Parenting perplexities: when child rearing challenges push people to the edge

Children are often seen as the best of humanity: they are the pride and joy of parents, the epitome of cuteness, and society's hope for the future. Yet, anyone who has witnessed a toddler melt down in the middle of a store, made food for a picky eater, or tried to get a young child ready for school can imagine the stress of parents whose job it is to confront such challenges. In 2024, the US Surgeon General released an advisory on parental mental health, citing research that has found 41% of parents say they have so much stress most days that they cannot function, compared to 20% of other adults. 

Though parenthood presents a plethora of stressors, some, like affordability and time pressures, are particularly widespread. Abigail Van Eeckhout, who teaches English at West, struggled to find child care as she prepared to have her son in 2023. Daycares she contacted would sometimes reserve slots for couples who were simply trying to get pregnant, and wait lists could stretch for more than a year beyond Van Eeckhout’s due date. Amid this, Van Eeckhout still faced considerations about the safety and support each facility offered, and, crucially, their cost. 

“We are basically paying a second mortgage,” she said. “We did just recently buy a house, but we were in our apartment for an extra two years or so, ironically when we needed more space.”

West English teacher Shelby Brey, who became a parent two years ago, says she is lucky to be able to rely on her mother to care for her twins. She struggles to imagine what she would do without this family support.

“I would potentially have made a different decision and have decided to do child care myself just because of the cost. Even cost aside, there’s availability, like finding a program that has two slots available,” she said. “Income wise, my husband is the breadwinner, but I do carry the insurance. So, that would have been a whole other conversation too.”

In-home and school or center-based child care relieves pressure on parents and supports workforce participation, but also offers key benefits for children themselves at a critical time in their development, according to Dr. Alejandra Ros Pilarz, an associate professor in the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at UW-Madison.

“Children thrive when their caregivers are sensitive and responsive to their needs and engage with them in ways that stimulate their learning and curiosity about their environment—ECE [early care and education] providers are the most important ingredient of high-quality care,” she said. “In order to provide high quality care, you need workers who are trained in ECE and you need to keep the number of children per caregiver low.”

High-quality child care is grounded in a safe and nurturing environment and requires caregivers to double as teachers cultivating curiosity, basic subject knowledge, and social and emotional learning in children. Ciera Cramer, the director of Chiemsee Castle Day Care, says that the extensive training and various qualifications needed for this work can be a hurdle to securing new employees. While she says child care offers fulfilling work, it can also lead to burnout and Cramer explains that Chiemsee Castle has experienced a high employee turnover rate.

“I think people come to the job because they assume it’s about babysitting, and it’s more of teaching the children,” she said. “I would love to find a qualified teacher that can be in our middle room so we can enroll ten more 3-year-olds, and that would bring up our number, because there’s not a lot of room to boost wages.”

The average child care lead teacher makes only $13.55 per hour in Wisconsin, compared to an average $28.34 per hour across all workers in the state. Since the pandemic, various state programs have extended funding to child care centers to help offset inflation and staffing shortages, but Cramer says Wisconsin’s current Child Care Bridge Payments program, which Chiemsee Castle relied on to supplement workers’ wages, will expire this summer.

“They've been saying this for the past three years, and they’ve always followed with the next program, but I think it might be it this time,” she said. “There’s nothing next for bonuses that I know of. And the bonuses helped retain employees.” 

Wisconsin receives federal funding through programs like the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which it uses to subsidize child care for low-income families and offer direct payments to care centers. According to Child Care Aware of America, Wisconsin is one of six states that invests only the minimum number of state dollars required to qualify for federal funding. 

Limited state funding for child care can have a profound impact on families. Van Eeckhout’s first day care provider closed abruptly last May when it lost critical state funding, causing another frantic scramble for care providers and forcing her family to leave a beloved program.

“My mom from Ohio actually drove up, took a week off her job, and took care of Arthur for a week,” she said. “There’s just a wild west of child care out there.”

Many Americans believe the government should play a greater role in funding child care. In an AP-NORC poll last June, 76% of respondents said the cost of child care was a major problem and 80% said helping working parents pay for child care should be a high or moderate priority for the government. Universal childcare captured national headlines last year as this policy proposal helped launch Zohran Mamdani to victory in the New York City mayoral election. 

Noting that the US spends less public money on young children than peer nations, and less than it spends on school-aged children despite the pivotal development that occurs in the earliest stages of life, Dr. Pilarz suggests that there is room for further investment.

“There is good evidence that if we increased government funding for ECE through already existing programs—such as Head Start, public pre-kindergarten and the child care subsidy program—we could raise ECE workers’ wages, increase the supply of high-quality ECE, and in turn, more parents would be able to work and their children thrive,” she said.

Senior Carter Crowe agrees that the government has a role to play in making it more financially feasible for young people to become parents, but he suggests strategies aimed at boosting families’ disposable income, such as a recent Polish policy eliminating personal income tax for some parents, may be more effective than universal child care.

“I think with social programs a lot of times what happens is they just become government run, and they become corrupt from political people who don’t know exactly what they’re doing all the time,” he said. “I think giving tax breaks in general can be really good as well, and especially if it’s like an income tax cut, because that implies that if you want to have a tax cut, you have to work instead of people just sitting back.”

Recently, fears of corruption within the child care industry have caught the attention of national news and the federal government. After a $250 million fraud scheme in Minnesota involving COVID-19 funding for child nutrition made national headlines, allegations emerged of fraud across Minneapolis’s child care network, fueled by right-wing influencers. Early in January, five Democrat-led states were cut off from about $10 billion in federal funding through TANF, CCDP, and the Social Service Block Grant. Since then, temporary rulings in federal court have forced this funding to resume. 

Cramer is confident that Chiemsee Castle and Wisconsin’s funding system could withstand federal scrutiny and prove they are clear of fraud to continue receiving funding.

“We had a lot of questions from parents from our state systems if there was going to be a freeze, but I hadn't gotten a notice or anything so I wouldn’t worry,” she said.

Parents’ need for social support begins before they enter pre-school or daycare. Dr. Pilarz explains that paid family leave, the lack of guarantees for which makes the US an outlier among peer nations, sets a healthy trajectory for parents’ well-being, connection with their children, and financial stability.

“Mothers’ earnings decline when they take time off work during pregnancy and after childbirth while families’ expenses for preparing for and caring for the new child increase,” she said. “Poverty peaks in the month of childbirth, and families have a difficult time making ends meet during a critical period for infant and maternal health.”

Van Eeckhout wishes that employer and government policy reflected the importance of bonding time between parents and children.

“I thought that eight weeks was going to be enough. I thought, two months without work, I’m going to be bored, I’m going to be so ready to get in the classroom. No way,” she said. “My grandparents live in Canada, and when I told them I was getting eight weeks, they were so angry, because in Canada you get like six months.”

While many working parents struggle to find the time or room in their budget to bond with newborn children, it can be equally challenging to find respite from care duties. Since having her twins, Brey says simple errands have often become complex logistical operations, while extended trips involve practically transporting their entire nursery.

“Things like running to go get a coffee or drop something off at the post office, I can’t just go,” she said. “It’s just a different dynamic to get used to because I think you're so used to this independence and this ability to just go do things, and then that goes away.”

Raising children has always been a major commitment, but evolving narratives of what it means to be a “good parent” means parents today face new demands. In one study, researchers examined the amount of time parents in 11 Western countries devoted to child care in 1965 and 2012. Over this duration, the average amount of time mothers spent caring for their children nearly doubled from 54 to 104 minutes per day, while the amount of time fathers spend with their children nearly quadrupled from 16 to 59 minutes. While parents face fears that providing insufficient attention to their children could stunt development or cause emotional harm, they are also subject to universal risks like loneliness, comparison to others online, and distrust in the information ecosystem.

West senior Summer Zinsli hopes that a culture emphasizing the well-being of parents will take root.

“When I think about the support system that would make me more willing to have children, I am looking for people that extend beyond just my partner. Ideally, this support would come from close people such as my family and friends who are physically present to help, as well as from my employer with flexibility and understanding,” she said. “This would be a reality where I have reliable help and a workspace that views my role as a parent as a priority rather than an inconvenience.”

by Aria Boehler

Published February 9, 2026

Oshkosh West Index Volume 122 Issue IV