After a series of lower-paying jobs, Nicole Slemp finally landed one she loved. 

She expected to return to her job in Washington state’s child services department after having her son in August. But the best option for child care would cost about $2,000 a month, with a long wait list. The least expensive option was around $1,600, still eating up most of Ms. Slemp’s salary. Her husband earns about $35 an hour at a hose distribution company. Between them, they earned too much to qualify for government help.

Ms. Slemp, who lives in a Seattle suburb, felt like she had no choice but to quit her job. 

That dilemma is common in the United States, where high-quality child care programs are prohibitively expensive, government assistance is limited, and day care openings are sometimes hard to find at all.

Women’s participation in the workforce has recovered from the pandemic, reaching historic highs in December 2023. But that masks a lingering crisis among women who lack a college degree: The gap in employment rates between mothers who have a four-year degree and those who don’t has only grown.  

After a series of lower-paying jobs, Nicole Slemp finally landed one she loved. She was a secretary for Washington’s child services department, a job that came with her own cubicle, and she had a knack for working with families in difficult situations.

Ms. Slemp expected to return to work after having her son in August. But then she and her husband started looking for child care – and doing the math. The best option would cost about $2,000 a month, with a long wait list, and even the least expensive option around $1,600, still eating up most of Ms. Slemp’s salary. Her husband earns about $35 an hour at a hose distribution company. Between them, they earned too much to qualify for government help.

“I really didn’t want to quit my job,” says Ms. Slemp, who is in her 30s and lives in a Seattle suburb. But, she says, she felt like she had no choice. 

The dilemma is common in the United States, where high-quality child care programs are prohibitively expensive, government assistance is limited, and day care openings are sometimes hard to find at all. In 2022, more than 1 in 10 young children had a parent who had to quit, turn down or drastically change a job in the previous year because of child care problems. And that burden falls most on mothers, who shoulder more child-rearing responsibilities and are far more likely to leave a job to care for kids.

Even so, women’s participation in the workforce has recovered from the pandemic, reaching historic highs in December 2023. But that masks a lingering crisis among women like Ms. Slemp who lack a college degree: The gap in employment rates between mothers who have a four-year degree and those who don’t has only grown. 

For mothers without college degrees, a day without work is often a day without pay. They are less likely to have paid leave. And when they face an interruption in child care arrangements, their families are far more likely to adjust by giving up work, according to an analysis of Census survey data by the Education Reporting Collaborative.

In interviews, mothers across the country shared how the seemingly endless search for child care, and its expense, left them feeling defeated. It pushed them off career tracks, robbed them of a sense of purpose, and put them in financial distress.  

Women like Ms. Slemp challenge the image of the stay-at-home mom as an affluent woman with a high-earning partner, says Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.