In the Lehigh Valley, childcare costs can determine whether a second income adds to a family budget or is swallowed by care expenses. Jenny Escolastico, who lives outside Allentown, says she has stayed home for years because the cost of care for her two children under 5 would make returning to work financially impractical. Her household relies on her husband's income.
“What I would be spending on childcare would be more than what I would be making if I were working full time,” Escolastico said, according to Spotlight PA. Her son attends state-funded prekindergarten, but she says she would still need after-school care for him and full-time care for her daughter to return to work. Escolastico voted for Donald Trump in 2024 and told the outlet she is weighing whether to vote Democratic next month, with childcare costs among the factors.
Other Lehigh Valley residents described different pressures. Lerin Hagenbuch, a registered Republican in Allentown, told Spotlight PA she has not decided how to vote and counts childcare costs among her top concerns. Becky Fisher, a Bethlehem preschool teacher who earns less than $20 an hour, said much of her paycheck goes toward care for her two sons. Fisher voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.
A District Where Every Vote Counts
These three women live in Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District, a closely contested seat covering Lehigh and Northampton Counties, including Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, that is expected to help determine control of Congress. The race pits Republican incumbent Ryan Mackenzie, who has two children under age 3, against Democratic nominee Bob Brooks, a retired firefighter. A Franklin and Marshall College poll found roughly 16% of district voters remained undecided as of September, the same Spotlight PA report notes.
Brooks has campaigned on establishing universal prekindergarten, expanding full-day kindergarten and increasing funding for Head Start, along with expanding eligibility for federal childcare assistance. The cost of care is rising, and Washington appears not to notice, Brooks has said. Mackenzie, for his part, cosponsored a bill expanding the federal childcare expense tax credit; according to his office, his Working Families Tax Package included legislation to double the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit and the employer-provided childcare credit. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Mackenzie voted for and which was signed into law on July 4, 2025, expanded the federal Child Tax Credit, and the broader tax legislation also increased tax incentives for private employers that subsidize or provide worker childcare, according to the same guide.
Trump's Tariff Pledge Still Unfulfilled
At the national level, Donald Trump campaigned on cutting childcare costs using tariff revenue, a plan that has yet to materialize, per Spotlight PA's reporting. Trump has also expressed skepticism about federal childcare funding, saying the country could not take care of daycare while fighting wars. That stands in contrast to a 2021 proposal from Joe Biden for subsidies so most families would pay no more than 7% of household income for childcare, which was narrowly defeated in Congress.
The federal government did spend more than $50 billion on the childcare industry during the pandemic, funding staff training, higher wages, protective gear and childcare assistance. Three years later, the last of that aid expired, and childcare assistance waitlists increased sharply afterward, the outlet reports. Childcare and early education remain among the nation's lowest-paid professions, even as the costs families pay keep climbing.
National Numbers Mirror Local Strain
Nationally, childcare costs rose faster than inflation between 2020 and 2024, and the U.S. average for full-time childcare topped $13,000 in 2025, according to Child Care Aware of America. The group's own 2025 price and supply report puts the exact national average at $13,184, up from $13,128 in 2024 and a 23% increase since 2021. The same report found the supply of licensed childcare centers decreased in 26 of 43 states with complete data, a 1% drop nationwide, even as family childcare homes grew 1.4%.
Pennsylvania families felt the squeeze just as sharply. Families across the state paid on average $14,910 for center-based infant care in 2024, according to the Commonwealth Foundation. That amounted to 11.5% of median married-household income, but a much steeper 40% of median income for single-parent families. The group also notes that two kids in childcare, on average, costs more than one year of in-state college tuition in Pennsylvania.
Part of the strain traces back to who's available to provide care. The median annual pay for Pennsylvania childcare workers is just $28,330, compared with $30,550 for teacher assistants and $34,250 for preschool teachers, the Commonwealth Foundation reports, and the state has an estimated 3,000 open childcare-worker positions. Pennsylvania state funding for childcare has climbed by more than $50 million since 2023, and Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed an additional $10 million increase for childcare-worker subsidies in his 2026–27 budget. The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services separately highlighted a $5 million increase for childcare bonuses in that same budget.
Waitlists Persist Even for Those Who Qualify
For lower-income families, Pennsylvania's Child Care Works program is supposed to help: eligible families can get part or all of their childcare costs covered through a local Early Learning Resource Center, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. But the state's own guidance acknowledges that if funding isn't available when an eligible, working parent applies, the child may be placed on a waiting list. That dynamic has played out well beyond Pennsylvania. Hundreds of thousands of children were sitting on childcare assistance waitlists in 23 states and the District of Columbia this spring, according to the Los Angeles Times, after $28 billion in pandemic aid expired in the fall of 2024. In Indiana, nearly 37,000 children were waiting for assistance by spring, prompting Republican Gov. Mike Braun to announce $200 million in surplus funding expected to move roughly 8,000 children off that state's waitlist.
Who qualifies for Child Care Works?
Pennsylvania Department of Human Services guidance lists the general income limit for Child Care Works as 200% or less of the federal poverty guidelines; the income figures on its page are dated May 2026. The verified information establishes the eligibility threshold, but not how many children in Lehigh and Northampton Counties are waiting for assistance or how those numbers have changed over time. See the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services guidance.
The political response has reached well past Pennsylvania's borders. New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani pledged to make childcare free for all residents, while the Democratic governors of New Jersey and Virginia elected last year both campaigned on plans to increase childcare funding. In Washington, D.C., the Democratic nominee for mayor proposed capping childcare expenses at 7% of a household's income. Nationally, about three-quarters of U.S. adults saw the expense of childcare as a major problem, and 64% supported federal free or low-cost childcare, according to an AP-NORC poll from June 2025.
Back in the Lehigh Valley, none of those national debates change the immediate arithmetic facing Escolastico, Hagenbuch and Fisher. For now, the choice for many district voters comes down to which candidate's plan, if any, might actually bring costs down before their kids outgrow the need for care at all.
