Parents and caregivers of young children you already know for most its one big hot stinking mess.

This whole thing just has really put a lot of strain on it. It's like,

financially, emotionally. Joseph Spire is a dad with two kids in Washington, DC.

He and his wife both work and in December they paid $1,000 on backup childcare

after their son's daycare closed for a quarantine. And then in January they needed backup again.

And it's not just the financial strain. Spire says the hardest part is seeing the impact on his two kids.

I mean it's the changing routine. We've had to constantly, you know, just force them into new day,

every day, totally different on a tier-o for you.

And the people who provide that care, they're struggling too. Deirdre Anderson is CEO of Early Start,

a nonprofit early childhood education program with three locations in Kansas City, Missouri.

I have classrooms that are closed due to quarantines but also classrooms that are closed because we

cannot hire the teachers to fill those classrooms while I have families that are stressed to the max

as our staff. And it quite frankly is very overwhelming.

There's still no COVID vaccine widely available for children under five. And with all of the uncertainty

and disruption, it's no surprise that for families and caregivers, the situation can feel like a

nightmare. Oh, I had somebody tell me to f*** off last week.

Cory Berg directs the Hope Day School, a church affiliated preschool program in Dallas, Texas.

That four letter word was from a parent who was angry that her children lost their spots in the

program. The parent later apologized. The pandemic certainly highlighted problems in the childcare

system, but the problems and the frustrations of both parents and care providers are not new.

The first thing that people have to understand in childcare is a business. It's a failed business model

because we have a product that costs more to produce than most of the customers who need it can

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