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More than 40% of American families are struggling to find affordable child care.

And a report from the Economic Policy Institute shows that child care for one infant now costs more than rent in 17 states

and more than in-state college tuition in 38 states.

These increasing costs mean more parents of young children are at a crossroads, drop out of the workforce to save on child care,

or have their salaries eaten up by high child care costs? That's a situation some of you are facing.

My husband and I both work, and so we send our kids to private child care, but private child care

in total now costs more than our mortgage and we are totally drowning

on the cost.

I have invested a lot of my career and I'm a senior person at a Fortune 5 company and

asked whether or not I would drop out of the workforce and my answer is always no.

One thing that we always talk about is the fact that there's no

financial aid for private child care. There are no loans. And so we've actually had to take out

a loan against our house in order to afford private child care. Thanks for that message.

How have costs gotten so high? And what effect high child care costs have on our

economy? We start today's conversation with one of you. Julia is a working mom of two who left this

message in our voicemail box. Hi, this is Julia calling from Arlington Mass and daycare costs in this area

are definitely crushing our family. We are spending close to

$70,000 a year to send our two-year-old and four-year-old to a local daycare. It is not a fancy

...