings, Smith said it hasn’t been enough to convince her to have another kid.
“The family growing as a whole would make me nervous,” she said. “I do want another child, but I just don’t think financially right now would be good for me.”
One in five adults of child-bearing age in Michigan say they don’t have children and don’t want to, according to Zachary Neal, a psychology professor at Michigan State University who studied why more people are choosing to remain childfree.
When Roe v. Wade was overturned, the number of childfree adults in Michigan jumped from 21% to 26% according to a recent study co-authored by Neal.
“The more general pattern that we’re seeing in Michigan and really in other countries is that when people have limitations on their reproductive rights like access to abortion, they at least express a reluctance to have children,” he said.
Neal is expecting more adults will choose not to have kids in the years ahead.
He said much of it comes down to uncertainty.
“What do the societal supports look like for childcare? For education? And what do societal supports look like for reproductive care? Can people obtain high quality birth control? Can they obtain an abortion?” Neal said.
Hannah Parke is getting ready to welcome a second child. A choice she said she’s only able to make because she doesn’t have to worry about paying for daycare. Now she’s the one providing it, caring for other children alongside her own, and getting paid to do it.
