Parents, you’re not imagining it: The cost of child care is rising. By a lot. 

The average annual cost of care in 2024 was $13,128, a 29 percent increase since 2020 — outpacing even inflation. That’s according to an estimate from Child Care Aware, a national child care advocacy group that calculates average prices every year. 

The rapid rise of child care costs is swallowing larger portions of families’ income. On average, a married couple earning the median annual income in their state is draining about 10 percent of their earnings on child care. A single parent spends 35 percent of their income on child care. 

In some states, it’s a lot worse. For a married couple with an infant in center-based care, the most expensive states by share of median income are Hawaii (17.9 percent), California (16.3 percent), Maryland (15.8 percent), Oregon (15.5 percent) and Nebraska (15.1 percent). In those states, single parents earning the median income are paying about half their earnings on child care. 

That means child care costs are rivaling home costs as the top line item in most family budgets. In 45 states and Washington, D.C., child care for two kids costs more than a mortgage. In 49 states and D.C., child care for two surpasses what families pay in rent. 

For years, the list of states where parents are likely to pay more for an infant’s care than higher education has been growing. According to Child Care Aware, the cost of center-based infant care exceeds the cost of in-state college tuition in 41 states now. The organization uses three methodologies to arrive at its average, looking at price, supply of child care providers and the number of child care spots, pooling data from 49 states and Washington, D.C., to arrive at its annual price analysis.

“Child care prices are a sizable part of family budgets — they are by no means under control for the majority of families,” said Anne Hedgepeth, chief of policy and advocacy at Child Care Aware. “If we are going to talk about family budgets, and if we want to talk about things you could solve for family budgets: Make a dent in child care prices. You would really bring down one of those highest costs or expenses for a family.” 

Child care remains so expensive because of staff needs and federal investment. To preserve the safety of babies and toddlers, centers are required by law to have more teachers in the classroom. The federal recommendation is one person for every three to four infants and young toddlers, and one person for every seven when you get up to 3-year-olds, but each state sets its own ratio. That’s different from a kindergarten classroom, where classes may have one teacher for every 20 kids, for instance. The costs of employing that many people are also not offset by substantial federal, state and local investment like public education is subsidized. So parents are left footing the bill, and centers can only pay their teachers about minimum wage to keep costs as low as possible. Profit margins at centers are only about 1 percent. 

For years, the United States has toyed with the idea of investing more broadly in child care. Currently, the federal government only covers some costs for very low-income families — and even then only about 20 percent of eligible families are able to access subsidized care. But broader proposals that go as far as introducing a “universal” child care system have repeatedly been blocked by Congress. 

After the pandemic, when thousands of child care centers closed, the United States got as close as it ever has to investing more broadly in the industry. Through September 2023, states received a historic investment of $24 billion in stabilization grants that helped keep centers open and raise wages for teachers at 225,000 programs nationwide. 

But after those funds ran out, Congress did not allocate any additional resources. 

Among families, there is broad support for more federal and state investment in child care, regardless of political party. In a nationally representative Child Care Aware poll released this month, 82 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents and 68 percent of Republicans said they want their elected officials to increase funding for child care and early learning. 

That support is also resounding among men. Another nationally representative poll released this month found that 90 percent of men, including 87 percent of Republicans, are in favor of ensuring families have access to affordable care.

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Republicans have grown somewhat more vocal in their support of child care investments. On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump said he supported child care but didn’t offer any policy proposals for improving affordability or access. Former President Joe Biden proposed a $400 million child care package that included universal preschool, but it didn’t pass Congress. 

At the moment, the closest the Trump administration could come to a child care investment is an update to the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, a tax break for families on their child care expenses that could be in the final version of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Currently, most families only get an average tax break of about $500 to $600 (the maximum parents can claim for one child is $1,050), which doesn’t do much to offset child care costs that easily run into the thousands. A bipartisan effort in the Senate to update the tax credit could get added into the package. (The House version that passed in May did not include it). The Senate’s Child Care Availability and Affordability Act would increase the maximum amount parents can get back in their taxes through the credit to $2,500 for one child and $4,000 for two or more. 

Julie Kashen, a senior fellow and director for women’s economic justice at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, said improving the tax credit is a good policy move for the families that benefit from it, but ultimately it doesn’t solve the problems facing the child care industry as a whole. 

“It’s one piece of a much larger puzzle,” Kashen said. “If you can’t afford to lay out the money up front to pay for child care, then it doesn’t help you that you have a refundable tax credit.”

Advocates worry child care has so far been a footnote in this administration. In April, a leaked version of Trump’s budget called for eliminating Head Start, the federally-funded program that provides early learning and other services to half a million very low-income preschoolers ages 3 to 5. After protests and demonstrations from child care providers and parents across the country, the proposal was ultimately withdrawn.

“It tells us a little bit of what it looks like when policy makers — in particular, members of Congress and members of the administration — hear about child care from the constituents, and what they heard was how much of a non-starter it is to eliminate these core early learning services in every district across the country,” said Hedgepeth of Child Care Aware.

Still, it will likely be a battle to keep the existing child care safety net — a battle increasingly at odds with the majority of American parents who are looking for relief on child care costs.

Because the reality is simple, Hedgepeth said:  “This is not what people are looking for.”