‘It’s tough on us:’ How child care challenges impact area families

Parents across the country, including north central Ohio, have struggled for years to find and keep stable child care.

The reasons for that vary.

Some families simply cannot afford it. Many are on long waitlists. Some families just lack access. And the centers that do offer care are either at capacity or face staffing shortages.

A lack of accessible, affordable child care forces parents and caregivers to make tough decisions.

But what does that reality look like for families in the region? What are they doing to make it work?

For a homeless mom of two housed in emergency shelter, it means late nights studying for an oncology data certification exam. Passing the test would improve her chances of being hired in the field.

For a pregnant mom with two children under the age of 8, it means staying out of the workforce for a while. It also means delaying paying bills to put food in the refrigerator.

For a mom whose son has special needs, it means leaving work early in order to deal with issues that pop up at a center she said is ill-equipped to meet his needs.

And for a working mom of two, it meant delaying a job promotion while she waited for more than a year to find care for her baby.

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Dianna Temple, a 38-year-old Mansfield resident, works remotely as a director of a non-profit organization. She secured spots on waiting lists at two local child care centers before giving birth to her second child. That was over a year ago.

In the meantime, the couple has cobbled together a patchwork system of care.

Temple’s mother-in-law watches the kids sometimes, but she lives 45 minutes away and is often busy caring for her husband, who has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

Temple’s own mom fills in when she can. But she lives an hour away and also cares for her sister, who has developmental disabilities.

Temple often has to cancel work. She makes it up on weekends and evenings.

The summer months are easier. Her husband stays home because he’s a public school teacher.

“My husband loves being home; he loves being with the kids,” Temple said. “But summer break only lasts so long and keeping the kids occupied while she’s working has been stressful.

“It’s really tough on us.”

Fortunately, one of the child care centers called recently with good news: her 1-year-old son Marshall can start attending part-time on Aug. 1.

Temple and her husband breathed a sigh of relief. It means she can take the promotion her employer offered more than a year ago — the one she had to turn down because she couldn’t find child care for her baby. (Her oldest daughter, 3, will begin preschool in August.)

The promotion means more hours. Temple still won’t work full-time, though.

“I still want to be home with my son,” she said. “I worked hard on my career, so I don’t want to give it up either.”

The career advancement also means better pay, which will allow Temple to chip away at college loan payments and continue to pay for home-improvement projects.

But it also means relinquishing her son to a center twice a week.

“It’s just hard,” she said.

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Lindsey does a lot of cleaning these days. She prefers a bucket, brush and Pinesol. The scraping, scuffing — back and forth — lulls her busy mind. The music in her headphones drowns out the noise.

For the last two months, Lindsey, 42, has been homeless. She’s been living at Ashland’s domestic violence shelter with her two daughters, ages 12 and 14, from a previous relationship.

The teenager and pre-teen are too old for child care, but too young to be self-reliant, Lindsey said. The summer camps in the area were booked when she inquired. There are no kids their age at the shelter, and it doesn’t offer any type of care for children.

Inviting friends over is difficult due to the shelter’s safety precautions. Those logistics make it challenging to plan time with friends.

The girls spend time with their dad — but he lives nearly two hours away. Their church in Wooster offers some semblance of a social life, but they’re still getting to know people. 

When Lindsey fled, she didn’t just leave her boyfriend of six years. She left her network of friends, home and source of income.

In the relationship, there was no need to work, but she enrolled in school to someday get a job in the oncology field. Things were working well, until they weren’t. 

Now, her kids are bored and often frustrated. The lack of personal space leads to seemingly constant fighting and bickering.

Lindsey received a housing grant, which will pay 100% of her rent for six months. But there’s a catch: she has to prove she has income once that six-month period ends. 

The only income Lindsey has currently is child support she receives from her daughters’ dad. So times are tough right now, she said.

Lindsey recently took an exam to be certified as an oncology data specialist. But she won’t know if she passed the test for another month. So it’s back to cleaning and waiting.

“It’s a vicious circle, every day,” she said.

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Kayla Huvler hasn’t worked a job since she lost a factory position in Ashland during the pandemic. That’s when she and her boyfriend of six years decided to take a leap of faith: she’d stay home to care for her one child from another relationship. 

The system has worked for them — enough to grow the family. In 2023, she gave birth to a son. And they’re expecting another baby in January. 

Her boyfriend earns enough as a trucker to pay the bills, but it’s stressful. 

“There’s days that he gets called and he’s gone for 12 hours,” she said. “He’s a trucker, he can’t decide his schedule.

“But we manage. We get things done. Everybody has their ups and downs.”

Huvler currently receives benefits from the state’s Women, Infants and Children program, but her household’s income means they aren’t eligible for additional public assistance. So paying for child care, on one income? 

“It’s not in the cards,” she said. “The cost of child care and not knowing who’s watching our children is kinda where we’re at.

“It’s too much for us to think about. We just decided I would stay home.”

So that’s what she does, not just for her children — but for her friends’ children, too. She’s watched up to eight children at once at times.

“Yes, it’s a lot. But you have to help each other out,” she said.

Huvler acknowledges the hard work, but then she witnesses her kids playing with their friends. 

“Just watching them all be together is more rewarding than the stress of it. They have fun. They have friendship,” she said.

“It’s working out. I mean, what else are you supposed to do? What is the American dream exactly?”

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Skyler Curtin, 32, of Millwood in Knox County, doesn’t get a lot of time for herself these days. She has three children — 9-year-old twin girls and her son. Lucas, 7, was diagnosed with autism and attention deficit hyperactive disorder, among other behavioral issues, at a young age. 

He’s in school, but summer break means the working mom must place him in a center that, according to her, is ill-equipped to deal with her son’s behavioral flares.

“I have to leave a lot of the times during the day. I’ll either have to leave early to pick him up, take him to my parents’ house or take him home,” she said. 

Lucas’ diagnosis puts him on “Level 3” on the autism spectrum. That level is considered the most severe, which means he experiences impairments in social communication and interaction.

He also displays repetitive and inflexible behaviors that requires extensive, ongoing support in nearly every area of his life.

If Curtin is lucky, she gets one day a week for herself and her boyfriend.

“Saturdays,” she said, chuckling. “That’s the only day I get free. That’s when my parents take my kids. And that’s also the only day my sister is there to help out.”

But her parents and sister have their own set of challenges, she said. Her mom, in her 50s, uses a wheelchair; her dad has COPD; her sister has fibromyalgia. 

“So they’re not physically able to help much,” she said.

That means that precious free time only happens on Lucas’ good days. 

“If he’s not up to it, I don’t get to do anything (on Saturdays),” Curtin said.

On those days, it means staying home and letting Lucas blow off steam in her backyard, which is set up intentionally for that reason. There’s a pool. A trampoline. A rock climbing wall. 

“The whole backyard is set up for him because he has so much energy,” she said.