Letter to the Editor: Child care must be accessible, affordable

Dear editor,

Child care in the U.S. is broken and Barry County is no exception. In 2023, my family moved to southwest Missouri to pursue job opportunities. A top reason was that Cassville had a quality child care facility. Now, due to numerous bureaucratic and financial difficulties, they will be closing. I don’t exaggerate when I say that my reaction to this was one of intense grief, and I felt immobilized and stranded. Southwest Missouri is a child care desert and suddenly our options were scant.

Cassville is not alone in this struggle – a state licensed provider in Aurora is facing bankruptcy due to lagging state subsidy payments. Throughout Missouri, child care is prohibitively expensive and so far, attempts to help ease the burden have failed both on the ballot and in the state Senate. Based on a 2023 report by ChildCareAware.org, in Missouri if you have two children in care, the annual cost is $22,588. That’s double the cost of annual college tuition and 1.3-times the cost of housing! The National Bureau of Economic Research released a paper in 2024 that demonstrated providing universal pre-K raised parents’ earnings by 20%. The bottom line: when parents return to the labor force faster, they can improve the livelihood for themselves and their families, which benefits everyone.

I call upon State Senate President Pro Tem Cynthia O’Laughlin, Gov. Mike Kehoe and our elected representatives at every level to prioritize initiatives to make safe, quality child care more accessible and affordable throughout Missouri. As Vice President JD Vance recently stated at the 2025 March for Life rally, “It is the task of our government to make it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids.” Families should not go into debt for child care and neither should providers. Show Me that we can do better!

—Katelynn Bowen, Cassville