A few years ago, I had just about given up hope.Every month for nearly two years after my youngest was born, I methodically confirmed my son’s spot on a child care center’s really lengthy waiting list in hopes that we’d inch to the front of the line. We’d chosen it because it was close to work and had a great reputation.At one point, I think there were over 60 children in front of my son, and judging by how slowly the waitlist progressed, dozens of parents were doing the same thing every month.During that time, our family had relied on a home care situation involving our parents because there were two-year wait lists for infant care at many Oklahoma City area centers.It’s not nice to hope that people lose their jobs, face financial difficulties, or that families move. But thanks to the boondoggle that is our child care system that’s often what it takes in many parts of our state.One family’s shattering misfortune results in another feeling like they’ve won the lottery, albeit an expensive one that results in a five-figure price tag.I naively expected finding child care to be easy when I was pregnant with my daughter over seven years ago.As I quickly learned, our maledominated, Republican-run Legislature has done a phenomenal job ignoring a major challenge facing parents.Because if there’s one thing that unifies Oklahoma’s working parents, it’s that we pretty much all have war stories from our quest to find quality and affordable child care.So I wasn’t particularly surprised that a recent study published by United WE and Oklahoma State University found our child care system is broken.What shocked me is how bad things have gotten thanks to the continued neglect in our Statehouse and the repeated decisions year-after-year to avoid tackling a difficult issue and an aversion to spending money to make it better.The study found that: — Over 55% of Oklahomans live in a child care desert. That means over 66% of children living in those counties — which include the populous Oklahoma, Tulsa and Cleveland counties — may lack child care access.— While there are over 3,000 licensed child care facilities, Oklahoma has two children per available slot in over half of its counties.— On average, there are 3.5 children for each child care slot. There is not a single Oklahoma county that has more child care slots than children who need them.— In ...
