Child Care

Massachusetts child care facilities are set to lose substantial funding at the end of June unless lawmakers act. The pandemic wreaked havoc with day care centers. Remote work meant reduced demand. In Massachusetts, 1,400 went out of business. But 85% were able to keep going thanks to Commonwealth Cares for Children, or “C3,” stabilization grants from the state. “You can…

Parents, already dealing with rising inflation, are also facing increasing child care costs.

Child care providers have experienced major financial struggles during the pandemic, but ones in Boston will be getting thousands of dollars in grant money from the city to help. The more than 450 registered family child care providers in Boston will each get $3,260 to spend on things like hiring or learning programs, the city announced Tuesday. The funding, Wu…

State leaders in Vermont, from both sides of the political aisle, have long said a declining number of working-age people in the small state threatens its economic future. A big reason for that worker shortage is difficulty accessing child care, which advocates say is a problem that has reached crisis levels. According to the Vermont Department of Labor, employers across…

New Mexico is making child care free for many families for a full year. Historian Anna Danziger Halperin joins Current to talk about the decades-long debate over child care costs and explores whether other states could adopt similar models.

Expecting a baby? It’s important to start thinking about both the short-term and long-term costs of raising a child, say financial advisors.

Covid-19 raised awareness of a lack of a federal paid leave policy. Democrats are still hoping to pass legislation to change that.

In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden called for more aid for families with children. Still, there’s no timeline for any legislation.

Millions of parents would love to see more monthly child tax credit checks. But getting lawmakers to renew those payments under the same terms may be difficult.

Even if you didn’t qualify for the child and dependent care tax credit in the past, it’s worth seeing if you qualify under the expanded tax break for 2021.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced Wednesday the creation of a new Office of Early Childhood in the city.

A bipartisan congressional proposal would require employers to make reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers.

There are promising results from a study that tracked babies’ brain development after mothers in need were given a monthly stipend. There were no restrictions on how the money could be used, and it seemed to have an impact on infants having healthier, more active brains, particularly in the regions that support thinking and learning. Columbia University professor of neurology...

The $48.5 billion budget Gov. Charlie Baker is proposing for fiscal 2023 pairs a modest increase in state spending with a total of $693 million in tax cuts. Among other measures, Baker’s eighth and final annual budget proposal seeks to double the allowable maximum for the senior circuit breaker property tax credit and increase the cap on deductions for rent…

As the U.S. economy has rebounded, more aid to Americans will likely be scaled down. Here’s what proposals could still get passed by Congress.

The first 1,000 days of a child’s life can be their most vulnerable, research shows. A new program gives money to mothers to help break the cycle of poverty.

The child and dependent care tax credit, as it’s called, was expanded for 2021 and is likely to reach more households.

Lawmakers officially received this week a report from an oversight body for Maine’s child services that includes summaries of the “substantial issues” the office found in the cases it investigated in 2021.

Kids under age 5 are still not eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine — and now hospitals are seeing a spike in children infected with the Omicron variant of the virus. In New York City, pediatric hospitalizations have quadrupled. And data shows huge percentages of child COVID patients have not been fully vaccinated yet, either due to choice or because...