Photo-Illustration: The Cut, Photos: Getty Newliz Hernandez remembers the moment she realized she couldn’t go back to work. It was spring 2020, and like millions of other people, she had been laid off. She had been working part time as a teacher’s assistant at an off-site location of her daughter’s preschool, so their schedules were perfectly aligned.
When Hernandez heard about the policy, she realized the timing was perfect. Fatima was going back to preschool in September — at no cost to Hernandez and her partner thanks to New York City’s universal pre-K program — and the money from the tax credits would help pay for after-school day care, which ends at 5 p.m. instead of 3. Suddenly full-time work seemed possible again.
While many employers have blamed unemployment benefits for so-called work shortages, Americans cited child-care obligations as the top reason they were not returning to work. Women were hit hardest by pandemic job losses, and many mothers were forced to leave employment to care for children and other family members. Women lost 5.
Most days, though, her preoccupations about returning to the workforce were displaced by more urgent concerns: How much food was in the house? What could she cook for dinner? What could she afford to pick up at the grocery store? For Hernandez’s family, this meant covering day-care costs, but for other families, the expanded tax credits meant money for new clothes that fit better, healthier meals, or trips to the zoo or a museum. Parents could say yes to their children more — yes to that extra snack or toy or school field trip. Parents who use the money for rent and utilities might have found themselves less stressed when they came home from work and more able to enjoy the time they spent with their children.
There was that kernel of uncertainty, that unpredictability, for Hernandez again. How much would she be making come January? How would she have to readjust her budget if the monthly tax-credit payments weren’t coming in? One way or another, her income would vary again, and she would have to start a new “mathematical journey.”
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