In the eight years that Cindy Veeser has operated her childcare center in the Green Bay suburb of Bellevue, Forever Young, she has provided an essential service — but she has also faced almost constant challenges.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic a few years ago, things got a little easier. Federal pandemic relief funds gave childcare providers like Veeser a new safety net — support and stability that they hadn’t known previously.

In Wisconsin the money went to thousands of providers, including Veeser, through Child Care Counts, a $20 million-a-month childcare stabilization fund that paid providers a monthly stipend.

The money helped childcare centers stay open and increase pay for childcare teachers, all without increasing costs for the parents depending on childcare so they could work.

“Federal stabilization funding prevented system collapse, supporting 5,762 programs, 75,740 educators, and more than 430,000 children, while helping reverse a decade long decline in licensed child care,” the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association states in a report issued in May.

“It made everything possible,” Veeser says of Child Care Counts. “My teachers were getting paid a little bit closer to what they should have been making at that time.”

The money didn’t just go to wages. “There wasn’t one thing that it didn’t help cover,” Veeser says.

At the end of this month, however, providers will lose the last vestige of that support. One year of “bridge” funding from the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget ends June 30, and childcare providers across Wisconsin are unsure what happens next.

“We’re holding things together the best we can now,” Veeser says. “I just see us falling behind.”

One in four centers could close

More than a year ago one out of four Wisconsin provides told researchers that without Child Care Counts funding they could close down entirely.

More than one in three said they would probably reduce the number of hours they could provide child care. And nearly three out of four said they would have to increase the fees they charge parents.

The survey results were reported in March 2025 by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. At the time, Wisconsin child care experts were looking ahead to June 2025, when the federal funds that paid for Child Care Counts would run out.

Providers, advocates, Gov. Tony Evers and Democrats in the Legislature had hoped for $480 million in the 2025-27 state budget to continue the stabilization program. What they got was less than 25% of that: $110 million for one year of stabilization funds that ends June 30.

WECA’s May report looked to the 2025 UW survey to forecast what could follow, and solicited new comments from providers.

“I believe that the numbers we reported on, which are the most recent data we have, are going to be much higher in reality,” says Paula Drew, WECA’s director of early care and education policy and research.

“Every provider is talking about the cost of what they’re paying for everything.” in comments submitted to WECA, Drew says. “Many, many, many of them said, ‘I will price parents out and I will likely close,’ or ‘I’m planning on closing because there’s no way I can pay my teachers less.’”

Increased fees and families dropping out

As fees rise, some families drop out of childcare programs. “There’s a huge, growing trend of under-enrollment due to parents not being able to afford the increases that they already have in tuition,” Drew says.

In The Beginning Child Care and Preschool operates centers in Boscobel, Prairie du Chien and Dodgeville, each licensed for 50 children.

“Child Care Counts was a huge difference in our operations,” says director and owner Beth Markut. “We were able to give the staff a minimum of a $2-an-hour raise. We were able to afford new supplies. It was a game changer for us.”

It also helped Markut and her husband, Patrick, open the center in Dodgeville, where they live, in 2023.  “I don’t know if we would have done that if we hadn’t had Child Care Counts, but my guess is probably not,” Markut says.

When Wisconsin cut Child Care Counts payments in half in 2023, In The Beginning increased tuition by 2.5% to 3%, Markut says, and she expects a similar increase after the bridge payments end.

In The Beginning’s increases have been modest compared with those in a state survey, which reported increases for infant care ranging from 11% to 14%, according to WECA.

Nevertheless, Markut says, “I’ve had four families leave our Dodgeville center because it’s cheaper for them just to stay at home” instead of both parents working.

Markut says she’s confident that In The Beginning can keep operating, but she also hopes that lawmakers will come around to the need for ongoing childcare support.

“I don’t think they understand what our profession does through day in and day out,” she says. “If they really understood they would support us, but they don’t. It doesn’t just affect us, it affects the broader economy.”

Shelly Boelter has operated a family child care program in the community of Hager City in northwestern Wisconsin for 23 years.

The family care license is limited to eight children at a time. Boelter built her home with the lower level as childcare space designed into it from the start. “When I was 12, this was what I dreamed of doing,” she says.

Child Care Counts enabled her to take a better wage, cover expenses and put some money away for retirement. That ended when the stabilization stipend was reduced.

To keep going, “I’ll be spending less on things that we could use, to try to just keep it affordable,” Boelter says.

She says she tries to avoid raising rates for families who already have children enrolled, however, because “I don’t want money to be an issue for them to leave.”

As a result, fees vary from one family to another. In the coming months, she expects to raise her rates for new clients, however. “Probably a 25% increase would not be unrealistic,” Boelter says.

She would need even higher increases to fully cover escalating costs, “but families would not be able to afford it,” she says. “I have some families with three children here. They can’t afford that cost for themselves and actually make a living, either.”

‘It’s going to get worse’

With the bridge funding ending and a significant number of programs at risk of  shutting down, advocates say their focus now is on the 2027 state budget, which will be hammered out by  a new governor and a new  state Legislature.

And the childcare economy is likely to become even more precarious.

“The stabilization funding in Wisconsin did some really remarkable things, and it’s really, really sad that we’re just going to see those things roll back,” Drew says.

“There’s a lot of different ways to approach the next budget,” says Ruth Schmidt, WECA executive director — from a new system of direct payments like Child Care Counts to new tax policies or tapping a revenue source, such as legalizing cannabis and then taxing it as a dedicated childcare funding stream.

“The bottom line is, this all is revenue. There’s no way to fix childcare to make it affordable for families, to make it stable within an economy without paying for it,” Schmidt says.

“So, is it going to get worse? We anticipate it’s going to get worse,” she says. “We anticipate it getting significantly worse. And every possible strategy needs money. We can’t just rely on providers to continue to sort of take this on their backs, and it’s not good for them, and it’s not good for kids and families.”

When Katy Dicks’ two children were both in childcare programs, she and her partner would dread sitting down each month to have the hard conversations about which bills would go on their multiple credit cards, the highest with a 20% interest rate, and which they could pay outright. “It’s a constant budgeting game,” Dicks said, although she and her family watch every penny and keep their finances as tight as possible. 

According to Act For Early Years, the global childcare campaign, the major expense that weighed on Katy and her partner each month is what also plagues 70% of American parents: the high cost of childcare. According to Care.com, Katy, 45, and her domestic partner, who live in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, are like parents across the nation for whom care has become an “all-consuming strain.” The same source found that mothers report “significantly higher levels of overwhelm, guilt, and identity loss” than fathers, pressuring many to leave the workforce. In fact, of the 455,000 women who left the workforce in 2025, roughly 42% pointed to caregiving costs as the No. 1 reason. In the past 40 years, cost has been the primary reason for the steepest decline in mothers of young children participating in the workforce. 

Katy, whose children are now ages 7 and 11, works primarily as a Pharmacy Project Coordinator, but she is also a realtor, and a co-owner of a logistics business with her partner. Katy considers herself “blessed” because she found wonderful, regulated childcare nearby for both of her children, and she “felt good with the care my children received.” However, between the full-time home-based care and the preschool for both children, it cost her and her partner between $20,000-$30,000 per year over six years for a total of $167,000. Average annual costs for childcare in Wisconsin range between $13,000 and $18,000. Even working her three jobs, she and her partner still owe $45,000 in credit card debt because of their childcare costs. According to a new study, a two-child family would need to earn $400,000 to make childcare affordable, defined as 7% of income by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, an unreachable sum for most families including Katy and her partner.

The reason for the high cost of childcare in the U.S. is primarily due to the fact that early childhood education is not considered a public good. Therefore, with little to no public investment in childcare for everyone, early educators are often entirely reliant upon parents’ private tuition payments to operate their programs. Despite high tuition rates, Wisconsin providers earn, on average, $13.55 per hour, compared to the average hourly wage of $28.44 for Wisconsin workers, with family childcare providers earning $7.46 per hour. 

This changed during the COVID-19 pandemic when the federal government recognized childcare as essential and distributed funds to states to stabilize the childcare workforce. In Wisconsin, $20 million per month was distributed to approximately 5,000 licensed providers, assisting in the retention of 72,000 professionals, and supporting care for over 417,000 children throughout the state through a program called Child Care Counts. While recent research shows that this program was highly effective, the majority of Republican legislators rejected continued funding for the program. Additionally, even though the 2025-2027 budget for the first time included state funds for childcare, that funding ends in June 2026, leaving providers once again on their own to figure out how to continue, or in many cases simply to close their programs. 

Katy also experienced complications during pregnancy and her maternity leave. During her first pregnancy she developed pre-eclampsia and had to be hospitalized and induced. After just three months of maternity leave at partial pay, she said, “It was the hardest day of my life to go back to work. What I needed was 12 months to heal and bond with my baby.” Nonetheless, she felt fortunate that she had childcare in place, had kept her job, and therefore had health insurance to pay all of her medical bills. 

When Katy returned to work, she went to her infant’s child care program every day to breastfeed her baby on her lunch break, to bond with her baby and also because she wasn’t able to pump enough milk to last through the day. When she tried pumping at work, she felt like her male supervisor was always “breathing down my neck,” and pumping twice a day felt like she was “pushing it.” Not long after, her supervisor gave her a performance improvement plan (PIP) for taking time out to pump breast milk.

With her second child, in a new position, Katy developed pre-eclampsia again, and had to be induced, but at this employer, she felt the pressure to quit working more intensely. After she repeatedly brought up the topic of maternity leave with her male supervisor, the company finally agreed to give her three months of unpaid leave. She made a plea for partial pay during her leave, only to be informed by her supervisor that the company would indeed adopt a partially paid maternity leave, but not until after her maternity leave was over. He also told her that she was the first employee he had who was pregnant and required maternity leave. 

The U.S. is the only wealthy nation on Earth that lacks federally mandated, paid maternity leave, even though about three-quarters of mothers are employed. As of January 2026, only 14 states and the District of Columbia had a mandated, paid maternity leave of eight to 12 weeks. Wisconsin does not have mandated, paid maternity leave. 

Katy’s  experiences ultimately drove her to take a leadership position in the Mother Forward chapter in Wisconsin to push for better policies so that mothers are set up for success.

It’s different in Denmark

When Manal Stulgaitis, an American, moved to Denmark to work for the United Nations, she had no idea how the early childhood education system worked. She visited the country  ahead of her family before the move to check out childcare programs. One morning, when she was out for a jog, she stumbled across an enchanting scene. Peering through a tall fence surrounding a huge residential house, she saw children in snowsuits playing on climbing equipment built into the trees and sitting under a structure whittling sticks around a fire. Teachers stood nearby, observing and supporting the children in their explorations. Manal decided to visit the place right away. She found the administrator and teachers welcoming and they quickly determined that they had space, so she was able to enroll her 3-year-old without delay. The center was part of the public early childhood education system, and she remembers it cost approximately $400 per month, and “was absolutely zero stress.” Meanwhile, her 6-year-old attended public school. 

Manal, 51, whose children are now 10 and 13 years old, like all parents in Denmark, was  entitled to a guaranteed childcare slot regardless of income or geographic location. Indeed, Danish law mandates this and ensures that parents pay no more than 25% of the cost of childcare, unless a family’s income is below a certain threshold, in which case it is free. 

As for maternity leave, although it did not apply to Manal since her children were older, the standard in Denmark is a paid shared parental leave that begins four weeks before a mother gives birth and continues for 24 weeks post birth. Another parent can share up to 10 weeks of the leave, and there is additional flexibility depending on the circumstances for a total of 52 weeks. Recent research shows that Denmark’s childcare and paid parental leave policies combined erase 80% of what’s called “the motherhood penalty” for working mothers, allowing them to pursue their careers and passions. This is certainly the case for Manal, who said, “I don’t think there are words to describe how it impacts you individually or how it impacts our family. To have the essentials like healthcare and childcare and education taken care of by the state – both financially and in terms of the regulatory aspects — gives every single Danish person a huge measure of confidence. We were so lucky to experience that system, which serves children and their parents so well.” 

Policymakers in the U.S. have chosen a hands-off approach to childcare and maternity leave. This has had the effect of normalizing the suffering new mothers and parents experience, pressures mothers to leave the workforce, stalls their careers, and loads parents with debt. Denmark, on the other hand, has chosen to promote equality for mothers by mandating and investing in both paid parental leave and childcare. For Manal, the impact of having her daughter welcomed and supported in a high-quality early childhood education system was “a lifesaver.” She could be a  mother and have a high-powered career that demanded long days and frequent travel. Total confidence in her child’s program meant that she or her husband could “drop the kids off in the morning and not have a second thought about their safety or their wellbeing.” Having a high-quality system freed both her and her husband to focus fully on their work, without all the stress parents in the U.S. feel over their children’s well-being and the toll having a baby takes on their household  finances. Childcare advocates in the U.S. say policymakers here could choose policies that set mothers up for success, rather than test their grit, tolerance for debt, and willingness to endure the pain of worrying whether their children are getting good care. 

Across the country, citizens demanding universal child care in their own  communities are joining the thousands of mothers, child care providers, and advocates gathering on Monday, May 11, 2026 for the 5th annual Day Without Child Care.

Support for this reporting came from the Better Life Lab at New America.