Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126. Now, as a mother, I will just tell you, I love my children. Like, I think they're amazing human beings. They're super dope. They challenge me every day. They make me laugh. They make me cry. They are just phenomenal human beings. I think

my husband and I would both agree that the best thing we've ever done is just parent these wonderful

people and get the privilege of being a part of their lives and seeing them grow and all the

things that they do as babies, young children, middle school age, preteens, teenage and on into

adulthood.

It's a lovely, wonderful thing.

And I think you'll find most parents would agree with some sort of sentiment like that.

Howsoever, what we also are very clear about is no matter how much we may be in love with our

children, those suckers are expensive.

Children cost an exorbitant amount of money.

And frankly, taking an accurate assessment

as to how much money one child costs you might really well serve you as birth control to prevent

another child and so that's where we're going to focus today some of the challenges that we're

seeing around the country when it comes to child care and it's a really big issue when i was

pregnant with my first child,

we were told early on that if we did not get on a wait list for a good child care, daycare,

preschool sort of situation, we were destined to mediocrity when it came to education in all the years

that would follow. Now, this was a really big deal in the early 2000s in New York City,

and I'm told that it existed as a

problem way before that. Frankly, it is a nationwide issue. There is a real emphasis right now

to encourage families to grow and to expand, and there's a real concern in some neighborhoods

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